Pattaya - the city of prosperity and desperate poverty

Last Saturday, we went to Pattaya with Pastors Jerron and On (they are assistant pastors at Pradumri UMC in Chon Buri at the present time and will be the new pastors at Bo Win UMC when it opens in 3 weeks.  We went with them to go on visitation with some of the church members who live in Pattaya, which is a 60-90 minute drive from church (depending upon traffic).  Pattaya is the largest city in this province with a metro area population that exceeds 500,000 people.  It is one of Thailand's busiest tourist locations with over 5 million people 
visiting every year.   Many of the tourists fall in love with this beautiful city on the coast of the Gulf
 of Thailand and decide to become permanent residents.  Pattaya has a very large expatriate 
population. Unfortunately, the cause for Pattaya's popularity is that it is the center for 
sex tourism in Thailand.   And with vice of sex tourism has come the dreaded scourge of AIDS which 
has devasted Thai families in this community.  AIDS has taken the lives of many adults, leaving many 
young children orphaned to be raised by relatives or friends.  Without intervention, these children 
turn towards prostitution as their only means of survival.  Child prostitution is rampant here and 
these children need ministries to reach out to them and give different options.  
One orphan that we visited is 6 year old Googeek, who lives in Baan Salay, a town south of Pattaya.  Googeek lives in a lean-to with her grandparents who are 85 years old and in poor health.  This lean to is a very small and has no water.  All water must be carried in from a neighbors well.  They have no bathroom and must use a storm drain near their lean-to for a toilet.  Pastors Jerron and On bring food to this family every week and dote on Googeek.  They will adopt Googeek when her grandparents can no longer take care of her.
There are many, many others like Googeek who are orphans living in destitution.  As United Methodists, we must provide for these children.   We hope that a ministry to orphans can be started this year that matches orphans up to be adopted by a Christian family and provides financial support for the adopting family to help with physical needs.  In cases like Googeek's family, her grandparents need to be adopted by a family to come live with her, so she is not separated from them and so her grangparents can be lifted out of their plight as well.

After visiting some families in the Pattaya metro region, we attended the cell group that meets at Pattaya.  There were 16 people that met for Bible Study, Worship, and dinner there in a member's home.  They have such abundant joy in worship and a real thirst for God's Word.  This cell group will probably form the third UMC church in Thailand and we pray it will open some time this year.  We are very blessed to be sent here to open new churches where there is such a great need.  We thank you for your support and prayers that makes it all possible.  May God Bless You!

Meet our new Thai language teachers

We want to progress faster in our Thai language studies, so we have added more instruction time each morning.  One element that was missing in our language studies are words and phrases used in the Bible and in the church context.   We asked for help at the church to see if anyone could teach us the Thai language in the morning hours and have some emphasis on biblical words.  A couple who are leaders at Pradumri UMC have offered their help.  Peter and Nuc are our new Thai teachers and they are a wonderful and spiritually mature couple.  We are very blessed to have their help and we believe we are making faster progress in learning the Thai language.  Now we receive instruction from local teachers on 4 mornings and 3 afternoons 
each week as well as all day Thursday at a language school in Bangkok.  
Our local language teacher that has been teaching us on afternoons has graduated from 
college and soon may not be able to tutor us, so our schedules may change again soon.

This last week, we had another lesson on the great hospitality of Thai people.  We wanted to plant just a few flowers and small trees in our front yard, which was really looking rather barren.  However, we know nothing of horticulture here, and it is all very different.... different weather, different plants, different soil, and different gardening materials and practices.  We asked our neighbor "Buk" for advice.  Buk not only helped us with advice, she helped take Sherri to several nurseries and also lined up all the workers to make a garden (which was actually much, much more than we had planned).  She personally supervised all the work because she knew we had difficulties with communicating to the workers.  After just 4 days, we had a new front yard, which has been a blessing to us, a peaceful place to enjoy in the early morning hours.  We asked for a an inch of help and we received a mile.  It really ended up being a neighborhood project because we had people from all up and down the lane in our yard helping.   We are truly blessed to have great neighbors.

Just a word about our internet phone.  If you cannot get in touch with us by the phone, please do not leave a voice message because we are unable to retrieve the messages at this time.  Please contact us by e-mail at thailandumc@gmail.com and we will call you.

Tomorrow we will be heading to Bo Win to see the progress on the church building construction.  We will take pictures and keep you up-to-date with how everything is going.

Blessings to you in the name of Jesus!

Feeling the Heat

Children are off from school here in Thailand for the next 2 months because the weather is becoming very hot.  Everyone is warning us that April is the hottest month of the year with the highest temperatures, high humidity, and very little rain to cool things off.  We say, "Praise God for air conditioning, fans, and please pass the ice water!"

In the hottest month of the year, we will be heading up to Li, Thailand to help conduct an English language camp and children's ministries.  We will be working with Pastor Wirot of the Li Happy Methodist Church, a ministry of the Thailand Methodist Foundation, which is a Korean Methodist Ministry.  Please visit their website at http://www.geocities.com/lihappymethodistchurch/
We cooperate in our ministry with other Christian groups, such as Korean Methodists, Singapore Methodists, Phayao Bible College, and other ministries as we work together to share the good news of Jesus Christ here in Thailand.