Developing Leaders and Constructing Campuses

The other day, I was shopping online at a Christian bookstore website and it was overwhelming the amount of Christian education resources available. There was no need to "re-invent the wheel". You could choose any age group and any topic or book of the Bible, and there would be hundreds of books available for teaching Sunday School and Bible studies. In fact, there are so many choices, it seems a bit overwhelming to try to sift through them all to make a choice. But in Thailand, it is a very different story. There is a real paucity of Christian education materials, especially for Sunday School for children and teens. For many years now, we and our fellow missionaries serving with Thailand NOW have been creating Sunday School material and providing it to churches throughout Thailand for free. Each year, Sherri and I have provided trainings for Sunday School teachers, so they can receive curriculum and know how to use if effectively. This past month, Thailand NOW missionaries (Carol Fare, Vicki Brown, David Houle, Allie Houle) as well as our Thai team (Dr. Prai and Miss Supaporn) provided a seminar and workshop for Sunday School teachers in the Korat area. The event was held at Special Blessings Korat, the Thailand NOW ministry for families of special needs children. The Thai Sunday School teachers received curriculum and training on teaching catechism as well as training on how to develop their own curriculum. Carol and Vicki will be following up with the teachers through social media to continue to provide resources and helpful tips. Five churches participated in this training, and we ask for your prayers that word gets out and many more churches will participate in the next seminar. Below are some pictures from the training event.

Last week, we began construction of the retainer wall around the campus of the future Abundant Life Training Center. Pictured below are trucks that delivered some of the construction materials. There is a crew coming with pile-driving equipment to hammer in all of the support columns. Each support column is 24 feet long and there are over 200 columns to hammer into the ground. After the wall is complete, we will have a few hundred truckloads of dirt brought in to raise the land by over 6 feet, so the buildings will be far above flood level. Our prayers are for construction of the retainer wall to be completed before rain season begins at the end of May.

We had a few more people contact us asking about how to donate. You can donate by mailing a check to: Thailand NOW P.O. Box 56 Mannsville, KY 42758 OR give online at : https://thailandnow.org/donate/