Bible Distribution!!!

Hello again from Chiang Rai- the most northern province of Thailand! We have just completed a week and a half of bible distribution here and it has been amazing! This blog will mostly be pictures with stories because there is just too much to tell and I will end up writing a novel! Plus, a picture really is worth a thousand words ;) I will be showing some pictures of one of the children's homes we went to. There are many children's homes in Thailand and they are usually run by local Thai Christians and are funded by western support. The homes are set up for children who are from remote Thai villages where there are no schools and the families are quite poor (poor in money, but live off of the land and in a communal way). They live in the children's home for most of the year so that they can go to local schools. Some of the children are also orphans and have been taken in by whoever runs the home. This one was lovely. The children were so happy and kind and you can really tell that the staff loves the children and do an amazing job of running the facility. We went with another team from Brazil to do dramatic performances and share testimonies. We also spent a lot of time just hanging out with the kids and eating meals with them.

Because Jonny-Boy is just sooooo cute ;) He is 2.5 now and is loving his time here. Although, he does get very overwhelmed by the swarms of Thai kids and adults who love him because he is white and huuuuge for Thai standards! So we often have to carry him around when there are large crowds around! But he is adapting so well over all.

Here is our team plus the Brazil team and all the kids with face painting and balloon animals that we did during a fun fair in the afternoon.

We stayed at a YWAM base in Chiang Rai and the base leaders had a 5 year old son. He and Asa became fast friends and played together from sun up until sun down the whole time we were there. Here are the boys being our spiritual warriors as we went out and delivered bibles from home to home.

Here we are distributing bibles at a high school right around the corner from the base. This is a public school in a Buddhist nation yet we were allowed to come here and preach the gospel of Jesus and hand out bibles!!!

These are our teams standing at the back of the auditorium waiting to give out over 500 bibles!!! Thank you so much to all who contributed to the purchasing of these bibles.

This is Asa with one of the high school students who just received her bible. After all of the students where out of the assembly you could see many of them sitting around reading it. So amazing! We continue to pray that the word of God would go deep into the hearts of these students.

A group of 250 elementary students holding up their new bibles!!!

The next 3 photos are from when we did evening bible distribution in the local neighbourhood. The goal of the YWAM base leader is to see a bible in every home in the province of Chaing Rai! The bible that they have chosen for this project is the Thai Source View bible. More information on this cool bible can be found here https://www.facebook.com/sourceviewthai/, but the basic idea of the source view bible is that it divides the text of the bible into four different speaking parts instead of chapters. This makes the scripture come alive, especially for oral cultures. The speaking parts are colour-coded into four colours and the colours are dispursed between the houses in a neighbourhood. The hope is that neighbours would get together and read the bible aloud. This is something that seems so foreign in the west, but it is really happening here in Thailand!!! Each time we would deliver a bible we would show a short video clip in Thai on our phone that explains how this bible works. We would then ask people if we could pray for blessing or if they needed prayer for healing. We saw SO many people healed during this time! I will share one short story of healing. One of the teams went to a home and after giving out the bible they asked if he had any pain in his body (this is all done through a script on our smart phones since none of us speak Thai! Google translate is an amazing tool!). The man said that he had pain in his shoulder. So the team prayed. He said the pain went from a 10 to a 6 so the team said "lets pray again!" They prayed a few more times and each time he was surprised to report that the pain got less and less. They prayed one final time and he said the pain was gone! He then began to rotate his shoulder, which he could not do at all before. A huge smile went from ear to ear as he realized he could rotate his shoulder completely without pain and the he could raise his arm above his head. He began speaking excitedly in Thai and swinging his arm around and around. The team shared that it was Jesus who healed him and that he can learn more about him in the bible that we just gave him. He was so thrilled and amazed at what God had done!!! Watch a video of the healing here: https://youtu.be/vvG7-ao6W9M

Sohee giving a bible to a precious mother and daughter.

Ki-Wook showing the Thai video explaining how the bible is to be read among neighbours.

Here is our team along with the Brazil team and the staff of the Chiang Rai base. We had such a wonderful time together! A funny thing about our time together was how many languages were being spoken. The Brazil team spoke mostly Portuguese with only a few people who could speak English. And none of the Thai staff spoke Portuguese so there were many times when Portuguese was being translated into English which was then translated into Thai! I love that my kids are getting to hear so many different languages and meet people from all over the world.

On one of our days off we got to go on an elephant ride!!! It was such a special experience for our family. The boys loved it and did so great. Jody has made a video and we are just uploading it to youtube now so we will share the link when it is available :)

Ki-Wook is an awesome photographer so we are blessed to have some really great pictures to share :)

Bless you my friends! Please continue to pray for all of the homes that have received bibles. Pray that God would move mightily among them and reveal himself through his word. Thank you again so much to those who contributed to the purchasing of the bibles. We couldn't have done this without your support. Please know that it is making an eternal difference!