Despite the fact that we were in the middle of a very busy time, it was wonderful to have Nanny Jill visit us in Thailand from the end of November through 'till Jan 12th.
Nanny didn't do a great deal of "sight-seeing" but enjoyed hanging out with the family.
She did do a lot of beautiful cross-stitching including finishing the second of two beautiful pieces that she has been working on for two years since we gave her the two kits for Christmas when she was in Thailand two years previous! We need to discover a dry-cleaner in Chiang Mai in order to clean the canvases before getting them hung in our house here.
Well, to prove that we did get out of the house a few times, here are some highlights:
We celebrated Nanny's 75th birthday with a Mum and daughter lunch out. We then had a family meal at Dukes - sorry - can't believe no photos!
Christmas morning!
Baan Saan Fan Christmas Day Party
Traditional British Christmas Dinner (on Boxing Day)!
Packing the "Blessings in a Bag" for Hoay Maw.
The house boats at Mae Ngat resevoir.
The Khaomao Khaofang "Imaginary Jungle" restaurant.
Nanny with the grand children who are getting taller by the hour.
Customary guest leaving photo with the sharps at Chiang Mai airport.
We are now awaiting the reproduction of the Powerpack Thai CD, "More & More!".
It has been a fairly intense period of translation, review, recording, mixing, artwork preparation and liaising with the printer.
The CD is a collection of 10 Powerpack songs selected across 4 albums.
The songs have been translated into Thai language with input from a broad team including: myself (Jenny Oliver), my Thai teacher (Khruu Oo),
The manager of Ban San Faan (Malee) and her husband (Brian), a worship leader from a Thai church (Dough), a Thai Grace student (Sup), our
Thai co-worker (Niti), and the older girls at Ban San Faan (Sarah, Hope, and Peach).
We were blessed to be able to use the full-quality backing tracks and artwork produced by Powerpack, UK.
Faith ("I Want More of You")
Abby ("Worship the King")
Mark ("Holy Spirit Come")
The Ban San Faan children formed the children's choir with lead vocals by Yui, Somkhit and Bebe (young people from our Thai congregation).
The recording was done at CCI Studios (Christian Communications Institute) which I guess is the equivalent of the UK ICC Studios!
The CD will include additional PC resources such as the piano score and guitar chords, Thai and English lyrics, backing tracks and samples of the English songs.
We hope that his will be a blessing and a resource for Thai children.
The CD will be released at the upcoming Powerpack conference which Heather Thompson will be coming out to lead.
Our friends Manny and Sherry and their three girls as well as thousands of others have been seriously affected by typhoon Ondoy.
They write:
Today Manny and I (and Mercy) went to a village 20 minutes from our house (called Arenda) to help a local church distribute food to those who are still affected by the flood 9 days ago. What we saw was truly heartbreaking. We put together a slideshow just from the pictures we took today so that you can see what the situation is like. You can see it at:
The first 4 pictures were taken in our own subdivision and the rest from the village where we went.
We had to ride on home-made rafts down the streets as the water in some places was up to 4 feet deep. We saw dead animals and garbage floating by us and children swimming under the water like it was a swimming pool. There was no place else for the children to play, their homes and schools are flooded, they just go out into this very unsanitary water and swim around.
We will continue to provide aid to this village and others like it that desperately need help. We are trying to organize a YWAM outreach to go to this village and pray for the people as we give the food to them. We will most likely be meeting the Samaritan's Purse Canada director tomorrow to see how we can partner with them to help these people and have contacted Operation Blessing to see if they can help provide food, water, clothes, and medicine. The flood water in this village is not expected to be gone for several months and that's if there are no more storms. Electricity cannot be turned back on (obviously) because of the danger. These people are the poorest of the poor and are truly suffering with this water everywhere. This is just ONE village out of so many that are in the same situation.
Please pray for God's mercy and love to be poured out to them in this desperate time and that they would call out to Him. Pray that the outreaches to these communities by the local churches will show the love of Christ and many would come into the Kingdom as they see God's love demonstrated in practical ways to help them.
