We wish you a wonderful and Happy New
Year of 2014. May the year of 2014 be a
year full of blessings from our living God and Lord Jesus Christ! The old year has passed away, and let us now look
forward to reckoning His faithfulness and giving thank to God for His unfading
and immeasurable love, focusing the joy that is set before us, seeking the
unshakable city, the New Jerusalem, whose builder and maker is God, and the
home Jesus has gone to prepare for us.
Thanksgiving for a new crop
Thanksgiving is an occasion that our
family would lift up each year during this month since we plant rice not only
for self-consumption, but also for our mission works. Each year, God has faithfully provided enough
rice. We also want to demonstrate the
right way of gratitude to our unbelieving neighbors, who are still giving
thanks for all their new crops to evil spirits or idols. Some even give their thankfulness to
animals. Among the indigenous people like
Lisu and Ahka, they thank dogs for their new rice crops. Every year at the harvest season, the Lisu
people would cook their new rice crops which had been offered to the evil
spirits and before their first consumption they had to feed their dogs to
express their thankfulness to the dogs. This
is due to the tale saying that dog was the first animal that could bring rice
from the court of god’s house to human.
Even today, many unbelieving Lisu people are still practicing this
ceremony. Among the Ahka people, they
offer their rice to dog every morning prior to their breakfast.
Stephen and Simee Ki are harvesting
Nick is hitting the rice stalks on a hard
rock chair in order to separate
the rice grains from the stalks
Nick is giving a speech at a family thanksgiving
service for the new rice crops
Family Christmas
One thing that we learned from
Christian friends while we lived in the USA was giving. Prior to our going to the USA, Mary and
Stephen had never received or gave any gifts, neither Christmas nor birthday
gifts. However, many of our friends had
demonstrated God’s love through giving us gifts in several occasions. We have always been touched with those
remarkable deeds, not because we loved those gifts, but the joy of giving
spirit. Now, we are in the mission
field, we have seen many people, children in particular, have never received
any gifts. So, every year our family has
a Christmas party for the displaced kids in our neighborhood. The gifts aren’t
amazing and the food isn’t special, but the love, happiness, and particularly
the story of Jesus’ birth that is told to the kids that make it priceless!
This year indeed was the first year
over the past several years that our family gathered together as a family. We had cancelled all Christmas convention (Stephen
called off his speech at any Christian convention) so that we as family would
be able to harvest the joy of family life together and meditating God’s
covenantal love that He has demonstrated through His Son, Jesus Christ. Praise the Lord! Our children were all at
home. Becky, John and Isaac were on
school break. It was the first year
since 2008 for Nick to spend a Christmas and New Year with the family.
Evangelistic trip for 2014
Since the raining season is over, land
traveling is much easier and most people are freed from the farm works, from
now on our ministry will be focused on open field evangelistic works. Rather than indoor ministry for equipping and empowering Christian leaders through teaching, we will emphasis
our ministry on carrying out the Great Commission to the lost souls, bringing
the gospel of Jesus’ redemption to many un-reached people who live in various
restricted areas and to various ethnic groups of people starting from the
border of Thailand-Burma to the border of Burma-India. Our goal is to sweep
every village with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, hopefully within 5 years we will
reach the border of India. The year of
2014 will be the second year of this evangelistic endeavor. Since we were blessed by winning many
souls in the past year, we pray God will bless more by adding more souls during
this upcoming year. Like last year, we
are scheduling to start this evangelistic trip this upcoming March-April,
2014. We are much appreciated you
lifting up this evangelistic trip before our living God and Lord, whether in
your daily, weekly, or monthly prayers.
Much appreciated for all your
partnership with our ministry throughout the year of 2013. We are looking forward to further partnering
in advancing His Kingdom through carrying out the Great Commission to the lost
souls in Southeast Asia and China till the day of His return.
In Christ's Love,
Stephen and Mary
