April 17, 2008

April Update

Dear Friends,

The past two plus months working with the SDRF in Thailand have been exhilarating. It has been an incredible time of expansion and consolidation of the work of the SDRF around Thailand. It just keeps on getting better and better – it is sometimes so unbelievably good that it takes my breath away. Here are some highlights:

•The groups of new believers in south Thailand keep growing and growing. They all got together to celebrate the birth of Christ in January in the province of Hat Yai and are now looking forward to celebrating the resurrection of Christ in April/May in the province of Naratiwat – the deep south. Leadership development in this expanding group of believers is a key focus for the SDRF right now.
•The SDRF related organization, CAM (Center for Applied Ministry), which was started last year to focus specifically on the growing churches related to the SDRF, became an official member of the Evangelical Fellowship of Thailand, an important Thai umbrella organization for protestant church groups, in early January.
•I re-connected with two long time Thai friends who are in different ministries of the Thai government. Khun Surapee Vasinonta, the former Vice Director of the Thai Social Welfare Department, and Khun Virasakdi Futrakul, the Permanent Secretary of the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Both are very interested in what we are doing and asking what they can do to help us meet the needs of at risk communities in Thailand.
•We have recently had multiple meetings with two organizations that are part of the International School Bangkok (ISB), one of the oldest and largest international schools in Bangkok. Both of these organizations have been working with a Social Welfare school on the coast of the Andaman see just north of Phuket in a place called Bang Sak. The short name for the school is R 35 – it is one of 45 schools throughout Thailand that are related to the King’s foundation which are focused on the education of marginalized and at risk kids. This one has over 1,000 at risk kids who board at the school, and more are being added. Many of the kid’s were orphaned by the Tsunami three years ago.
-We have been asked by ISB to take over both of the organizations they have started in order to make work with R 35 more sustainable. One is an ESL organization that has 8 volunteers from the U.S. teaching English to kids in the school. The other is a Scholarship program that focuses on financial support for around 70 kids at this time and is moving to support 300. The SDRF will take responsibility for both programs starting May. ISB will continue to support the program financially and also be involved in visiting and interacting with the kids regularly. It is a great partnership that is already creating an unusual synergy between the SDRF and the ISB groups that will have a powerful impact on the plight of youth at risk in Thailand. In March we meet with a key group of people from ISB, R 35 and the Department of Eductation. We were invited by the DE director, who was there,to establish an MOU agreement with the DE regarding our new responsibilities at R 35 - a very good step forward.

•We are in the middle of the construction process for the Andry High School, Baw Yuak. Two of the three buildings will be completed by May. The third building should be completed by August this year. Since the school is under the patronage of the Crown Princess of Thailand, the Crown Princess will be visiting and opening the new high school in the Fall. What we are doing here will be linked to and leveraged by the new Center for Development that the SDRF is building, with the help of GrX, in north Thailand.

•We are in the process of designing and developing the Center for Development for North Thailand in Baw Yuak, Nan. We have recently worked through getting the Center approved by all of the government entities in Baw Yuak and have built a road up the side of the mountain on which the Center will be built. The Center will be a leadership development center and will address a number of key needs of the area: a Prep School (for jobs & university entrance) for local at risk youth, an Agricultural Research Center – addressing slash & burn agriculture, and a Vocational Training Center for marginalized villagers in the area.

-The churches in Nan continue to make a positive impact on the surrounding area. I sat with a small group of new believers in Huay Kap, Nan province last month - the whole extended family of 12 people had come to belief as a group. I asked them why they had done this and one of the young sons responded "because belief has given us such peace of mind and heart". At first I thought that this was a rather "canned" answer but later learned that this young man had been a crazy man smashing cars ,homes and people around the area for a number of years. He was tied up and locked in but even this did not help. Kru Chun, the SDRF director for Nan, began visiting him and talking to him and praying for him. After two weeks of TLC from Kru Chun, the young man professed belief in Christ and a week later, when I met with him, said that he had great "peace". He is the smiling man on the left in the picture below. This is what transformation is about.

