Thai Country Trim
Thai Country Trim was started in the early 1980's by missionary wife Betty Butcher and her Thai friend and co-laborer, Khun Saeng Duan. Together they shared their dreams and vision of how God could use this type of ministry to provide for the physical needs of rural families in eastern Thailand, and to build relationships in order to have opportunity to share about God's love with women and their families. The International Mission Board invested $5000 from their global relief funds and "TCT" was born. Over the course of several years a vibrant cottage ministry has been developed and God's hand has blessed our project with orders from all over the world. (TCT has since give the $5000 back to the IMB in hopes it would help another project similar to our to get off the ground)
Presently we have our main center in Bangkla and another center in the north in the city of Nan. The Bangkla center employs approximately 150 women in 7 neighboring communities and our Nan center employs about 50 women in 3 neighboring communities. Each center prepares the materials needed to fill our orders and provides the quality control and training for the decorations we make. In addition each center is responsible for sharing the Gospel weekly with these women who bring in their finished work once a week. The Bangkla center has 25 full time Christian workers and the Nan center has 4 full time Christian workers. The videos below will give you a picture of how all this works together. About 90% of my full time Christian workers came to Christ working for us first from their homes.
The privilege of being the missionary director for this ministry was first given to Betty Butcher, then passed to Sue Kavli, then to Lynn Kinnison, and now to me, Cheryl Derbyshire. In the beginning we would make only a few hundred products per month. We now make sometimes as much as 20,000 products a month mostly for a company in London who distributes our products to all the high end gifts shops in London, France, many other places in Europe, and now we have products in the White House gift shop. These products are sold exclusively to our London client and can not be pictured in our blog. However, I have a small catalog of our own original products that you can order and have a part in our ministry. You can email me at tctbgkla@loxinfo.co.th with your orders.
Last year in October our area had a terrible flood situation. Most of our TCT home workers were under several feet of water. They would not leave their homes but wanted to continue to work. So we found a way to take their work to them and food, water and supplies. The video below is one of those such days that we took supplies out to our ladies. We were given funds from our Baptist Global Relief to help us with the cost of food supplies. This act of kindness has opened many doors to sharing Christs message to our ladies families and neighbors. Pray the Lord will continue to use it. May his Word and our lives telling it not return void.
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