A few weeks ago, our mobile clinic team of
nationals partnered with an American team from Heartland Worship Center in Paducah,
Kentucky as well as with 4 missionary couples from 2 different areas of
Thailand. We made our way up to some
small villages in northeast Thailand where the Thai Nyaw people live. The Thai
Nyaw people are what our mission board has labeled as a people group that is “unreached
and unengaged (UUPG).” That is they are
unreached with the Gospel, and no group with the Gospel is engaging them. Our mission board has been encouraging our Southern
Baptist churches in America to pick a place where we have these UUPG’s and partner with us to try to find ways to
reach them with the Gospel of Christ. Heartland
church has stepped up to the plate.
Beginning last summer they sent their first team into these villages to
look for ways to engage them. This
summer they sent another team and asked us to do a mobile clinic with them in
hopes of making some contacts with these lost souls.
Our first surprise
was that a Thai church met us when we arrived.
They had heard of our joint efforts and our desire to reach the Thai
Nyaw and wanted to join with us. (It was their heart too). As an added bonus several of them spoke the
language and one of their members was Thai Nyaw. For three days we worked together in three
different villages sharing Christ one on one with everyone who came to our
clinics and teaching English via Bible stories to the neighboring schools. It was a wonderful partnership that started
with one church in America, then four missionary couples, and finally a national
Thai church. We saw a tremendous number
of people respond to the Gospel during our 3 days with them.
As we met together
and prayed and shared what we had seen God do with our time together, all of us
were overwhelmed by the reality that God had directed each of us to be here at
this appointed time. Heartland church
and the national church were so excited to learn that even their ideas of how
to reach people for Christ were so similar.
The fellowship we shared will be a treasured memory for all of us. Pray for these people that what they heard
that week will penetrate their hearts and souls. And in the days ahead, as the Thai nationals
and the Heartland team return to those villages, we pray that God will go
before them and prepare the hearts of these people for further understanding
and discipleship.
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