JourneyOnline
Over the Christmas and New Year period, five members of Toowong Uniting Church embarked on a short term mission trip to Thailand. Grace Branjerdporn reflects.
The mission trip was called Thai’d Together to represent the sense of collaboration and cooperation that the team wanted to have with the local churches in Thailand.
With only 1.2 per cent of the population identifying as Christian, at 93.6 per cent Buddhism is by far the dominant religion in Thailand. As a result, many Thai people have not heard about Jesus and his love for us. Churches in Thailand therefore proactively spread the gospel through various outreach initiatives and events.
The Thai’d Together team travelled to over seven provinces to partner with and add value to the local churches and missionaries in their ministries. With the diverse range of skills in the group, the team ran many children’s and youth programs in hospitals, juvenile prison rehabilitation centres, rural villages, church outreach festivals, schools and special education institutions.
One significant experience was running a two-day children’s camp in a village deep in the jungle at Sangkhlaburi, close to the Myanmar border. In this village the people live in rudimentary wooden houses without electricity and they grow rice and raise cattle to feed themselves. It took two hours by 4WD on a bumpy dirt road to reach the village with approximately 40 families and over 150 children.
The team provided a range of supplies (blankets, shoes, books, stationery, Bibles) to the village, and led a teaching and song segment at their church service. The community was blessed, and in turn, the team felt blessed as well.
One of the team members reflected on the village experience by saying, “I was so inspired by Dan Kensel the missionary, who lived with the villagers for 15 years”.
Dan has done an incredible job with helping so many community development projects (Bible training, skills training, adult literacy, community school classes, well, water systems and health, medical assistance). Seeing how much Dan sacrificed makes me reconsider how much time and effort that we put into reaching out to people.”
Overall, the team felt privileged to serve God and the Thai people in this way. Please continue to pray for the lives of the Thai people to be transformed by the gospel.
Find out more about The Sowers Hands project in Sangkhlaburi and Thai’d Together.
