E-mail Update/ Tsunami Project Southern Thailand- 1/10/05

Dear Friends,
Praise God for all He did through our students and staff this past week in the Tsunami hit areas of Thailand. It’s hard to summarize the real life stories in one e-mail to you. When we packed to go on this trip, we were all told that we’d either be staying in tents near the misplaced people or else in a very simple school building. When we arrived in the area neither of those places worked out- but along miles and miles of beach with hotels and homes flattened – there was one hotel up on a hill that was 50% saved. The manager heard of our relief group and gave the rooms to us at a 90% discount. It was also the command center for the Thai army for the whole area. We were able to come back in the evenings after a hard day of work to very comfortable rooms and have a meeting room each morn and eve.

Our typical day was to meet together at 6:30am for Worship and Prayer, eat breakfast, a meeting of orientation for the days work and then leave for the refugee camp by 8:00. The needs of each day changed a lot- so we had to make ourselves constantly available for the pressing need at the time.
There were many relief workers at the main camp with around 3000 homeless people sleeping in tents. We cooked for them, built houses, toilets, helped the Thai soldiers to sort through all the donations (that were arriving by truckloads), entered data into computers, ran children’s programs and much more. After 2 days, we felt that this main camp was getting so much media attention and help from relief organizations that we wanted to branch out into more remote areas and find more of the homeless people.

The next afternoon, Mike and I hopped into a truck to survey other areas along the coastline. We were sobered to come upon village after village of flattened homes and fishing businesses with no people left. Where were these people we wanted to know? We prayed for God to lead us to them. That very afternoon, we stopped at a field with people sleeping under plastic coverings which turned out to be a temporary Thai military camp. It was there that we met ChatChai, a very influential man- who led us to people who were not being helped. ChatChai was the park ranger for an island that had 300 inhabitants, mostly fisherman. No one is left on the island now. Of the 300 islanders, 35 were killed and 85 families had been displaced into 2 smaller camps. They were still sleeping under plastic covers, but had no individual homes. We went to both of these areas and put up tents for them, gave them each one sleeping bag and just spent a few hours with them. Our students have such hearts for evangelism that after spending the afternoon with them, most conversations turned to the message of God’s love for them. Some of them were told that God had spared their lives for a reason. When Mike and Ohm (one of our Thai staff) began to share with ChatChai he was so attentive and interested. He told them that he has seen God’s love in them from the very start and that he wanted to worship their God. He prayed a prayer of salvation with them. After spending more time with these people – we had to get on the bus to go the next camp area of people. As our bus pulled away and I looked out of our big bus window, I was so touched to see the villagers crying tears of gratefulness as they waved good-bye to our group. What a privilege to meet their basic needs. ChatChai told us—how he was so concerned for his people group on that island, and that they were now getting food and clothes form relief groups – but what they needed most was Jesus. He asked us to pray for him to be able to share Jesus with all the rest of the people that hadn’t heard. We found out later from the other students that the island people are so thankful for ChatChai because he takes such good care of them and they respect him so much. We believe that God led us specifically to him to help these needy people.

Each day we heard story after story of people who had all lost family members. One man had 15 relatives and 8 of them had died. Another man lost his wife, both parents, and 3 children. Many of the fisherman who were far out in the ocean working that day were not hit, but when they came back home that day- found all their family members on the island gone. My heart ached for the mothers who told me they were hanging onto their children as tight as they could while running ahead of the Tsunami but could not keep a hold of them and the force of the water tore them from their arms and they survived but saw their children wash away.

We feel that God was glorified through the attempt of our team of 250 people to serve these victimized people. One Thai said they had only seen foreigners come to their country to stay at their beautiful hotels and had never seen them be such servants to the Thai people. Needless to say – the devastation has made the Thai peoples hearts tender and asking important life questions. Many wanted to know about the God that we talked with them about after seeing their labors of love. We plan to return to this area on 2 more projects in the near future. We need to see what physical needs there will be after while-but we know the spiritual needs will continue on. We see a need for the fisherman to return to their livelihood and feel that replacing their boats may be some future projects we can work on. Pray for wisdom in wanting to meet their needs.
Sorry this got so long- there’s so much to tell.

Thank you for your prayers—we felt them each day,
Mike, Judy and Jenny

PS Jenny was interviewed by Fox TV reporters one day while working at the camp. Let us know if you see her as we don’t get Fox news.

