ABCRM Mission Experiences

ABCRM Mission Experience to Haiti - 8/8

2011-08-08T21:32:00.000-06:00

Greetings from Haiti! The team is alive and well and we appreciate everyone;s prayers. We have been working hard - really hard and having a good time. We are staying at a great guest house and have flush toilets and plenty of food. the first couple of days because of the threat of heavy rains we didn't work on the rubble houses but at the Conservative Baptist Fellowship school project. We built desks, twisted rebar, dug foundation and moved a lot of rocks. We are physically tired at the end of the day but it is good to return to the guest house for a cold shower, filling meal and evening devotion.

Saturday another team arrived - a college group from North Carolina and 3 from Canada. Sunday, we went to church (over 3 hours all in Kreole) and then spent the afternoon at the beach. We enjoyed spending lots of time in the ocean and it was great to give our bodies a chance to recover. Today we moved 7 truck loads of rubble (picked it up from large piles that are on the streets with buckets and shovels into the back of a truck). It takes about 3 truck loads to build one house so we felt great that we gathered more thatn enough material for two houses.

Today was Becky Whitaker's birthday. We sang Happy birthday numerous times and even had cake - in fact we had four cakes so everyone could have some.

Please continue to pray for the team. We have one more work day then we travel home on Wednesday. Also prayer for Don & Lynn's daughter who is 17 and the person who was staying with her had to go to the hospital.

Blessings-
the ABCRM Haiti Mission Team

ABCRM Mission Experience to Haiti - 8/4

2011-08-04T21:14:00.000-06:00

We had a great day today. Tiga, our team coordinator was afraid that the Storm was going to pass through Grand Goave around 10 am so we didn't work on the rubble houses. Instead we helped another American Baptist mission team from Washington State build benches for a school. Along with an equal number of Haitians, a group measured lumber, cut the boards, assembled the legs, then screwed the benches together. the project started slow but once we saw the first one completed we kicked it into high gear. Plus, Emily stalled out before reaching Haiti and our temperature was milder than normal (another blessing).

Everyone is finding ways to serve. Robert uses his French, Lynn's Kreole is wonderful for recuiting workers and explaining things, Catey pitches in with any task, Haley has a great skill relating with the Haitians,and Becky works hard on individual projects or with a group.

The lodging and food has been great. Plus, we are inspired by all amazing people serving here.

ABCRM Mission Experience to Haiti - 8/3 #2

2011-08-03T20:48:00.000-06:00

Greetings from Haiti!

The team arrived this morning around 9:30am. After 2 -3 hours of sleep, the group took a shuttle to the Ft. Lauderdale airport for our 7:30am flight. God was with us because there were extra seats in first class and five of us got bumped up. God is Good! The skies were clear and we enjoyed looking out over the Bahamas and Turks and Kakos on our way to Haiti. We arrived but our luggaged didn't; the bags are due in at 1pm. Tiga, our boss for the week, and a driver were at the airport to pick us up. Tiga suggested we go to an air conditioned fast food restaurant where we can hang out for a few hours instead of waiting at the hot airport.

And in the same building as the restaurant is a small internet cafe. I handed them $5 US, they gave me 160 Gourdes Goud back and let me use a very old computer.The space bar only works if you hit it twice but I am thankful for the opportunity to email you on behalf of the team.

Flying into Port Au Prince you can see beaches, low tin buildings and areas of tent homes. Lots of traffic, horns honking and much activity. The team is engaged in soaking it all in and Robert and Lynn are using their language skills to learm more about the people.

Thanks for your prayers. We heard Emily will arrive tonight. We will be gratefully to have our rain gear which most of us packed in our delayed suitcases.

Blessings-

Karen Van
ABCRM Haiti Mission Team

ABCRM Mission Experience to Haiti - 8/3

2011-08-03T00:57:00.000-06:00

It has been a hard day of travel for the Haiti team. Our flight out of Denver was delayed about 1 1/2 hours (late arrival then mechanical problems)so we missed our connecting flight in Dallas. There wasn't another flight to Ft. Lauderdale that night so they rerouted us through Miami. That flight also left late and we arrived in Miami about 1 am and then had to take a shuttle to Ft. Lauderdale. We hope to get about three hours of sleep then catch the hotel shuttle to the airport at 5:30 am to get our 7:30 am flight to Port Au Prince. Our luggage is still in Dallas and won't make it to Ft Lauderdale until after our flight leaves for Haiti.

Please pray for the team
* Safe travels
* our luggage catches up with us soon
* The tropical storm Emily doesn't effect our work in Grand Groave
* that we will be a blessing to the people we encounter during this adventure.
blessings to all-

Karen, Becky, Lynn, Catey, Haley, Robert and Don

THAILAND MEMORIES

2011-03-08T11:04:00.002-07:00

There are so many things that made this trip memorable. There are smells that will forever be associated with Thailand—garlic cooking in the street vendors booths for example; there are sounds that will forever
remind me of Chang Rai—roosters crowing at 3 a.m., dogs barking, lots of traffic sounds; the traffic in Bangkok that was scary because it was so heavy and so intense; the beauty of the temples and the Grand Palace of the King; the taste of marvelous Thai food that we experienced in so many ways. Mary Tellis, Karen VanValkenburgh and I were blessed with a great camaraderie and a chance to see mission up close and personal.

The missionaries that we met challenged us every step. The Dieselbergs in Bangkok met with us and gave us a tour of Nightlight Ministries. We had a chance to worship with them and meet the women who work at Nightlight (making beautiful jewelry). Karen Smith gave us a tour of New Life Center in Chang Mai and introduced us to the young ladies and their handcrafts. We worshiped at the Chang Mai Community Church and were truly blessed. Becky Mann showed us the Lanna Café and the coffee distributing business. The Akha ministry of Chang Rai was highlighted by Chuck and Ruth Fox. We were asked to help with a project at the Family Learning Center (the school where Ruth is principal). The library had compiled a database of their book holdings but needed some additional help with the input of grade levels. So we, Karen, Mary and I, helped with that project.

Karen also helped with the financial piece they are completing. The school will become an international school in the fall in the new building being completed as I write this. Chuck assists the Akha with water projects and also works with people with drug addictions. We visited the village of Sansouk to see the dormitories and food service areas where ABCRM is funding necessary improvements. Chuck and Ruth Fox took us to spend the night in Sukasem, another Akha village, to worship with them on the final weekend we were in Thailand. It was an awesome experience, with the young people leading the service. We sang familiar hymns and the love of God was expressed to all of us through our worship together.

The trip included some wonderful sightseeing. Bangkok is a beautiful city with the longest official city name in the world. (Don’t ask me to pronounce it or spell it!) There are huge shopping malls, but narrow streets and wide boulevards, beautiful homes next to small houses or huts, a huge river with city on both sides of it with a canal through the “new” Bangkok (started in the middle 1800s). The elephant camp outside Chang Mai was amazing and showed us what a marvelous animal it is. We visited the King’s mother’s flower gardens at Doi Tung, which were beautiful and so peaceful! The night markets were an experience!

How does one express all the emotions experienced during this kind of trip? How can one share the lessons learned, how people we worked with touched us? Each day was full of new experiences and we praised the Lord for each one and for each person we met, for the challenges offered. It is an experience that has changed my life and I know will continue to bless me, Mary and Karen. I challenge others to take a mission trip because each one will forever be changed and blessed.

Deanna Dyer

Thailand 2011

2011-02-14T23:33:00.000-07:00

We are very excited to be able to help Sansuk. ABCRM transferred $1,000 US into the Foxes' account to be split between the Sansuk project and the Ahka Craft program. We are a the school his week working on the library/book order project and I spent yesterday working with their accounting staff to help with their conversion to QuickBooks. Friday Chuck will drive the group to Sansuk so we can visit the area where the improvements will be made.

We are having a great time-

Karen Van

The next six pictures are of the Sansuk kitchen and dorm that needs help. They are requesting a new refrigerator, cabinet, and stuff for the kids. They are also requesting funds for a new roof on the girls dorm which is quite expensive.

Chiang Rai

Chiang Rai

ABCRM gifts presented to the Family Learning Center where Ruth Fox is principal.

Ruth Fox

The gifts from ABCRM

Bus station in Chiang Mai

On a bus... luxury.

The new site of the Family Learning Center

Deanna and Mary doing English practice with a student from Korea

The Fair Trade Akha Craft Store (another Ruth Fox project)

Downtown Chiang Rai

2011 ABCRM Thailand Mission Trip - Day 1

2011-02-06T21:59:00.001-07:00

It was quite a day! Woke up around 7, had breakfast and then took a cab to the bike tour office. There were 4 of us on the bike tour and it was great- back alleys, across the big bridge, good mix of beautiful scenery and some background information. About half way in on a narrow path my foot caught a piece of metal on the side of the path and I had a cut between my 2nd and 3rd toe. We couldn't get it to stop bleeding and the extra guide and I jumped in a cab to find the closest clinic or hosipital.

We ended up at the oldest hospital in Thailand and they took a copy of my passport and proceeded to figure out what to do. It is a teaching hospital, so there were about 8 med students and Residents gathered around my bleeding foot. The cut was pretty deep and close to the bone, so they sent me across the hall to get an Xray. That took less than ten minutes and I was back with the doctor and med students. They pulled up the Xray on the computer and everything looked Ok. Next the foot was numbed, throughly cleaned and five stitches put in to hold the cut together. I was given two scripts (pain and antibiotics) and sent to the front to get them filled.

I paid 620 baht (less than $20) and was back in the cab in about an hour! We arrived back to the tour office about 30 minutes before the bike group finished their tour! It sounded like the bike group saw some amazing things but I got to experience first hand (or foot) the Thai medical system.

This demonstrates that you can have the day or your life well planned but God might throw you a curve ball. The detour to the hospital will definitely make this a trip a will remember! As you can tell, we need your prayers.

It is time for bed. Tomorrow we start the day with worship at NightLight, a tour of the jewelry business and hopefully some time with Annie and Jeff Dieselberg.

Thailand Greetings from the ABCRM Mission 2011 Team-
Karen Van

February 15-16

2010-03-23T09:42:00.001-06:00

Team Activities with IM Missionaries Chuck and Ruth Fox in Chiang Rai on February 15-16

Early on Monday morning February 15, our mission team went with Chuck to see the 7:30 a.m. opening ceremonies of the Combined Christian Village School located across the street from where the Fox’s live in Chiang Rai. This school was begun in the 1950’s by American Baptist missionaries who initially taught 15-20 kids in their home. Since then, it has grown to be a Christian school that has a student body of over 2300 kids. Most of the students come from nine different northern Thailand tribal groups, where some students are Thai and Chinese. As the opening ceremonies were about to begin, it was quite impressive to watch as over 1500 kids from grades 7-12 obediently stood in the large open space in the middle of the school grounds to sing Thailand’s national anthem, followed by their reciting of Thailand’s “pledge of allegiance” and the Lord’s Prayer.

After members of the school staff gave announcements to the students, team member Arlene gave them a message of Christian greetings from our mission team and American Baptist churches in America, and of encouragement to study and learn from their teachers. After the ceremony ended, our mission team talked with Principal Wichai Sonosaeng (a Thai Baptist) about his over 20 years of service at the school, and about how the students receive a quality education there. The school is a wonderful testimony of the impact that American Baptist missionaries have had in helping people in Chiang Rai.

During Monday afternoon, Chuck drove Arlene, Sandy, Karen, and Beth to see areas north of Chiang Rai, including a scenic overlook of the confluence of the Ruak and Mekong Rivers at the place where the borders of Burma, Laos, and Thailand meet to form the infamous “Golden Triangle”; Mae Sai, the northernmost city of Thailand at the border with Burma; and the Queen’s Garden, a beautiful botanical garden south of Mae Sai that has over 10 acres of many kinds of flowers, plants, and trees indigenous to Thailand arranged in spectacularly beautiful ways. While this sight-seeing was being done with Chuck, Kerry stayed behind at the Chiang Rai New Life Center facility to work with a NLC staff member to complete the testing of a database program he’d developed for Karen Smith and her NLC staff to use to keep statistical/education information about the in-need women they helped.

On Tuesday February 16 (the team’s last full day in Thailand), we started our day by visiting the Chiang Rai “Family Learning Center” (FLC) where Ruth Fox is the principal. As is done every Tuesday at this grade international school, the upper-class students led a contemporary worship service. Team member Beth had been invited by Ruth prior to our mission trip to give an inspirational message to the students, so she shared we them an abbreviated summary of the book of Daniel that included the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed'nego and the “fiery furnace”. Ruth followed Beth in thanking our mission team for bringing along with us from Colorado a “Tall Paul” anatomical model to be used for FLC science classes, as well 40 Bibles for the FLC Bible studies class. These items were paid for by a portion of the $5300 in 2010 ABCRM missions funds that were designated for this ABCRM Thailand mission trip’s projects.

After Ruth Fox gave our mission team a tour of the FLC facilities and talked about their plans to build a larger FLC facility in Chiang Rai, we visited American Baptist missionary Scott Coates and his “Mekong Minority Foundation” facility on the outskirts of Chiang Rai. Launched in 2005, MMF’s goals are to equip, train, and empower marginalized tribal people in northern Thailand to develop sustainable solutions to complex problems that impact their communities. Due to globalization and other factors, tribal communities are facing unprecedented issues of poverty, trafficking and exploitation, debt, and environmental destruction. MMF is uniquely positioned in Chiang Rai to help address these issues. As our team did with other American Baptist missionaries we’d met during our trip, before leaving we stood hand-in-hand with Scott to pray for him and his MMF ministries that help so many tribal people in northern Thailand.

After returning to the Fox home from the Family Learning Center, the mission team visited the Chiang New Fai New Life Center facility behind the Fox’s home to be given a tour by NLC staff members. The Chiang Rai NLC is a “sister facility” of the Chiang Mai New Life Center, where both facilities are overseen by Karen Smith and her staff. The Chiang Rai NLC in-need women are given education and training to help them lead self-supporting lives as is done in Chiang Mai.

After lunch, our last mission trip activity was to go with Chuck to an elephant reserve about 20 miles north of Chiang Rai, where we took a 30-minute ride around the small village where the reserve is located, returning to the starting paint by the elephants walking in a river. After enjoying a delicious evening meal of homemade pizzas that Chuck cooked in a pizza oven he’d built in his backyard, we finished packing our bags (including the 40 Karen Bibles being taken back for Duane Binkley), and headed to the Chiang Rai airport to fly to Bangkok to then return back home the next day. Thanks to all who prayed for us during this ABCRM mission trip!

Kerry Hassler

February 13-14

2010-03-09T09:46:00.000-07:00

February 13

ABCRM Thailand Mission Team’s Last Day in Chiang Mai

On Saturday, February 13, our mission team enjoyed its last breakfast at the Downtown Inn hotel in Chiang Mai. As we tried to do every morning during breakfast, team members talked about the daily topic in the International Ministries “Short-Tem Missions Handbook” that provides mission teams with a 10-day “spiritual framework” for their trip. Also as was often done, Kerry brought his laptop to breakfast so team members could write up their mission trip articles for publication on the ABCRM “Missions Experiences Blog”, as well as send emails and make Skype voice-calls to family members in the U.S.

Little did our mission team know how frustrating our last day in Chiang Mai would be! After breakfast, Becky Mann called to tell us that the “VIP Bus” we’d hope to take from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai at 11:00 a.m. had been sold out, and our team would have to take a bus later in the afternoon. Also, as Kerry was loading the team’s luggage and other items on the truck Becky borrowed from ITDP, a box full of Karen Bibles (to be brought back by our team for IM missionary Duane Binkley to distribute to U.S. Karen refugees) slipped off the truck track, and dented the fender of a car parked next to it. After working out a settlement with the car’s owner, Becky drove us to the bus, and we said our “good-byes” to her. We didn’t know it at the time, but one of our team member’s suitcases had been left in the Downtown Inn’s storage room, and also our later VIP bus from Chiang Mai would break down three times on its way to Chiang Rai, delaying our arrival there by another two hours. What a troublesome day!

February 13-14
Team Activities with IM Missionaries Chuck and Ruth Fox in Chiang Rai

After our team arrived at the Chiang Rai bus terminal, we were met by Chuck to take us to our hotel, and then later we met wife Ruth and the Fox’s son Kenny at a downtown Chiang Rai Thai-food restaurant. We enjoyed a delicious meal together, and then had a “guided tour” of Chiang Rai’s Night Bazaar by Chuck. Since Chiang Rai (100,000 population) is about one-tenth the size of Chiang Mai, its Night Bazaar has a much cozier, friendly place to shop compared to Chiang Mai’s Night Bazaar.

