Turmoil in Bangkok

We want everyone to know that we are OK here in Thailand. We live far from where the bombs exploded and we are taking appropriate precautions. We do need your prayers for safety, because we must travel into Bangkok at least once per week and two of the bomb sites are places we must travel past to get to language school and to do our banking. This week we will also need to go to the American embassy, and we will be cautious.

Many of you have known about Anthony's dog, Saphira. Saphira is a Shih Tzu puppy which Anthony received for Christmas. We asked for prayers from family and many friends when Saphira contracted a deadly intestinal virus. The vet gave her a 30% chance of survival. Saphira died on New Years Eve and we just had her burial service this morning. The neighbors all helped. When I went to one neighbor to borrow a shovel and told her the dog died, she contacted the other neighbors and soon they were all in action to help us. One neighbor saw that I was struggling to dig the grave in the rocky and very hard soil, so he took over and soon another neighbor helped. Others brought food and flowers and participated in the service. They are very kind people.

Please also pray for our visa situation as we seek to obtain a one year worker visa. Obtaining visas and other Immigration documents here is very complicated. We have been making multiple trips to the Immigration office and each time there are requests for additional documents. These matters take up a large portion of our time.

We thank you for your prayers.

Your GBGM missionaries in Thailand,
Sherri, Mike, and Anthony

Limited Internet Accessibility

Just in case you don't hear from us for a while, or our communication seems very sparse, we want everyone to know that international internet service from Thailand has been dramatically affected by the Taiwan earthquake. We're presently very fortunate to have gotten on-line here at the internet cafe. (Internet service was hooked up at the house this week, but is now 'down.' With all of the current challenges to the communication system, DSL/internet trouble-shooting at home will take a while).

We hope everyone has a wonderful & safe New Year. Tomorrow, we'll be thinking of all of our brothers and sisters in the US who are possibly participating in a Covenant Service, or corporately praying Wesley's Covenant Prayer... We'll be reviewing this ourselves, and again, dedicating ourselves to God's Work for the new year. We hope you'll join us!

Sawadekha,
Blessings
Sherri, Mike, & Anthony

**The Wish List ** - Updated August 8, 2007

Wish List - Updated August 8, 2007

Help Start New Churches in Thailand

Help with the equipment expenses of starting a new church
Remodel building, Furniture, Books, Church Supplies $5,000.00
Musical Instruments and Sound System $2,500.00
Used Pickup Truck $5,000.00

Total Launch expenses for one church $12,500.00

Help with pastoral support for a church planting pastor
Pastor Salary $5,400.00
Rent $8,000.00
Total Pastoral and Church Support for One Year $13,400.00

(1st floor of the building is used as the church sanctuary and the 2nd floor is the children’s Sunday School room and pastor’s apartment)

Become a Sister Church!
Churches that help start a new church in Thailand will have a sister church relationship with the new congregation. Sister churches connect with each other through e-mail and letters, and VIM missions trips

Help Start New Homes for

Orphans and Indigent Seniors

Help with start-up expenses for a home
Staff Salary $5,400.00
Rent $8,000.00
Used Pickup Truck $5,000.00
Operating Expenses (Food, Clothes, School Fees) $12,000.00
Total expenses for launching the Home $30.400.00

If you, your mission committee, church, or district would like to contribute to covering the costs of these items and strengthen the work of the Thailand Mission, please follow these easy steps:
Your church (or district) treasurer can forward funds to your Conference Office, with the Project Advance Number written in the memo section of the check. (Thailand Advance # 00403A).

Please contact us by email and let us know which project you are supporting, with information on how we can contact you / your church, so we can thank you.
Email Address: thailandumc@gmail.com

VIM teams needed:

• Music teams for evangelism and outreach
• Construction teams for re-building homes
• Connectional teams to bring needed supplies and discover what the Lord is doing through the UMC in Thailand.

Serve as a layworker here in Thailand. There are many job opportunities teaching English in schools here in Thailand. If you want to work here in Thailand and help serve the Lord at the same time, please contact us.

God's People are good people, and you have been generous and thoughtful in your support of your mission in Thailand. We give you are heartfelt thanks for all that you do to make a difference for the Kingdom of God!

Mike and Sherri Morrissey

Sherri & Mike Morrissey

The Day After Christmas...

We have had a blessed and tremendously busy Christmastime here in Thailand. Between all of the Christmas events at God Purpose Church and all of the travels and meetings we have had, we have not had a chance to update the blog.

The members of God Purpose Church worked very hard to put on a large Christmas dinner and service. They had a delicious meal outside on the front parking lot, where people could see what was happening and come and join the fun. Then we all went inside for singing Christmas carols and worship songs. They then put on a Christmas play that was very evangelistic. The play began with the Christmas story, proceeded through a few vignettes in Jesus’ ministry, and ended with his death on the cross and resurrection from the grave. After the drama, Dr. Viseth, the pastor of God Purpose Church, preached a sermon to show that the reason Jesus was born was so he could die on the cross for our sins. There were many people in the church that day that were hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ for the first time. We were delighted at this event. It took the whole church to put it on, and they did a wonderful job. After the drama, gifts were given out to all who registered at this event. Each person was given a ticket with a number and a color. Tickets would be pulled out of a bowl and called out, and whoever had the appropriate ticket would win whatever prize that was up front. Everyone had a fun time (in Thai, we would say “Sanook!”) After the Christmas dinner and service, a group went around Christmas caroling at members homes until 4 a.m. And then they were back in church a few hours later for the Sunday morning service! After service and our usual Sunday dinner, the people went caroling again and came by our home. It was a great time of singing and fellowship.

