The house Church I have been a part of starting
June 2004

Hi

I’m back in Norway now and am sorry that I haven’t written sooner. Prior to my departure from Thailand and upon my return to Norway I was extremely busy. Also, my health has gotten worse again the last weeks.
Very soon I will have been back a month, and already I truly miss Thailand and my Shan friends a lot! I hope to get back there very soon and have plans to go back in September through November, depending on my health.

Starting a Church
One of the last weeks I was in Thailand, while sitting in the cell-group we had started in a place called Mea Mau, it suddenly struck me that I had a role in the starting of a Church. Not only had I been a part of starting a Church among this un-reached group of people, but I also witnessed the Church grow. It has almost been a revival there. We started in December with 5-6 people, but when I left, the Church was numbering 23-26 people. Also, there were more people that got saved on rice-fields in the area. All together I saw around 20-25 people get saved, and some others healed. I have been travelling to Fang and Thailand since 1999, but I have never seen results like this. Before this I saw maybe 10 people get saved since 1999, but God’s time for the Shan people is here!

Sad stories in Mea Mau
One lady I met lost her husband about two years ago and is caring for her child and her elderly mother. Remember, these are refugees and they live in a culture where a woman gets a lower salary than a man. If a refugee finds a job they only earn approximately 2 USD per day (or 80-100 Thai Bat and one kilo of rice costs about 10-15 Bat). So, if this woman is lucky enough to find work, she earns less than 2 USD, and with that she has to feed her family, plus pay for their other expenses. Along with these hardships, this woman also has a big tumour on her right cheek. However, the good news is that I can see in their eyes that they have hope in God!
Another woman has a 2-year-old child that looks like a 6-month-old baby. She can’t grow or only grows very slowly and can’t walk or speak. The mother is married to a man who uses all of their money on alcohol. Amazingly, this woman is one of the most eager to know more about God. She studies the Bible, writes down the worship songs we sing and asks a lot of questions. The last Sunday I was in Mea Mau, she was able to bring her husband to the meeting.

The paralysed woman
One experience that had a great impact on me was a visit with a half paralysed woman. The couple that have the house Church in their home brought us to a relative that was paralysed on one side of her body.
We went to her bamboo hut that someone had made for her apart from the other houses.  When we came to the hut we understood way. The smell of urine and human waste was really bad, because she had to do everything in that hut. When we came in, the woman started to cry, and you don’t see that lot out here, because Buddhism teaches them to suppress their feelings. She told us that she had been like this for five years and we could see the hopelessness in her eyes.
We were able to tell her about the hope we have in Christ, and we put our hands on her dirty body and prayed for her.
Some days later when we came back with food and clothes for her, she could move her paralysed leg a little bit, something she could not do before. God had done something! Even though she still had a lot of fear, we could see that she had gotten some hope back. One woman that helped the paralysed woman became saved, probably as a result of what she saw happen.

There are many more stories to tell, but to keep the newsletter short I didn’t write them all down. (If you understand Norwegian you can read more on my Norwegian web site http://www.bibelundervisning.com/tore/thailand)

I hope to get back to Thailand soon to continue to help and disciple this people.

More on the ministry
Youth With A Mission runs this ministry. My YWAM home base here in Norway has adopted this group of people. This ministry is led and was started by a Norwegian/Filipino couple, Mario and Mariann Lao.  
Mario and Mariann live in Chiang Mai, so I have lived most of the time alone as a foreigner in the city of Fang. But if it had not been for this couple, the ministry and now the Church in Mea Mau would not exist today. I’m glad that I was able to help and I hope to spend a lot of time in Fang in the years to come.

The last day I was in Thailand I was also with Mario when he started up a Shan church in Chiang Mai, so the ministry has started two churches amongst this un-reached people group.

For more info about the ministry go to: http://www.ywam.no/shan/eng

Prayer Subjects:

Pray for Ching and his Family

God bless you!
Tore