On Sunday morning, February 14, our team went with Chuck and Ruth to the “Sukasem” Akha village about 30 minutes from Chiang Rai. This is an all-Christian village that the Fox’s are closely connected with since Chuck helped arrange for the funds and work-teams to build their church. He’s also a good friend of the village’s Akha pastor Pedru, and shares the pulpit with him often. There was also a connection between this village and our ABCRM mission team since Kerry had worked with Chuck during the past year to arrange for his FBC of Boulder church to donate $1000 so the Sukasem village could build a clean-water system through Chuck’s project ministry help.

After we arrived, our mission team joined with the Sukasem villagers in worshipping at their church overlooking the village. The Sunday start-time for their main service (they have two other Sunday services) varies each week somewhere between 10:30-11:00 a.m., so the villagers are called to the church by a small church-bell. As the villagers starting coming to the church, the women sat on one side of the church; and men, on the other (as is the custom in all tribal churches). Many of the village’s men were absent on that Sunday morning since repairs were being done to their clean-water system far up the mountain. After the service started, our mission team was introduced to the congregation by Chuck, and we sang to them (as best we could!) portions of the traditional hymns “I Love to Tell the Story” and “Amazing Grace”.

As Pastor Pedru and Chuck preached to the congregation in the Akha language, Ruth translated for the women in our mission team. During the service, we were able to sing along with the congregation in the Akha language (for such traditional hymns as “How Great Thou Art“) by reading the phonetic English spellings of the Akha words printed in their hymnals that also included the words in Thai. This multi-lingual printing in Akha and English is due to the many years of hard work done by well-known American Baptist missionary/linguistic expert Paul Lewis. Paul and Elaine (originally from Calvary Baptist of Denver (good friends of team member Karen Pinkham and her husband Ken, and Beth Kieft and her husband Gordon) dedicated their lives starting in the 1960’s to providing a written language and dictionary for many tribal groups in this part of the world. This led to the first printed versions of Bibles/hymnals in the Akha, Karen, Lahu, Wa, and other tribal languages 50 years ago. What an amazing impact these two American Baptist Christians had on bringing Christianity to the tribal people of Thailand, Burma, China, and other Southeast Asia countries!

At the end of the service, Pastor Pedru thanked Kerry and his American Baptist church for the past year’s donation made to their village (through Chuck Fox) that allowed their village to have clean water. Kerry then gave his greetings to the congregation from his Boulder church, and asked members of the Sukasem congregation to pray for the future of FBC of Boulder, while at the same time his church members are praying for the Sukasem church and its members.

After the service, our mission team enjoyed meeting the members of the Sukasem church congregation with spoken translation help by Chuck and Ruth. We then had a lunch of delicious Akha food shared with Pastor Pedru in a newly-built village eating area. It was such a blessing to share this Sunday with our Baptist brothers and sisters in Christ in the village of Sukasem!

Kerry Hassler

February 11 - 12

2010-03-09T09:31:00.000-07:00

February 11
Crafts Project at Chiang Mai New Life Center with Missionary Kit Ripley

As Karen and I stayed in Chiang Mai while team members Arlene, Sandy, and Karen were at the Starbucks Clinic, she and I enjoyed another fine breakfast at the Chiang Mai Downtown Inn together (love that pineapple!). After breakfast, we waited for a ride to the New Life Center (NLC) to begin a mission trip crafts project there coordinated through Kit Ripley. Unfortunately, there was a misunderstanding in our getting picked up, and after several phone calls and almost two hours later, we were on our way to the NLC in a "tut-tut" mini-cab, with instructions to the driver provided by Kit in Thai.

Finally at the NLC, we met its Director Karen Smith, her primary staff leader Kit, and an Akha NLC staff member named Fay. Fay recalled meeting another member of my Calvary Baptist Church in Denver (Maggi Sussman) who’d visited Thailand on another mission trip. Kit drove us to lunch at a nearby restaurant that was located inside a section of a Buddhist Temple.

After returning to the NLC, we prepared for our crafts project with the young women who live, learn, and work there. Although only one of them spoke a wee bit of English, we managed with Kit's help to communicate pretty well, and did so with joy. Thanks to a generous supply of paper, stickers, stamps, ribbons and paper-punches, we helped the young women produce some fine-looking Valentine’s Day cards for their loved ones.

Following a tour of the NLC campus, Kit drove us back to our hotel, where we found out that Arlene, Sandy, and Kerry had just returned from the Starbucks Medical Clinic. In the evening, our mission team met Mike and Becky Mann and their son Ryan at our hotel, and we walked a few blocks with them to have dinner at the “Antique” Thai restaurant. Our shared meal included “pineapple fried rice” (made with coconut milk in a pineapple boat), tilapia fish, lemon grass soup (served in a coconut bowl with other vegetables), and fresh fruit. Back at the hotel, our team members stood in a circle hand-in-hand with the Mann’s in the hotel lobby. We prayed for Mike and Becky and their ministries, asking for God’s blessings on their many ITDP programs that help needy tribal people in northern Thailand.

February 12
Mission Team Visit Chiang Mai House of Hope/House of Love/Preschool and New Life Center

Following breakfast, our mission team members rode in a pickup truck-type taxi driven by Becky Mann’s friend “Pricha” to meet ABC-IM missionary Kim Brown (and learn about her ministries) at her "House of Love/Day Care Center” facility on the outskirts of Chiang Mai. After Arlene, Sandy, Karen, and I were introduced by Kerry to Kim after we got there, our team first spent time with the beautiful 3-5 year-old children of the Day Care Center. They each politely stood up one-by-one to introduce themselves, and then sang a spirited motion-filled song to us.

We presented the Kim and the Day Care Center teachers many crafts items and small toys that our mission team members brought with us. They loved them! Since there was only one jar of bubbles we brought, the teachers had the kids line up on the porch outside the Preschool, and they each waited patiently for a turn to blow bubbles.

After the children left for playtime with their Preschool teachers, Kim talked to our mission team about here ministries that includes –

The “House of Blessing Day” Care Center, which provides morning day-care for kids from poor slum areas, prepares children to enter Thai schools, and works to strengthen the kids’ families; and
The “House of Love”, a program that takes care of HIV-positive women and kids that Kim started in 1994 when a woman came to her with children who were HIV-positive, as well as women who had been sold into prostitution, AIDS orphans, and children taken out of their homes by the Social Welfare Department because of abuse.

We learned that a House of Love worship service is held here every evening for the 31 women and kids currently staying in this facility. Kim also told us financial help is being provided from an Australia Baptist denomination to help cover the cost of AIDS-related drugs for House of Love residents who are not Thai citizens. Financial support is also being provided by the Samaritan's Purse (an International Christian relief and evangelism organization), American Baptist individuals/churches, and churches in Japan and Norway.

Before we left Kim to go to our next mission team activities, she asked that our mission team pray for the kids here to grow in their faith. Our mission team then stood hand-in-hand with Kim, and each of prayed for her and for her many ministries that help needy people here.

After Pricha drove us to a Thai restaurant for lunch and then to the New Life Center to meet Karen Smith and Kit Ripley, our team joined a prayer-circle of NLC staff members who were praying for one of their fellow staff members who was leaving Chiang Mai soon to go to her Hmong village more than ten hours away to be married. After the prayer-circle ended, we said our good-byes to Karen since she needed to return to the NLC main office, and Kit talked to us about the tribal groups of Thailand and its surrounding countries. She mentioned that approximately one million tribal people are living in northern Thailand. Except for the Karen, most tribal groups migrated from southern China, and today tribal people continue to migrate to Thailand from Burma, Laos, Cambodia, and China.

As to the New Life Center programs, Kit told us that the NLC provides support for primary/secondary education to resident young women, as well as vocational and university education to non-resident women through scholarships. In addition, NLC offers classes in life-skills training, fire safety, basic health, human rights, and sexual equality. Kit told us the questions that the NLC staff ask themselves are: “How can we keep the girls safe?”; “How can we prepare them for urban living?”; and “How can we help them stay in touch with their own culture?” In addition, NLC staff members hope that many of the young women will choose to live with Christ in their lives.

After Kit’s talk, she gave our mission team a tour of the NLC facility, including the crafts building where NLC residents can make jewelry, quilts, women’s accessories, and other items that are sold in the NLC Crafts Store to help provide income for the Center. We ended our visit to the Chiang Mai NLC by standing hand-in-hand in a circle with Kit, and praying for Kit, Karen, the NLC staff, and for continued support of NLC programs that have helped so many tribal girls and women.

For our Friday evening dinner, our mission team was met at our Chiang Mai hotel by Japan Baptist Union missionaries Eiji/Emi Osato and their two daughters, Naomi and Anna. We’d not been able to meet with Eiji and Emi at the Siloam Bible Institute (where Eiji teach theology in Karen to perspective Karen pastors; and Emi, teaches conversational English to Karen students) on the previous Sunday since they were visiting a Karen village north of Chiang Mai. Our mission team enjoyed learning more about Eiji and Emi’s ministries while eating a delicious meal with the Osato family at a Japanese restaurant called "Kitchen Hush", owned and operated by a native Japanese couple who’d lived in Chiang Mai for over 15 years. The restaurant building had great significance since it was in this very building (a large house in a residential area) where beloved ABC-IM missionaries Paul and Elaine Lewis started the original New Life Center in the 1980’s.

What a day! So much learning! So many people our mission team met! Thank you, Lord!

Beth Kieft

Thailand Mission Team Project at Huay Som Poi Karen Village “Starbucks Clinic”

2010-02-12T22:08:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, February 9 –

This is the first full day of our mission team’s clinic project at the Huay Som Poi Karen village with Sandy, Becky, and I. The day dawned with a bright sun and the promise of a warm day, even though it must have been in the 40’s during the night. We had a breakfast “fit for a queen” cooked by our home-hosts of fried rice with herbs, pork meatballs, and tofu in a broth soup, along with bananas, watermelon, and coffee.

After breakfast, Sandy, Becky, and I began the 1 kilometer (0.7 mile) walk over a deeply-rutted dirt road through the Huay Som Poi Karen village to the Starbucks Clinic on top of a hill at the end of the read. The clinic is a spacious building with a large waiting room, a small room where people can sit and talk before they’re examined, and a two-bed infirmary. The medical technician for the clinic is Kuhn Rot, a full-time ITDP staff member. She’s a young married Karen woman who received 6 months of medical training at a school in Chiang Mai.

When we arrived at the clinic about 9:00 a.m., there were five women waiting with their toddlers to learn how to care for their babies’ teeth. I taught them about dental care, and answered their questions with Becky’s help. Sandy (a registered nurse from Rochester, Minnesota) and I (a retired R.N.) saw a steady flow of women and children throughout the morning. Two women walked nearly an hour from their Karen village after they heard that Sandy and I were there.

Kuhn Rot said she’d never seen anyone examine patients as Sandy and I did, where we first discussed the best treatment for those we examined, keeping in mind the medications available at the clinic before conferring with Kuhn Rot, and if necessary referring them to see a doctor in Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, or another city. This is difficult for many village people to do this since most are poor and don’t have Thai government assistance for health care because of their non-citizen status.

At noon, Sandy, Becky, and I walked back to our home-host’s house for a lunch of rice, dried salted fish, meat balls, tofu, and fruit. Our ITDP driver Kuhn Boondai overheard us talking about our longing to have a Starbucks coffee, and ran out to a local store to buy the ingredients to make us a cup of mocha coffee. It was surprisingly delicious!

We are so appreciative of Kuhn Boondai’s servant heart. He was born in a poor Lawa village and was selected to receive an ABW scholarship to attend a Christian high school in Chiang Mai. While he was at that school, he received Christ as his Savior. He is now in his 40’s, and has such a joyful spirit and loves our Lord. He also ministers to people in his home village when he has time. We were so blessed by his servant heart during our time at the Som Poi village.

Kuhn Boondai drove us back to the Starbucks Clinic after lunch, and we continued seeing patients during the afternoon. We also met two young Karen men who’d left the Som Poi village to get a university education and then came back to teach at the village school. One of them (an English teacher) invited us to his home, but we were unable to go. To have such young educated people return to their village was such a blessing to the villagers. Most who continue their education past high school find jobs in Chiang Mai or elsewhere, and don’t return. The children in this village school attend kindergarten through grade 8 school, where the children from also seven other surrounding Karen villages. Some of the children from far away villages stay in a hostel during the school semester.

We finished our first day at the Starbucks Clinic at 5 p.m., and returned to our home-hosts for a delicious supper of rice, fried chicken, a vegetable that looked like peas (but was a bit bitter), soup with pumpkin leaves and stems, potatoes, and chicken. We all sat together after the meal, and Sandy and I enjoyed talking to them with Becky’s translation help.

To visit a Karen village such as Huay Som Poi, one must be adaptable and in fairly good physical condition. Since there are no showers, we took “sponge baths” using river water. Since there are no chairs in their homes, we sat on grass mats for our meals. Since there are no western-style beds, we slept on pads placed on the floor using sleeping pads provided by Mike Mann. Since there are no western-style toilets, we had to use “squatty-potties”. Since there are no paved sidewalks or roads, we walked on uneven ground with many ruts and stones. However, this was balanced by the mountain air in the village that was so refreshing, and the stars at night lit up the sky as I have never seen before. And our Karen home-hosts and other village people we met -- they are so gracious, welcoming, and hospitable.

Wednesday, February 10 –
As I wrote this account at 6:00 a.m. using a flash light in our host-home’s guest home, I heard the first rooster’s crowing. The first time they crow between 3-4 a.m., they told us that a new day was coming. When the rooster crowed many times in a row around 6:00 a.m., they let them know the new day’s darkness was about to break.

We heard our home-hosts get up, so it was time for us to get up too. Tuesday was “sponge shower day”. The water was numbing as I washed one limb at a time so as not to shock my body. Then Sandy, Becky, and I joined our home-hosts for breakfast.

As worn by the wife of our home-host family, married Karen women wear the traditional tribal dress of a wrap-around red skirt, blouse, and sandals. Older Karen women wrap their heads wrapped with a twisted cloth. Most of the younger women wear the “global dressing-style” of a T-shirt and blue jeans, while school-aged girls are often seen in their school uniforms.

On Wednesday morning at the Starbucks Clinic, we taught over 20 Karen women had to do self-examination for breast cancer through English-to-Thai translation provided by Becky, and spent the remainder of the day with Kuhn Rot examining many people who came to the clinic after Kuhn Rot announced our being there. Sandy and I were surprised by some of the women who went through great detail in explaining their medical problems, and then would tell us through Becky’s translation after we advised them of what to do to improve their condition that they’d been told the same thing by a doctor they’d previously visited. Apparently, they wanted us to simply reassure them that the previous medical diagnosis they’d received was correct.

About 4:00 p.m., Becky left the village to return to Chiang Mai with Kuhn Boondai since she needed to attend a meeting on Thursday morning. At 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday evening, Kerry arrived by truck with another ITDP staff member Somsak. Kerry had returned with team members Beth and Karen from the Akha village on Tuesday after they’d help construct a floor for an ITDP building in an Akha village that’ll be used to house coffee-processing equipment. He wanted to take photos our Sandy and me as we completed the Starbucks Clinic project on Thursday. The village was completely dark when they arrived since the power-generator run by a local stream had been temporarily shut down.

Thursday, February 11 –

After enjoying another delicious breakfast with Kerry prepared by home-host Kuhn Noi, Sandy, Kerry, and I were driven to the Starbucks Clinic by Somsak. Sandy and I talked with a few people who came to the clinic at 9:00 a.m. before we walked with Kuhn Rot to several nearby village homes to make “house calls” to check on people who’d previously visited the Starbucks Clinic. One of the calls was to see a boy 8 years old who’d become physically weak and sometimes unable to walk or speak about one year ago. Because of this, he wasn’t able to attend school and play with other kids in the neighborhood. Kuhn Rot and the village doctors the family had taken the boy to couldn’t understand what caused this affliction, but the boy’s mother said he’d lately been getting better. Then we visiting another village home to check on the health of a very elderly woman, and enjoyed meeting her daughter and granddaughter. Since Kuhn Rot had told the village that Sandy and I would be leaving back to Chiang Mai on Thursday afternoon, we didn’t examine any other people later in the day.

We made a short stop at the Huay Som Poi village school to talk with the two teachers we’d met on Tuesday before our ITDP drive Somsak took us back to Chiang Mai. Unfortunately, they were away at a teachers’ meeting, but we were given a tour of the school by a staff member. We were impressed by its facilities where currently 177 students from kindergarten through grade 9. The staff and kids take great pride in the school, and have many posters about the class activities. There’s also a nice school sports area for playing volleyball, “dekraw” (a combination of volleyball and soccer using a small ball made out of light wood strips), basketball, and soccer.