We want to thank all who sent Christmas cards to us. Christmas cards have always been special to us, but since we are on the other side of the globe, so far away from family and friends in America, those beautiful Christmas cards have taken on added meaning for us. Thank you. Special thanks to our sisters and brothers at Santa Clara UMC who deluged us with lovely cards and words of encouragement. Our hearts are overflowing.

Anthony had a special gift this Christmas. One of our neighbors has a Shih Tzu dog that he adores, so we bought a Shih Tzu puppy for him, and he has named it Sapphira (I think this is the name of the dragon in Eragon). He is thrilled with his little companion.

On Christmas Eve, we had a really big block party at our house, with neighbors coming and filling up the house and overflowing into the front yard. We cannot overstate how wonderful our neighbors have been to us. God’s hand was at work placing us in this neighborhood. Our lane is known as the friendly street because the neighbors are always together with each other. They have helped us innumerable times and we wanted an opportunity to show our love and gratitude to them.

May the Lord Bless You!
Sherri, Mike, and Anthony

It is a blessing to have our belongings arrive in Thailand

Praise The Lord! The Lord is good and provides for all of our needs! On Friday, our belongings arrived! We have been essentially living out of suitcases since the middle of August (3-1/2 months) and we really needed our other clothes, sandals (yes!), medications, toiletries, kitchen items, Anthony’s games, and many books and ministry items.

The children of our home church, College Heights UMC in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, created a precious banner for us to take to Thailand. Sherri promised that this banner would be the first item we would display in our house, so that is exactly what she did. The banner is now in our kitchen and it reminds us that we have a group of wonderful children who we are praying for and they are praying for us. Thank you, kids of College Heights. We love you!

On a somber note, we attended our first funeral in Thailand. It was at the rural church in Bauwin. It was good to see God’s people surrounding the grieving family and church family with love. God’s people are good people all over the world.

This next week we will be very busy. We will be meeting with our programming supervisor, Rev. Jong Sung Kim for a few days in Bangkok. Several missionaries from Southeast Asia will be there for this time of meeting together. Please pray for wisdom and discerning God’s path for the mission in Southeast Asia. We look forward to this time together.

We will also be purchasing bookshelves and office furniture and setting up our office at the church. God is good!

VIM Team comes from Singapore

This weekend, God Purpose Church hosted our second VIM team. The team was from Singapore and consisted of three young couples with their children. As a team, we visited a school on Monday morning that is near our rural congregation. It was a middle school with around 1200 students. We had about 200 students that we helped to teach English through games and songs. The children on the team did a wonderful job of singing songs to the Thai children. Sherri, Anthony, and I have been invited to help teach English on a regular basis at this school, and we may volunteer a few days per week, to make connections with the people in the area.

After our school program, we went for lunch and then went to a village that has over 100 families and many of them are Christian. The Christians there have asked that we start a church there, but at the moment, we do not have the people or resources to send anyone there, and this area really needs a full-time Christian worker to pastor the people. Please pray that the Lord will send for workers and the resources needed to support those workers for planting churches in Thailand. There are many Christians who are stranded in areas without any church near them.

We visited in many homes and had a good time praying with the people there. The people in the area range from very poor to absolutely destitute, with most being the latter. Being the heavy man I am, I had to watch where I stepped in their homes because many of the floor boards were broken and could not support my weight (or anyone who weighed more than 100 lbs.). As I visited people in their homes, I looked around and realized that most Americans have garages that are larger and in much, much better shape than their homes. We build houses for our cars that these people could only dream of having as a house to live in with a large family. Most of the people we visited were elderly women and men. The younger adults were all working at a nearby factory. It astounded me that a household could have 2 or 3 adults working full-time at the factory and still just barely eek out a living. Anthony was especially touched by visiting with these people. We believe all youth need to go on a mission trip to gain perspective on how truly blessed we are.

On Monday night, some team members presented a teaching session on cell group ministry. We were excited about the presentation, because no one does cell group ministry better than Asian Methodists, like those in Singapore and Korea. Asian Methodists have the largest Methodist churches in the world and are tremendously effective at evangelism, discipleship, and mission work. The team did a great job of teaching cell group ministry and we hope God Purpose Church adopts this Cell Group structure.

We enjoyed the fellowship with the VIM team from Singapore, and we hope to visit with them in January. In January, we will need to leave Thailand briefly to re-apply for a new visa. We are hoping to go to Singapore to renew our visas at the Thai embassy there. It would be a blessing to be with our sisters and brothers in Christ there. We need your prayers concerning visa issues. There is a very long and complicated process that we need to pursue to obtain one year worker visas (these are the longest term visas available). We will not describe the whole process here, but it will probably take several months to complete the process, and we will only be able to have 90 day visas until this process is finalized.

Ohhh! We almost forgot about Sunday night. Every so often, all the Protestant churches in the region come together for a time or worship through singing. It was God Purpose Church’s time to host the event, and there were seven churches that participated. It was a time of joyous singing and we were blessed to see each of the church members praying for each of the other churches and also praying for each other as individuals.

If you have prayer requests, please e-mail us at thailandumc@gmail.com and we would be honored to pray for you. Nothing of eternal significance ever happens without prayer.
And with prayer, all things are possible through Jesus Christ!