E-mail Update- E-mail Update from Chiang Mai, Thailand- 4/14/07

Dear Team,
Happy Thai New Year! This weekend is one of the biggest Thai holidays of the year. We are in the midst of our hot season and to celebrate the New Year, our whole city turns into a giant water throwing festival. To be honest, the holiday was a lot more fun when we had four girls in the house and our family would go out and celebrate with all their friends riding in the back of our pick-up truck, throwing water. This year, we’re staying inside and staying dry.
Our Thailand Campus Crusade for Christ annual staff conference this week was a big encouragement to us. In a room full of national Thai staff, we couldn’t help but reflect back to when we first came to Thailand and worked with just a handful of national staff. God has done amazing things through the ministry of TCCC, and the passion of our staff to reach their country is such an encouragement to us, as the numbers continue to multiply every year.
Several of you commented from our last letter that the pictures helped you to better visualize our life and ministry here in Thailand—so we will try to share photos more often. Please let us know if the photos are difficult for you to receive in our messages.

A few photo highlights of last weeks conference………………..……….

It has been a special added blessing to have Jon and Marisa working together with us these past two years. What fun to get to see our grandchildren, Collin (2 ½) and Summer (1) weekly as they grow in personality and are so loved by our Thai staff family. This was taken during our conference “fun day” on a Thai style afternoon cruise ship!We will miss them so much when they return to the USA next August.

Each year at staff conference, we have a graduation ceremony for the new staff who have completed their training at our 9 month Great Commission Training Center. This year we had 8 new staff join our ministry full-time. You might remember that when we first came to Thailand in 1986, it was to open and direct this training center. Mike was asked to lead us all in prayer for them as they began their first year of ministry with TCCC.

This week, April 15-19, Judy will be participating in a CCC international conference in Bangkok to receive training in how to help our TCCC ministry reach out to students through use of the internet. Mike will return to the south building more homes for Tsunami victims for the next three weeks, working with a stop-out team from the USA and the local villagers. We hope to share more pictures of the village as it grows from the 5 homes that you saw last week to an eventual 30 homes.

We are grateful to God for his blessings in our lives and your partnership with us,
Mike and Judy Christian

Mike receiving an award at our Staff Conference

We just got back from our annual Thailand Campus Crusade for Christ conference. We were very surprised the last day at an award ceremony to receive an accolade from the CCC President's office in Orlando in recognition for all the work that Mike has done toward Tsunami relief work. Here we are recieiving it from our National director, Yuttasak Sirikul.

E-mail Update- Tsunami Project Pictures and Update From Last Week- 4-3-07

Dear Team,
It’s good to be back home again and we thank God for all He helped us to accomplish on the Tsunami project last week. Specific answers to prayer are:
1) Good health and protection from accidents. Other than some scrapes and cuts, our group was kept amazingly safe.
2) We were able to break ground for the new village and get a foundation in for 7 huts.
3) God answered our prayers in giving us unity as three different people groups worked together in three different languages. We had about 23 Americans, 30+ Thai’s, and many Moken people in an out doing various jobs.

Mike decided to return this week again with a smaller team to get more building done, while Judy’s stays in Chiang Mai to get some other projects accomplished. Next week is our annual all Thai staff conference. Please pray for:
1) Safety for Mike and the team again this week, and that they could make a lot of progress in training the villagers how to build their own homes.
2) Our staff conference next week, to be a great time of encouragement and motivation for all our staff as we finish out the Thai summer and move into a new year of ministry on our campuses.

We are enclosing a few photos- to help you better visualize our work project last week.

Thank you for praying,
Mike and Judy

First day of work, clearing the land

Last day on the island – after 5 days of work.

The daily 1½ hour boat trip back and forth.

Thank-you to the Waterloo team for coming
all the way over and for working so hard!

Prayer of dedication before leaving