The theme our ABCRM Thailand mission trip is “Watch for God at Work”. I’ve seen God at work through the hands and hearts of generous and caring people like Becky and Mike Mann and their ITDP activities, the building of the Starbucks Clinic through the Starbucks high-level managers and the teams of Starbucks staff who come here to help, and the leaders of the village like our home-hosts Kuhn Nat and Kuhn Noi. God is at work here in northern Thailand, blessing and sustaining a community of hard-working people who’re very content in their lot in life, not wishing for worldly thing and living simply, and enjoying their work as well as their family and friends. I’ve been blessed to come here and be a part of their lives for a short while.

Arlene Bowie

Thailand Mission Team Construction Project at “Ban Kohn” Akha Village

2010-02-09T16:30:00.000-07:00

On Monday, February 8, three of our Thailand mission trip members (Karen, Beth, and Kerry) traveled by truck with Mike Mann and an ITDP staff member (Somsak, who is Karen and a former pastor in Bangkok) to an Akha village named “Ban Kohn” about four hours northeast of Chiang Mai. We were first shown the construction site where the next day would be helping men and women from the village to hand-mix and lay a concrete floor for a building that’ll be used to house first-stage coffee-processing equipment brought there in March. We were also shown the garden near the site where the villagers are planting tomatoes for their meals and to sell for income.

After returning to the village, we brought our sleeping bags into the home of our home-hosts and got our beds arranged on floor mats in their “living room”, the “headman” (or mayor) of the village and his wife. Mike then showed as around the nearby homes where the villagers stored their newly-picked coffee beans, and later on the same day put them through a “hulling machine” (powered by electricity and connected to a water supply). The machine separates the “nut” of the coffee bean and the hull, where the hulls are funneled into a bin for later use as mulch in the tomato gardens. Because of the high productivity of coffee in the village through their ITDP training provided by the Mann’s, we saw many stacks of coffee beans picked earlier that day waiting to be hulled. The new building site for a larger hulling machine we’re helping to construct will provide a central place where the villagers can instead bring their picked beans to be hulled by a much larger hulling machine.

The following day, Beth, Karen, and I worked alongside 15 of the villagers, Mike, and three ITDP staff members to help construct the concrete floor for. We passed buckets of sand, stones, and water to the Akha workers who built “volcanoes” of these items then mixed by hand to spread into the new floor area. Each “volcano” made enough concrete for an area about 4 feet by 4 feet. After the concrete was shoveled into a new area, other workers used wood “floats” to smooth the floor surface. By continuing this process, the new floor was completed in about four hours.

We had lunch with the headman and the ITDP staff in a makeshift “tent” covered by plastic sacks, with again delicious food prepared by our home-hosts brought to the site. We said farewell to the headman, and then saw the areas nearby where the women from the village were picking beans that day. This is a difficult job for them since they climb up steep slopes to pick the beans, and the straw baskets they carry on their backs weighs over 60 pounds when it’s filled with picked beans. This area is nestled in mountain valleys about 4000 feet high, and the views from the fields were quite nice.

This construction project coordinated and managed by Mike and Becky’s ITDP coffee-growing project was largely paid for by $3500 in 2010 ABCRM Mission Team funds set aside for our ABCRM Thailand mission trip that were EFT’ed to the Mann’s Chiang Mai bank account before we arrived. Mike and Becky and the village headman very much appreciated this donation that will help many of families in the Ban Kohn village.

Kerry Hassler

February 8

2010-02-08T15:54:00.004-07:00

On Monday morning, our ABCRM mission team checked out of the Chiang Mai “Downtown Inn”, and were driven by Becky to the Chiang Mai office of her and Mike’s “Integrated Tribal Development Program”, which is the focus of their American Baptist-International Ministry activities. Mike talked with us and showed a video about the wonderful things that ITDP has done to improve Karen villages in northern Thailand over the past 15 years through building over 200 village clean-water systems, providing village educational programs and medical assistance, and helping villagers to support themselves by growing and selling coffee to Starbucks and a Japanese coffee-house chain. We learned that the Huay Sam Poi village was selected by Mike on behalf of Starbucks to build the Starbucks Clinic to help seven Karen tribal villages in that area. The funds for the construction came from 5 percent of the sales of ITDP-produced Starbucks coffee that’s sold in the Far East and America. Starbucks employees were selected by them to travel to this village to help construct the clinic.

After Mike’s talk with us, he also gave us a tour of the coffee-roasting facility next to the office which process raw coffee beans brought to Chiang Mai from many villages in northern Thailand where members of the ITDP coffee-growing cooperative are located. After roasting, the coffee beans are backed into various kinds of bags here to be sold to individuals and churches in Thailand and the U.S. (Contact our team leader Kerry at kerryhassler@comcast.net if you or your church wants to buy this coffee.) Most of the coffee is shipped by Starbucks to their coffee-roasting facilities in the U.S. to eventually be sold in Starbucks locations in the Far East and the U.S.

God has been so good in His work through Mike and Becky that has helped particularly Karen and other tribal villages in northern Thailand. Becky and Mike need our prayers and monetary support to continue their good work in northern Thailand.

After having a delicious lunch at the ITDP’s “Lanna Café” coffee-shop next to their office and coffee-roasting facility, Becky, Sandy, and I were driven by Kuhn Boodai (a staff member of ITDP from the Lawa tribe) by truck over paved and bumpy dirt roads to the Karen village of Huay Som Poi about 2.5 hours (80 miles) south of Chiang Mai where the ITDP “Starbucks Clinic” is located. Towards the end of the journey, the bumpy deeply-rutted road took us near steep drop-offs which (as my family knows) is not my favorite thing to see. Kuhn Boodai jokingly called the last part of the bumpy road a “Karen super highway”.

We were greeted at our Som Poi village guest home by the “head man” (mayor) and our Karen home-hosts Khun Nate and his wife Khun Noi. We enjoyed an evening meal of rice, chicken stew, fruit, and herbal that they and Kuhn Boodai prepared. We talked over tea after our meal with our home-hosts thanks to Becky’s translation from English to Thai (and vice-versa). We learned that the village has over 500 people spread among 129 families, with many of them coming here from Burma (Myanmar) over the past decades. We also learned that in the past decade, over 100,000 Karen have migrated from Burma to many refugee camps along the Thailand-Burma border. Since these refugees are not Thai citizens, they can not receive free medical care from the government’s facilities, but they do have medical facilities in the camps provided by the United Nations and other refugee-help organizations. These refugees can not leave the camps and move elsewhere in Thailand unless they have government permission to do so, which is very difficult to get. Over the past five years, Karen refugees are being allowed to come to various cities in America through the help of the U.S. government, where many American Baptist churches in the cities they’re relocated to have helped them to adjust to our country’s culture and way-of-life.

We talked until 9 p.m. with our home hosts, and then headed for bed. We were not accustomed sleeping on mats and sleeping bags on the hard wood floor, but felt privileged to be in a guest house of wood construction instead of in the normal village bamboo house with thatched roof. The guest house was built by Starbucks for their work teams that helped to build the Starbucks Clinic. The rooms are spacious, and included a resident gecko and a few bugs, but it is a nice place to stay. Tomorrow morning, Sandy, Becky, and I will walk to the Starbucks Clinic from here to start our mission team’s project with the clinic’s ITDP medical technician Kuhn Rot.

Arlene Bowie

February 7

2010-02-07T22:49:00.003-07:00

We awoke this Sunday morning to the bright sun shining, cool soft breezes, but unlike Bangkok with its oppressive humidity, it is quite pleasant here. We had breakfast together at our hotel, the Downtown Inn, and we Skyp-ed home to talk with our families from Kerry’s laptop brought by him to the restaurant.

Our first stop was to visit the Karen (Tribal) Siloam Bible Institute (SBI) where we were greeted by their Director/Principal Mr. Glad. I am most amazed at the Karen and Thai people, they are quietly gracious and shy, and Mr. Glad is no exception. He proudly took us on a tour of the campus.

We are told that there are 150 churches in the Karen Baptist Convention. Even though this Karen seminary is 50 years old, many of their buildings are fairly new having been completed in 2007. We are told that only 20 percent of the funds came from the Karen people, with the other 80 percent being donated by other organizations including ABC-International Ministries. There is a large educational building with four classrooms and a gathering hall, a woman’s craft building, the library and book store, and on-campus homes where theology and English teachers missionaries Eiji/Emi Osato (supported by the Japanese Baptist Union) and UK missionaries Peter/Lisa (supported by the Church of Christ) live. There are two old buildings that are the dormitories, where men share one and women are in another house across the way. SBI presently has 71 students. It is a four-year program, three years in the classrooms and 7 months on the field. This year they will have 18 Karen graduates, where half of them already have placements in ministry. We are told that next year they will be teaching English to the Karen students, because all the theological resources they get are in English, very few are written in the Karen language. They have a need for more theology books.

Mr. Glad shows us his simple accommodations where he lives with his wife (who is expecting their first child in May), his brother and sister-in-law. There are two rooms: one a kitchen, with table chairs and stove, no cupboards, the houses the new sewing machine that his sister-in-law just bought to do her work as a seamstress. There is also a small bedroom on the first floor. His brother and wife sleep upstairs. Their simplicity of living grossly exaggerates our homes filled to the brim with all conveniences.

We then went to their worship service. It is a large windowless room. There are 40 students who are in the choir and whose singing blesses us with their enthusiasm and harmony. The Sunday School teacher lays out a big mat and all the children gather around to sit on it. Children are the same here, the boys restless, playing around and need to be shushed, the girls quietly drawing with pencils and paper. The pastor who is preaching is from Korea and is the theology professor. He is warning the students that when the Karen people leave their villages and go the USA or into the big cities they loose their faith….and their culture. We join them in singing familiar hymns, not knowing their words, but knowing the songs. Prayer is the same world wide and we join them in praying to “our” God, who has been most gracious to all of us. They have prepared lunch for us and we eat with another professor from Sweden and some of her friends who have come to visit.

We next decided that we want to see the tigers. We joined with many other tourists to go into the cages of the tigers to pet them. Being a little squeamish, we think it more “prudent” that we go into the baby tiger cage, instead of the large cats. They are rather docile and lay there as we all gather around to pet them. As we walk out of the building a man playing with a baby python wants us to pet his animal….eeuuhh!!! Along our way, we meet many tourists from other countries and who stop to speak, asking us where we are from.

We stopped for meals eating in open air restaurants. Our next stop is to attend the large Chiang Mai Community Church service where all our American Baptist Missionaries attend. Here we join in with over 300 English speaking people, mostly Caucasian, from around the world who gathered together to worship and praise our Lord.

Sandy and I decided to go to the night market, the others head to bed. The streets are lined for miles with tall cages that hold the wares of the many international vendors and Thai people and tourists who come to barter. There are also many men from around the world who have blatantly come to buy the services of the Thai women. It was very disturbing to us to view this. We learned when we went to visit with Annie and Jeff and their NightLight ministry that seven out of ten international men who come to Thailand with the purpose of buy sexual services from these young women. They need our prayers and support.

We ended the day tired and grateful that we are so blessed to live in the U.S. We are also excited that after many changes of plans, we are leaving for the Karen and Akha villages to do our mission trip projects. We’re looking forward to this adventure and to see how God is at work here.

Thank you for your prayers! We feel the peace and presence of God with us. We are a good team and Kerry has planned well, where with a team spirit of “adaptability”, all is going well.

Arlene Bowie

February 6

2010-02-06T22:46:00.003-07:00

We rose early on Saturday, February 6, and packed for our departure to Chiang Mai. After breakfast of omelettes, fruits and veggies, we shared the message in our ABC-IM Short-Term Mission Trip book everyone had a copy of, today’s theme focusing on God’s faithfulness in our lives. Kerry reminded us to look for God at work today.

We arrived at the Bangkok airport and moved quickly through security. This airport is just three years old and looks like a huge shopping mall. As we moved toward our gate, we marveled at the beautiful gardens below us and the bamboo trees all around.

The efficient staff on board our Thai Airways flight managed to serve us a simple meal and beverages during the one-hour flight. After collecting our bags, we spotted a man with a sign that read “Ms. Kery”, and we made the deduction that this was “our” man to take us to our hotel. We arrived at the Downtown Inn where Becky Mann, ABC-IM missionary with husband Mike in Chiang Mai, was waiting for us. We unpacked and settled into our rooms, then walked around our immediate vicinity.

Chiang Mai, a city of one million people, definitely has a “small-town feel” to it after coming from Bangkok with a population of 12 million. In walking towards the Chiang Mai “Night Market” just one block from our hotel, we spotted a MacDonald’s and a Burger King, then stopped at a Starbucks for Sandy and Arlene (the coffee lovers in our group) to get a good dosage of caffeine,. Kerry led us to the Galare Guest House, where he has stayed on previous visits to Thailand in his working with ABC-IM missionaries here. A lunch of soup, rice (of course), and veggies was followed by delicious fried bananas. Next, we caught a taxi ride to the Chiang Mai Flower Festival that happened to be going on during the weekend. We counted at least 25 floats loaded with every flower imaginable. There were Buddha’s, elephants, and dragons galore in a vivid splash of color. So many flowers! This was however a sad moment for me when I discovered that my camera was missing from my bag.

Back to our rooms for a brief respite, Becky picked us up and drove through crazy, heavy traffic (what a multitude of motor bikes in this city!) to the Old Chiang Mai Cultural Center. After dining on chicken, pork, cabbage, spicy sauces, pineapple and melon, we were entertained by a program of beautiful young men and women in costume traditional Thai singing and dancing. A final part of the evening was to visit a small theater featuring the hill tribe people (including Akha, Lisu, and other tribal groups) doing their dancing and music. Time to retire! We went back to our hotel after a full day of listening and learning in Chiang Mai.

Beth Kieft

February 5

2010-02-05T22:35:00.002-07:00

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

February 3-17 2010 ABCRM Thailand Mission Team is Ready to Go!

2010-02-03T10:11:00.000-07:00

From February 3-17, an ABCRM mission team composed of Arlene Bowie (FBC-Colorado Springs), Beth Kieft and Karen Pinkham (Calvary Baptist -Denver), Sandy Stensland (Autumn Ridge Church-Rochester), and team-leader Kerry Hassler (FBC-Boulder and ABCRM Mission Team member) will go to Thailand to meet and learn about the ministries of ABC-IM missionaries and do work-projects with many of them. Missionaries the team will meet include:

Jeff and Annie Dieselberg, whose Bangkok NighLight ministries help women escape from prostitution, and to learn about and accept Christ;
Mike and Becky Mann, whose Chiang Mai-based Integrated Development Program (IDTP) ministries provide income to hilltribe families by teaching them how to grow coffee, as well as by helping them with medical clinics and education programs;
Karen Smith and Kit Ripley, whose Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai New Life Center ministries shelter in-need tribal women, and help them to get an education;
Kim Brown, whose Chiang Mai “House of Hope” provides day-care for young children from needy families, and
Chuck and Ruth Fox, whose Chiang Rai Akha Crafts ministry provides family income to Akha villagers, and whose Christian outreach ministries brings the message of Christ to Akha villagers in northern Thailand.

ABCRM Thailand mission team members will be doing work-projects with Mike and Becky in an area about two hours north of Chiang Mai, helping the Mann’s IDTP “Starbucks Clinic” medical staff to treat ill and injured villagers. Some team members will service as “helpers” to assist the Mann’s IDTP Lanna Café Coffee staff to construct a shed for coffee-processing equipment in a Hmong village. Several team members will be doing craft projects with Karen and Kit at the New Life Center and at Kim’s “House of Hope” in Chiang Mai.

During the trip, team members will be learning about the Thai culture and see beautiful places in Thailand. At the end of the mission trip, the team will ride elephants at an elephant reserve north of Chiang Rai.

To see on-going updates from the ABCRM Thailand team members during their February trip, check the ABCRM “Missions Experiences Blog” at http://abcrmmissionexperiences.blogspot.com/. Thanks for your prayers for the ABCRM Thailand mission team!

L-R: Arlene Bowie, Beth Kieft, Karen Pinkham, Kerry Hassler (Sandy Stensland absent)

2010 Mission Trips

2010-01-20T12:22:00.002-07:00

Click on the picture for a larger view.

Thailand Mission Trip - Feb 3-17, 2010

Chiapas, Mexico Mission Trip - March 2010

Rainbow Acres Ranch Mission Trip- September 11-18, 2010

Thailand Mission Trip—A General Overview—By Rev. Bill Golson

2009-03-10T11:00:00.005-06:00

The weeks leading up to the trip to Thailand were busy. The invitation and decision to go to Thailand came a little more than 6 weeks preceding actual departure. There was much to do administratively to prepare for my absence and in preparation to go. So much so, that clearly defining and stating what I hoped to receive was a bit fleeting. Somewhere in the early part of our trip, I recorded in my journal, and vocalized to those of “Team Colorado” as we would come to be known, that I was going as a blank slate for God to write upon whatever he wished. As I reflect upon the total experience, I do so more as a sponge being wrung out, having absorbed as much as I could about the culture, the work of missionaries, our work experience, and the environment of being in a foreign land, and particularly the Huai Namkhun (Akha village). As with the wringing out of a sponge, some things come gushing out and others require a more thoughtful compression, and continued squeezing to excise the significance of everything seen and done. Much of what is recorded here is “gushing.” In the passing of days, months, and possibly years, under the unction of the Holy Spirit, I am sure I will continue to wring out life lessons. There are many lessons, which I suspect will find their way into sermons on humility, stewardship, personal satisfaction, the need to pray for those globally, and other subjects.

