We continued to travel between the United States and Thailand over the next five years; leading teams and growing in our relationship with each other and with the ministry to the Akha. Finally in 2005 we moved here full-time, and Akha Outreach Foundation had grown and matured in its ministry. By this time the ministry here was serving the Akha with three ministry focuses: House of Joy, a children’s home for orphaned and high-risk kids; Akha Bible Institute, a training program for young emerging Akha leaders; Akha Outreach Services, a ministry to Akha villages and churches.

Earlier this month Akha Outreach Foundation celebrated it’s 10th year of ministry. Nearly 2,000 Akha men, women and children came to participate in the event and to celebrate the heritage of ministry that Akha Outreach Foundation has fostered.

The 10-Year Anniversary celebration was a beautiful event that was well worth the months of preparation that we put into it by printing books, images, pamphlets and banners, editing videos, and coordinating visitors. It was amazing to see what God has done over the past ten years. Former drug addicts leading their villages in worship. Men and women who had been witch doctors and mediums smiling with the joy that comes with the freedom of the gospel. Christians from multiple denominations and backgrounds laughing, singing and eating together.

But as exciting as the look back was, and as encouraging as it has been to see what God is doing, the most exhilarating thing is that the vision for ministry to the Akha is just beginning. The barriers that have bound the Akha for generations are being broken, but this is just the start. As God leads the Akha into freedom, the barriers that exist between individuals, villages, regions, and nations are being broken. The rice is ripe and harvest is coming.

Those years of dreams are now becoming a reality! We have had some very exciting relationship developments with a subgroup of a highly respected linguistics and translation agency (link unavailable due to closed country concerns) that will provide financial packages enabling the purchase of high-end sound equipment, cameras, Mac computers and software to empower Akha leaders with the tools needed to share the gospel through these media in the Akha language. These packages have not yet been sponsored, but we are confident in God’s timing and purpose for this project and are prayerfully waiting for Him to move.

We have also been blessed by a relationship with a wonderful group of believers in Singapore, who have purchased a high-end microphone, hd video camera, soundboard and computer for us to begin our media recordings. (This group has helped serve Akha Outreach in many other ways as well, but this is a media post so I’ll stick to the point). Additionally, we are discussing our vision with church partners in Colorado and Idaho and are considering having a team from America come out and construct a sound room.

But, we’re not just sitting around waiting for our vision to be fulfilled. Using our existing tools, we’re in the process of producing our first Akha Outreach Media project, moving ahead with our vision and without a sound room. We are producing an Akha worship cd and have prepared a room for recording by taking dozens of mattresses and piling them up on the walls and floor in order to have clean enough sound to record a distributable album.

There are a number of Akha cds existing today, but they generally follow the tendency of the region to go with a Karaoke-style format (lead singer, 5 locations, dreamy superstar poses, band in background scattered throughout a field, etc.). While we are accustomed to these productions, and have even grown to enjoy them, the goal for this album is to keep the focus away from the musicians and really stress worship. To accomplish this goal, we are recording four 5-song sessions with 15 voices joining together in corporate worship. We’re using a single microphone and two pickups for acoustic guitars and everyone is simply standing in a circle in the room and worshiping God. It sounds simple enough, but getting 15 voices and a few musicians to sound good together is not easy; and to add a further challenge we’ve chosen the voices and musicians for their hearts for worship rather than for their vocal and musical proficiency.

We’re going to be distributing this cd throughout Southeast Asia to various Akha villages and hope that it promotes, facilitates and ushers glorifying worship wherever it is heard. Recording five songs in one take, using amateur musicians and an untrained production crew (read: me) we are guaranteeing ourselves a large number of technical glitches, but that’s part of the message we’re spreading to the Akha people: Worship God together with whatever you have. We’re thrilled with how things are going and I am taking in too much information far too quickly, but even if all this falls apart we are having a wonderful time worshipping our Saviour together.

Here’s a sample from our sound tests, I’ll make sure to post again when the cd is available. Listen, and join in worship… and while you’re listening, pray for me, my crew and our worship team that God would work through us throughout this process.

If you have any sound/music/production skills and want to give me some pointers I’m all ears. Or, if you just want to let me know what you think please drop me a note in the comment section below.

The principles behind becoming a missionary are straightforward: receive a call from God, seek direction from God and obey in each step. However, there is no consistent series of events on how these principles unfold. Through the Foursquare Church we have guidelines and an application process by which someone can become a Foursquare missionary, but, even with guidelines and processes, each story is unique – as ours testifies.

