At the end of December, Christian churches around the globe celebrate the incarnation of the Eternal God, the dwelling of Emmanuel, Christmas: the birth of Jesus Christ in a humble manger. The songs, the scriptures, the stories awake something eternal in us. We began Christmas early this year, and in an unexpected way. At the beginning of December we, along with fellow FMI missionaries in SE Asia, hosted a team of 8 pastors and leaders from the Gateway district, led by George Cline as they came on a short trip to two SE Asia nations to see what was happening out here and how the US church could partner with the work in Asia. This team was an encouragement to us in a way that few, if any, prior teams had been, and we would like to highlight four reasons why:

They Came, They Engaged, They Imparted, They Testified (and will continue to do so!)

click the images below to view the full-size image:

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.

Since we are part of two large organizations (Akha Outreach Foundation and Foursquare Missions International), most of the opportunities we accept are through these two ministries. In the last year we have taken on a ministry to the Akha extracting teeth, a monthly training of Akha pastors and church leaders, and an Akha Vacation Bible School to both AOF and FMI villages. These projects have added on to our normal daily work within our home village, assisting our director in his projects at AOF and teaching monthly at the Bible college.

Most recently, I (Paul) have received an opportunity to fill in for another FMI missionary who has been serving the foursquare church in the nation to the northwest of us here in southeast Asia. While this missionary is on furlough over the next 14 months, I will be meeting with the pastor from this region who is essentially in charge of reaching thousands of people from multiple people groups with the gospel.

Honestly, the work isn’t that exciting. Balance sheets. Grant reporting. Emails and communication. Office work.

But the realities behind the work: 5000 salvations, 1700 water baptisms, 1200 filled with the Holy Spirit, and 40+ churches and cell groups planted all in the last calendar year. Those are exciting stories, and worth the headache that is spreadsheets and accounting.

Beyond the actual work hours, this also provides me with an opportunity to speak with, pray for and encourage a pastor who is serving the Lord in one of the most difficult places on earth. The very existence of his ministry challenges me in my walk and work with God.

So, you probably won’t read to many more updates on my spreadsheet and accounting work, but I wanted to share with all of you the men and women behind the work who are shining lights in a very dark place. Please remember them in your prayers.

We woke up very early in order to cross the border in Maesai by 7 am. After going through Thai customs, we crossed the bridge over the Mekong river, which divides the two countries. Once that bridge had been crossed, we found ourselves in a different world. The language, the customs, the people, the food, the vehicles and even the time have all changed. That’s right, having left Thailand at 7:00 am we found ourselves in customs at Tachileik at 6:30 am, as the entire country has set it’s clock 30 minutes off of the rest of the world’s recognized time zones.

Once we had worked our way through customs and the crowd of sellers, we hired a Tuk Tuk to take us to Esther’s home village to see her parents. As is typical in any Akha village, Abi quickly made herself at home, “helping” fix breakfast and playing with all the Akha kids, and (as is also typical) the villagers were all amazed to see a little “foreign girl” speaking Akha and interacting in the Akha world.

After the delicious breakfast and great time in the village, we headed off to the dedication celebration for the new church. It was beautiful, and over 500 people from the various Foursquare churches in the region came down. A majority (probably 80%) of the attendees were actually hilltribe members – most of them were Lahu but many Akha were there as well. We enjoyed speaking with the pastor and Bible students from the church, but Lori and I especially enjoyed connecting with the Akha and Lahu people who came down. (The Lahu are a group related to the Akha, and although the two languages are unique and distinct, most Lahu speak a little Akha and vice versa.) Abi put on the traditional Burmese outfit that Esther had tailored for her as a Christmas present, and even wore Thanakha – the traditional face-paint of the region.

In the middle of the service I (Paul) was asked to come up and give thanks for the offering, I was planning on speaking in English with a translator, but when I got up front there was no translator, so I decided to just stumble along in Akha. Once I finished, the reaction of the crowd told me that most of them could in fact understand Akha, and it was great to connect with everyone in a language they could understand – although they were extremely gracious overlooking the ineloquence of my words.