In the days preceding our village work at Huai Namkhun (Akha village), we were exposed to the culture: sights and sounds of the cities of Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai; the ministry endeavors of American Baptist missionaries and partners, verbal insight as to the customs of the land and its variety of peoples. Evident throughout the land were the secular and spiritual images of the people. From a secular perspective, pictures of the royal family are abundant throughout the land, mainly the King, are everywhere: billboards, street signs, in busy metropolitan places, in small villages and roadside markets, bathrooms, calendars, and other unlikely places. The love of the King is evident and obviously, people look to him as their guide for current and continuing success of the land. He and all that concerns him is reverenced.

From a spiritual perspective, images of Buddha are even more abundant. As the tangible image of their faith, Buddha is worshipped and present in all sizes and varying positions. The Thai people are a superstitious people. Spirit houses, little replicas of Buddhist temples or shrines, appear at the forefront of homes, businesses, hotel lobbies, restaurant, taxis, and like the picture of the King, in other unlikely places. Daily offerings are made at these spirit houses to appease the evil spirits and keep them at bay.

The worship of these two, the King and Buddha, were in obvious contrast to the silent witness of the crosses worn by each of our team members and the simplicity with which we worship our God.

We had three occasions to attend church. Two in Chiang Mai, at the Chiang Mai Bible College (also known as the Siloam Karen Baptist Life Development Center) conducted in the Thai language, and at the church attended by many missionaries and conducted in English. The other was in the village conducted in Akha. In each service, we observed the Western influence with regard to the order of service. For those non-English services, the order of service was recognizable as were many of the melodies of songs. As I observed the preaching, the peoples response—sometimes of great laughter—Paul’s admonition in 1 Corinthians 14 regarding speaking in tongues became more real. Although his reference was to the ecstatic use of tongues, the result of being in a service and not understanding the language was essentially the same. “Undoubtedly there are all sorts of languages in the world, yet none of them is without meaning. If then I do not grasp the meaning of what someone is saying, I am a foreigner to the speaker, and he is a foreigner to me” (1 Corinthians 14:10-11). Those verses took on different meaning. It caused me to wonder if there are those who come into our churches and leave unedified because they are unfamiliar with what we commonly take for granted.

Much of what our missionaries do is to help elevate the lifestyle of the people by attempting to discover and market the resources of the people. For the most part their resources are a good work ethic, the ability to stay focused on what we would consider mediocre tasks, the use of physical labor, and the ability to design and craft items for sale.

In Chiang Mai, we were taken through the process of growing coffee beans that are processed and sold to Starbucks and other vendors. It was not the pristine factories, as we would experience in America. A dozen or so people processed beans grown and sorted for size and quality by villagers and shipped off to other world markets. This kind of enterprise is not what I would have thought about in terms of the role of a missionary; however, is their any mission greater than helping people to become self-sufficient and to have a purposeful livelihood. That is where the Gospel really touches the lives of people.

At the Akha village, the first observations were of contrast. The simplicity of the bamboo huts were juxtaposed with a church of Western design constructed of brick and mortar, a few solar panels mounted on poles, motorbikes, boom boxes, people dressed in Western branded attire (emblems of Nike, Adidas, Marlboro, etc.), children clean and well cared for, and a few color televisions. Obviously, they are not devoid of Western culture, but at the same time living in the simplicity of a bamboo hut. One has to wonder what they think of video images portrayed on television in light of their simple lifestyle. Yes, it was quite the contrast and something that caused reflection on the abundance, and in comparison opulence, of the Western lifestyle.

The source for the water supply was approximately three miles from the village. The laying of the pipe took us through dense jungle trails, previously established by the Akha men, and often-precarious pathways along hillsides. The Akha were as surefooted as Rocky Mountain goats and traversed the terrain with little problem. I wish that could be said for us as well. The combination of the heat, the terrain, and the carrying of supplies was quite the experience. Noticeably absent were an abundance of bugs, birds, and other animals one would have expected in such an environment.

In spite of the language barriers, we were able to work together in a spirit of harmony. Some things require no words. A strong work ethic seemed to transcend any lack of ability to communicate.

In addition to the work, personally, the greater challenges were food and leisure time. It became immediately evident that variety of menu was not a strong point in the Akha diet. The staple of course is rice, vegetables, and at the request of our missionary host sprinklings of beef, pork, shrimp, and chicken were to be found in various dishes. Although it was a healthy diet, eating essentially the same meal items for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, did become a bit taxing. Fortunately, later in the days of our stay, we were able to add some fruit, which was deeply appreciated.

On the matter of leisure, the Akha workers played a game called LaKraw. It is the equivalent to volleyball where instead of where hands are used to volley; they only use their head or feet. The agility required was amazing, particularly after a hot hard day in the jungle. Those of us, not so athletically inclined and agile watched. The village is alive from dawn to dusk. The nights became very long for those of us used to staying up late to watch the late night news, Jay Leno, and CNN. However, in the passing of days, we began to make the adjustment.

In reflection the greatest things I came to see were:

One, that mission is about more than just sending money for support but also about grasping the day-to-day ministry of the missionary. Being a preacher, I previously had thoughts of missions primarily about the proclamation of the Gospel. I came to understand that we are “the hands and feet of Jesus” as Karen Van aptly quoted the theme for our American Baptist Mission. Helping to construct a waterline to bring water to the village seemed like such a small thing. I came to see it as significant, not only in providing water giving life, but more so in establishing relationship with the villagers as representatives of a larger body of believers.

Two, I had tangible, verbal and touchable, evidence for the support the church gives towards support of missions. I came to see how important the work of global ministry is, that the Kingdom of God is large, vast, multicultural, multiethnic, rich, poor and in many other ways diverse. The concerns of many of our western churches are trivial in comparison to some of the challenges our brothers and sisters face in other places throughout the globe. As a pastor, I am more committed than ever to lead our church to support those who are willing to invest themselves in the lives of reaching others for Christ.

Three, being of African American descent, I have always had a sense of what it means to be a minority. The experience of racism, discrimination, Jim Crow and all that goes along with it has always been a reality. In Thailand, I learned of those who were refuges from Burma, particularly the Akha tribe, who were refuges in a land who, in many ways like Blacks and the American Indian, are relegated to a position of being less than and limited to areas of settlement. Citizenship, if obtained, comes at a high price and without it, essentially little or no resources are available to them from the government: travel, employment, education, healthcare, etc.

Four, I have a greater sense of the meaning of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20). I see the matter of making disciples in a much broader sense than merely the sharing of the gospel and people coming to Christ. It involves meaningful and helpful relationships with the people of God and sharing the love of God in unconventional ways.

February 22-24 ABCRM Thailand Mission Team Experiences

2009-03-03T12:37:00.005-07:00

Early Sunday morning, February 22, all of our Thailand mission team members returned to the “Ban Huai” Akha village with Chuck, Ruth, and Ruth’s Family Learning Center short-tem staff volunteers (Sandy and Ruthie). We went to see progress made on building the clean-water holding-tank and filter, as well as to attend the village’s Sunday service. The villagers had mixed and poured more concrete for the holding-tank on Saturday afternoon, and the legs of the elevated water-filter had been put in place. We were thankful for what had been accomplished so far in working as a team with the Akha villagers and Akha Foundation project managers. However, the villagers would need to work another 10-12 days to finish building the holding-tank and filter, and to complete the laying of water-pipes from the holding-tank to the nearby village homes.

The Akha village’s morning worship in the Akha language was led by both men and women. The service music was a mixture of contemporary songs (like “Shout to the Lord”) and the same traditional hymns that are sung in U.S. churches. Although we couldn’t understand what was being said or sung, we could see the joy they had in their hearts of the Akha people in praising God and loving Jesus.

After the sermon, Chuck introduced our mission team members to the Akha congregation, and told them where we came from in the U.S. Our team then joined with Chuck, Ruth and NLC staff volunteers to sing “Amazing Grace.” Kerry presented an enlarged photo of our ABCRM clean-water mission-team members to the Akha village clean-water project leader. The picture was taken in front of their village church on Saturday. Each of our team members had signed the photo-card with messages of blessings and Christian love to our Akha brothers and sisters in Christ.

At the conclusion of the service, Barbara Fuller talked about the wooden cross necklaces that had been hand-made by a relative of hers in Kansas for our mission team members to bring along on our trip and give to people we met. Barbara and other team members gave a necklace to each Akha man, woman, and child in the congregation. Karen Van also presented to the congregation prints of her digital photos she'd taken of kids and families in the village and of the clean-water activities we’d helped with since arriving to the village on Tuesday.

After eating a last lunch prepared by the village, we said good-bye to our Akha village friends. They had gone out of their way to make our team members feel welcome and comfortable during our stay, and we appreciated all they had done for us. Our team returned to Chiang Rai after lunch to look around the downtown area, and then enjoy our last evening meal with Chuck and Ruth at a downtown restaurant, followed by some night bazaar shopping.

On Monday morning, Chuck took our mission team to the Christian public school located across the street from the Fox home. We watched the daily opening ceremonies of the students saying the Thailand pledge of allegiance, singing the national anthem, school song, and singing the Lord’s Prayer. Karen Van and Mark Francis then said a few words of greeting to the students assembled in the school courtyard. It was amazing how quiet the students were as they listened to the school principal talk about the day’s activities and events.

After the ceremony ended, the principal told our mission team about the school’s beginnings in the 1950’s by Chiang Rai American Baptist missionaries. The school had grown from less than 10 students when it was founded to todays over 2200-student population. It is comprised mostly of tribal group children in the Chiang Rai area. There is no tuition charged to this Christian school that covers grades K-12, with financial funding provided by the Thai and Japanese governments. The school was another example of how American Baptist missionaries have greatly helped people in need in Thailand.

On Monday afternoon, some of our Thailand mission team members went with Chuck to see the Golden Triangle area and the northernmost city of Masae where the borders of Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos meet. We flew from Chiang Rai to Bangkok later in the afternoon. We spent a few days there seeing various sights before leaving for Denver on Wednesday morning.

The February 2009 ABCRM Thailand mission team members were thankful to have come to Thailand to meet many American Baptist missionaries during our visits to Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai. We are especially thankful to have helped in providing clean-water to the Ban Huai Akha village. Many thanks to all the churches and individuals in the ABCRM who in some way contributed towards the costs of our Thailand in-country projects, and to those who give to the World Mission Offering to help keep our American Baptist missionaries in the field in Thailand.

February 18-21 ABCRM Thailand Mission Team Experiences

2009-03-02T12:57:00.000-07:00

The first morning after our mission team members arrived in the “Ban Huai” Akha village, we had our first breakfast at the village’s common eating area prepared by Akha women cooking over open fires. The menu of rice, fried eggs, vegetables, fried fresh meat, and hot tea would remain essentially the same for the remainder of our village stay. We left at 9:00 a.m. in Chuck’s truck with village men and women to go to the clean-water system’s mountain stream water source located about three miles from the village. The villagers had done much hard work to hack out a new road through the jungle for Chuck’s truck and the area around the water-source.

Upon arriving at the stream, we saw how the villagers had constructed a small dam so the stream water would flow into first water-pipe. We watched as Akha women scooped water from a pool below the dam to catch small fish trapped in a pool. Another menu selection for our evening meal!

Soon our team started walking with the villager workers down slippery slopes to connect water-pipes together from the water-source. It was very difficult for our team to stay on the path and not slide down the mountain slopes, but the Akha men and women walked along this same path without any problem at all. The low overhanging jungle vegetation in some areas was a problem for our taller team members (Chuck and Mark). We were soaked in sweat due to the high heat and humidity after helping to connect water-pipe for just a short time.

At noon, Akha women brought to us in thermal containers lunch they’d prepared at the village. Karen, Pastor Bill, and Kerry took a break after lunch on “cushions” made out of banana tree leaves gathered by Akha villagers while Chuck, Mark, and some Akha men went to get more water-pipe materials.

In the afternoon, we helped the villagers connect and carry more water-pipe through the jungle. At 4:00 p.m., we were too tired to work any longer, and went back to the village in Chuck’s truck with Akha women workers while the rest of the villagers stayed to work a while longer. When the younger village men returned at 5:00 p.m., they played the combined volleyball/soccer sport of DeKraw. It was amazing how much energy they had after working with us in the jungle all day!

On Thursday morning, our team members returned with Chuck and the villagers in Chuck’s truck to the mountain water-source to watch the Akha villagers improve the initial water-tank. We learned that the Akha villagers had completed connecting the water-line through the rest of the jungle path before we got there so that it extended into an open rubber-tree field that was not far from the village. We were glad we didn’t need to work on connecting and carrying the water-pipe on the slippery mountain slopes. We worked with the villagers to extend the water-pipe through the rubber tree area to the site of the water-system filter and holding tank near the village. Progress was being made.

On Friday morning, our team members helped the Akha villagers to bring concrete forms and materials from the village in Chuck’s truck to the site cleared out on a hill next to the village where the water-system’s filter and primary holding tank would be built. The villagers had leveled the ground the previous afternoon using hoes, and concrete forms and rebar were put in place to pour the foundation and walls of the tank.

On Saturday morning, hand-mixing of concrete began by using the “volcano method” of making a mound of sand, stone, and concrete aggregate, and then pouring water into a cavity shoveled out on the top. Our team members helped to mix, carry, and tamp down the concrete that was filling in the forms.

About 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, our team members left the holding tank construction site to return to Chiang Rai with Chuck to take a hot shower at our hotel, and get rested up before returning for Sunday morning worship with the Akha villagers. Unfortunately, we were surprised to discover that the hotel was doing maintenance on its hot-water system, and we weren’t able to take a hot shower until later in the day. Despite this surprise, we enjoyed eating dinner at the hotel with food choices we were more accustomed to, and to sleep in comfortable beds without hearing bugs and other “critters” chirping and moving around during the night! It had been quite the four days of work on the clean-water system with the Akha villagers.

February 16-17 ABCRM Thailand Mission Team Experiences

2009-02-25T09:58:00.016-07:00

Monday February 16 was a day of transition for the ABCRM Thailand mission team. We took time learning about the Chiang Rai ABC-IM ministries of Karen Smith and Kit Ripley to help tribal in-need women at the New Life Center (NLC), as well as the multiple ministries of Mike and Becky Mann to help Karen people with coffee-crowing, medical supplies, and education. We then packed up to go by van to Chiang Rai with ABC-IM Global Consultant Lauran Bethell and NLC staff members. The unexpected blessing for our team was to spend time with Lauran allowing us to learn more about her global efforts to stop human trafficking for slave labor, prostitution, and other purposes.

After arriving in Chiang Rai, the Thailand mission team was met by our host ABC-IM missionaries Chuck and Ruth Fox at the Rimkok Hotel located less than a mile from their home. We enjoyed dinner at the hotel with them in preparation for the many mission team activities scheduled for the remainder of the week.

On Tuesday morning, we started the day by attending the Family Learning Center (FLC) international school’s morning worship where Ruth Fox is principal. Ruth introduced the students to our mission team members, and thanked us for bringing five extra suitcases filled with purchased and donated books, science kits, a microscope, and sports-related items that were requested by Ruth. Most of these items were paid for using part of the total $5000 of ABCRM funds designated for our team’s in-country projects.

Bill Golson participated in the morning worship by talking about appreciating gifts, especially the spiritual gifts we have received through our faith in God and by our following Jesus’ teachings.

After the FLC morning worship, Ruth let the mission team members on a tour of the school’s campus. We then went to the Fox’s home to see the Akha Crafts Store staff who make many kinds of home and apparel items that are sold in Thailand and through the Akha Crafts Internet Store (www.akhahilltribe.org). The income helps families in the Akha villages near Chiang Rai who do hand-stitching in their homes.

Barbara Fuller’s mission trip project for the upcoming week was to work on crafts projects with the Akha Crafts women as well as the Akha women in the Chiang Rai New Life Center located next to the Fox’s home.

After the entire team went to the beautiful Quenn’s Gardens about an hour north of Chiang Rai, our “Clean-Water Construction Crew” (Karen Van, Bill Golson, Mark Francis, and Kerry Hassler) went with Chuck for our first visit to the Akha village where we would stay for the next four days, located about 45 minutes south of Chiang Rai. We arrived there as the sun was setting over the nearby mountains, and were greeted by the villagers who we would be working with. They arranged our accommodations in the village family homes, including setting up the mosquito netting to protect us from various insects.
Karen Van immediately made friends with many of the village kids, and we started learning about the Akha culture around us. The next morning, we would be going with Chuck and the villagers to the source of the clean-water supply high up in the mountains to see how the system was being constructed. Our ABCRM clean-water project was ready to start.