"Ondoy" (as it is known in the Philippines) dumped nearly twice as much rain 9 days ago on Manila as Katrina did on New Orleans. You can understand why we prayed so hard for the hurricane to miss Manila a few days ago; Manila cannot take on more water right now. Some of these villages will be flooded like this for months. In case you did not see the news reports about this flood, you can see a 2-minute clip from CNN on YouTube from last week:
If you would like to give to help us continue to provide food, water, medicine, and clothes to this village and others that are flooded, you can send a tax-deductible donation to:
SEED Project Asia
2632 Ranchette Road
Billings, MT 59105-3737
Please make a note that the money is for FLOOD RELIEF. 100% of all donations go towards relief for these flood victims, we have NO overhead or administration costs or salaries to pay - it ALL goes to help these people. 100%.
Last year, a teacher at Grace went to the Night Market area on Saturday evenings to speak to tourists and hand out tracts. Occasionaly he would be accompanied by his own children and then by his children's friends. More and more students started to join in until on some nights there were 60 students.
During the spring break they had a 24 hr tract attack involving 42 students, 10 adult chaperones, 15,000 Thai and English gospel tracts handed out. Each person gave out 40 gospel tracts each hour!!
Mr Miyakawa, the teacher who inspired this, has now returned to the US but the team is continuing under the new name -
GO Team.
Peter Harris is the new leader and we are part of a group of parents helping coordinate this.
This year we have already got of to a great start with training sessions being included as a regular component. About 20 high school students went out on the first Saturday and about 20 Middle school joined by 7 High School students went out the following week.
Training at the Olivers
We were joined by a film crew from an organisation who print gospel booklets in different languages. They filmed the students talking to tourists and local Thai people in the market.
We look forward to seeing how the GO team can continue and develop during the year ahead.
A little while ago, many Christians had been focused on the amazing outpuring of God's favour and presence that had been taking place in Florida, USA. This had been watched from around the world and streamed over the internet through the medium of "godtv".
But what does revival look like in a remote village in Thailand? I had the chance to find out!
A small Lahu community has a church which is supported by Chiang Mai City Gate Fellowship. Our friends Simon and Jill Bird work with this Church and travel out to the village from time to time to encourage them. Previously, this church was one of the least "alive" of the 4 village churches that they help. So what has happened to change all that?
Apparently, the Pastor and some of the members felt to meet together regularly to pray and ask God to "revive" their village. After some months, their prayers have been answered. God has made His presence known to this group of people in such a strong way that the whole village is now in the church. They meet daily each evening in the Church and that is where we joined them.
Everybody including small children were there. They were queueing up to share their experiences. I couldn't understand everything but picked up a little. Many had seen visions of white light and had heard God speak to them. One lady said that all the stresses and strains that she had felt in her life had gone. Another lady had never been to school and couldn't read. She has now been given the ability to read and is able to read the Bible. This lady also fasted for a 2 month period. She said that she didn't feel hungry, she just felt full of God.
A marked feature was the desire of the people to go out and share with other villages, but they had no money or means to travel. It was arranged that the City Gate church would help transport them to another village.
I didn't like to seem too much like a spectator and so I only took one photo as we were leaving. At about 10pm the villagers prayed for the "visitors" for about half an hour. Then we set off for the 1.5 hr drive back to Chiang Mai. They were going to continue worshipping and praying in the church until 2-3am as they have been doing each night.
When our friend Julia visited recently, our friend, Dr Jill Bird, arranged a medical outreach and was going to take Julia to that village. They sent the message that there was no need for a medical outreach as everyone had been healed through prayer!
We have heard that the revival that started over a year ago in the mountain village of Om Koi is continuing. There the people saw a "pillar of fire" come into the village and a voice spoke to them saying that the blood of Jesus would cleanse them from their sins. Women and children have been fasting and praying all night and still going to school or work the next day. Heather Thompson and I had the privilege to visit that place in January.
Few people will be aware of or get the chance to witness these outpurings in remote villages, but fortunately God doesn't rely on a world wide audience in order to impact lives where there is an openness and hunger for Him.
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