February 5

Our ABCRM Thailand Mission Team arrived safely in Bangkok after midnight Thursday February 4, after flying from Denver leaving February 3. Our team is comprised of Kerry Hassler (Team Leader) from FBC of Boulder, Arlene Bowie from FBC of Colorado Springs, Beth Kieft and Karen Pinkham from Calvary Baptist of Denver, and Sandy Stensland from Autumn Ridge (formerly Baptist) Community Church in Rochester, Minnesota. We were tired but excited after our long flight and four hours sleep after arriving at the Grand Inn Come Hotel at 1:30 a.m. on Friday morning.

Following breakfast, we packed tightly into a taxi (4 women in the back seat) for an hour’s drive to ABC-IM missionaries Annie and Jeff Dieselberg’s “NightLight” office and church in downtown Bangkok. We wanted to join the worship service with Annie and the women from NightLight. We learned the Thai way of removing our shoes whenever entering a home or worship center. The morning service was packed with 60 women, and we enjoyed sharing the service with them even though we did not understand Thai language. We did recognize the tune of “As the deer…”, and sang along in English on that song.

Following worship we toured the three building facilities of NightLight Ministry. We learned NightLight now operates through two branches: Nightlight Ministry the non-profit registered in the U.S. and NightLight Design Company Ltd., the business as mission. The design company is a registered jewelry business that employs 80 women coming out of prostitution, or having been at risk of prostitution and/or trafficking. After meeting the employees and watching them at work we stopped at the sales office, we saw their beautiful jewelry of such things as black pearls, silver necklaces and earrings. Then we met with Annie and heard her personal story of growing up in Congo (Zaire) of a child of missionary parents. She talked about her ministry with prostitutes. We heard many amazing stories that we will relate in later blogs.

In the afternoon our team rode the Bangkok Sky Train (BST) to take a boat ride on the Chao Phraya River to go see the Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho. The Buddha is gold-plated with mother of pearl sandals over 150 feet long. We also enjoyed walking around the beautiful gardens behind the Reclining Buddha. It ended up being more of an adventure then expected when on our return got on the boat going the wrong way back to the BST station, and we spent an extra 1.5 hours on the river.

Although wee were two hours late meeting Jeff Dieselberg for dinner at a nice hotel next to the NightLight office and church, he patiently waited for us and explained more about his work as pastor of a local church where many NightLight “graduates” attended, his involvement with seminary theological training, and serving at the administrative leader of NightLight. We were all impressed Jeff’s and Annie’s to helping the women in Bangkok by teaching them another way to make income through jewelry-making, as well as leading them to Christ. In the past several years, they’ve baptized over 40 of these women.

After returning to our hotel, we spent the next night catching up on sleep for our Saturday flight to Chiang Mai to meet our host ABC-IM missionaries Mike and Becky Mann.

Karen Pinkham