Making Differences For the Lord!

Thank you so much for your prayers, love and support us for carrying out the Great Commission to the lost souls and making disciples in Southeast East Asia and China.
  
In the past month, Stephen made a quick missions trip to Northern Myanmar to teach the book of Revelation to a group of Christian leaders from various denominations and the Doctrine of Grace to students at Jamaitee Bible Center. He even went up to Putao to find the place to establish the rehab center the drug addicts. Several thousands of youth in Putao area are addicted to particularly heroin. Some streets are filled with people by youth at night. Needles are lying around everywhere. The sad part is that these youth are considered to be Christians. They have grown up inside the churches. Their families were known to be Christians for several generations.

Stephen with students at Jamitee

Stephen is teaching a Doctrine of Grace


He also participated at the cultural festival in Putao and met and had gained close relationships with many political and cultural leaders in Myanmar. He helped the leaders from China and Myanmar to meet each other so that they would further their relationship with one another. He really became an intermediary. 

Stephen in Putao

Group photo with Lisu leaders from China and Myanmar

Meeting with Lisu leaders from China and Myanmar

During this mission trip, Stephen did a ground breaking for building a home for the orphans particularly among the displaced people due to the ongoing fighting in Kachin State of Myanmar. It was another real blessed trip. Praise the Lord!

Group photo with preachers, elders, deacons and evangelists

Ground breaking photo

During mid-January, Nick was able to go into Northern Myanmar in order to visit and encourage the Lisu people living in one of the many refugee camps. Normally, Nick travels to Myanmar to teach Bible or focus on youth ministry, but this time, it was to visit and encourage the displaced people.

Nick has been to Myanmar on many occasions but this was the first time he has ever experienced such an intense emotion. He started the week visiting the youth in the area. He visited Sayleyet, one of the leaders in Myitkyina. At his house, he teaches some of the youth in the area just about every evening. There were about 4 orphans in the group of youth that he teaches; he was able to join their worship services almost every night.

Nick with children at Sayleyet's home
Nick’s main focus was on the children at Nicodi refugee camp (village). On one of the days, several leaders from the area and Nick threw a little feast for the 150+ children living at Nicodi village. They woke up very early and went to the market to buy ingredients to make rice and pork soup. Nick is very blessed by brothers and sisters in Christ that donated money in order for them to cover the cost for hosting this party for the children. 

When they arrived at the village, this is Nick’s remarking:

My heart sank because I saw signs of poverty and hardship everywhere. The villagers were wearing torn and rugged clothes, the village had no electricity or running water, and you could just feel a sense of hopelessness in the air. But from the dusty roads to the tattered houses, I could see that they still held their Faith in Christ. The people valued their church building because that was a place where the 300+ people gathered to worship.

We reached the village at about 1pm and started to cook the pork soup and rice. At about 3:30pm, an old pickup truck carried about 30 kids came and dropped off the first bunch of kids at the village before leaving for the next 5 groups at the school in a nearby village. The kids smelled the food and all came and gathered around; many had extremely old clothes on and had a look of sorrow in their eyes. We began with some games and teaching worship songs to the kids; they began to smile. After that, I gave a little word of encouragement for the kids (along with the adults who joined). Afterwards, we all sat down on the grassy field just behind the church and enjoyed the meal together. The party was intended for the children, but many of their parents came to watch the kids eat so we couldn’t turn them away. Tears rolled down my eyes as I saw glimpses of laughter and joy in this place.

This was only one of the many Lisu refugee villages; I was unable to go to other villages because of the continued war. As the week progressed, I visited several more youth in the area; I felt compassion for the people here so much that I forgot about my birthday during this trip. This trip was absolutely eye opening because when I went to Myanmar last year, there wasn’t any war or displaced people. Even more heart breaking was that two days after I came back to Thailand, I heard from Sayleyet, that his pregnant wife was just kidnapped. I felt deep pain and sorrow because I was just in Myanmar and met and congratulated them on their first child. Please pray for the Lisu in Myanmar as they face many hardships.



Nick with children at a refugee camp

Nick is shopping at the morning market
Feeding children at a refugee camp 

Nick is preaching to children
Dad and his little child at a refugee camp 
God has given us yet another opportunity on the mission field to show His love, and we need your help and continued prayers and partnership. If you feel God calling for you to help out or would like to know more about how to help, please let us know.

Family

Several occasions, Isaac has demonstrated his compassion and general kindness to others. A week ago, the school chose him to be Aladdin for the play. He voluntarily chose to be Jafar in order to comfort one of his classmates who cried heavily in the school for wanting to be Aladdin. Great job, Isaac! Becky is doing a great job on tutoring Isaac. She has to force herself in studying Japanese and revisiting her Chinese in order to catch up with Isaac. She is uplifting her parent’s loads (while Stephen is frequently out for mission trips and Mary is exhausted from managing the house and farming). They both are enjoying evening time together. The whole family celebrated Mary’s birthday on January 29. Everyone was happy to see mum’s happiness and laugh as we had dinner together. 


Mary's Birthday!
On the same day, Stephen and Mary’s visas was finally been approved. They are now searching for their flight to the States. They are hoping to depart on March, after Isaac begins his summer break so Isaac could join the trip. He is very excited about this trip because he gets to go see the place of which he was born. Your prayers for the whole family is much appreciated!

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2018!



