November 2007 Update

Six months ago, YWAM Ratchaburi was just an empty office building with two leaders and a big vision. We have truly seen God moving and it amazes us how many doors have been opened for us in only half a year.

We have watched as the hearts of our high school students have opened and have seen how God has been revealing Himself to many of them. We have even lead a few of those students to ask Jesus to reveal Himself to them more and feel privileged not only to be there for that, but also to be there as their teachers and friends who walk with them in this journey of discovering a relationship with their Creator.

We have been able to take short term missions teams into our English classes who have become friends with the students and who have shared their lives and experiences and have talked to our students about their own relationships with Jesus.

It has been amazing how God has lead us to key people in the community who have helped us to minister in places that we never would have imagined would be possible. The professor at the University English Club is one of those people. We join the University English Club once a week and spend another whole day hanging out with the students on the campus. We have been out with them on weekends and public holidays, we have shared food and taught each other how to cook, but most importantly we have shared of God’s great love for them and know that many of them are seeking after this God that we have been telling them about.

One of our other focuses over the past few months has been a small village primary school. We decided to choose this specific school, not because we thought that they needed English, but rather because most of the students at this school and many others like it, can’t afford to attend a better school and lose interest in education before they even finish high school. There are many young people in villages like the one where the school is that work in factories and live in poverty most of their lives because for them, they never had the opportunity that the other students at better schools had. Even if they make it to a better school by the time they get to high school, many of them can’t keep up with the other students. Our hope as we go into the school every time is to encourage them to keep studying and to let them know that they are just as special as any other child in any other school. We hope to be a light to them that they will remember as they continue on in their studies.

A large focus in our ministry over the past six months has been ministering alongside the local churches. It is not our heart to be the church in Ratchaburi, but rather to support the churches that are already established. Each church has a different focus in the community and we have tried to support them whenever we can. The ministries vary from working with the people in the slums in town, evangelizing to the youth through music clubs and other outreaches to encouraging the local Christians at their cell groups.

The latest door that has opened for us is in the local hospital. We have wanted to find a way to build relationships in the hospital for a long time as it is the biggest hospital in the region and is attached to a nursing college that sends nurses all over the country. We have begun by holding English seminars with some of the doctors and nurses and hope that as we continue to build on those relationships that we will have many opportunities to share God’s love in the hospital.

We have yet to find the perfect piece of land for us to build our base on but God has been showing us more about the vision for that time. We trust that God will lead us to the right piece of land and that He will provide for us to be able to buy the land and build the base. We are also trusting Him for a vehicle in which to transport the teams that come to serve with us as at the moment we are having to rent a vehicle when teams come.

We are no longer just two people working to see God’s Kingdom come here and our office building is no longer empty, but is very often filled with the wonderful short term missions teams that have been serving with us. We praise God for all that He has done and all that He is going to do.