Sunday - Pictures

Bruce: Today was a very busy day. We traveled together today. We started our day at 8 am for breakfast with devotions and communion then on to Pastor Timothy’s church in Fang. It was a terrific service and Dr. Jan Busboom spoke. The message was well received. After lunch we went to the Queen’s school for poor children. This boarding school is one of the places we visited at Christmas with youth 2 years ago. After our skits, 2 years ago, several Christian students came and begged that someone would come regularly to pastor them, it took a few weeks to organize but Pastor Timothy (or his youth leader Thumb) now go and have church service with them every Sunday afternoon. The students want a church building on campus, and Timothy has now arranged that a church can be built IF there is a full time missionary there to teach English.


Mark and Abby spoke to the group of about 40 Christians and several non-Christians (high school mostly). This is the largest gathering of Christians I’ve seen in my 4 visits to Thailand. Mark and Abby did a fantastic job and several accepted Christ for the first time and several more, about 12, rededicated their lives. There also were about 6 students who were supposed to be baptized after the service and Timothy’s wife Fong explained what it meant to be baptized, I think she thought more would respond positively but instead when they heard what baptism was about then 3 of the students decided not to get baptized.

We wrapped up the worship service and drove about 2 miles on a VERY rough road to a reservoir that I thought was partially filled up but in fact the lake was covered with huge sections of floating plants supporting small trees. We found a good spot for the baptism and one of the Thai youths went in to clear away the scum. Then Timothy and KC went in to do the baptism, they were both pretty wobbly since the bottom of the lake was large stone.

Michael decided to get a good spot to video tape and jumped to one of the ‘islands’, without realizing that it wouldn’t support him until it was too late. He was quickly up to his knees, he turned and headed for the bank, but it was too late. Now he was over his waist and about to nosedive his only choice was to support himself with his hands, unfortunately he had his DV camera in one hand and it got baptized, we are now laying on hands that it be revived but it isn’t looking good. Michael on the other hand merely got a wet body and slightly bruised ego.

At any rate 3 people were baptized by Timothy with KC’s help.

Next it was off to the children’s center (Timothy’s orphanage) which is just getting started with about 15 kids. It is about 10 miles in the country and property adjoins Timothy’s house. When the school term ends this week he will be getting about another 20 students.

It was here that we learned that we could either build a kitchen and dining room or start building the church. This will be the second Grace church as Timothy will continue to meet in town as well. This church will be much bigger and more expensive to build than the hill tribe church we built last year. Even though we won’t be able to finish the project we decided to start it. We plan to get the land leveled and the foundation poured and the large concrete posts in place that will form the structure of the building. We also will be building a concrete post fence around the property. At 65’ by 30 feet of sanctuary this may be the largest church in the Fang area and will mostly be attended by the hilltribe people (I don’t recall which one) who work in the tangerine groves in the area. They currently have no church building and no pastor.

Next (about 6pm) we traveled to the Akha hilltribe where Dana, Mandy, Dan, Patty, Bruce and Laurie built a church building last year. The youth ALSO visited this tribe at Christmas 2 years ago. It was VERY exciting to Bruce and Laurie to see these people again and they recognized us and greeted us all very warmly. The tribe has a full time pastor (Tom, who is Lahu). Laurie introduced us and thanked them for their hospitality. Michael spoke and thanked them for being some of the people who so positively affected his son James who was part of the youth team 2 years ago. Tyler preached about the need to reach out to others (this tribe is all Christian). Timothy also preached to us in English and in Thai to the tribe. As we concluded they served us a wonderful spread of fresh roasted peanuts, squash, tea, some sort of spicy pickled herb, and awesome bananas (now the youth know what Laurie and I were raving about)

Next Saturday, they will slaughter a pig and we will dedicate the church. We were back at the hotel, had dinner and our summary session and in bed by 11 pm and everyone was told to be ready for breakfast at 8 am.