Season's Greetings

Christmastime is coming around once again, and celebration is in the air.

It's nothing new, of course. Most of us have done this our entire lives, complete with candles, candy canes, and Christmas dinner.

We’d like to pray that the Holy Spirit would be present in all of your Christmas celebrations this year, and that you would be filled with His joy and peace throughout this season.

Please pray for us as this will be our first Christmas outside of Chiang Mai, and our first trip down south as a family. Blessings to all of you, and a Merry Christmas!

Our Christmas Picture: (clockwise from far left) Eli, Eric, Eng, Evan, Linda, and Ethan.

The Liujiang

All of us here in Chiang Mai, Thailand apologize for the late updates.

Last week my father was going to update about his trip up to Doi Inthanon, but was unable to due to his heavy work load.

This week’s Unreached People Group is the Lijiang. Like the Hongshuihe and the Yongbei they live in Guangxi, China. There are much less of them, numbering only 1.65 million. Unlike the first two, they are not being worked with.

Pray that the Lord would send sufficient workers to reach all in that area, that His holy fire would spread through people groups and would not be kept within only one village or people. Pray that the fire would spread.

The Future of Grace

Some of you may have heard about Grace International School and the issues that have been going on legally as well as relationally.

Our school is located within the muubaan (neighbourhood) World Club. In fact, GIS’s main building is the muubaan’s clubhouse, which was essentially a place for the people living in Word Club to work out and swim and such.

Recently the muubaan has come up with many complaints about Grace, one of them being that the building was sold to us illegally. Considering all of the money that we have poured into it cleaning up the property, setting up classrooms, and just generally improving the entire building, you can imagine our shock when we found that World Club wanted us to leave.

Recently an email has been sent out to all of the teachers and, my mother being the first grade teacher, received a copy. It reads as follows:

Statement from the Grace International School Educational Foundation (GISEF) and the Trustees:

We have prayed and come together as the GISEF and Trustees to discuss GIS’s future. It is our decision to direct the Superintendent to locate suitable property for building a K-12 campus. It is our intent to see GIS become all that God has planned.

That plan may also include continuing to use our present location. We await the outcome of the action being taken against the school to determine the future use of our current facility. In the meantime, the school will continue to operate as usual. God has blessed us greatly in the past and we will continue to trust in Him for the future.

Basically this means that Grace is now looking for new property, and is fully ready to leave once we have found another building or land on which to build a new one.

No matter what happens, I believe that God will work things out for His own great purpose. His ways are higher than our ways, and He works everything out for good.

Please pray though, for all of those who have put their wholes lives into the school, building it and watching it grow into what it is today. For many of us who attend Grace, nothing is certain, but even if we have to move, pray that there will acceptance of what God wants.

The Yongbei

The Yongbei number 2.31 million, and have 0.35% of the population recorded as believers. They are currently being worked with and live, like the Hongshuihe, in Guangxi, China.

Please join us in prayer for the Yongbei.

Also, I apologize for the lack of posts recently. We have been very busy lately.

-evan

November Recap

November last year was an eventful month, and considering that I’ve missed out on writing for the past two weeks, this is the post to fill you in on what’s been going on.

As a repeat from last year two events were repeated: Music Mania (a.k.a. Battle of the Bands) and Loy Krathong, which were both posted about last year.

Music Mania came around this year without a band for me to play with, and so I teamed up with my friend Sam Walden to sing an acoustic song; with him on guitar and me singing. We didn’t place, but I had a lot of fun singing up there on stage.

Loy Krathong is a festival celebrated on the full moon of the 12^th month on the traditional Thai calendar. The word ‘loy’ means float, and a ‘krathong’ is a raft about as big as your hand, which are floated for the forgiveness of sins.

This year we celebrated as a family by shooting off fireworks and firecrackers, and the night before I went down to the bridge to do the same with my friends. It was an exciting time, with explosions and lights, being both blinded and deafened by the festivities.

November also called for a lot of traveling on my father’s part, and he has gone to both Singapore and Malaysia this month on business. This Friday he will be going to Doi Inthanon, a nearby mountain, to spend time with his friend and to take a break.

The track meet is also this Wednesday, and Eric will be running the 400 metre dash, the 4 by 100 relay, and the 4 by 400 relay. He has gone to practice four days a week for this, and we know he will do well, both for himself and the school.

A lot of things have been going on, and God has been good to us in all of them. We thank you for your prayers for us, and ask that He would bless you in return, many times over.

The Hongshuihe

The Hongshuihe are a subgroup of the Zhuang. Both the Zhuang and the Yi people groups are in urgent need to assess ministry language questions (as I failed to point out in the last two posts). Please pray for answers in this area.

The Hongshuihe live in Guangxi, China, and number a whopping 3.26 million. Of this number 0.35% are believers, and they are being worked with.

Please pray with us for the Honshuihe, and the Zhuang and Yi people groups.

A Prayer for Safety

My father left this afternoon for a ‘restricted access country’. Generally this means that he is very strongly encouraged not to be there.

While in this country he will be part of an Accountability Group for a Vocational School. He will be there for two days for meetings and will fly back to Chiang Mai Sunday.

He hopes to connect with people while he is there.

Please pray for his safety and that his trip will be successful, that God would be with him and work through him.