New Christians

We have 9 people in our new Christian group right now (people that have been baptized in the past year): Son, Yut, Thoe, Tak, Jeab, Poopay, Gie, Jan, and Nut. Working with them is one of my favorite parts of the ministry here. Four of them have university exams coming up which is a stressful experience in Thai schools, so they have all been studying hard and are anxious about taking their exams.

Thoe is soon to join the military (it's long to explain the military and draft systems in Thailand, but joining was not Thoe's choice). He'll be serving 2 years in a city about 12 hours away from Bangkok.

Gie is still looking for a job. She must find one soon or she'll have to go back to her home town, something which she does not want to do as she'd be leaving her friends and her Christian family behind.

The new Christians have still been finding time to hang out and help out at the English center though. Some of them are especially good with the new students and it is wonderful to have them working with me. One in particular I've gotten a chance to work with lately is Tak. We have come to be as good of friends as two girls who don't speak the same language could be. The two of us have come to find that we work well together in talking to new students and those who come to visit the RCC.

It is a wonderful thing to be part of the new Christians' lives and to be able to discuss life and their growing faiths with them. As many of the new Christians are girls, and so my team mates and I have been discussing some ideas to further minister and mentor them. We already have a monthly women's Bible study, but we wanted to do more. Right now we're trying out some mentoring groups in which each of my female team mates and I have a couple of the girls that we focus on and spend time with.