By Esther Price & Alan H. Leyden
The trip to Thailand at the beginning of September was a unique trip as Alan & Esther were the only team members, after we had received a word from God that we should bring the trip forward.
We arrived in Bangkok on 31st August and we travelled 13 hours overnight on the bus to Mae Sai the most northern city of Thailand which borders Myanmar.
The first day our hosts Tom & Ploy took us to a young people’s outreach run by San & Fon a couple who use football to reach 11–18-year-olds. The meeting was hosted by the young people, and we were impressed by their maturity. The following day we helped at an after school English class for children aged between 5-14 run by Gift who Esther worked with in Bangkok in 2019. In all we did two sessions at this club.
On Sunday morning we visited Tom & Ploy’s home where they have a house church, reaching out to the young people in their village, and many have come to know Jesus as a result. Alan led worship and Esther gave a testimony. Because the young people in that village are Hill Tribe people, without a Thai ID card, they must pay to attend university. So, Tom & Ploy sponsor each young student from their group with a one-off donation when they go to university! We finished off the day by joining Victory International Church, where we met many missionaries and overseas workers.
om and Ploy drove us via The Golden Triangle to our second hosts Pat & Wandee who work for the Mennonite Brethren Christian Learning Centre (CLC) in Wiang Kaen. It is a residential school where young people from the Khmu Hill Tribe stay during the week receiving Christian input as well as attending regular school. It is located right next to the Mekong river and across the river is the nation of Lao. Esther came to this area with a team 3 years before and stayed in the small village of Huar Juor approximately 5 miles from our location.
The CLC centre was founded by Pastor Phonkeo a refugee from Lao who went to America and was then called back to his nation to support the pastors in Lao. Lao is a communist nation where people are persecuted for their faith. On our first day we were invited to join five pastors as they prayed together and studied the word. On the same day we were also able to teach English to the students at CLC. Using a globe Esther did a lesson about different nations and we played lots of games. Alan was the score master!
During the week we visited several churches in the area meeting the Khmu Pastors and seeing what vision and work they are doing in their communities. They have a great heart for their people giving support whether Christian or not which has met with some success in bringing people to faith. We also visited several homes in these villages praying for people at their point of need.
Our biggest challenge was entertaining 60 children aged 5 at a local school. Esther led them in a large game of pass the parcel with Alan providing the music and then impersonating different animals in a copycat game. Dao the teacher who facilitated this visit, was our translator when we visited the area in April 2019. Dao’s village was also the recipient of our project money – a microenterprise and loans for the farming community. We visited the village later in the day and saw how they are managing this project very well and the money has helped 11 families to date.
On our second Sunday we attended a Khmu church run by Kun our hosts father, where Alan gave his testimony. Then in the evening we attended the Youth Church at CLC and both Esther and Alan gave their testimonies.
Despite only deciding on the project 7 days before we left the UK, we were amazed by people’s generosity and we raised £880. Our project was for women providing for their rural communities and families by making material products. After much searching, the recipients were right under our noses! In a conversation with our hosts Wandee and Pat we discovered they had had been looking at ways to develop the skills of local women in producing small item like purses and moving on to clothing using embroidered tribal patterns.
