Thursday 30th - Team 1

Today we split into two groups, with James, Jonny, Dave, and Alice traveling to Pitsanulok, about an hour and a half away, and Carissa, Esther, and Philip remaining in Nakhon Sawan. In Nakhon Sawan we had a crash course in english teaching in the morning and handed out tracts till lunchtime. Esther was able to make some significant contact with some Chinese students and three of them came along to an evangelistic Bible study in the evening which is very exciting (this led to Narkon Sawan Youth Houses first tri-lingual bible study! English, Thai and Chinese). It is great to see some new faces coming to the Bible study group as a result of us handing out fliers and tracts and we ask that you pray that discipleship continues.

Phil

Set Backs

Well, Anne jut got a phone call from the camp site we are going to on the 8th December for the evangelistic camp. They have cancelled the booking.

Please do pray for Jonny and Anne as this adds an additional stress point of not only having no site for the camp but them having to run around visiting campsites that we can use as an alternative. Please pray that a viable alternative would be found quickly so that the camp can go ahead as planned as the camp is one of our key evangelistic events.

Wednesday 29th

On Wednesday morning we went on campus and handed out leaflets advertising the various upcoming events, including english teaching and a party in the park this Saturday. A bit strange handing out fliers to people we can communicate very little with, but Thai people are very polite and seem to show quite a bit of interest in the fliers. One of the amazing things we have found here is that there is a lot of Chinese students around, and one of our team, Esther, is Chinese Malaysian, so students are very keen to talk to her in Chinese and this is already opening up some great opportunities for the gospel. We ran a "cool cafe" in the evening where we were able to meet some Thai students which was exciting. Communication is always a bit limited so pray that as time progresses and relationships deepen, we will be able to have significant conversations with the students here.

Arrivals

We arrived in Nakhon Sawan (the city where we are based) at 4am, only to find that the hotel (much more like a backpackers than anything else though) wasn't expecting us for another 24 hours and was fully booked! Fortunately, they were able to clear a two room bedroom for us, with another one becoming available at 5am and another one at 6am. So we all managed about 3-4 hours sleep our first night. Once we all got up from our nap, Anne (local missionary we are working with) gave us a comprehensive overview of Thai student culture and what we were going to be doing (a mixture of english classes, tracting, and helping out with a camp among other things). Jonny and Anne have a lot of experience with short term mission teams so it is great to be in competent hands! :) We are all finding it very hot here (36 during the day and 30 at night - and this is supposed to be the cool season!), but fortunately, jet lag numbed most of the transition period on the first day.

Meet the Team

Back row: David, James, Phil, Johnny

Front row: Alice, Carissa, Esther