Clean Water for an Akha Village

2009-02-23T14:27:00.001-07:00

But when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you will receive power and will tell people about me everywhere- in Jerusalem, thought Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Acts 1:8

We spent the last four nights in an Akha village in the remote hills of Northern Thailand. There are about 15 houses, with most made out of bamboo and having thatched grass roofs. They are off the ground on stilts. Each house has a solar panel that powers an indoor light and they have batteries if they are lucky enough to have a television. The kitchen (in the main section of the house) has a wood fire where they heat water for tea, cook lots of rice, some vegetables and a little fish or meat. The bathroom is outside in a separate building and contains a "swat" toilet and a large container of water with a bowl for dipper baths. Before dinner, the young men gather at what looks like a dirt volleyball court with a lower net and play decrew, a game using their feet and heads and a wicker ball. It is amazing how good they are at getting the ball over the net.

A simple life. People in the village care for each other, love their children and work very hard. One issue they have is a lack of clean water. That is why we are here. ABCRM has supplied most of the money, Chuck Fox and the Akha Foundation have supplied the expertise and the village paid for some of the materials and almost all of the manual labor for the water project. Before we even arrived the villagers, both men and women, went into the jungle with machetes and hacked a narrow path for the water pipe. A dam was built in a stream over three miles from and 100 meters higher than the village. The ABCRM Mission Team is here to lay and connect the PVC pipe together. It is hard work.

I believe this is an example of being the hands and feet of Christ. Having clean water is something we take for granted. ABCRM mission funds will make a difference for this village. Even though most of the work is being done by the villagers, your funds and willingness to help has made it possible. The mission team members are here to let these new Christians know that there are brothers and sisters in Christ half-way around the world who care about them. By bringing clean water to the village, the Rocky Mountain Region has helped Christian people in a remote Akha village experience the living Christ in the world today.

Please pray for the mission team and the Akha people.

Karen Van
ABCRM Mission Team member
February 21, 2009

Thailand Team splits up to accomplish more!

2009-02-18T10:38:00.000-07:00

The Mission team arived in Chaing Rai via the New Life Center Van. We traveled north with Lauren Bethel, the founder of the New Life Centers. All is well...no one sick and most are enjoying the adventure. The team split with four members and Chuck Fox traveling to one of the mountain villages to work on a clean water project and Barbara Fuller staying in Chaing Rai to work with the Akha Crafts Women for a few days. Barbara will be helping the women develop quilts with squares of their beautiful embroidered work and work with the New Life Center girls in the evenings after classes. They will work on their knitting skills. The team will return to Chaing Rai Saturday or Sunday.

There are so many exotic and exciting things in Thailand to enjoy. In the morning I wake to the sounds of birds singing along with roosters crowing.... Motor scooters racing by outside the gates of the walled compound. I have enjoyed the food and most of all the friendly people that I am working with here in Chaing Rai. Kerry Hassler and Karen Van are out of range now for e-mail, but when they return you will hear from them

Many Blessings,
Barbara M. Fuller

Thailand Mission Team Members Meet with Eji Osato on Sunday

2009-02-17T13:26:00.003-07:00

ABCRM Thailand mission team members meet with Eji Osato on Sunday, February 15 to learn about his ministry of teaching Bible studies and other topics to Karen villagers up to grade-level 6 at the Chiang Mai Bible College (also known as the Siloam Karen Baptist Life Development Center). Eji and his wife Emi are native Japanese who were called to server the Lord at the Bible College in 1993, and are directly supported by the Japan Baptist Union. Eji showed the mission team the campus that was built in part with funds from ABC-International ministries.

The ABCRM mission team also enjoyed attending the Sunday morning church service at the Bible College with Emi and Eji and their two children (Naomi and Nana). It was especially delightful to hear the Karen choir sing in Karen during the service songs composed by the choir director. This was another example of how the efforts of our American Baptist missionaries in the past (especially the Judson’s and Paul Lewis) are still seen today in the continued spread of Christianity among the Karen tribal people in northern Thailand and surrounding countries. What a joy it is to be a part of this American Baptist heritage!

First 2009 Thailand Mission Trip Update

2009-02-15T21:01:00.001-07:00

It is 5 am on Valentine's Day in Chiang Mai, Thailand. My body is tired but my mind is alive with thoughts and images from our first full day in Thailand. Going through immigration we were greeted with Valentine's Day signs. The markets are filled with flowers decorated with rich red and pink ribbons, with a price tag that is over five times the normal cost (sounds like Valentine's Day in the US). The night market is only a block from our hotel and offers vendors selling all types of "bargains". Becky Mann, one of our host missionaries in Chiang Mai, introduced us to a local treat (fried bread with coconut milk) that we bought fresh from a street vendor.

Thailand alerts all your senses with new sights, sounds, smells and tastes. It also tugs at your heart. We spent yesterday afternoon at the New Life Center which works with ethnic minority women who are at risk for, or have been victims of, labor exploitation and sexual abuse. If you attended the Gathering in Cheyenne in October you had the pleasure of hearing Karen Smith, the American Baptist missionary who is the director of the NLC. Karen is on leave in the US, so Kit Ripley, another missionary who works with Karen took us around. Our mission team saw some of the girls sewing dolls with hearts that say "Jesus loves me" and beautiful quilts. Other girls were gathering to board an open air van to go to their adult education classes.

One of the problems for many of the women or girls at the NLC is citizenship. There are approximately one million tribal people living in Thailand. If a girl was born in a tribal village but her birth was not documented, it is difficult to prove she should be granted citizenship. And without proof of citizenship, she will not be able to work or have access to government provided services such as health care. Thailand has been flooded with immigrants from neighboring countries of Laos, Cambodia and Burma. This influx of refugee put additional constraints to obtain documentation for ethnic minorities. With very limited opportunities in the villages, young girls are being forced to work in factories, markets, domestic situation and the sex trade. The New Life Center develops individual plans to train each girl with the skills she needs to reach her goals. They provide a safe living environment, citizenship advocacy, specialized vocational training, spiritual development and supports them emotionally.

To find out more about the New Life Center, visit their website at www.newlifecenterfoundation.org. Find out how you can help them continue to make a difference in the world.

"I sought the Lord and he answered me: he delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame." Psalm 34:4-5

Blessings from Thailand,

Karen Van
ABCRM Region Administrator

2009 MISSION EXPERIENCES

2008-10-22T09:25:00.003-06:00

February 11-25, 2009
ABCRM Mission Trip to Thailand
Hosting Missionaries: Chuck & Ruth Fox
Estimated cost per person: $2000
Limit of mission team participants: 8
Trip application deadline: November 21, 2008
Contact Mission Leader-Kerry Hassler (kerryhassler@comcast.net) for more information

Needs:

The "Ban Huai Namkhum Phattana" Akha village near Chiang Rai, Thailand needs a clean water supply for the 99 men, women, and children who live in its 19 households.
The Chiang Rai "Family Learning Center" (FLC) Christian international school for English-speaking K-12 students needs help with teaching and administrative staff assistance
The Chiang Rai New Life Center (NLC) is in need of volunteers who can teach Akha women sheltered there various crafts skills, as well as possibly teaching them English.

The 2009 Thailand Mission Trip will give you the opportunity to:

Work with Church Fox, Akha villagers, and in-country Thai volunteers to construct and Akha village clean water system.
Work with Ruth Fox to provide assistance to Chiang Rai FLC teachers and staff.
Work with Ruth Fox to teach crafts and/or English to Chiang Rai NLC Akha women.
Stretch your life to use your talents and abilities by helping people in need.
Strengthen your relationship with Christ through Bible study and prayer.
Make new friends and build lasting relationships with ABCRM mission team members and in-country people you meet.

Trip Requirements

Age 18 or over
In good physical condition if helping to build the clean water system
Have teaching, story-telling, and/or crafts skills if helping with FLC or NLC projects
Flexible and willing to try new things

April 19-25, 2009
ABCRM Mission Trip to Murrrow Indian Children's Home
Hosting Missionary: Joan Brown
Estimated cost per person: $225 (plus meals and incidentals)
Limit of mission team participants: 8
Trip application deadline: February 16, 2009
Contact Mission Leader-Jenita Calton (mjmjpack@vcn.com) for more information

Participants will have the opportunity to assist the Murrow Staff in providing for the spiritual, physical, and emotional need of the children by:

Work to maintain the 17 acres Murrow is situated on.
Assist with general building maintenance such as painting.
Perform repairs and maintenance on tractors.

Participants will also be able to:

Investigate the cultural heritage of Native Americans by visiting the local museums.
Enjoy the beautiful wildflowers of Oklahoma at their peak.
Strengthen your relationship with Christ by fellowshipping with other team members and the children at Murrow.

Trip Details

Leaver early afternoon on Sunday, April 19 from ABCRM office
Return late evening on Saturday, April 25
4.5 days to work on site

May 9-16, 2009
ABCRM Mission Trip to the Bahamas
Hosting Missionaries: Daniel & Estela Schweissing
Estimated cost per person: $1600
Limit of mission team participants: 6
Trip application deadline: February 9, 2009
Contact Mission Leader-Richard Schweissing (rschweissing@msn.com) for more information

Purpose:

Emmaus Haitian Baptist Church has only a sanctuary with a small crowded lean-to in the back. Children come to the after school program because their parents do not speak English and cannot help them. They must use the seats of the pews as desktops for writing.
Haitian immigrant women with noskills come to a sewing class and set up sewing machines on tables no larger than TV trays in the aisles. Estela and Daniel carry the equipment and supplies for both programs back and forthe from their residence each day.

The 2009 Bahamas Mission Trip will give you the opportunity to:

Work with others to contstruct multi-use pews that can be converted to tables during the week for both seing classes and after school programs. If time permits cabinets will be contsructed for storage.
Stretch your life to use your talents and abilities by helping people in need
Strengthen your relationship with Christ through Bible study and prayer
Make new friends and build lasting relationships with ABCRM mission team members and Haitian immigrants in the Bahamas

Trip Requirements

Age 18 or over
Able to do carpentry (building multi-use pews), staining, and/or job clean up tasks
Flexible and willing to try new things

Watch for more experiences to come. ABCRM is hoping to travel on 5-6 mission experiences in 2009.

2009 Mission Experiences to be Announced at 2008 ABCRM Gathering

2008-07-30T08:52:00.003-06:00

The ABCRM Missions Team will be announcing the 2009 ABCRM Mission Experiences at the 20008 ABCRM Annual Gathering in Cheyenne, WY. There will be two workshops centered around the ABCRM Missions Team and the workshop on Saturday morning will be the workshop that the 2009 trips will be announced. Please come join us for this amazing weekend in wonderful Wyoming. You can find more information at http://abcrm.org/2008gathering.htm. Come, enjoy the fun!

June 27-30 – ABCRM Bulgaria Mission Trip Project in Pleven and Bulgaria Sight-Seeing

2008-07-15T08:44:00.008-06:00

After spending the previous five days in Guliantsi, early Friday June 27 the ABCRM Bulgaria mission team left our temporary Guliantsi Baptist Church home for the nearby city of Pleven to complete our last in-country project at an orphanage there. The many sunflower fields we passed along the way reflected the bright morning sun. What a beautiful sight!

Our Bulgaria mission team soon arrived at the Pleven orphanage, met the orphanage’s acting director, and started assembling the new playground equipment (paid for by ABCRM Bulgaria mission trip funds) and painting the orphanage’s fence. Thankfully, temperatures at the orphanage were a lot cooler than in Gulliantsi and we complete fence-painting by later afternoon.

Also, some of our mission team members enjoyed spending time with some of the kids who live at the Pleven orphanage. Although most of the children were away at a summer camp being held on the eastern shore of Bulgaria, the special-needs kids who needed to stay behind greeted us with big smiles and hugs. Although we didn’t share the same language, our mission team communicated with these kids through a language of genuine care and love for them.

Later on Friday after finishing our projects at the Pleven orphanage, the ABCRM Bulgaria mission team started the Bulgaria sight-seeing part of our trip by going with the Myers family, Katya, and Pepi to the central Bulgarian city of Veliko Tarnovo, a city that dates back to 300 BC and the medieval capital of Bulgaria. After staying overnight in 200-year-old house converted to an inn in the nearby village of Arbanassi, the mission team walked through the ruins of the Bulgaria fortress that was captured by Turkish Muslims on July 17, 1393, beginning the 500-year reign of Bulgaria by the Turkish Ottoman Empire until Bulgaria regained its independence in 1878. The view from the church built above the old fortress in the 1900’s gave the mission team a wonderful view of Veliko Tarnovo that may Bulgarians call the most beautiful city in Bulgaria.

On Saturday evening, we arrived back in Sofia from Veliko Tarnovo after making a visit to the small village of Etera with its many hand-made crafts shops, as well briefly stopping to see the beautiful “Shipka” Greek Orthodox cathedral at another place along the way. We now had only one full day left of our mission trip. It was amazing how quickly our time went by in Bulgaria!

Our last Sunday in Bulgaria was spent by first attending again the Sofia Baptist Church with the Myers family. Team leader Kerry Hassler briefly spoke to the congregation about our ABCRM mission trip, and extended greetings and prayers for the church’s well-being from fellow Christians in the Rocky Mountain Region. After the service, our mission team traveled with the Myers family to see one of the most popular sights in Bulgaria, the Rila Monastary, located in one of the highest mountainous areas of this country. First founded in the 10th Century, the monastery is a masterpiece of “Bulgarian national Revival architecture’, and still is an orthodox school of theology today. We ended the day with a a farewell party at the Myers home in Sofia, that also included Pastor Ivan and his family along with our dear friend, Katya. Our ABCRM mission team members will miss them all!

Early Monday, June 30, the Bulgaria mission team members flew from Sofia to return to the U.S. and (for some) other locations. Many thanks to the ABCRM mission team members who heard the message of “Been Called? GO!” and responded by participating in our region’s June 19-30 2008 Bulgaria Mission Experience. Thanks also to all those in the ABC Rocky Mountain Region who provided funding for the team’s Bulgaria in-country projects through “ABC Missions Basics” contributions from their respective churches Lastly, the mission team is indebted to ABCRM special-interest missionaries Tom and Terry Myers for coordinating and leading our June 19-30 ABCRM Bulgaria mission trip. It provided a wonderful mission experience for us all!

June 22-26 – ABCRM Bulgaria Mission Trip Experiences and Projects in Guliantsi

2008-07-15T08:20:00.007-06:00

After traveling in two vans from Sofia to Guliantsi with the Myers family and Sofia Baptist Church member Katya Raichinova during the afternoon of Sunday, June 21, the ABCRM Bulgaria mission team met Pastor Ivan Vassileff, wife Teddi, and their children at the Guliantsi Baptist Church for the first time later that afternoon. We moved into our guest sleeping quarters in the upper levels of the church, prepared for the first day of Vacation Bible School on Monday, and helped celebrate Teddi’s birthday with cake and ice cream later that evening in the church sanctuary. It was a wonderful way to start our 5-day mission team’s stay in Guliantsi to do our VBS and work projects!

On Monday morning, we were happy to see that over 20 Roma Bulgarian kids from ages 4 through 14 showed up for our first Vacation Bible School class. We made out name-tags for the kids (and our mission team), Sherry and Karla took photos of each kid for the “flat Charlie” paper-doll craft they would make later in the week, and Katya began the first session by leading singing VBS-type songs that included kids and adults. Katya was fantastic at getting everyone energized through our singing!

Next, some of the mission team members did a skit for the kids about Jesus making his first disciples “fishers of men” using costumes brought from the Laramie Baptist Church VBS sessions, followed by a time for crafts and games. The first day’s VBS session ended around noon with Katya leading more singing with the kids, talking about God and lessons taught by Jesus, and then the kids were given a snack and fruit drink. This first day’s schedule of VBS activities would generally be followed through the rest of the VBS sessions ending on Thursday.

After enjoying lunch at a nearby Guliantsi restaurant, the Bulgaria mission team walked several blocks from the Guliantsi Baptist Church to the preschool where our schoolyard renovation project for them was done in the afternoons. These included putting together new playground equipment purchased for/delivered to the preschool using budgeted 2008 ABCRM Bulgaria mission trip project, and painting of the preschool’s playground equipment and fence using paint also purchased from these same ABCRM funds. Despite daily afternoon temperatures in the high 90’s, the mission team completed these projects with help from the Myers and Vassileff family members, Katya, several Guliantsi Baptist Church volunteers, teenager Chrisie who lived in Pleven, and the director of the preschool, Matzidana Dasuvosa. One of the Guliantsi Church volunteers “Emo” (who had his own construction business in Guliantsi) helped improve the preschool by replacing wooden playground benches. The completed painting made the playground look alive with color again, and we could see the kids were happy with the results. A local Guliantsi TV station brought a reporter and video cameraman to the preschool on Monday to write a news story about our ABCRM mission trip preschool project shown later that same day. We were told that many people in this town of about 5000 inhabitants were in general amazement that a Baptist mission team from America had come so far to improve a preschool and the Baptist church in their city.

