Good News From Afar

An e-mail came from my friends who are missionaries, but not Presbyterian, in South East Asia the same day that Michael Kruse posted Our Presbyterian Witness in Asia, on his web site which was about the new web site of Linda Valentine, Executive Director of the GAC. She is traveling to Asia to visit the various Presbyterian missionaries there. Her web site is Our Presbyterian Witness: A Faith Journal from my Journey.

This got me to thinking how much I would like to post the e-mails from my friends on my blog. Now I have their permission. However, because of some of the places they travel and because of the wonderful Christians they minister to, who live in suffering places, I cannot post their names. But this will give others a chance to read the wonderful stories they send and to pray for another part of the Church. So following is the first of what I hope will be interesting messages from friends far away.

"We wanted to thank you for praying for the new constitution and upcoming elections in Thailand. When you see other messes in other countries, we sure do appreciate prayers as motivated by our Father.

I was wanting to relate a story to you about Buddhist religion seeking to be declared the state religion of Thailand in the new constitution. Many were praying and it turned out that the Queen of Thailand was staying in Chiangmai when one of her project leaders, who was a Christian went to be with the Lord. So she graciously attended the funeral service at the First Church here in town. One of the songs in that service is a lovely song asking God to protect, prosper and Bless the Thai nation. After the meeting, the Queen was heard to comment that the Christians really love the Thai nation. A couple of days later she wrote a front page article for her birthday and asked that Buddhism not be declared the state religion in the new constitution because she did not want to see religion associated with politics in that way. Two days after that the major lobbying/action group pushing for this took itself out of business. Three days after that the constitutional referendum, without the religion clause, passed with about 60% approval. God does answer prayer.

Please keep praying as elections are scheduled before the new year. They maybe moved a little bit datewise which is okay but just this last week the coup leader resigned as Armed Forces Chief and now has been appointed deputy Prime Minister. Interestingly the Thai economy has not suffered much yet from all this. In fact the US dollar has dropped more than 20% against the Thai baht in the last two years.

Since I was scheduled to be in .... at this time, we wanted to say that the unrest and discontent is usually just below the surface in the population at all times. (much worse atrocities than you have seen on TV happen everyday in all the borderlands of ....) But the population seldom flares up like this as they know they are very unlikely to effect this government even with armed insurrection. The civil war that has raged 60 years now resulting in the 120,000 refugees and up to 300,000 internally displaced people has been a rear guard guerilla war of attrition for forty of those years. Only the prayers and cries of God's people will bring the changes that are needed.

This year is the first year that regular refugees have been allowed to leave the camps along the Thai Burma border. WE hear that 2-3,000 of these 10,000 have this year immigrated to Tennessee. That is most interesting, since three of the Pastors of the churches I spent last week with in the Hills three hours south of here have been invited by a partnering Baptist church to come for three weeks to Tennessee. I am not sure that the church is yet aware of this immigration but it would be amazing to have Pastors that are really moving ahead and experiencing 100% growth this year being able to minister to ethnic Karen refugees just getting started in a strange land as newly arrived refugees and aliens.

The district that I was in last week has had a strong move to God in the last seven years. The Worship and Prayer aspects have risen dramatically. The church there is growing up to the point that today more than 30 percent of the 60,000 people in the district are Born again Christians. There is no other place in Thailand that has that kind of statistic. The general population of Thailand is still looking for the first 1 percent to be evangelical Christians.
The only other places in SE Asia that I know have a similar percentage are in two provinces in tribal Burma and three provinces in tribal NE India.

You know the thing that impressed me the most was not the big new church buildings (one that can seat (on the floor) 1500 people) but it was the pastor and cell group leaders that are beating paths in the rainy season to small villages with brand new small Christian groups gathering. This is a real movement happening and it has been primarily among the Pwo Karen which have been the resistant ones in the last 180 years.

So we are much encouraged and it is always wonderful to bring a good report from afar."