In December 2008, Pattaya Chinese Church joined the Thai congregation of Life Center UMC to form a new congregation together which is stronger and can do ministries together that they would be unable to do as separate congregations.
This has been a long process and the process continues in January and February, as we will meet for Leadership Team meetings where the leaders will form a united vision and work out many of the details of forming one organization. This will be a challenge because the trainings will be tri-lingual (English, Thai, and Chinese). We have to put together all of the materials now because our translator, Miss Nittaya, will be on vacation for 2 weeks in February.
We thank Kenny for sending us pictures of the uniting service, 3 of which we are posting here on the blog.
We have just finished doing all of the wrap up for 2008: an end-of-the-year newsletter (expect it to come to you in the mail in the next few weeks), closing up a year of financial books (GBGM keeps tight controls on finances, and our financial books and receipt folders are audited regularly), and end-of-the-year reports to supervisors. These things have kept us busy this past week. Doing accounting and typing reports is not the most exciting forms of ministry, but we are glad to have the accountability that we have in GBGM.
