A Blessed Week with two team members from Kentucky

This past week Judy Heathman and Charlene Skaggs of Russell Springs UMC served in Thailand with us.  They were a great blessing to the Thai people and to all of the TMM missionaries!  Judy is a Registered Nurse, so she blessed the Thai people with health checks.  Charlene is a member of the Board of Directors of the Thailand Methodist Mission, and it was wonderful to have her be able to witness all that the Lord has done.

Judy doing a health check on a
member of Sai Noi Church, one of
the newest Pioneer Pastor Churches.

Judy and Charlene served at all three Blessing Home Centers and visited Special Blessings Korat.  They also served at Sai Noi Church, which was planted through the Pioneer Pastor Program only 6 months ago.

The final stop on their mission trip was to Fire of Glory Church.  Fire of Glory Church is led by Pastors Somsri and Warin, and we are in the midst of raising funds for constructing a church building together with the members.

We need $150,000 to complete the construction and we have so far received a little over $82,000.  We will be coming back to the States to raise the rest of the funds for this essential construction project.  We will be asking all of the churches that we visit (and all of the churches that we cannot visit this time around) to please take special offerings to help us complete this project.  We are praying that when we head back to Thailand on the first week of July that we will have the full $150,000 raised.  Please pray.

Charlene and Mike burn the bank note while
 trying not to set the field of straw on fire.

The $82,000 that has been received has already been put to use.  The land has been purchased and the bank note totally paid off.  And there is also enough funds to bring in dirt to fill the land up by 6 feet, so it is above street level so it will not have problems with flooding.  The field was a rice paddy, and we had to wait for the rice to be harvested before beginning to fill the land.

On the last day of their mission trip, TMM Board Member Charlene Skaggs represented our mission in a ground-breaking and note-burning ceremony at Fire of Glory Church.  All of us gathered out on the land in the boiling mid-day sun.  We burned the bank note for the land and celebrated God's provision for all of our needs.  Then we had a ground-breaking.... but really in Thailand, we do not generally do ground-breaking ceremonies, we do ground-filling ceremonies.

Yes, it is a ground-filling ceremony because most land plots are rice paddies, so they must be filled with dirt to be usable to construct a building upon.  So instead of digging the first bit of dirt, we shovel on the first buckets of dirt.

Pastor Somsri, Charlene Skaggs, Mike Morrissey, and Elder Samai (Somsri's husband) all had gold painted shovels to fill in the first dirt.  Then all of the church members took a handful of dirt, and after the prayer of dedication, each person cast their dirt onto the land.

The day after the ceremony, trucks and front loaders started coming in to fill up the land.  It will take about a month to fill the land, and then we will need to wait about 3-4 months for the rain to fall to pack the dirt tight so it is ready for construction.  And the wait is OK because that gives time for the rest of the funds to be raised.

If you would like to give to help Fire of Glory Church construct a much needed building, please be sure to designate your gift to the Building Fund.

You can send a check to TMM by mail to:
TMM
P.O. Box 56
Mannsville, KY 42758

Or give online through our blog at thailandmethodist.org