The other main Bulgaria mission team’s project in Guliantsi was to improve the grounds of Pastor Ivan’s church by spreading gravel over the area used for car-parking. This was another task made more difficult by the high daily temperatures. With shoveling and raking contributions by Dwight, Kerry, Tom, AJ, Nathan, Pastor Ivan, Emo, and particularly Kent on our last day of this project on Thursday, we were able to finish this task from Tuesday through Thursday. Church visitors were now had a designated place to park their cars at the church.

The Guliantsi Baptist Church VBS sessions led by Katya continued through Thursday with puppet shows and skits involving the ABCRM mission team along with the Myer’s kids AJ and Nathan, and Vassileff family teenagers Pepie and Monie. During the middle part of the VBS daily sessions, the kids did new crafts and games provided by the mission team every day. These kids worked hard to complete their crafts with materials brought from ABCRM churches in Colorado and Wyoming. The kids especially enjoyed doing water-related games in the churchyard to cool off from the daily high temperatures. On Thursday morning, we held out last VBS class, and said good-byes to the kids we had gotten to know during the week. It was a sad parting for all of us!

On Thursday afternoon, we returned for the last time to the Guliantsi preschool several blocks from the Guliantsi Baptist Church to complete the painting of playground equipment and the preschool’s fence. The preschool’s director and staff thanked us all for our hard work put in since Monday in very hot temperatures by providing the team members with special Bulgarian food snacks and small gifts, as well as certificates (written in Bulgaria) for each member of our painting team and their respective home church. The director said she wanted to use our mission team’s project to encourage people living in Guliantsi to also do volunteer projects to help improve Guliantsi schools. We all saw how the newly-painted playground and fence sparkled as we left the preschool to walk back to the Guliantsi Baptist Church to spend our last evening there.

After having an evening meal at the Guliantsi Baptist Church with Pastor Ivan, the Vassileff family, Katya, and Emo, we gathered for our last evening fellowship in the church’s main meeting room. After singing several hymns simultaneously together in English and, we finished sharing our testimonies about how we became Christians and are now serving the Lord in various ways. It was especially interesting to listen to Pastor Ivan’s testimony about how he endured persecution as a Christian during the Communist time in Bulgaria, during which he lost his job as a farm manager because of his faith. The ABCRM mission team received gifts of gratitude from Pastor Ivan, and we closed by singing “Blest Be the Tie that Binds”. Tomorrow we’ll go to Pleven to do our last mission team work-project to paint a fence and assemble new playground equipment at an orphanage there. Our Bulgaria mission trip is almost over already!

June 20 and 21 -- First Two Days’ Experiences in Bulgaria with ABC-IM Missionaries Tom and Terry Myers

2008-06-24T12:58:00.008-06:00

Greetings everyone from Bulgaria! The 6-person Bulgaria ABCRM mission team (Sherry Wilson and Karla Davis from FBC of Laramie, Kent Oakes from Calvary Baptist Denver, and Dwight and Aladine Neuenschwander and trip leader Kerry Hassler from FBC Boulder) arrived in Sofia midday on Friday, June 20 after flying from Denver the previous day. We were greeted at the Sofia airport by our hosts ABC-IM missionaries Tom and Terry Myers (ABCRM special-interest missionaries), who promptly took us to our Sofia hotel to get a few hours of immediate rest after our long 14-hour trip.

Later that evening, our mission team gathered at Tom and Terry’s home to sort out materials and puppets we brought along for the following week’s Vacation Bible School our team is helping to conduct at the Baptist Church in Guliantsi. The church is about 2 hours north of Sofia. The VBS will be taught along with Tom, Terry, AJ, and Nathan, and interpreter Katya Raichinova from the Sofia Baptist Church. We then enjoyed a delicious evening meal prepared by Tom and Terry before retiring early back at the hotel for a much-needed full night’s sleep.

On Saturday morning, June 21, the Bulgaria mission team was transported by Tom and Terry to the Sofia Baptist Church (the Myers’ family church) to meet Pastor Teddy Oprenov. Pastor Teddy showed the group the new 5-story Sofia Baptist Church building (still under construction) that will be used as a multi-functional facility for future church services as well as for community outreach purposes. It will house a medical/dental staff to provide free exams to the homeless, a high-tech Internet café, shops for in-need women who sell craft items for income, rentable business meeting rooms, and a computer training center to teach young unemployed Bulgarians the skills necessary to get jobs involving office computer applications.

After the mission team’s tour of the new facility, we talked with Pastor Teddy about details of this visionary $2 million project he has led for the past four years, along with his summary of Bulgarian Baptist Union’s history. It was truly amazing to learn how Pastor Teddy has combined his skills as a church-building planner and innovative pastor to create a new way to spread the Gospel of Christ that have never been seen before in Bulgaria.

On Saturday afternoon, Tom and Terry gave the ABCRM Bulgaria mission team a tour of downtown Sofia, including stops at the statue of Saint Sofia, the former Soviet headquarters during Communist rule, the current building housing offices of the President of Bulgaria, the National Arts Center, and the 1600-year-old St. George’s Orthodox Christian church. With Bulgaria being a member of the European Union (EU) since early 2007, the mission team saw examples of the many new buildings and municipal construction projects that have been stimulated by foreign investments now coming into Bulgaria. Although there are still many smaller cities in Bulgaria who are suffering from high unemployment in post-Soviet times, Sofia is rapidly evolving into a modern city comparable to other major cities in Europe.

On Saturday evening, our mission team again enjoyed sharing an evening meal in Tom and Terry’s home that was joined by Bulgaria ABC-IM missionary Susan Linderman. After eating, Tom shared with us how he and Terry had been called to their Bulgaria ministry in the mid-90’s after spending 18 years doing farming in the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado. Susan (commissioned as an ABC-IM missionary in Sioux Falls, South Dakota in early 2006) also told us about her call to first be an English teach at the International Baptist Theological Seminary (IBTS) in the early 2000’s, and now her new ministry to help in-need women in Bulgaria. What wonderful servants of the Lord are Tom, Terry, and Susan!

On Sunday, June 22, our mission team will attend the Sofia Baptist morning worship service, and then travel by van to Gulliantsi to conduct June 23-26 morning Vacation Bible School sessions in support of Guliantsi Baptist Church under Pastor Ivan Vassileff and wife Tedi. During these afternoons, we’ll be putting together new playground equipment and painting existing equipment and a fence at an elementary school in Guliantsi. On Friday, the mission team will travel by van to the nearby city of Pleven to put together more new playground equipment for an orphanage there. A busy week lies ahead for our Bulgaria team!

Stay tuned for more ABCRM Missions Experiences Blog updates about our mission trip that will be sent from Bulgaria on June 29. Please keep the ABCRM June 19-30 Bulgaria mission team in your thoughts and prayers as we complete our upcoming projects on behalf of ABC-Rocky Mountain region churches and members.

Kerry Hassler
ABCRM Bulgaria Mission Trip Leader

Nicaragua Measure of Success

2008-06-05T14:41:00.005-06:00

It is hard to measure success. In Nicaragua where everything you do requires that you solve a problem first or reschedule it for later, success is even harder to gauge. On April 13th, our Region mission team left to help build a church and school on the Mosquito Coast in a community called Kukra Hill. Kukra has a population of about 17,000, with very little industry, high unemployment, no running water or sewage, and very few prospects of a better future. The daily wage of a palm oil worker is about $1.25.

The mission team had three main tasks: to help build the church/school, to lead a Bible school program for children, and to teach adults in the evening. We were welcomed by Pastor Joel, the church planter and pastor of this new church, and Vital, our American Baptist missionary. Joel’s vision is built around the church, but it is aimed at empowering children with education and skills they will be able to use in the future. He is somewhat pessimistic about the ability of adults to change. So not only is the church new, but very young as well.

Although we were successful with all three of our missions objectives, other things emerged on the trip that became more important to us than the reason for being there.

One of the first was the emergence of a fellowship of Christians. The first couple of nights sleeping in a common room were a little stressful, but by the end of the week we could identify each other by our snores and steps. Soon we set aside all the triviality that we use to keep one another at arm’s length and began caring for each other. Soon we felt like a family. The sense that we were family gave us a unique ability to work together and to support one another. One could be passing cinder blocks to the one setting them on a scaffold or pouring water while one shampooed her hair. We miss that closeness in our sometimes busy society. A warm shower might have been an added comfort, but it was not really necessary.

On one of the nights, Joel showed a movie on the side of the house for anyone who wanted to watch. As it played on the green boards, no one seemed to be concerned about the quality of the picture or the plastic chairs, the heat, or the bugs. One tried to stay away from the fire ants, however. We were all enthralled in the moment, although most of us had seen the movie before. I doubt that I would have even considered watching a movie on the side of a house had I been stateside. I found myself wondering how much of my life is governed by distractions. There were no phones, TV, or internet. We did not have our cars to take us to the mall. There was no mall. There really wasn’t anything to buy. And yet we felt remarkably connected. I found myself wondering if the lack of distractions allowed our team to become more connected. No one complained that they missed any of the modern conveniences. Although I am sure that there were times when we all wanted to catch up on our e-mail.

You didn’t have to look hard to find a problem. I had the opportunity to visit other parts of Nicaragua after our team returned stateside. I found wide spread unemployment, poor health conditions, little hope for the future. I found myself thinking that I do not have problems. I have annoyances and speed bumps. Americans do not understand our connections to the rest of the world. When we enter into a recession, the rest of the world, especially impoverished countries, enter into a depression. They wait for us to recover because that indicates they will recover. It is in this arena or poverty and difficulty that our missionaries try to bring a message of grace, hope and future. It is surprising how well they do it.

Will the church and school be successful? Will the money that we poured into the project yield a return? A mission is an exercise in faith. We cannot measure it in the same way that we would one of our commercial ventures. I already see success, the success of love and hope. If that is all that I would ever see, that would be enough. However, I think that more is coming and I plan on seeing that as well. We have set the stage for success, because we have empowered others to teach, create, give, and make disciples. The way God works seems odd to us. God takes the collected efforts of a few and turns them into great things.

One of our team members said that this work was the first worthwhile thing he had done in a long time. In the heat and humidity, sweating profusely, and dirty, I sensed a deep meaning to what I was involved in building and teaching. I found myself rejuvenated and experiencing Christ again. Sometimes we get so bogged down in our very busy culture that the sense of Christ’s presence is lost. One of the ways I view mission is that it is a ‘reset; button on life. Missions have a way of resetting our priorities, revealing what is important, renewing our sense of direction and faith. The work at Kukra continues. Success was not that we went and completed an effort, but that we participated in something that will go on long after us. I was reminded of a comment on of my seminary professors made many years ago. “God did not call us to be successful. God called us to be faithful and to leave success to Him.”

John Turnage
Mission Trip Leader
First Baptist Church
Loveland, CO

2008 ABCRM Bulgaria Missions Team is Ready to Go!

2008-06-04T16:06:00.002-06:00

Thanks to in-country planning by ABC-IM Bulgaria missionaries Tom and Terry Myers, a 6-person mission team from Colorado and Wyoming ABC churches is set to go on the June 19-30 ABCRM Bulgaria Mission Experiences trip. Shown in the photo L-R are mission team members Karla Davis (First Baptist-Laramie), Sherry Wilson (First Baptist-Laramie), Kent Oakes (Calvary Baptist-Denver), mission trip leader Kerry Hassler (First Baptist-Boulder), and Dwight and Aladine Neuenschwander (First Baptist-Boulder). Also shown on the right are Betty and Bill Moseley, parents of Terry Myers and the gracious hosts of the ABCRM Bulgaria mission team’s “pre-trip meeting” held on May 24 at American Baptist in Ft. Collins.

The Bulgaria mission team will first stay in Sofia from June 20-22 to meet Tom and Terry and talk with them about their Bulgaria ministries. They also meet Pastor Teddy Oprenov of the Sofia Evangelical Baptist Church (the Myers family home church in Bulgaria), and then tour the new SEBC church facility currently being built. After attending Sunday morning services at the current SEBC location, the mission team will help conduct morning Vacation Bible School classes and fun activities for Bulgarian children from ages 4-15 at the Guliantsi Baptist Church in northern Bulgaria from June 23-26. During the afternoons, the team will improve the grounds surrounding the Guliantsi Baptist Church by spreading gravel and making other improvements.

On Friday, June 27, the team will go to the nearby city of Pleven to make improvements to playground equipment at an orphanage for Bulgarian children of primary school age. The last days of the mission trip will be spent touring the historic Bulgarian city of Veliko Turnovo before returning to Sofia to attend Sunday services at the Sofia Baptist Church.

To pay for the cost of materials for the June 19-30 Bulgaria Missions Experience projects, ABCRM has provided $4400 to the Myers for use in buying project materials prior to the mission team’s arrival on June 20. These ABCRM funds are part of the total $25,000 funds designated in the 2008 ABCRM budget for in-country project costs for the 2008 ABCRM mission trips to Thailand, Nicaragua, Cambodia, and Bulgaria.

You may read about the experiences of the ABCRM Bulgaria mission team during their June 19-30 trip by reading updates posted on the “ABCRM Missions Experiences” blog at http://abcrmmissionexperiences.blogspot.com/. Please keep the Bulgaria mission team members who have answered the challenge of “Been Called? Go!” in your thoughts and prayers!
Kerry Hassler
Bulgaria Mission Team

Lending a Hand in Nicaragua

2008-06-04T16:02:00.002-06:00

I had the privilege of going on a mission trip to Nicaragua sponsored by ABCRM this past April. The trip was led by Pastor John Turnage of Loveland and consisted of eight other members from Colorado ABC churches, including FBC Loveland, Calvary in Denver, FBC Colorado Springs, and my own church, American Baptist Church in Fort Collins.

The purpose of the trip was to help ABC missionaries Vital and Ketly Pierre, and their church, Bethel Baptist in Bluefields, with the construction of a multi-purpose building at a site in the town of Kukra Hill, where Bethel Baptist planted a new church in January 2007. Kukra Hill is about 17 miles north of Bluefields on the Caribbean Coast and accessible by boat on the Rio Escondido River.

The second purpose was to put on a Bible study for the children of the Kukra Hill Church and the community. Another important goal was to develop relationships with our missionaries, the parishioners of the Bluefields and Kukra Hill churches, and the Nicaraguan people.

It was hot and humid, and the work of masonry construction was hard and not the sort of work any of us was used to doing on a regular basis, but very rewarding. We made a large dent in the task of finishing the cement block and concrete beam walls. Better yet, we got to know our fellow Nicaraguan church member workers. Language was never a problem. Some in the group were bilingual and the rest of us found ways to communicate.

The three ladies in the group had a successful Bible school with the help of a wonderful lady named Alice from the Bluefield’s Church and Pastor Turnage, both of whom are bilingual. When they weren’t putting on the Bible school, the women helped with the construction.

My fondest memory of the trip was the rapport I experienced with my fellow team members and the Nicaraguan people. Our team meshed very well together and I found the Nicaraguans to be a very warm, friendly and inviting people. I believe that God will use the work we did and relationships we made to foster His purposes in Nicaragua. When the airplane wheels lifted off the tarmac at Managua on the trip home, a large part of me did not want to leave.

Bruce Nuttall
American Baptist Church
Fort Collins, CO

First Update from Nicaragua Mission Experience

2008-04-28T13:20:00.003-06:00

Hi All,

We are back in Managua after 9 days in Bluefields and Kukra Hill, mostly in Kukra Hill. Conditions were pretty squalid in Kukra Hill- we were basically camping out in the church building. The work was very hard with humidity around 40-50% and temps in the 90-100 degree range. Rats and geckos in the rafters, chickens and scraggly dogs everywhere. Bugs had a feast on me the last few days. We were in Bluefields only a short time and there was no internet access at all in Kukra Hill. We could not get telephone service internationally there either.

Conditions were rough and remote but I love the people down here and I truly do not want to leave. The church members who we worked with and for are wonderful, humble, hard working people full of God’s grace. They will go far. If everyone from our churches had the opportunity to experience what I have experienced, they would have a much greater sense of urgency about the crucial importance of missions at all levels to the vitality of the Christian church. See you in a few days.

