I (Amy) love how active God is in revealing himself. I’ve always known He is the God who pursues, but when I see Him do so, it touches a deep part of me.

Since before coming to Thailand, we felt that this was a key time for Thailand and we are beginning to see the reality of that. God is on the move here. Over the past few weeks, the House of Prayer we are connected to has had a couple of times where a pre-believer has come and sat and read the Bible in the prayer room for hours. One of these individuals came because of a dream. In the dream, they saw the name of the church that the house of prayer meets at and knew they were supposed to go there. They drove a long distance across the city to get to the prayer room and spent several hours there, reading the Bible.

Recently, our church had a special baptismal service on a Saturday. Since “T”, one of our neighbor girls, loves coming with us to church, we invited her to come with us. During the service, T was intrigued, as she had never seen anyone get baptized before. She curiously asked about what the people were doing and Matt and the Thais who were around her explained that they were making a commitment to follow Jesus.

“I want to get in that water,” T exclaimed. “I see Jesus over the water!”

While we loved her enthusiasm, we told her that we felt she needed to ask her parents first before she got baptized and the Thais with us agreed. After the service, one of the gals who had been talking with T took her to talk with the pastor who had been baptizing people and explained that she wanted to get baptized. I told him that she’s one of our neighbor girls and that we felt it was important she talk with her parents before taking that step. He agreed and said, “But what we can do is pray with you today to accept Jesus into your heart.” And right there, T prayed to make Jesus her Lord. The next day, T went with us to the Sunday morning church service and shared with Matt how she had talked with her parents about her decision to become a Christian. Her mom had said, “You can follow Jesus every day!” and told her she could get baptized too.

Our hearts are so stirred as we see God in pursuit of people here and our hearts’ desire is to partner with Him in it.

In other news –

• Our English class with our students at Dton Naam is continuing to go well. We recently read Amy’s favorite part of the book, where the children first hear the name of Aslan and C.S. Lewis beautifully pens the reactions of each child’s heart. Our students’ hearts are still engaged and enjoying the book. As we read, we are seeing their English skills grow and we are trying to draw out the deeper meaning of the story as we are able.
• Matt has been taking on a social work role with some of our Dton Naam students to help them reach their goals and take steps towards healing.
• Amy just wrapped up teaching a soul care class to the Dton Naam students, sharing with them about basic principles of walking in freedom in Christ such as breaking down strongholds of lies and creating new strongholds of truth and forgiving those who have hurt us. It was a powerful time, both for the students and for Amy, who had never taught on such things before and found that teaching on those things brought it to a whole new level of understanding for her.
• Amy’s friend, May, has continued going to church with us weekly and Amy’s tried to make it a point to connect with him after the service each week. He’s quite busy doing hair school but the two have been glad for their weekly connections over lunch.
• One of our students at Dton Naam has been visiting church with us lately as well. He had never heard the gospel before coming to Dton Naam and so we are thankful for his curiosity and desire to learn more.
• We’ve been starting to have regular monthly FaceTime calls with one of our pastors back in the States. It’s been very encouraging for us!
• Amy’s sister, brother-in-law, and nieces are arriving tonight for a visit. We are so excited to spend some time with them over the next couple of weeks!

Thank you for your significance in our journey. We are grateful to all of you who believe in us, encourage us and make it possible for us to be here.

Much love,

Matt, Amy, Jed & Alizah