February 2023 Prayer Letter
Dear Family and Friends,
I want to share with you the good news that we are making progress getting back to the mission field.
Financial Support News
In the past few months, we’ve seen an increase of financial support of +/- $500/month through a handful of new mission partners as well as a number of kind year-end donations in December (thank you!). I’ve been busy reaching out to churches and I think we have a few promising leads for new church partners, but nothing firm yet. I do have, however, a couple of verbal commitments from people who want to start giving regularly when we leave for the field. For planning purposes, that is really helpful for us because we can say to OMF how much will be coming in towards our budget and thus get the thumbs up to depart for Thailand. Please continue to pray for us that full support may be reached (or at least pledged) in the near future so that we can return to Thailand this coming summer.
Chiang Mai Theological Seminary
We have been in communication with OMF Thailand field leadership and are pleased to share that we have been officially designated to NorthernThailand where I will teach at Chiang Mai Theological Seminary (CTS). CTS was started about 20 years ago by OMF missionary Larry Dinkins and now has a small faculty of Thai and missionary professors and about 150 students. I am excited about the opportunity to jump back into teaching and training Thai Christians who will serving as pastors, evangelists, Sunday school teachers, missionaries, and more. My exact responsibilities and course assignments will be worked out later but it is likely that I will get to teach church history and historical theology. I love church history. This spring at our church in Florida, the associate pastor and I are tag team teaching a Sunday school series on church history (listen here). And I am also writing an article on 20th century Thai evangelist Boon Mark Gittisarn that will be published later this year. There is so much to learn from the past when we view it through the lens of Scripture. I am thankful that the Lord seems to be opening an opportunity to be in the classroom with Thai believers once again to see what we can learn from the past to apply to serving the Lord today.
December 2022 Prayer Letter
Dear Family and Friends,
How do you prepare for Christmas? If your family is like mine, it might involve putting up a tree, decorating the house, making Christmas cookies, buying gifts, attending holiday parties, and reading an advent devotional together. It is both a time of celebration and traditions as well as reflection and meditation on the wonder of the Son of God coming into the world.
In Thailand, however, Christmas looks quite different. In a majority Buddhist country where December 25th is just another day, you see nearly none of the cultural trappings of Christmas that appear in the U.S. That said, in our globalized world, most Thai people have heard of Christmas from movies and media. And some entrepreneurial Thai shopping malls hang lights and tinsel in an attempt to capitalize on this “Western” celebration to make extra sales.
But “What is Christmas?!” This curiosity question in the mind of the average Thai defines the whole month of December for churches in Thailand. December is a month of evangelism in Thailand as churches hold evangelistic parties, outreaches, and local school programs.
This December, will you join us in praying for Thai Christmas evangelism?
One of my former M.Div students, Surachet, whose D.Min dissertation research I am currently supervising, is pastoring a Thai church in Hong Kong. On Dec 18th and 25th, he and his congregation will host Christmas outreach events and are inviting staff from the Thai Consulate in Hong Kong to join them. They are hoping for 200 people to attend, including many non-Christians. Surachet sent me the photo below. He would be grateful for your prayers for these outreaches.
November 2022 Prayer Letter
Dear Family and Friends,
It feels like an awfully long time since we’ve been in Thailand and undoubtedly, some of you may be wondering, “What’s the deal with Karl and Sun? Are they going back or not?” Following the completion of my Ph.D. in Scotland, we moved back to the U.S. in March 2021, thinking that it would be a matter of months before we could go to Thailand. At that time, no visas were available, tight COVID restrictions for entry to Thailand were in place, and we were low on financial support.
In the past year and half, we’ve been glad to see visa applications re-open and just this past month, we were delighted to learn that Thailand has now dropped all its remaining COVID-related entry restrictions. The only piece of the puzzle remaining is the financial component.
July 2022 Prayer Letter
Dear Family and Friends,
Thankfulness is vastly undervalued in our society today. We grumble. We gripe. We give our attention to everything going wrong rather than what is going right. And I fall into those ruts too. But thankfulness and counting your blessings is highly valued in Scripture. In my Bible reading the other day, Psalm 50:23 stood out, “The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me; to one who orders his way rightly I will show the salvation of God!” We want you to know that we are thankful for each of you reading this, for your prayers, encouragement, and financial support as we seek to return to Thailand and do some stateside Thai ministry during this stage in our lives.