What's your history worth?

The first Karen Christians in Thailand heard about Jesus in the winter of 1881.  A group of travelling Burmese Karen evangelists came to a village in Lampang Province, just south of Chiang Mai, and spent four months sharing the gospel and encouraging new Christians.  During that time, three entire villages came to faith in Christ. The picture above shows the memorial stone set up on the site where those first conversations (and conversions) took place.

As is sadly true of many memorials, this one is not in good shape.  The surrounding area is overgrown, the fences are broken down, the signs are falling to pieces, and the memorial stone itself could use a good clean.

This weekend, however, fifty young Karen Christians, inspired by the vision of an emerging local leader, are about to change all that.

Poster inviting young people to join in the restoration weekend

Coming from all corners of the Thailand Karen Baptist Convention, which now has over 25,000 members in 160 churches, the young people are converging on the memorial stone for a weekend of restoration and rebuilding.  Over these two days, the focus will be on cleaning, clearing, cutting and repairing.

But there is a bigger vision behind it all.  The vision of returning to the dynamic, bold, unashamedly missionary faith of those first Karen evangelists from Burma through whom God planted the Karen churches in Thailand.  The vision of restoring not just memories of a golden past, but faith in God to provide possibilities for a golden future.  Please pray for the young people involved this weekend - that as they honour their forefathers in the faith, they might be inspired by their example.

BMS Day of Prayer - 4th February

Next Monday, 4th February, is this year's BMS Day of Prayer.  There's a whole spread of resources on the BMS website - among which is our prayer letter written specifically for the day.  You can open it by clicking on the picture below, or by clicking here.

New Year - but not yet!

Did you think that the New Year had already begun?  Not for the Karen - the Karen year 2752 officially begins on Saturday 12th January.  So Friday 11th January will see a variety of Karen New Year's Eve celebrations, including the one advertised below at the City Karen Baptist Church in Chiang Mai. 

You might have noticed the times on the poster - yes, they will be meeting at 6am on New Year's Day for a celebratory worship service!  Maybe your church could try that next year?

This weekend will not be the end of the New Year celebrations in Thailand, though.  The Chinese New Year on the 10th February will be observed by many Thais.  When we lived in Bangkok, we were surprised that more of our local shops closed up for Chinese New Year than for the Western New Year. 

And then for the big one - the Thai New Year, celebrating the beginning of the year 2556 (Buddhist Era), on April 13th.  After that, it's not so long until December 31st...