Dear Friends,

We want to thank you again for your prayers and support. We are privileged and very thankful for all that you do to keep us here on the field.

We feel your prayers these days as we serve here in Thailand. I have recovered from my sickness and in many ways it was a blessings. Our Thai co-workers took turns looking after me in the hospital while Wendy home schooled. It was a great time to spend hours talking to each one of them. I had the chance to here in detail how they came to God and what God is teaching them in their lives. They asked me to share testimonies of God's faithfulness. I got to hear their concerns about the work and saw their faith as they trust God in the issues of life that they don't have answers for.

Many people prayed for me often and I recovered quickly. In the end God used my sickness to answer prayers for unity, prayers for opportunity to love each other and prayers for good communication with Thai partners. Thank you for your prayers too. I believe God answered them and did many good things through my being sick.

There are some events that I want to share with you and ask you to pray for.

Next week we will be doing a Bible English camp on the island of Ko Kaw. 70 kids should come. I (Ken) will be the main English teacher. Our Thai partners will be doing Bible teaching 2 times a day. We will be doing memory verses and Bible skits too . Sports and games will be part of the program too.

Pray for God to give us stamina. Pray that the hearts of these kids would be open and changed as the gospel is shared. Pray for the parents of kids. Pray we do not have any accidents. Pray we will have a blast and that the kids would go away blessed and touched by God. That they would be convicted of sin and turn to the resurrected Christ.

The next activity I would like you to pray our time with people. On Mondays we are spending the whole day at peoples homes in the village of Taptawan. The Taptawan people are mostly Sea Gypsies and other ethnic groups of people from the Eastern Thailand. Many of them work each day to eat and get by. Pray that we would have wisdom as we talk and build relationships. Americans are far from the Molken(Sea Gypsies) and Esan people that live in Taptawan. Pray for openness. Pray that as we talk we would take risk and bring up hard subjects, like: Why are we here? Where did the world come from? How come every one dies? Is there a God? What is sin? Is there a heaven? What is a spirit? What does the Bible say about spirits? Who is Jesus?

Most of these people are into spirit worship and are Buddhist in a nominal way. Some of them are deep into witchcraft. Pray for us as we enter into spiritual warfare. We have spent a month praying every day, walking around this village asking God to open hearts. Now we are going out by faith looking for the people He has called out. Please keep praying for us as we pursue these people.

In the future we look to do church planting in Thakua Pa. It is the county seat of the this province. It is the most populated city near us. I believe God wants us to move there with in the next 3 years and start to seek out people of peace and see small bible studies started there. In the mean time, we need to take a year, or many months to saturate this area with prayer and make relationships. We will be going out on the 31st to prayer walk every morning at the Buddhist temple and the main neighborhood of this city. Pray that we would be disciplined to keep praying and talking to people when we go out.

This is a dark place and it is like an epicenter of Satanic activity in this area. I have seen many hundreds of people being controlled by spirits in this town. Pray for us as we enter spiritual ware fare in Thakua Pa.

Lastly. On Mondays and Fridays we are meeting and worshiping and doing Bible study. We meet in Chan's house in Taptawan on Monday night and we meet in different people's home on Friday night. This is what I want to ask you to pray for. That Jesus, the Holy Spirit would be the MC of these meetings. We want to follow Gods leading and moving in these times. We don't want to try and control Gods agenda, but want to follow Him. Many time the temptation is to organize and invite God to come and join us. It is my desire to come and listen and seek God's face. Pray as I back off and don't "lead" as the missionary, that others would have freedom to use there gifts and be led by the Spirit to share from the word and give testimony of God goodness.

Please pray for us as a family too. Pray we invest in our kids. Invest in each other as a couple. Walk in the Spirit every day every moment. That we would not get discouraged, but have a great joy, peace and rest as we are part of God's plan for Southern Thailand to see them be part of His Church.

We covet your prayers and believe they are vital to see these activities bear eternal fruit. You are very much a part of this work.


Look forward to seeing many of you when we are in the states from Sept 2008 to Mar 2009.


In Him,

Jonathan Training/Church Multiplication

Jonathan Training at a Bible School.

Tanom & Chan

These 2 are brothers-in-law, by the way. Here they are during a break in in the training day. There were many ideas presented in this workshop that were a real challenge for the traditional church model most Thai pastors follow.

Jonathan Training

Kennedy, Tanom, Chan and Khrua all went up to Chiang Rai, Thailand's border city with Burma, to do Jonathan Training, a Church Multiplication week-long workshop for church planters. They really enjoyed the other attendees from all over Thailand. They said the weather was freezing cold. (For them, maybe, but comfortable for us westerners!)

There was lots of homework and everyone learned alot. Chan found it exciting that he was a tent-maker kind of church-planter.

Darts

• One of the new believing families has been feeling jealous of the attention that another new believing family is receiving and has stopped coming to church or cell groups.
• The owner of the center is giving us trouble; his relatives are putting pressure on him to break the 20-year contract on the center he has with us and make it into a motel to make more money. (He is doing fine financially.)
• Kennedy is in the hospital, tonight will be the third night, and the doctors have been unable to make a diagnosis. Sometime in-between hospital trips we had $130 dollars stolen from us.
• The missionaries who have been coming to learn Thai from our partners are leaving, meaning 3 of our Thai partners have a drastic income loss.

We sure appreciate your prayers!

Chan's House & Shop

Jonathan Training/Church Multiplication

"Church Planting Movements" is the main text for the OMF Jonathan training that Kennedy, Tanom, Khrua and Chan are attending this week in the Northern Thai area of Chiang Rai (near the Burmese border.) They will be there all week, learning about teaching the Bible chronologically, house churches, lay leaders, principles of rapid church multiplication...all in Thai. This is the same training Kennedy and I went to last year for 2 1/2 weeks. This one is for Thais and will be shorter. It is very exciting that we will be able to talk about these church multiplication principles with greater understanding as a team now.