January 2014 Prayer Letter

Written by Karl Dahlfred on .

DSunday evening Bible study at Grace City Bangkok church plantear Friends & Family,

Happy New Year! Thank you for your abundant prayers and support during this past year. We praise God for a healthy, growing family and continued opportunities to be a blessing to others at Bangkok Bible Seminary, Kanok Bannasan (OMF Publishers), Grace City Church, and various local churches where Karl preaches. As we head into a new year, we have a few updates and prayer requests for you to remember this month.

Grace City Church, Bangkok

Our family is involved with a new Reformed church plant in downtown Bangkok, together with Thai Christians and some other missionaries, from both OMF and MTW. For most of 2013, we met for Bible study and fellowship on Sunday evenings and then for the last few months of the year we had a worship service once per month. Karl has been part of the rotation for preaching and teaching Bible study. Starting in January, we will have a worship service every week, meeting on the 25th floor of a hotel. As we transition to regular worship, please pray that our small core group of people will be built up in Christ, that non-Christians will come, that people will come to faith, and that our children’s Sunday school would have good, regular teachers and teaching. You can find the church website at www.gracecitybkk.org

Political Tensions

As you may have seen in the news, the month of December 2013 saw massive street protests in Bangkok against the sitting government (Click here to read my summary of the situation in early Dec.). As a result, the prime minister dissolved parliament and called for a new election on Feb 2nd. However, a large number of people are still not happy with this and there have been more protests and violence, together with a push for an unelected “people’s council” instead of new elections. In January, there will be more protests. Please pray for peace, justice, cool heads, and for Thai Christians to know what to do in a very divisive political climate. There are many Thai Christians with strong convictions on both sides of this political chaos.

Writing Projects

One of the abilities that I (Karl) have discovered in the past few years is writing. An interest and ability in this area meshes well with my work at both the seminary and the publisher, and there are several small writing projects that I hope to see come to completion in 2014. Last year, I drafted a booklet about the prosperity gospel for Kanok which a Thai pastor will now revise and expand into two booklets, one about money and one health. The Thai church needs more literature addressing false prosperity teaching, so please pray for this project. Also for Kanok, I am researching and writing a booklet of testimonies from church history, including both Western and Asian leaders, such as Augustine and John Sung. Aside from Kanok, I aim to publish two eBooklets to Kindle, one about substitutionary atonement in the Buddhist context and another about Luther’s catechisms. And last, but certainly not least, I am on a small committee with two Thai Christians to write a new catechism for the Thai context. 2014 will be a busy year! Thanks for praying.

by Christ’s grace,
Sun & Karl Dahlfred


PRAYER POINTS

  • New church plant - Grace City Bangkok
  • Political tensions in Thailand
  • Karl’s writing projects


PRAISES

  • Sun has recovered from post-delivery back pain & baby John in sleeping well
  • Some time of rest & reflection in January before new term at BBS begins

CALENDAR

1/12  Grace City Bangkok begins weekly worship
1/15 Baby John is 4 months old

 


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