As you pray... (September 27, 2018)

Praise

• Praise God for the increased use our camp facility has seen over the past months!  
• Thank God for all who have encountered God through the various camps held over the last months.
• Thank God for the new initiative to reach Isaan people for Christ--and for all those who are reaching out over the past weeks!  

Prayer

• Please pray for many new believers in Isaan--and pray for the renewed effort to reach our neighbors for Christ.  .    
• Pray for the development of our camp.  For resources, for plans.  Pray we would sense what God's plan is for us--and to move in concert with that plan.    

If you'd like more regular updates, please visit our Facebook pages or our blog.....

Ruthie's Facebook

Peter's Facebook

Peter & Ruthie's Blog

We're Dreaming!

We're excited to see our camp facility being used like never before!  But our goal is to able to host camps of up to 200 people.  In the middle of writing this, Ruthie came rushing in to tell me we've had a request for a camp of 200+ people in November 2019! 

We would love to find partners to help us complete projects and make improvements!  We'd love to...

• Finish off our large meeting hall.  Presently it is just a tall roof structure.  It needs walls, flooring, and sound system.  Our estimate?  $50,000 USD.

• Build more rooms and sleeping space.  We currently have two small cabins and 5 rooms in which we can sleep campers on floor mattresses.  We'd like to build more family cabins and some dormitory space!  Our estimate?  $8,000 USD per cabin to sleep 10 people.

• Finish off a meeting hall and improve facilities at our Chiang Mai camp.  The Covenant's camping ministry there has many bulding and outfitting needs!  $20,000 USD!

We are thankful for those of you who have given time and money to bring us to this point!  Please let us know if we can share a more detailed list and costs!  We're looking for people and resources to join us in this ministry!  If you have time--or if you can teach English or give some time to work... let us know.  We'd love to talk!

Another Blessing, Another Partner

Rolling Hills Covenant Church from SoCal came again this year--as they have every year since Ruthie and I returned to Thailand.  This time they brought an unusually large team.  And, together, we visited many local schools for a couple days--then finished off with a big ESL camp at our camp ground.  As always, this was an incredible blessing--and  a big help in our efforts to reach out to schools in our area.  Thank you, Richard & Cathy Smith, and the team you brought this time!  The relationships we've built with these schools, we hope, will continue to bear fruit. 

Encountering God

But it wasn't only with "outside" groups that we began to see our camp utilized.  Another wonderful experience these last weeks came from a sister Covenant church in Taiwan!  Pastor Vernon Wu, from Taipei, along with a group of 10 church members came August 22-27 to do a camp that has been a huge blessing to churches in Taiwan. 

Reports from our church members....were amazing!  One women spoke of how this is "the first camp she's been able to attend--and she just felt that God met her!"  Another participant said "this was the first Christian camp in which his son and daughter-in-law had stayed totally engaged and hadn't slipped out of the meetings."  Numerous others voiced similar thoughts.  Many remarked on how they felt so loved, so affirmed!

We are so grateful to the Taiwan team who came!  Many slept willingly on floor mats.  Some even got rained on one night as one of roofs sprung a leak! 

Camps, Camps, CAMPS!

What is our mission?  What should we "be about" given our people, resources, and capabilities?

As we've reviewed, one part of the answer has come!  God has gifted our church with a beautiful camp ground.  So....we need to use these facilities to see his church planted and body strengthened.
With the renewal of this vision, we have set about the work of sponsoring camps--and opening the use of our facilities to the work of the wider body of Christ in Thailand!


As soon as we made the decision to move in this direction, we were approached by a consortium of church groups who wanted to conduct a camp on church planting.  They wanted to hear about new developments and lessons learned from a movement to Christ in central Thailand--the Free in Jesus Christ Church Association.

A long-time friend of mine, Dwight Martin, has been a key contact and liaison with this Thai church movement.  Other key organizers from OMF, So. Baptists, and Mennonites were instrumental in pulling this meeting together.  Together, we listened to reports--and prayed together--that God would do a work in our Northeast region similar to what He is doing in the province of Petchabun.

That original vision, cast back in July, was followed up early September with another meeting of members in this  coordinated strategy.  We were thankful and gratified to be a part!  The reports that came back were very encouraging--several groups reported more than 25 new believers in the two month interim.  This is astounding news for Thailand!  Please pray with us.