We really enjoyed our time and look forward to some great opportunities that are on the horizon to continue to build into the new relationships we have with these Foursquare churches.

Knowing that there was a much larger backstory to this question, I asked Kelly what he meant and he shared the following story: The Gilberts, Foursquare missionaries to Mae Sot, have been in America since August visiting churches and fundraising. Mason and Virgene Hughes were overseeing the ministry, but Mason had some health problems that required them to return to America. Now there was a home, two dogs, and some ministry activities that needed some bodies to fill in for about a month.

I began telling Kelly all the reasons we couldn’t make it, going down my list of activities and opportunities that would make it impossible for us to be away for that long. However, every word I spoke felt like it was more and more incorrect. Soon I found myself stopping mid-excuse and saying to Kelly, “You know what, let me talk to Lori and I’ll call you back.”

Immediately after explaining the story to Lori, she confirmed the check in my spirit, saying “We’re supposed to do this.”

A week later (after hosting Sarah Smith – a short-term Foursquare missionary serving for the summer at Our Home Study Center in Bangkok), we were packed up and on the road (a 7-hour drive) moving to Mae Sot.

Our time in Mae Sot has been interesting. There are many Aid organizations working in the region, including the Mae Tao clinic – an incredible medical facility we were able to visit and exchange information with that “provides medical services for Burmese migrants in Thailand and for the thousands who come from Burma each year seeking medical help”. They have suggested that they might be able to partner with us by sending doctors our way to do mobile clinics along the border in the north, and might also have training options available for us and for nationals who are serving their villages as “barefoot doctors“.

The Foursquare church in Thailand also has a significant presence in Mae Sot. The National Leaders of Foursquare Thailand, John & Sarah Srivichai, pastor the church here and there is also a children’s home, an elementary school, a coffee shop / english school and village churches. We are especially excited to have learned that there is an Akha village about 48 kilometers (30 minutes) from town, and plan on visiting it later this month.

But, as we have found in Thailand and understand to be true in most of Asia, you just can’t pick up and start ministering immediately in a new area. Relationships are slow and history is important. So, although we’ve been to the church, the coffee shop, the children’s home – we are still strangers and visitors, not active parts of the community. We’ve been able to work with the ex-pat community, and Lori has taught some English classes, but for the most part we’re just house-sitting, dog-sitting and sitting around.

This has been difficult, as we’ve been going non-stop for so long that we don’t know what to do with ourselves. Lori and Esther are especially stir-crazy coping with the minutia of daily life and with the culture-shock of a new region and new food options.

However, despite the difficulties, we have found that “just being” and “physically being” here we can still be used as tools for God’s Kingdom. Here are some quick examples:

We’re leaving Mae Sot tomorrow for about 10 days, and are planning on returning here on the 19th or 20th of October for the remainder of the month. We will be going up to Mae Salong to reconnect with our church and village this weekend.  Then Paul will be going to Singapore to attend a seminar taught by Beth Barone while Lori, Esther and Abi will be attending the annual interdenominational Akha Christian Youth camp next week.

Pray for us as in our travels and as our family is separated that we would stay safe and open to what God has for us in this strange season of our lives.

Thanks for following our Journey Notes online!

Mae Sot is a border town between Burma (Myanmar) and Thailand. Historically, many Karen refugees have come into Thailand seeking asylum and live in refugee camps in the area. Like many border towns, it has a mixture of languages and cultures packed densely into a small area.

It is a little daunting to move from a region where we can speak a very common language, Akha, to a region where there are very few Akha and the majority languages are Thai, Burmese and Karen. We are looking forward to the opportunity to increase our Thai language skills, and are grateful as always for the huge blessing that Esther is for our language needs. We speak to her in Akha, and she can translate it to Thai or Burmese as needed.

We don’t really know what to expect in Mae Sot, but know that the National President of Foursquare Thailand pastors the church there and we are honored to get a chance to get to know him and his ministry a little more. Here’s an excerpt from the Worldbase Thailand website regarding the ministry in Mae Sot:

Philip Chimeto, the national leader of Foursquare Zimbabwe,
collapsed last night after checking himself into a hospital. Pastor Chimeto,
who is in Anaheim, Calif. following Connection 2009, has been
diagnosed with cerebral malaria. He is in a coma and is now on
life support.