But becoming a missionary is much more than applying, interviewing for and accepting a job position. Becoming a missionary is aligning yourself with the identity God is calling you into. As we have grown in our experience in the field over the past five years, we have noticed a few patterns that are visible in the lives of long-term, successful missionaries. These patterns reflect what I believe is the identity of a missionary, and are things that we are hoping to see transformed into in our own lives. I want to share 4 of those patterns here today.

This is really for those who feel called into missions in some way, if that’s not you, I recommend you take a look at some of these posts instead. Also, before I share with those of you who feel called into missions I want to make a few assumptions as to where most of you are coming from:

• You know God and can connect with Him
• You’re confident you’ve heard His call to missions
• You don’t know what to do next

If these assumptions are true for you, then the following patterns should be helpful as you seek your commission into missions: Pattern 1, Pattern 2, Pattern 3, Pattern 4.

We are off to the village today with Erick Olsen who is visiting us on his way back to America. We are armed with boxes of medicine to restock our Akha clinic for the onslaught of flu cases we expect to see up there as well.

Despite all our running around during the last two months, we are all in great health but covet your prayers of protection from the flu and for continued recovery from the jetlag that we’re still dealing with from Germany.

My role in the event was mostly “observer” with a little bit of “translator” and “photographer” thrown in. For one of the sessions, we were blessed to hear from an American friend, Marlene. Having been a family counselor for many years, she shared out of her expertise about the different stages in a woman’s life. This is an important topic for Akha women, because in traditional Akha culture it’s generally considered taboo to talk about things like menstruation or menopause, which often leaves women unprepared and scared when natural changes occur. In any case, I was elected to translate for this session.

Although I’ve been here for nearly 4 years, my language is not what you would call “microphone worthy”. So I stumbled through the session saying things like “Do you understand me? Did I say that correctly?” and “How do you say _________?” It was like being tossed in the deep end and told “Sink or swim!” While moments like this are difficult, for sure, I’m grateful for the opportunity to step up to a challenge and find that, even if I can only doggy paddle, at least I didn’t drown!

My other, less challenging, job was to take pictures during one of the craft times. My mission was to capture a picture of every woman for the slide show scheduled for the final night. As an added bonus, I got to witness the skilled craftsmanship of nearly a hundred women making traditional men’s headdresses. Take a peek at the pictures to see for yourself!

The event was so much fun (I’m serious, we had a blast!) that I only snapped a few shots at the very beginning and during the “formal picture taking time”, but here are a couple of moments captured throughout the day:

We had a great evening, too, but I’ll leave that story for Lori to share that with you in our Baby Notes.

The children sang worship songs in Akha waving banners brought by the Pearson’s from Colorado. Akha leaders came down from their villages to show their support and to celebrate the first graduation, and American pastors and support team pray for the graduates.

I’ve been stuck on a passage for days now, and it gained so much more strength watching the graduation. The passage is in Mark 1, quoting Malachi:

“Behold, I send My messenger,
And he will prepare the way before Me.
And the Lord, whom you seek,
Will suddenly come to His temple”

How wonderful that the God who created the universe loves every one of us! It’s amazing, he sends messengers to love people and to talk about Christ so that when they seek Him and encounter the Living God they have already seen what love for Christ is.

It was as if we saw the embodiment of the song “Did you feel the Mountains tremble” yesterday…

Here we see that God you’re moving
A time of jubilee is coming
When young and old will come to Jesus…
Fling wide you heavenly gates
Prepare the Way of the Risen Lord!

Be encouraged, the message is going forth. This is an exciting place to be, because God is already moving so powerfully from here.

Please continue to pray for us. We have decided to move to an Akha village about an hour and a half from here. One of the men who graduated yesterday will be going up to pastor the church there and we are hoping to move there to concentrate on the Akha language and way of life. We are confident this is where the Lord is leading us, but please pray for us in this process. We will let you know more as some of the details come together.

Don’t forget to see the pictures!

So we’ve had our new bed for one night and now we’re off again. We are heading out in just a few hours to spend the night in an Akha village called Doi Chang (or Elephant Mountain). I guess we’re not completely done with our “nomadic life” yet… but at least we have a home base! We’ll be sure to send out another update with all the details of our first night in an Akha village when we get back!.