Our lay workers in Thailand, Liz Meister and Katie Lehmann, assist the mission team by, supporting national church members in outreach (teaching English, soccer ministry, music outreach, children’s outreach), encouraging and helping to develop small businesses (coffee shop, crafts), and supporting the mission’s administration (reporting, communications). The following is recent update from Katie.
We develop relationships with many local people in Thailand. Evangelism opportunities often present themselves from ongoing relationships. Daily life presents opportunities like this with Thai people in our neighborhood, with people who run local businesses, and with people we meet throughout the day.
My role as a WKW mission assistant is to support and be a friend to the national Christians, and encourage them to be lights where they live and in the natural relationships that they develop with people in their communities. For some Thai people, these opportunities to be a light occur in the fields where their families work, for some it’s in the city where they work in the coffee shop and coach soccer. Recently, I’ve gotten to see one of the girls who sews for Thai Village Handicrafts grow in her desire to be a light.
Pring is from a village outside of Chiang Mai and a member of Promise Lutheran Church. She left home and first came to the city as a teenager to study at a local high school, as many young people do in Thailand. After finishing a vocational school program in sewing, Pring began looking for work. Most of the available jobs in the city are in factories that require long hours with little time for much else. Pring had a few jobs and continued to talk with the church leaders about her future.
After hearing of her dream to open her own clothing shop some day and her desire to study further, the church encouraged her to find a vocational program in clothing design. At the same time, Thai Village Handicrafts was looking for a more full time seamstress to help with sewing projects. Now Pring comes to work five days a week to sew at the mission center for Thai Village, she has time to study at a vocational school part time in the evenings, and is a part of the Christian community based around the church.
As Pring spends more time working with us we’ve been able to develop a closer relationship with her and to encourage her in her faith daily. Throughout the past year, as she has been working at the mission center, we’ve seen God give her an increased desire to learn the Bible, to follow his ways, and to share Christ with others. Although Pring comes from a Christian village, many people there don’t know Christ. She has expressed how she sees much pain in the lives of many people, including members of her own family. Pring wants her family to be different; to be an example to the families around her, and to have a warm, loving home that honors God.
Praise God that he is working in Pring’s heart to strengthen her faith, for allowing us to be a part of her life, and for allowing us to see the change in her. Please pray that Pring has opportunities to share Christ through the relationships she has with her family and with the people in her village, and that she would be bold to take them.
“Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name, make known among the nations what he has done. Sing to him, sing praise to him, tell of all his wonderful acts.” Psalm 105:1-2
WELS Kingdom Workers is providing $47,400 to the Thailand Leadership Training mission project in 2011.
See the list of national projects for 2011.
Contribute to support the ministry of WKW.