•In January the SDRF was asked by Curt Peterson, the Executive Director of the Evangelical Covenant Church DWM to write up an MOU between the SDRF and the DWM. That MOU has just been completed and will unite the two organizations in a mutually beneficial partnership. This is a step back into history, as key leaders in the SDRF have been related to the ECC for over 30 years now, and a step forward into the future with a new relationship between the DWM of the Covenant and the SDRF, an autonomous indigenous organization.

•In south Thailand, we have had some difficulties filling in the land for the new nursery system for the MRI on Koh Yaow island due to water seepage from an underground spring which we discovered on the land. We are working to solve the problem by adding more landfill, terracing the land and developing an effective drainage system for the land. We are currently in the process of starting construction of the first phase of the new MRI system. When it is completed, the new facility will include spawning, hatchery and nursery systems necessary for breeding spiny lobsters and grouper. I was just down on Kho Yaow working with the lobster hatchery system and adjusting the grouper hatchery system - we have a cage of Coral Trout Groupers that are pregnant and getting ready to release their eggs. "Good stuff.

•Elite Thailand continues to grow and expand its impact on the youth of Bangkok. We have started a Junior Elite program for younger children and are expanding the reach of Elite Thailand to include selected Thai schools in Bangkok. We are now teaching TOEFL as well as SAT test prep and high end ESL to students. Elite Thailand has just leased another module of rooms in their current facility in anticipation of an expanded number of students. Elite Thailand is also linked to the work that the SDRF is doing with marginalized youth in Nan and in the R 35 school in south Thailand – it is the key SDRF organization for addressing the needs of marginalized at risk kids.

All of this is exciting and demanding – we continue to need your partnership and prayers as we move forward. May God give us all increased commitment and strength to serve Him and to move forward with him.

Blessings,

Jim

4/17/08

I am on Koh Yaow island just off of Phuket working at the MRI where the SDRF has set up a spiny lobster and grouper production system. A couple of weeks ago 3 mother lobsters gave birth to literally hundreds of thousands eggs. These eggs have now hatched and we have baby lobsters swimming in our hatchery tanks ( see below one of them that I photographed yesterday). We are busy setting up the system for feeding "rotifers" (small zoo plankton we grow in tanks) to the small lobsters. It is a mind blowing experience to work with the production and growth of spiny lobsters - I once again marvel at the fantastic way God has created this world.

God continues to amaze me as he moves, always ahead of us, to find at risk people and meet their needs. On January 20th we met with a group of new believers in Hat Yai, south Thailand. They had invited us to visit and celebrate the birth of Christ with them. After Nujon asked the group why they had beleived in Christ, we sat and listened as they spoke, many with tears, from their hearts. "I believed because God gave me a new family - all of the other AIDS infected believers in this group"; " I believed because I saw the change in Narong ( in whose house we were meeting) and wanted to experience what he has"'; "I believed because God touched my body - even though I know that I still have AIDS, my body has been transformed from weakness to strenth"; "God is good and has blessed me beyond anything I ever dreamed was possible - I now have a house ( really a small shack) and I just got married by God's grace". As I sat there listening to them I wept as the goodness of God came flowing over me from these AIDS impacted people who were being moved by his grace.

We continue to move forward in God's strenth in Nan province, north Thailand. The new high school that we are building there at Baw Yuak school in the mountains of Nan is in the initial construction phase. We are targeting the middle of the year as the completion date - the Thai school year starts in May and we hope to have the school completed in time for that. We are also building a Development Center (DC) about 10 kilometers from the school. The DC will provide a prep school for high school graduates in the area as well as doing work in the area of agricultural research and vocational training for the marginalized people in villages of this isolated area. We are currently building an access road up a mountain the SDRF has obtained - the DC will be built on the top of this mountain.

God is good and he is doing great things. As I stop and look around myself from time to time I am, once again, moved to praise God for his goodness. I trust that you are experiencing his goodness and moving with him.

Blessings,

Jim