Peace,
Bruce
Member of Nicaragua Mission Trip

February 16-19 ABCRM Thailand Mission Trip Follow-Up

2008-03-10T14:13:00.007-06:00

Sunday, February 24

After the ABCRM Thailand mission team left Bangkok on February 19 to return to their Colorado homes, team leader Kerry Hassler remained in Thailand to do non-profit “Good Samaritan Technologies” technical consulting for ABC-IM missionary Karen Smith (director of the ABC-IM New Life Center in Chiang Mai) and other missionaries in Thailand. Consequently, Kerry was able to visit the Sansuk Akha village on Sunday, February 24 with Chuck Fox to see the completion of the Sansuk school improvement project. The project was started on February 12 by the ABCRM Thailand mission team’s “Construction Crew”.

Akha village workers and school kids had worked during the previous week to put lattice coverings over the open windows of the eating area and kitchen. New kitchen cabinets, shelves, and refrigerator (paid for by ABCRM Thailand misison trip in-country project funds) had been put in place. On Sunday afternoon, school kids moved new tables (also paid for by these same ABCRM funds) and repainted benches into the renovated eating area. It was quite a difference between the shabby tables and dirt floors seen in this same eating area when the Construction Crew first arrived at the Sansuk village on Febuary 12!

Many thanks to mission team members who heard the message of “Been Called? GO!” and responded by participating in the February 6-19 ABCRM Thailand Mission Experience. It changed the lives of many people in northern Thailand in God’s name!

February 18 -- ABCRM Thailand Mission Team’s Last Day Experiences in Thailand

2008-02-24T20:34:00.013-07:00

Monday, February 18

Today is our ABCRM mission team’s last full day in this beautiful country of Thailand! We start the day by visiting the Chiang Rai New Life Center facility next to the Fox home where Barbara has been teaching the Akha women sheltered to knit. The Construction Crew team, busy most of the past week in the Sansuk Akha village, is led on a tour of the facilities for the first time by Chuck accompanied by other members of our mission team. Chuck shows us a photo of Paul and Elaine Lewis on the wall of the NLC dormitory that reminds everyone that they are the primary reason why the Akha women are able to be sheltered here as well as at the New Life Center facilities in Chiang Mai. What an impact these two American Baptist missionaries have made on helping Akha people in northern Thailand through their many years of ministry starting in the 1950’s!

Our mission trip is ended by our mission team taking a “fun trip” to see the elephant reserve about 30 minutes north of Chiang Rai as we again all pile into Chuck’s truck. This reserve has about 35 elephants that have been placed there to protect them since it’s now not possible for these magnificent animals to be in the urban areas of Thailand due to lack of food sources and too many people in the cities. Our team members enjoy feeding the elephants bananas and taking a short ride around the small city next to the reserve. Karen Van is the only one on our team who is brave enough to have a giant python placed around her neck at a tourist store located at the reserve!

The last part of our day is spent in touring the “Queen’s Garden” further north from the elephant reserve, where the Thai government has created a botanical garden containing facilities for orchid and other plant research, as well as large area of beautiful gardens containing all sorts of Thai flowers. Everyone on our team is astounded by this beautiful place. It’s another reminder of how beautiful this country of Thailand is!

We arrive back in Chiang Rai about three hours before the mission team checks in at the local airport to fly to Bangkok to then fly back to Colorado early the next morning through Japan. It’s been a wonderful experience for all of us to meet many ABC-IM missionaries who are doing so much to help the people in northern Thailand, and to help in our own way to help Akha people with our construction projects at the Sansuk village with Chuck, as well as to help Ruth with her ministry activities in Chiang Rai. With sadness, we say our “good-bye’s” to Chuck and Ruth at the airport. We hope we can somehow tell our church congregation friends and others about the experiences we’ve had here since arriving on February 8 to give them a true impact of our mission trip, but this will be difficult to do. We’re all so proud of our American Baptist missionaries, and hope we can help them in some way to continue their work here in the future!

February 16-17 -- ABCRM Thailand Mission Team Experiences in Chiang Rai and the Akha Village of Sansuk

2008-02-20T10:15:00.003-07:00

Saturday, February 16

Today, the Crafts/Teaching Crew in Chiang Rai has completed most of their mission trip projects under Ruth’s direction, so the much of the day is spent in “down time” for them to reflect on what’s happened so far during our ABCRM Thailand Mission Experiences trip. The Construction Crew in the Sansuk village has also decided to go back to Chiang Rai on Friday evening since the cold evenings and lack of warm water for showers has started to take its toll. Those of us working on the Sansuk projects especially enjoy our first hot showers since leaving Chiang Rai on Tuesday. Our mission team members spend the day sharing together their thoughts and the opportunity to talk with Chuck and Ruth about their Chiang Rai ministry activities.

Chuck, Bruce, and Kerry decide to return to the Sansuk village on Saturday afternoon to help with the completion of the kitchen’s new concrete floor, and to do more bunk-bed painting. They are delighted to see that the new kitchen floor has indeed been completed, and work is underway by the Akha workers to install the bamboo lattice that will fill in the cafeteria wall openings. The new tables for the cafeteria will be moved into the eating area after our mission team leaves Chiang Rai on Monday evening.

We are also able to have fun with the Sansuk Akha kids on their Saturday day-off without school, with Bruce showing his badminton prowess playing against an Akha teen. Also during the afternoon, Bruce (who is a highly-skilled pediatric doctor who specializes in curing childhood cancers in Colorado Springs) checks out a few of the Akha students using the medical kit he has brought along on the trip. He found that the kids in the Sansuk village are generally in excellent health.

After dinner, Chuck, Bruce, and Kerry are blessed by sitting with many of the Akha students gather around an open fire as they enthusiastically sing songs in Akha that are mostly of a Christian theme. They are led in singing by Chuck’s ministry Akha song-leader Yohn, who plays the guitar very well. The students clap loudly as Chuck, Bruce, and Kerry sing “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” in English. What a great way to end the ABCRM Thailand mission team construction projects in the Sansuk village!

Sunday, February 17

It’s difficult for all of us here on this ABCRM Thailand Missions Experiences trip to think about this being our last day to worship in this beautiful country! Ruth drives the mission team members in Chiang Rai to the Sansuk village in Chuck’s truck to join Chuck, Bruce, and Kerry already there. The Sansuk schoolgirls again dress in their beautiful traditional Akha outfits to greet the mission team members who arrive about 8:30 a.m. The worship service starts at 9:00 a.m. in the Sansuk meeting building instead of the nearby Sansuk American Baptist church due to its smaller size.

During the morning worship, Yohn leads the singing of worship songs by the Sansuk students and adults, and our mission team again sings “Amazing Grace” as we did the previous Sunday in the Sukasem Akha village church. Ruth’s Akha Crafts Store assistant Iew teaches the students our team a fun song involving hand gestures and a little dancing. Karen Van joins Chuck and Ruth and several of the Akha kids to try to follow along with the song at the front of the service. Everyone loves it!

As a thank-you gift to Sansuk village “headman” Tuliwat and his wife who cooked all of our meals during the Construction Crew’s stay at Sansuk, mission team-leader Kerry presented them with ABCRM 2008 Missions Experiences t-shirts. Kerry also presented Chuck’s Akha ministry support team members Yohn and Amay with the ABCRM t-shirts in thanks for their involvement with our mission team projects. Chuck then thanked the ABCRM Thailand Mission Experiences team for their participation in this mission trip, and for all the great work we did in Chiang Rai and Sansuk in helping the Akha people who are served by Chuck and Ruth’s ABC-IM ministry. We all joined hands at the close of the service in Christian love with our Sansuk Akha friends, followed by Karen Van and Barbara giving the kids a few small “thank you” items. What a great experience it has been for our team to come here to the Sansuk village!

On the way back from Sansuk after having lunch there, Ruth drove our mission team in Chuck’s truck to Mae Sai, the northernmost city in Thailand where you can cross over to Myanmar (Burma). We also visited the nearby “Golden Triangle” area where the borders of Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand meet at the formation of the Mekong River. We took a short river speedboat trip across to an island owned by Laos (no visa required) so we can say we’ve set foot in that country. What a splendid way to end our last Sunday in Thailand!

Only one more full day left in Thailand for our ABCRM Thailand Missions Experiences team on Monday. Our mission team will be seeing a few more sights before leaving for Colorado from Chiang Rai on Monday evening. Our mission trip here has gone been all too quickly!

February 13-15 -- ABCRM Thailand Mission Team Projects in Chiang Rai and the Akha Village of Sansuk

2008-02-20T09:14:00.035-07:00

Wednesday, February 13

Today, the two sub-groups of our ABCRM Thailand mission team (the “Crafts/Teaching Crew” and the “Construction Crew”) started working on their respective mission trip projects arranged by Chuck and Ruth Fox for us to do for the rest of the week to help Akha people that the Fox’s minister to in various ways. For the Crafts/Teaching Crew projects the rest of the week included –

o Beth Cook (with her previous experience in library management) helping Ruth’s Family Learning Center school staff to order and classify books for their library spread over several bungalow offices and classroom teaching purposes. Beth became friends with many of the FLC staff and students in doing this project, including IM-ABC Short-Term Missions volunteer Sandy Martin from Indiana. This was a full-time task through the end of the week for Beth that she thoroughly enjoyed.

o Carmen Ferguson working full-time from today Wednesday through the weekend in the Fox’s home-office to help them by updating Excel spreadsheets containing information the Fox’s need to send to ABC-IM staff members at Valley Forge This is office work that the Fox’s have needed to complete for some time due to time spent on their Chiang Rai ministry activities such as the Akha Crafts Store management. Ruth was elated that Carmen could do this work on her behalf.

o Barbara Fuller finding her calling during our Thailand ABCRM mission trip by doing Ruth’s suggested project of teaching Akha women staying at the Chiang Rai New Life Center (located next to the Fox’s home) to do many types of knitting using the knitting needles and yarn Barbara brought along with her on our trip. Barbara was amazed how quickly these Akha women learned how to make scarves, booties, and other knitted items in just a few days. She’s showing Chuck Fox a few knitting stitches she taught the New Life Center women in the photo on the right.

o During the February 13-17 mission trip project time, Beth, Carmen, and Barbara (along with Karen Van at the end of the week) helping the Akha Crafts Center staff do various tasks, such as rolling the new craft-item material purchased with part of the $4500 in ABCRM funds provided for our mission trip in-country projects on to rolls used for material storage. Our mission team Crafts/Teach Crew became friends with all of the Akha Crafts Store women (Iew, Mio, Pisamai, Luta, Ami, and Duen). No special team-building was needed to make this happen!

For our mission team’s Construction Crew (Bruce Cook, Carl Ferguson, Karen VanValkenburgh, and Kerry Hassler) now are staying in the Akha village of Sansuk along with Chuck through the rest of the week. Today they saw the “before” conditions of the Sansuk school’s eating area, kitchen, and dormitories that will be greatly improved through the use of some of the $4500 in ABCRM mission trip funds provided for our mission trip, including –

o Putting in of a new eating area and kitchen concrete floor (about 1800 square feet in total) to replace the current flooring where some areas are simply dirt. The open wall spaces in the eating area and kitchen will be filled with concrete block and bamboo lattice by Akha village workers as part of this project. These facilities are used every day to feed all of the Sansuk school’s 57 elementary- and primary-level students.

o Replacement of current old wooden eating tables with new formica-topped tables, as well as replacement of old shelving used to store eating plates with new shelf units. These tables and shelves were designed and constructed by Chuck Fox again using part of the $4500 of ABCRM mission trip funds provided for our in-country mission trip projects.

o Replacement of the wood tabletop of the kitchen’s food-preparation table with a new top that will improve the sanitation of the food that the Akha school students are fed.

o Painting of school dormitory bunk-beds by our mission team’s Construction Crew using paint paid for out of this mission trip’s ABCRM in-country project funds.

o Putting in bamboo framing in the boys’ and girls’ dormitories to support mosquito netting to protect the students from getting mosquito bites while sleeping. Although malaria and yellow fever are not a problem in the Sansuk village, the students’ health will be generally improved by this mosquito protection especially during the summer rainy season.

o Building of a covered porch area near the girls’ dormitory where they can dry their clothes on clotheslines during the rainy summer months instead of hanging them under an edge of a nearby thatched roof.

The Construction Crew met the Sansuk village Akha “headman” Tuliwat for the first time on Wednesday, as well as the Chiang Rai AKHA Foundation staff members, Chiang Rai University student volunteers, and Sansuk Akha adults who would be helping with the ABCRM mission trip projects. Tuliwat was the “project leader” for all of the various projects Chuck Fox had planned with him for our in-country mission trip projects, and our Construction Crew members are acting as their “labor servants” to help get the job done. In this way as it should be, the Sansuk school improvements the ABCRM mission trip project funds are paying for (and the Construction Crew labor we’re donating) will be “owned” by the Sansuk Akha people, not by our ABCRM Thailand mission team.

During this Wednesday morning, the Construction Crew learned how we will help construct the new concrete flooring for the school’s cafeteria/kitchen by carrying sand and stone in plastic buckets from where it was dumped about 50 feet from the construction site, and then help when needed to help mix the sand and gravel with Portland cement bags with hoes and shovels to create batches of concrete that each cover about 100 square feet. The mixing of the concrete by hand was very messy and tiring, and a lot of this work will be done by the AKHA Foundation staff and university student volunteers. Finishing of the concrete surface will be done by Akha workers from the village who are experts at doing this specialized work.

About 10 o’clock in the morning, the first concrete batch was mixed on the cafeteria floor and spread into one corner of the corners. Our Sansuk cafeteria/kitchen renovation project is underway !!!

Thursday, February 14

As the Crafts/Teaching Crew continue to work on their Chiang Rai projects under the direction of Ruth Fox, the Construction Crew continues to complete the Sansuk school cafeteria/kitchen project by helping to make more batches of concrete, carry concrete blocks used for the new kitchen walls being constructed by Akha workers, and painting the school dormitory bunk beds. It’s been a lot of work, but thankfully the weather has been relatively cool in the 50’s and 60’s under cloudy skies.

As the Construction Crew is sleeping in Sansuk guest homes with no heating, it’s been very chilly in the night with temperatures falling into the 40’s, but Chuck has brought along sleeping bags to keep us warm, and our Akha host families also provide us with warm blankets. We wake up every morning to the sounds of multiple roosters competing to see who has the loudest cock-a-doodle-do. Thanks to Chuck’s pre-trip suggestions, all of our Construction Crew have brought along ear-plugs to help sleep through the morning rooster-crowing.

The Construction Crew mission team members are now staring to make friends with the Sansuk school kids who normally walk to school about ¼ mile away \ at 7:30 a.m., and return in the afternoon from a full day of academic and Christian studies at 4:30 p.m. We have all found these kids are absolutely beautiful and delightful, at all times respectful to us and all adults they interact with, active in their play outside after school without having any video games or toys other than shared badminton and soccer sports equipment provided through ABC-IM funds.

Even more amazing is when the Sansuk school girls from grades 3 through 12 treated our Construction Crew team members to a display of their native Akha dancing after supper in the Sansuk village community building that was built several years ago thanks to ABC-IM funds. These beautiful Akha young women are made even more beautiful when the wear their elaborate Akha outfits that they make themselves usually in about one month, starting around the age of 10. They performed various types of traditional Akha dancing for us, including one dance where three or four each interlock a leg in the center and hop on the other leg in a small circle. They invited our Construction Crew team members to dance with them on Wednesday evening, but we were sorely lacking in our Akha dancing abilities! Chuck said that the young Akha women dancing for us every evening after dinner is a real treat since they are normally very shy about dancing for foreigners like us. It is almost impossible to not have a strong sense of Christian love for all of these Akha school kids that we see every day!

Friday, February 15

Today at the Sansuk village, we reached an important milestone in our Akha school cafeteria renovation project as the last batch of concrete was mixed to complete the new floor! We are now helping the AKHA Foundation, Chiang Rai university volunteers, and Akha workers to finish the new kitchen concrete flooring. One particularly difficult part of the kitchen project is to break up large rocks with a 20-pbound sledgehammer to level out one corner before new concrete flooring is spread over it.

Everyone working on this project (especially the Sansuk village “headman” Tuliwat) is very happy with our school cafeteria renovation project so far, with the new kitchen concrete floor to be completed on Saturday. The Construction Crew also continues to paint school dormitory bunk beds. During the afternoon, we took a work-break to learn how the Akhas make “mochi” by pounding raw rice put into a stone bowl with a large pole. It’s hard work to smash the rice into a chewy paste that the Akha then cook over a stove or open fire to eat after dipping small portions of it into a bowl of sugar. The Akha students and adults love it, but we non-Akha Construction Crew members can’t each much of this mochi at a time.

Also, our Sansuk village project team has now completed the frames for mosquito netting in the boys’ and girls’ dormitories. Chuck’s being tall (about 6 feet-6 inches) was quite an asset in securing the bamboo poles to the rafters as part of this project. The Akha kids are delighted when the see the new netting and also new bed pads after they return from their school day. Monday evening.

