Transition, Development and an Answer to prayer
Hello from Thailand!
Our adventures continue in Asia since we came back home from South America. Here’s a quick summary of what has occurred over the past two months…
Elias Graduated from Kindergarten
We’re very proud of our son who was able to finish off the school year well with his classmates. Elias has learned how to read and write and do some basic math. It’s fun to hear him sounding out the letters and getting the “Aha!” moments when he figures out what word it is. We’re grateful to God for letting him enter kindergarten this past year.
Rob is becoming the foundation chairman
(transition)
One of the things that happened while we were in South America is that the legal foundation we helped pioneer about 6-7 years ago started a transition. The current chairperson, Nit (a Thai leader), was seriously burned in a house fire while visiting the USA. She has so many burns that she won’t be able to travel for at least 1 year, maybe more. She decided to step down as chairperson and asked me (Rob) to take over.
After much prayer, I took on the role as chairman moving forward. There are plenty of legal changes that need to be done over the course of this year, including moving the head office out of Chiang Mai and into Chiang Rai, running the board through the official meetings, and making sure we’re submitting the correct paperwork through the government in a timely matter. The whole process will take roughly 1 year or so to complete. Please pray for this matter. It’s currently one of the most stressful parts of life these days.
Share Bibles
(Development)
We were pleasantly surprised by a request for us to host a YWAM DTS team from Muizenburg, South Africa. They stayed with us for 3 weeks and helped us distribute Bibles into 4 villages. We were able to distribute over 800 Bibles, including visiting a primary school where 100 kids got their first Bible.
This project is growing and developing quickly. We plan to have a full website up and running by August. We also hope to have our own Bible Distribution tracking app to help us record the data that we need within a few months.
God’s hand is really moving in this project. There are increasing invitations to share this with others: churches, ministries and individuals. We’re using this year to develop tools to equip people to get involved and to do their part well. We’re always looking for people to help with the following:
1. Donate for Bibles ($2USD/Bible)
2. Pray for us and especially for those who receive the Bibles
3. Send teams to Thailand to help distribute the Bibles (maybe you, your family or your church wants to come for a week or two)
UPDATE ON OUR FAMILY IN VENEZUELA
(answer to prayer)
Thanks to a few miracles by the hand of our Father, five members of Cy’s family that hosted us in Venezuela flew to Chile to escape the horrible situation that Venezuela is currently in. We’re trusting God to get the rest of them out of the country before it gets too late.
PRAYER REQUESTS
There are plenty of things you can pray for us over these coming weeks and months:
- Wisdom and favor for dealing with legal things – Rob is learning a whole new area of life in Thailand, dealing with government bodies with increased interaction and responsibility (in his 3rd language no less).
- Leadership of the Spirit of God – “Share Bibles” has the passion of a powerful God as the initiator of this project. We want to walk in step with what God wants to do and we don’t want to make decisions based on human wisdom or conventional reasoning. We want to hear what the Spirit is saying to the church in our generation and continue to follow him in faith.
- Health – though we have been relatively healthy over the past 3 months, stress with new roles of leadership, especially the legal things, has taken its toll. We’re continuing to learn the rhythms of work and rest with faith as the foundation for both.
Thanks for sharing in what God is doing in and through our lives. We so glad to have people all around the world praying for us and caring about what we go through. We have felt supported through so many of you.
Blessings!
Rob, Cy and Elias
