Wong in Focus

In the past two months, our family has been very busy, both in family business and activities and ministry. However, God is very faithful in taking care of every need from the smallest to the greatest need. Since our time is very busy and a full schedule, taking children to school is a load on Mary’s shoulders. Mary drives Isaac every morning to school and brings him home every afternoon. John’s school is a different direction from Isaac and very far from our site. A few days before his school start, his regular taxi driver called us to cancel taking him to and from school. This matter seems very matter, but it really impacts the ministry of our family. We set a time to pray especially for this with friends and students both from Burma and Thailand. At the moment after we prayed and said “Amen”, the phone rang. Mary answered and a taxi driver called us to tell us that he wants to drive Johnny to school. God is good and faithful even with a minor thing. Praise the Lord!

We appreciate you keep Isaac in your prayers because he is struggling with his friends who are Buddhist. He told us that he have a big conflict with friends who tried to challenge him and force him to pray to Buddhist god. He strongly reject that and his friend tried to physically abuse him. A good thing was that he challenged them that believing God is better. He went to the teacher and the teacher make all his friends apologize to him. Living in this country that is dominantly Buddhist is not easy and keeping faith in God has started from a very young age. Pray that he will continue to commit and be strong in his faith throughout his life. 

Mary helping Isaac with homework and making paper animals

 Beside taking care of children, Mary is also busy cooking for our students of AIS and taking care of the rice farm. Now the rainy season has start, so the new crop need to be planted so that we will have a supply enough for the following year. Mary has done a great job on this. As you may know, this rice that Mary plant will be used for family, for ministry, for students, and for guests.

Rice planting

 Stephen has been busy in teaching. Mostly 6 hours a day from Monday to Friday. Monday he teaches a group of leaders from Thailand. Tuesday to Friday he teaches a group of leaders from Burma. He taught Romans, Hebrews, James, and Philippians. We appreciate very much for Saengduan and Isaiah who came and help teaching in Greek and theology. We also appreciate for Alicia taking time while studying Thai to teach English to the group of Burmese leaders. All the course, particularly for the leaders from Burma will be finished this week.

Stephen teaching leaders from Thailand

 Stephen ended the course giving a lecture to 16 undergraduate students from Japan who most are majoring in anthropology. He gave a two hour lecture on Christianity and Lisu, particularly why do Lisu people believe in Jesus Christ to these students who flew directly from Japan in order to attend Stephen's lectureship. Hopefully, the gospel seed that was planted will grow and bear fruit in the Light in these students. Stephen see that this is a great privilege to have the opportunity to share his faith and life to people that he never thought he would before.

Stephen teaching to students from Japan

 

Evangelism among the Wa people at the border of Thailand and Burma is continuing to be very challenging. One major challenge is the culture difference, which causes significant impact. One example is in a village, a tree was struck by lightning few weeks ago. The Wa people were very scared because they thought this was a judgment from God. They went to our evangelists living with them for help. The evangelists called us for direction in how to handle this. We shared with them to explain that God sometimes changes bad things to good. Through this happening and through prayer, the Wa people are no longer scared and the village may turn to Christ soon. Please keep this village in your prayers. We believe that soon God will see the result and we will harvest souls due to this event.

Since our evangelistic work has spread throughout Thailand, Burma, and China, we also appreciate your prayers for some of our native evangelists who have gone to China to do mission work there among the Lahu people. Please pray for their safety and courage to proclaim the truth about Jesus Christ to the people who used to live in the darkness and restricted environment.

This coming September 2^nd, pray also for Stephen and Alicia who will go to Burma with the group of leaders from Burma in order to with their own eyes and have a first-hand experience about the need of health and hygiene among the Lisu and Hmong people in Burma. We have heard that there is an epidemic of malaria and the breakout of TB at this moment in the area from our students. Also, we have been strongly requested to offer them a conference for Christian leaders emphasizing on biblical studying. We want to go there and see how we can offer a leadership conference this upcoming November 2012.

We are continue to thank God for adding more workers in the field. A young college graduate from Nebraska Christian College, Thomas Anderson, will arrive to Thailand soon to help us in the area of leadership conference. Thomas Anderson is sent by the Alliance of Christian Missions International (ACMI), who is co-working with Asians for Christ. After his arrival, Stephen will have someone to travel with to make more evangelistic trips and a teaching partner. 

The children ministry reaching out to the Shan people in our neighborhood with teaching English has been growing. We see that now it might be a good time that we will show them some Christian cartoons or Christian movies in the class. We would like to offer more class, especially in the evening after school to help tutor them and have more activities, such as a sport ministry, with them. In order to fulfill this, we need your participation in donating a projector and a basketball court (half-court). We can use the court for other games as well. So far we have only a table tennis, which we also use for the classroom table.

Children's English class

Thank you very much for your continual faithfulness in partnership with us to advance God’s Kingdom in Southeast Asia and China.