Also today, the construction of the clothes-drying porch next to the girls’ dormitory was completed by the Chiang Rai AKHA Foundation workers and Chiang Rai University student volunteers. Great progress is being made on our Sansuk mission trip projects!

February 9-12 -- ABCRM Thailand Mission Team Experiences in Chiang Rai and Sukasem Village

2008-02-13T08:03:00.004-07:00

Saturday, February 9

Our last morning in Bangkok began with a hotel breakfast and then mission team devotions. How odd it was to sit around the breakfast table with the mission team just a block from the Dieselberg’s NightLight ministry discussing our feelings regarding the rampant Bangkok prostitution and sex trading, and the necessity of Jeff and Annie to reach out with Christ’s love to the women (and men!) caught up in this horrible business as the prostitutes and their customers wandered in and out of the breakfast area for the buffet. Suddenly it seemed helping those in prostitution was not a far-away problem, but a real life issue as it surrounded us everywhere. These images are unforgettable!

After packing up, we met in the lobby and headed to the airport to catch our flight to Chiang Rai. Upon our arrival in Chiang Rai, we were met at the airport by Chuck Fox, ABC-IM missionary in this city of 100,000 people. We passed mostly rural areas riding to our hotel in Chuck’s truck, where our hotel sat on a large, beautifully gardened property on the outskirts of Chiang Rai. What a contrast to the crowds and congestion we just left in Bangkok!

At our hotel, we received the “Baptist room rate”, a lower rate given by hotels in northern Thailand to American Baptist guests in appreciation for all the great work our ABC-IM missionaries have done over the past 150 years to help people in this area. After unpacking, we met Chuck, wife Ruth, and their family for dinner at a local restaurant. We were joined by Karen Smith (shown in the photo on the right), Director of the New Life Center women’s care facilities in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, and Angela Sudermann, ABC-IM Short-Term Mission Opportunities Coordinator at Valley Forge. Karen was in Chiang Rai that evening thanks to an invitation from Ruth Fox to meet our team, and Angela just happened to be there on her way to Chiang Mai to meet with ABC-IM missionary Duane Binkley. We felt fortunate to enjoy a meal with Karen and Angela, and to talk with them about their activities. After dinner, we shopped at the Chiang Rai Night Market. With Chuck’s assistance, some great deals were negotiated for souvenirs, and we saw for the first time beautiful Akha crafts being sold by Akha women. The evening ended with everyone going to the nearby Swenson’s Ice Cream Parlor next to the Night Market. It was indeed a great way to end our first day in Chiang Rai!

Sunday, February 10

Breakfasts here are delightful. Fresh fruit abounds along with “sticky rice” and an array of Asian breakfast selections. After breakfast, out mission team piled into Chuck’s double-size-cab Toyota truck (some of us riding in the truck bed) as we went with Chuck and Ruth to the Akha village of Sukasem about 1 hour from Chiang Rai. Sukasem is a Christian village where the Akha residents have pledged to Akha church leaders to not use drugs or alcohol. Homes there are built of bamboo with thatched roofs nestled in a small valley.

We were greeted with smiles and waves as we entered the Sukasem village. We met the Akha Baptist Area Director Pedru who serves 12 Akha villages in this area, and sipped tea and ate delicious Thai “apple bananas” waiting for church to begin around 10:00 a.m. Chickens and their chicklets, cats, and dogs wandered around us as we ate. We were unexpectedly blessed to attend the service since it was a special day with a new Akha pastor for the village being installed by his younger brother Pastor Pedru with blessings also by Chuck and Ruth. The new pastor was being paid by the Akha Baptist Foundation about 600 baht a month for his upcoming pastoral duties, only about $20 a month!

After about an hour of visiting we made our way up the hill to the little church made of cinderblocks with cement floors, constructed by donations from International Ministries under the direction of Chuck Fox. The church windows had no glass, only wooden shutters which were opened for light and to allow the gentle breeze to flow through. Women sat on one side of the sanctuary, men on the other, while small children played on the veranda. Singing was joyful and beautiful. What a heritage we have as American Baptists that made this Sunday service possible for the Akha people in the Sukasem village!

During the service, our Colorado mission team sang along with the Akha people such hymns as “Onward Christian Soldiers” and “How Great Thou Art” in Akha in the Akha language using hymnals that showed the words in Akha, Thai, and the phonetic Akha word pronunciations in English. This was made possible by the work that American Baptist Paul Lewis started in northern Thailand in the early 1950’s (and continues even today) to create the first written Akha dictionary, and to provide the Akha word English phonetic pronunciations and meanings so that other English-speaking people could communicate with the Akhas. Also, since the Akha people had no knowledge of a “music staff” for notes, Paul Lewis’s wife Elaine created a singing system for the Akha people where the “do, re, mi, fa …” words were written in Akha to tell them which tones should be sung. How joyous it was for us to sing with the Akhas!

As part of the church service, our ABCRM mission team stood before the some 80 Akhas attending to sing “Amazing Grace” as we would in Colorado. We were awed by then the Akha congregation standing to joyously sing in return “Amazing Grace” in their Akha language accompanied by a guitar. What a sign of all of we brothers and sisters in Christ sharing our fellowship in this way!

As an example of what a small world it can be, Beth (Currier) Cook on our ABCRM mission team sat beside ABC-IM missionary Ruth (Gilson) Fox during the Akha church service. They had discovered the night before they both had a connection with former American Baptist missionaries and Beth’s “Uncle Bryant” and “Aunt Sara Jean” Currier. The Curriers had served in Burma when Ruth’s parents had been missionaries there many years ago, and knew Ruth’s missionary aunt and uncle. Also, Pastor Pedru who installed the new church pastor been installed by Paul Lewis many years ago as an Akha Baptist pastor. How deeply entwined our missions of the past are with today’s work to spread the teachings of Christ to the Akhas and other people in northern Thailand!

After the dedication of the new pastor and the completion of the service during which Chuck preached and both Chuck and Ruth gave their blessing to the new pastor, we were fed a delicious meal at Pastor Pedru’s home in the Sukasem village cooked over an open fire in the home’s kitchen. When we returned to Chiang Rai in Chuck’s truck, some rested at our hotel with a few went with Ruth to enjoy a relaxing Thai full-body or foot massage, quite a treat after all our experiences at the Sukasem village!

Monday, February 11

Our ABCRM mission team gathered for breakfast and devotions in our hotel before starting our tour of mission trip activities in Chiang Rai that day. We learned that American Baptist missionary projects in northern Thailand come in many forms. Our first stop was to attend the opening ceremonies at the Sakasartsuksa School located just a half-block from the home of Chuck and Ruth. This private school supported by the Thai government was started in 1957 by American Baptist missionaries, with the first classes composed of a handful of students meeting in a small bamboo house. Its purpose was to educate tribal children of northern Thailand who otherwise would have no educational opportunities as they are not considered Thai citizens. This school is now a large multi-building compound attended by 2200 students from various local tribal groups, mostly Akha.

Almost 60 percent of the Sakasartsuksa School’s students come from Christian homes, where some students live in the school’s dormitories and some commute there daily. Support now comes from a variety of sources other than American Baptist churches, but the school still honors its American Baptist heritage with classes in Christianity and the reciting of the Lord’s Prayer every day before classes start. Our ABCRM mission team members were the honored guests of the school’s opening ceremony this day, with our mission team leader Kerry saying a few words to all the students about where we were from, and also our bringing greetings from their brothers and sisters in Christ in the Rocky Mountain Region to these students.

We met with the principal after the ceremonies. Mr. Songsaeng was raised in a Christian family and his father was a leader of the Baptist Churches in Burma. His concern was that his school not only change minds but also hearts. Many tribal families deal with issues such as drugs.

Our next stop of the day was at the Akha Crafts Center Store across the street from the Fox home. We took advantage of this opportunity to see the beautiful items made by the Akha Crafts Store staff under the direction of Ruth before heading on to the AKHA (Akha Kinship and Holistic Alternatives) Foundation in Chiang Rai. AKHA Foundation leader Yote Kukaewkasem (mentored by Paul Lewis) focuses on helping many Akha villages in the Chiang Rai area, including protection of the forest environment, creating economic opportunities for Akha communities and families, educating Akha youth, improving Akha health conditions, providing Akha crises relief programs, and solving Akha/Thai community problems through negotiations.

Our next stop during the day was to visit the Mekong Minority Foundation (MMF) in Chiang Rai led by ABC-IM missionary Scott Coats, son of well-know northern Thailand missionaries Bob and Patricia Coats who started over 60 American Baptist churches especially among the Karen people from 1957 through 1995. Scott’s MMF organization focus on helping all the Mekong Delta tribal groups (Karen, Akha, Hmong, Lahu, Lisu, Mien, and Tai Yai) to develop and raise up leaders among these people, emphasizing through training how to lead based on Christian ethics and morality in all that they do. Although Scott has been here several years connected with World Concern based in Tacoma, Washington, he has organized in recent years the independent MMF Foundation to carry on the work of building tribal leaders (see -- http://minorityleadership.org/English/minoritypeople.htm).

After our visit with Scott, we stopped by the Family Learning Center in Chiang Rai to see the completion of this international school’s “Sports Day” where Ruth Fox is the principal. Sports Day involves five multi-aged groups of the some 80 elementary/primary English-speaking students at this school competing in various athletic events to see can score the most points. We ended the day by returning to our Chiang Rai hotel dinner with Chuck and Ruth after Chuck showed us the typically street markets where food and other items are sold. We discovered when the hotel’s evening soloist starting singing American songs from the 60’s and 70’s that Chuck/Ruth and Carl/Carmen are great dancers. It was another nice ending to a busy day in Chiang Rai!

Tuesday, February 12

Today’s ABCRM Thailand mission trip activities started with visiting the Family Learning Center for a more in-depth tour after briefly seeing the school’s Sports Day events on Monday afternoon. Many missionary children attend the school as well as Thai children and children of other non-Thai’s who are spending time in this country for business or other reasons. It’s located in a former “bungalow motel” with 35 cabin units used for classrooms and school offices. The curriculum is based on home-school teaching materials, but Ruth hopes to soon achieve an accredited international status for the school. Christianity is emphasized in the curriculum although not all children are from families who are Christian.

On this day, our mission team attended the hour-long worship time that FLC holds for all students in the school’s primary meeting room every Tuesday morning. All the students joined in singing contemporary songs with words displayed on TV monitors, and sharing of prayer concerns raised by the students and staff. Ruth invited Beth Cook from our mission team to provide the worship message in the form of story-telling to all the school’s students that they tremendously enjoyed. What a joyful service it was to start our day’s mission team’s activities!

At the end of the school worship service, Bruce Cook of our team presented a $1200 donation to the school’s building/grounds supervisor Mooh, a member of the Karen tribe. This money came from the Cook’s building contractor who had been working on their home in January, and heard about our ABCRM Thailand mission trip from Beth. Although the Cook’s contractor had no knowledge about the need for $1200 by Mooh to buy a much-needed pickup truck that had been found by a Chiang Rai friend who was selling it for $1205, Ruth Fox (much to her amazement) found about the Colorado contractor’s $1200 donation and made the “connection” for Mooh to receive the donation forwarded by First Baptist of Colorado Springs through the Cook’s. Mooh was total overwhelmed by Bruce’s giving of these funds to her, as were the school students and our mission team members who witnessed this amazing way in which the Holy Spirit can work in our lives!

After a tour of FLC by Ruth, our mission team checked out of our Chiang Rai hotel, and prepared for the next five days of doing our primary ABCRM mission trip projects. Carl, Kerry, Bruce, and Karen helped Chuck load up his truck with construction supplies, sleeping bags, and other necessities for their school renovation project at the Sansuk Akha village located about an hour from Chiang Rai. Barbara, Beth, and Carmen moved into the Fox home to in parallel do crafts projects with the Chiang Rai New Life Center women, help the Akha Crafts staff and Ruth with various Crafts Center work-items, and to help with FLC library projects under Ruth’s direction. Our ABCRM team was looking forward to doing “hands-on” work projects with our Akha and Thai friends, where the $4500 cost of the materials associated with these projects was covered by 2008 ABCRM missions-focused funding for our February 6-19 ABCRM Thailand Mission Experiences trip. Our mission trip members are excited about the rest of our week here that lies ahead!

February 8 -- First Day in Thailand-- Experiences with Annie and Jeff Dieselberg in Bangkok

2008-02-10T21:51:00.000-07:00

Greetings from Thailand! Here’s a summary of experiences by members of our ABCRM Thailand mission team with Annie and Jeff Dieselberg and their NightLight ministry.

----------------------------

After leaving Denver on February 6 and flying 26 hours to Bangkok through San Francisco and Tokyo (losing one day as we flew over the International Date Line), the ABCRM Thailand Mission Team arrived in Bangkok at 12:15 a.m. on Friday February 8. The first mission trip activities later on this same day were to visit with Jeff and Annie Dieselberg who started NightLight two years ago. They now employing salaried 78 women who make jewelry that allows them to escape from the huge prostitution Bangkok market with a good wage and health benefits/company savings plan.

Even at our 1:00 a.m. hotel arrival on Friday, out team could still see first-hand the busy prostitution business operating in the streets surrounding NightLight and our nearby hotel. It was off to bed for a few hours of sleep before we gathered for breakfast at 8:00 a.m. to attend the daily morning 9:00 a.m. worship service held at NightLight’s nearby chapel. We were led on the short walk to the chapel by Annie and her “right-hand” outreach and business assistant Bang, where we joined 75 women employees of NightLight who sang praise songs in Thai with great enthusiasm before hearing a spiritual message on love from Jeff.

This service was also a farewell celebration for one of NightLight’s primary staff members Natalie, a co-founder of the NightLight ministry with Annie in 2004. The NightLight women expressed their love for Natalie by sharing of their sorrow, singing songs, and performing Thai dances. Natalie (shown in the red sarong in the photo on the left) moved to Kuwait with her businessman husband Steve on February 10. The deep love and respect for Natalie by the NightLight women was obvious!

After the morning worship service, Jeff met with our ABCRM Thailand Mission Team to tell us about this ministry in an area of Bangkok where every night an estimated 20,000 prostitutes roam the streets and bars in a half-mile radius of NightLight. Jeff explained that he handles the chaplain/teaching portion of this ministry, as well as teaching in local Bangkok seminaries and preaching at nearby Bangkok Thai Christian church. Annie is the CEO of NightLight, in addition to working on the jewelry designs, attending morning NightLight chapel services, leading weekly Bible studies, getting addition business, and helping to keep track of on-line NightLight jewelry website sales (see -- http://www.nightlightbangkok.com/).

Bang gave us a tour of NightLight facilities showing our mission team the many facets of the jewelry business including design, inventory, production, quality control, packaging, and shipment. The women showed so much pride in their work. As members of our team purchased jewelry and the NightLight workers saw our excitement and amazement of their high-quality work, their joy on the faces of the NightLight women was quite obvious!

After having a delicious lunch with Jeff of Thai and other Asian foods, our mission team discussed his and Annie’s ministry, and their desire to expand into more working space for NightLight. This transitioned into a “pros and cons” discussion of how ABC-International Ministries funding might be provided for such business-related ministries and our concern whether ABC-IM can adapt to support a “business in missions” strategy for those missionaries who wish to do so. Such a strategy could help build economic stability for needy people in various parts of the world, and at the same time provide a way to introduce Christianity to the employees of the business ministry. The importance of having trust, autonomy, and flexibility of our ABC-IM missionaries who wish to create a business-related ministry seemed obvious to our mission team members.

Later in the afternoon, our ABCRM mission team met with Annie, who talked about the challenges of starting up a missions-related business in Thailand where bribes are a part of the business environment. Annie emphasized the complete rejection of any bribe-based activities by NightLight to instead build a missions-based company that provides many benefits to its employees. She also discussed the huge problem of human trafficking seen in Bangkok that the NightLight ministry is helping to combat.

Before returning to our hotel to end a busy first day of our ABCRM mission trip, the team members shared dinner with Annie’s Christian outreach group at a food court just a few blocks from NightLight. This group walks during the evening through the go-go bars and other gathering places around NightLight to hopefully start up begin new friendships with women involved in prostitution who could possible be saved by the Dieselberg’s NightLight business-ministry. Everyone on our team was simple awed by what the Dieselbergs are doing as IM-ABC missionaries in Bangkok!

Tomorrow Saturday our IMABC Thailand Mission Team leaves to see the ministries of Chuck and Ruth Fox in Chiang Rai, where some of us will start the project to rebuild a school cafeteria in the Akha village of Sansuk with Chuck, and others will help with Akha craft-making and doing New Life Center teaching with Ruth. We’re looking forward to what God has in store for us next!

(Note: You can read more about the Dieselberg’s IM-ABC ministry at -http://www.anniejeffbangkok.org/)

Kerry Hassler

Mission Team Leader