So the history of the Mae Jong church goes like this. One of the older ladies there who was a christian moved to that neighbourhood years ago. She had no other christian's she could worship with, but over 10 years, she faithfully prayed for those in her village to come to know christ. And God answered her prayer. She shared the good news about Jesus with another lady in the village and from there, there's a group of about 20 or so people who meet at her house each week now. However, there is no pastor, and none of them have had any training in the Bible. all they know is that God loves them, they love God and want to meet together to worship him and read the bible. So when my teachers church heard about this group of Christians, they wanted to help. So every couple weeks, they'd send down a few people to give a short talk and run some activities for the kids. However it is a bit of a hike to get there - 2hrs driving each way. So just recently they've started supporting 2 students to work down there as missionaries. Between the 2 of them, they are given 400bht ($15) a week to survive. This money is what they have for food, petrol, housing etc etc etc. They had a house warming party time for their new 'house' while we were there. Unfortunately i didn't a photo of it at the time as i forgot to take my camera to the house, but believe me, it was pretty basic! But what i found really exciting was that there were thai's here who were giving up so much in order to bring the gospel to this small village. I can't say i know too much about their theology, as they were speaking another hill tribe dialect, so i wasn't able to understand a whole lot, but sitting in the beginning part of the service, was really encouraging to see people singing to God with all their heart. Then when we took the kids out for Sunday School, the kids were keen to share things they had learnt the past few weeks about the Bible.
the kids singing a special song item in church
My role for the day was to run the activity of making pizza's with them. When asked if there was anything special they wanted to do for christmas last year, the kids answered that they wanted to eat pizza since they'd never ever eaten it before. So my teacher agreed to this request, only problem is, they're in such an isolated area, it's not like there's any pizza delivery there. and they have no microwave or oven to bring pizza down to heat up. So we thought we'd take down a couple toaster ovens, and teach them how to make pizza and make it into an activity where they could make pizza for the whole church. So Mac ran a session on washing your hands
then we got into the pizza making.
the kids had fun and were pretty proud of their creations.
I can't honestly say they were the tastiest pizza's i've ever eaten, but it was great to see a smile on the kids faces and relief on my teachers face to know that she's finally come good on her promise to the kids.
For those praying,
- please pray for the people in this church to really grow in their understanding of the bible and the gospel.
- praise God for the way that he has worked in this village so far
- pray for the 2 students who are working there as missionaries, to be able to keep on persevering in ministering there and that they themselves will keep growing in their knowledge and understanding of God