The intensive care unit staff are currently giving him a
platelet transfusion. Please intercede for Pastor Chimeto. Pray that Jesus Christ
the healer will raise him up and completely heal his body.

Unfortunately, I just do not have the time right now to completely update all of the pages on the site (the entire site has needed design and code changes for some time), but I have been able to get our ministry blog (Journey Notes), our prayer and praise blog and our personal blogs (Lori’s, Abi’s and Mine) up on crutches for the time being.

As for the rest of the site, our info, media updates, partner pages and the upcoming Mae Salong Project pages, they will not be updated for a little while. We are heading back to the village today and will not be back in Chiang Rai for any significant amount of time until the end of the month.

We are also waiting for some developments from the server over at Foursquare Missions which will allow us to begin receiving online contributions toward our ministry. As these features become available over the next months our site will be updated accordingly.

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Here are our current updates…

We are planning on building a new home in our village in Mae Salong:
This was actually not our idea, and was difficult at first, but as we have thought more about it we are getting very excited about the prospect. The village leaders want to move us away from the center of the village and use our current house as the village home for cooking, hosting and storing things as needed. Actually, our home has always been used for these purposes, but now that we have a growing family they want us to move to a home with a little less foot traffic.

We are hoping that we will get an internet connection in our new home:
We still will have a bamboo house and grass roof, but because of the proximity to the Chinese town of Mae Salong we might be able to put DSL into our new hut. It’s still just an idea and there are a few development issues that might stand in our way, but if we are able to set up an office with full internet connectivity in our new home it will allow us to more effectively communicate with all of you as we spend more and more time in the village compiling the data we collect from the Mae Salong Project.

Visa Travel:
After we receive our 1-year visas at the end of this month we will have to travel to Bangkok to apply for a 1-year visa for Abigail. If we cannot get this visa in Bangkok we will have to travel to Singapore to purchase a visa there. We are planning on traveling to Singapore at the end of April anyway, but would love to have all our visa issues worked out before that trip.

School Break Plans:
School break has begun in Thailand and will continue through the beginning of June. Other than our visa needs and ministry travel plans (we have some exciting developments in the works that we will update you on if they work out) we have some plans to minister in our village as we build our new home and settle in again for the year.

Around the Thai new year we will treat our entire village for stomach worms (ourselves included). Although we will all be sick for a few days, the village is really looking forward to this medication as they understand that when the stomach worms are dead, the food (and therefore, the money) goes much further for the family.

We will also be “teaching english” through some sign language videos that John donated for the deaf family in the village. This way the kids will all learn sign language while learning english words and will be able to communicate with the deaf children as they are learning to sign.

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Thanks for your patience with us as we deal with the site changes and please keep our energy and health in your prayers as we enter these very busy months.

Pastor Jack Hayford continues his six-part series “Anointed to Serve” as shared with leaders, pastors and dignitaries of the Foursquare Gospel church at the Eastern Counsel of Foursquare Churches conference in Bangkok, Thailand.

Originally recorded and cast by our Foursquare friends at Mustard Seed Fellowship Canningvale, Western Australia. Used by permission.

A flash flood has struck the city covering much of it in as much as seven feet of water. Please join us as we have been asked to pray the following:

Pray for the restoration of lives and homes damaged by the floods, for the peace of God to flood the community, and that God would minister to all affected through the aid provided.

Thank you for your prayers.

It’s a great little town, mostly fruit orchards and national forest and we really enjoyed our time there. Pastor Timothy and his wife are wonderful people, very welcoming and hospitable. Their English is very good and we really enjoyed talking with them as we ate wonderful Thai food, visited their home, saw Grace church and went to see a hot spring. Jim and Eda are settling in well and are busy with language classes nearly every day. They are living above the church in a very nice apartment and had a friend from their home church, a girl named Tanya who Lori really enjoyed talking with, visiting them.

Great things are happening with Grace church, they have seen many churches come out from them and are purchasing land for a future church site and orphanage. Be praying for them as they are working on the price for the land and looking to make these expansions.