A small team left the comfort of their church home (Judson Baptist Church), loved ones and mild weather in San Bernardino (CA) to serve alongside our global servants in Thailand. Their home church is in the midst of their 70th year anniversary celebration, and saw fitting to send God’s instruments of peace and hope to spread love through Charity, Grace, Annie and Jennifer. They have been on this journey for ten days, and have seven more days to go. When they arrived in Bangkok, they worked with NightLight ministry, seeing how women are reached and freed from slavery in the Red Light district. They witnessed how dark the Red Light district truly is, even with all its flashing lights. In Charity’s words “It was horrible. I’m praying God washes our minds of all the dirty images. Psalm 10 was powerful for me to come back to after the outreach.”

The team has now moved on to the Chiang Mai area and its surrounding remote area to help with a water project. In order to reach the site of the project, the team traveled in the back of trucks (bumpy, dusty and truck fumes). The remote village that will be receiving a water project is for Karen people with about 1/3 Christian families and the other 2/3 Buddhist families. The team’s presence alongside others who have traveled from Ohio will bring light and living water as they build trenches and pipe in water to a filtration tank; build squatty potties and water faucets for the village and bring the love of Christ in all they do. We keep them in prayers, as they work side by side with many hands needed to build the trenches, do the cement mixing, lay the pipes and make all the connections.

They have needed strong spiritual stamina in the Red Light district of Bangkok, they now need to add the physical stamina of a long journey, long working days, unusual food, avoidance of illness, and sleeping on the screened in porch of a village hut. Our prayers sustain them. Our hearts yearn to hear more of the stories they will share when they return. Our ears will be transformed. They live Matthew 25:35 and they witness to us all.

For more information about short-term missions around the world with our global servants and partners, please don’t hesitate to contact the Short-Term Mission office at volunteers@internationalministries.org