Merry Christmas from Thailand!

Merry Christmas to all of our wonderful friends and family!


We hope your holidays are blessed with joy and God's peace, and that you enjoy precious times with your families.  We miss you all and love you very much!  It is strange to have a hot, humid Christmas that feels like summer in Houston.  We celebrated Christmas with our team last night.  There aren't really any American restaurants around here, so we cooked a revised version of pesto pasta with chicken and garlic bread.  It was funny to see some of the ways we had to be flexible with that.....like, we could only find peanuts rather than pine nuts or anything else, and one girl smashed them with a rock, as we didn't have a food processor.  :)  The evening was wonderful, with a few surprises for the students.  It made us all just a little homesick, though.


I'm sorry we haven't updated sooner!  We have had pretty full weeks of ministry.  We have two amazing Thai women to work with as contact here, Jaime and Yui.  They are so vibrant and committed to seeing Thai people come to know Jesus.  They are youth ministers at a small church that we are working with here.  Their church has a wonderful ministry going here, and we feel really privileged to be a part of it.  Our team has performed at many Christmas parties and schools so far.  We have a variety of songs, dances, and dramas that we do, as well as sharing personal testimonies.  These schools are are filled primarily with Buddhists and a few Muslims.  It is such great timing to be here at Christmas, because everyone wants us to come to their gathering and teach them about this American holiday.  Then, we get to share the gospel and the true meaning of Christmas with them over and over!  Our team has shared the gospel with about 500 or more people by now through our various Christmas performances and messages!  It seems that Thai people take quite awhile to choose Christianity and leave Buddhism behind, but we are so thankful to plant so many seeds.  We have been able to pray for many and we know that the Holy Spirit is opening the hearts of people to receive this message.  Please pray that people would not forget what they've heard, but that they would be very curious and seek to know more about Jesus.


One of the most exciting things that happened was when a young English teacher came to a Christmas party for high schoolers that we helped host.  She listened intently to everything we shared, particularly the personal testimonies of a few of our students.  She told us afterward that she had never heard these things about Jesus before and that she wanted to know more!  We invited her to attend the church and we are praying that she comes.  It would be amazing for her to know him and impact many Thai students with God's love!


We are so thankful for all of you and your love for us, especially at Christmas.  Thanks for praying for us while we are here.  Please continue to pray for our team and particularly for hearts to be open to God's love and truth.


Bless you all!  
Erika and Jason

We made it!!

Hello from Thailand!

We have safely arrived and have enjoyed our first day here in Bangkok.  We spent the day doing cultural orientation and enjoying our first tastes of delicious Thai food!  Additionally, our students headed out for a scavenger hunt while Jason and I and the Thai staff here had a leaders' meeting to go over outreach details.  Today, we will be doing a prayer walk around Bangkok and touring a Buddhist temple.  Our tour will help us to understand Thai religion and worldview, so that we can better understand how to share God's love and minister here.  We will be taking an overnight bus ride tonight to our first ministry location with Phang Nga Church, about a 15 hour trip.  Please pray for safe travels on our journey there!  

We begin outreach to younger children and high school students on Monday.  We are so excited to jump in to all that God has for us here!  Thanks for your prayers and encouragement!

Love, Jason and Erika

Heading out..

Hi everyone! 

Our last couple weeks have been filled with things, things, and more things. It seems to be the nature of DTS, especially toward the end of lecture phase. A couple of "things" I am describing are plenty of great lectures, preparing the last details and dramas, dances, and testimonies to go on outreach, thanksgiving, and having Jason's dad here for a week of teaching. That week turned out to be a powerful week for a lot of students and staff members. God ministered to people in such a unique way, bringing healing and encouragement. He also taught a lot about how to be an evangelist through the adventures that John had in the past. It was an incredible time, to say the least. 

Now that lecture phase is over, the moment we have all been waiting for has come: outreach to Thailand!  Each and every one of the team members is excited about heading off to Phang Nga in the south, as well as Phuket, and then for the last couple weeks in Chiang Rai up north. Some of the ministry we will be doing there together is prison ministry and working with prostitutes in the bars of Phuket, showing them God's love.  We will also be doing kids ministries, street evangelism, working in a smoothie shop trying to get to know local college students and tell them about Jesus :), as well as many other ministry opportunities. All this to say, we all feel very privileged to partner with God in serving the people of the world. Thank you ahead of time for your prayers and thoughts about us. We appreciate you guys. 

This is our team that we'll be with for two months! We'll be updating about our adventures on this blog; so look for news about what God is doing in Thailand here!  Please keep us and these lovely people in your prayers.  We love you all and will miss you!  Have a wonderful, blessed Christmas!

Love,  Jason and Erika

DTS lecture phase is coming to a close!!

   The past couple of weeks have breezed by so quickly!  We had a fabulous week of teaching about prayer/hearing God's voice, followed by a week of teaching about the Holy Spirit/spiritual gifts.  It was so exciting to watch the students stepping out more in their giftings and praying for and encouraging one another.  We have seen so much growth in them, particularly as they gain a deeper understanding of how much God loves them, and how their true identity is who God says they are.  This is such a simple thing, but so important for all of us.  We get so many mixed messages about who we really are, every day.  It is so easy to define ourselves by what we do, what our hobbies/talents are, or simply what people say about us.  It is vital to understand that we are the beloved children of God, and to measure any other messages about our identity by that standard.  This is the heart of what we will be discussing in DTS this week, and we are really looking forward to seeing how God impacts all of our lives deeply with this truth.  I highly recommend this video by Henri Nouwen if you are looking for some excellent teaching about your identity as a beloved son or daughter of God.


   Thank you for your prayers and encouragement.  The thoughtful notes we get from some of you mean so much to us; thanks for taking the time to bless us.  Though we are really far away, it makes us feel closer to know that we are not alone in what we are doing here and that you all are praying for us.


   It's hard to believe, but we leave for outreach in Thailand in a little over 3 weeks!  Our team is bonding together more and more and growing very excited about the opportunity to minister there.  We have had a lot of team meetings where we've learned about Thai culture and religion/worldview, some language basics, as well as learning how to share the gospel and preparing dramas for outreach.  We've even gone over some practical team building stuff, like learning our Myers-Briggs personality types, and how we need to relate to each other in love.  : )  For Jason and me personally.....as we prepare for a two-month outreach to Thailand, we are still in need of partners who feel called to help support our missions work monthly.  If any of you feel led to participate in what we are doing as a member of our financial support team, please contact us.


Thank you for your love and support!  We love hearing from you!