Happy New Year to all of our Asians for Christ friends and family! It has been another great year of doing ministry and life with you all. We would love to give you a recap of all the wonderful things that God has worked through us this past year for His own Kingdom’s sake.

At the start of 2017, a group of Myanmar leaders from many different churches and denominations came to our establishment in order to study the Bible exegetically with Stephen. Through this, these leaders went back to Myanmar and parts of southern China and taught what they had learned to the people who hunger for the Word. Now there has been a revival in these areas and people are really on fire to learn more about the Bible.

This past year, John was also able to come to Thailand during his summer break. It was a blessing to the family because we were able to spend time with him and also see him grow. We are so proud to see him preach and decide to pursue ministry.

2017 was also full of ministry in the physical sense. Through the help of many churches locally and internationally, we were able to provide some temporary relief for the displaced people in Northern Myanmar. This is a very important ministry because we feel that we can show them the love of God even during this tragedy. We helped purchase food and tarp as a roof for the temporary shelters just in time for the rain. Praise God! Please continue to pray for this ministry because there are many more opportunities that we show people Christ.

Stephen also finished several commentaries and was able to take several trips to Myanmar and China to teach the Word. Many people are still requesting for Stephen to go back and teach them more. God is moving in this ministry of AFC as well. Praise Him!

December 2016

The last month of 2017 was also a busy one. Along with leaders, both Lisu and Thai officials, Stephen and Mary went to China in order that Stephen giving a speech at the Lisu Literature Forum around the time of Christmas. Through such a trip, many Chinese Lisu are now setting up to make a Lisu center where Lisu biblical language has become a common language for the Lisu people in China. This is the vision that AFC has had for many years and now it’s coming together. On this trip, the Thai elites that joined Stephen on the trip were able to see what it means to be a Christian and they respected that a lot.

Stephen and his group with the Chinese governor,
 local authorities, scholars at the Lisu Literature Forum

Our group from Thailand attending the forum in China

Lisu Chinese New Year celebration in Wei Xei, China

Thailand and Myanmar group in their Lisu outfits

Another picture of the group from Thailand and Myanmar

Stephen representing all of the Christian Lisu
in Southeast Asia and China, speaking about Lisu literature

The highlight of this trip was the group of 12 Christian leaders from Thailand and Myanmar together singing Christian hymn entitled “Praise the Worthy Name of Jesus” in front of the governor, the local authorities and the crowd. While we were singing some Christians in the midst of the crowd started to sing along with us. It was at that moment that we all felt God moving in the crowd. It was beyond expressions how God is working in this spiritually dark area. For many people, this was an unprecedented event of Christianity in those restricted areas. Praise the Lord! May His will be done!

Singing Hymns in public, China
Nick, Becky and Isaac were at home during Christmas and decided to have a Christmas party for the Shan kids in our neighborhood. Many were able to come and have a great time and be able to celebrate and learn about Christ.



Games during the Christmas Party

Our neighborhood having a great time 
The kids are trying to pop each other's balloons; a game of elimination



The Shan kids in our neighborhood with their presents

Becky leading a game
Family

In December, Isaac had a Christmas play at his school. The school is technically a Christian school so they had performances about the Jesus. Isaac did an awesome job! At this moment, just short of New Year’s Day, Stephen, Mary, Isaac, Mary’s mom and Mary’s nephew living with us all became sick with some type of flu. Please pray for the family as we have been bombarded with sicknesses these past couple of months. Besides this sickness, the family can’t complain because it has been a great year in the Lord and we hope 2018 will be an even more fruitful year.

Stephen, Mary and Isaac are also planning to visit churches in the States during March-May. They have been away from America for nearly 8 years. Please pray that everything goes smoothly with the visa and the acquiring of the tickets. They plan on visiting John at Boise Bible College as well. With excitement mixed with a little bit of fear of the long flight, they would love to meet up with AFC friends and family in the States. If you would like them to visit you, please send them a message or email so that they will be able to schedule a visit.


Isaac's school play; Can you find where he is? (Hint: he's wearing green)
Goals of 2018

We have many goals for 2018 and are very excited to get started! One of our main goals is to set up an orphanage in Northern Myanmar. As you know, many people were affected by the war in Northern Myanmar. Lisu in particular, over 200 children lost their parents and became orphans during the past year. We are very moved beyond sadness for these kids and are praying that God gives us a means to start this ministry. Many outside organizations like Compassion are not able to go into such area, and so we cannot wait any longer for outside organizations to help the needy children. We will team up with local churches to do the best we can to show the Love of God to these Children.

As 2018 starts, we hope to raise extra money in order to set up a building where we can start and take in 10 children that need extreme care (such as kids under 10 years of age). We immediately need $5,000 to start a shelter for 10 orphans.  We cannot imagine how much these kids had to go through because they not only lost their homes but also their parents. Who will love them? Who will they be with during Christmas or Thanksgiving? Please pray for us as we are spearheading this ministry.
AFC is also in the process of making a website thanks to Nick’s former OCC classmate, Austin Coon who has been helping with designing a website for us so that we can better show you all how our God is working in Southeast Asia and China. Please check out our website at www.asiansforchrist.com

We thank you so much for you partnership in prayers and financial support. Together, we have had a great year in the Lord. We pray that 2018 will be full of Kingdom works that will change this world for the better! We love and miss you all! Happy New Year!