E-mail Update/ Tsunami Project In Thailand -1/7/05

Dear Friends,
Quick update after 2 days of working with the Tsunami victims and prayer requests for our remaining 2 days:

Praise God for:
---Thailand Campus Crusade for Christ being able to pull together this project of more than 250 people. With just a few days to plan it, the logistics have been a bit crazy- but everyone has been incredible servants, flexible, and we’ve had an incredible bonding between our Thai students and American volunteers working together in spite of the language barrier.
---God has led us to work in a temporary camp where the victims have been moved from one particular destroyed village. This is the hardest hit area in Thailand. Out of 8000 village members, half of them were either killed or still missing. The surviving victims are sleeping in tents and have lost everything they ever owned and all tell us which relatives they lost.
---In the last 2 days, we’ve helped build rows of temporary housing for the misplaced refugees, dug and built toilets, helped the government in the camp office, cooked food and distributed it, organized programs for the children, talked and counseled with the victims, and passed out sleeping bags and tents. The Thai military has thanked us repeatedly for helping them.
---Many people have come to the camp to observe the tragedy and devastation in the village- and have commented so positively on the work of our Christian group. One man commented that our people “work like slaves”.. God’s love has compelled our students to be “slaves of Christ” for these hurting people.

Please pray for:
---Wisdom on how to best help these people. The needs are so overwhelming and pathetic, that sometimes- we just don’t know what we should do.
---The tents that we brought have not all been distributed, because we need official government permission in some areas and then other areas already have tents. Pray that God will lead us to the people who most need them.
---That these people will feel God’s love and learn of Him as a result of our service and work.
---Wisdom for a long term plan to continue to help the people of southern Thailand.

His servants,
Mike and Judy and Jenny

E-mail Update- Vision Conference Update- 1/1/05

Dear Praying Partners,
Now that we’re at the Vision conference we want to give you some updated prayer requests.
--- Coming into the room today, filled with almost 1000 students and staff brought tears to my eyes. It doesn’t seem that long ago that the ministry had just a few students, and now this huge and well-run conference is totally done by our staff and students. We have some visiting students from Laos, Cambodia, and Viet Nam which adds even more flavor. Pray that each student will hear from God during the next 3 days.
---Thank God for the 400 students that rode the buses for 12 hours from Chiang Mai. It was pretty exciting for them to caravan in 8 buses of 50 students each. We are personally thrilled to have the college age son of our house girl (who has worked for us for 10 years) join us at this conference for his first time.
---At the registration tables, the students signed up for which type of seminars they would attend. There were lines for new Christians, alumni, English speakers, etc.—but the interesting one I wanted to tell you about was the line for
“Non-Christians”!!! (Would we ever have a seminar grouping like that in the USA?) Please pray for the 30 non-believing students who signed up for these seminars to learn enough about Jesus love for them this week and accept His plan for their life.
---Mike is giving a seminar on Holy Living 5 times, pray for His communication in the Thai language on this important topic.
--- Tonight is New Years Eve, and our conference in years past has celebrated with a big bang—but because of all the devastation in the country as a result of the Tsunami that hit Dec. 26, the Prime Minister has declared the country to be in a state of mourning. The only grandson of the King was also killed. Tonight there will be no parties, but prayer for these hurting victims.

---After seeking God’s direction about a plan to help the Tsunami victims, we are moving ahead. Tomorrow the students will be challenged to take chartered buses after the conference down to the destroyed and flattened islands. The needs have changed day by day since the waves hit. First it was for water, then food and those needs were met. After making our plans, we have found out that our plans are right in line with the greatest needs right now. The needs are for encouragement and housing. We will be distributing 500 tents and 3 sleeping bags per tent as thousands of victims are just sleeping in the open with no housing available. We are working together with the few churches in the area to counsel and be there for the hurting victims. One area we plan to go to has over 500 homes that need rebuilt. There are also three large schools that need rebuilt that we will be helping to clean up. Our goal is to work in the areas where the majority of relief workers are not going. Today we heard of a village in Phang Nga that had 6000 members. Around 2000 of them were killed, 2000 are still missing and the remaining 2000 are living without homes. We plan to take some of our group to help in that village too. Please continue to pray for wisdom and strength for this not so comfortable task ahead of us. More bodies are still being uncovered daily in the clean-up efforts. There’s a lot more to share, but we wanted to keep this short.
We appreciate your prayers now more than ever,
Mike and Judy

PS-We’re having problems sending out messages from here—This is now Jan. 1-2005---HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!