Recently, during the June holidays, Ai Cheng, Bethley and I flew over to visit the ministry at Arunothai in Chiang Mai, which is a ministry that the church has been supporting since the year 2000. It was a fruitful trip as we witnessed how the ministry has grown from a small orphanage to a student centre, plus a school with three campuses.
The Home of Grace Student Centre houses 45 students. This is also where we stayed and had our meals. Some of the parents of the students there are separated or working in the city or other villages. There are also some whose parents were imprisoned or had already passed away. About 20 out of the 45 students are pre-believers. On weekdays, at 5 pm, they will be reciting Bible verses and At 9:10 pm is their Bible study time.
As for the school ministry, it now has three campuses.
Campus 1 consist of 410 students where 82 or about 20% are believers.
Campus 2 consist of 22 students where 4 or about 20% are believers.
Campus 3 consist of 130 students where 13 or about 10% are believers.
Campus 2 and 3 has children of new Myanmese refugees who fled from their country to escape the civil strife and unrest in Myanmar. These refugees are all pre-believers and therefore this is a great opportunity for the church to do gospel work among these refugees. Pastor Lee and his wife Ren Fang only employs Christian teachers for the school and so the school teachers themselves are very key points of Christian influence to the students.
Below are some of the ministries that we had the opportunity to get involved in while we were there.
We conducted a night sharing session where we explained the gospel and the Christian worldview to all the students at the student centre.
We went on several visitations. Above left is a visitation to new refugees seeking refuge in an old Chinese school. Above right is a visitation to an old deaconess, who is the sister of Rev Du Guang Yao who spoke at our church retreat in 1998.
We visited all three campuses in their various locations. On the right is a class watching the Jesus film.
We attended a house meeting after the Sunday church service and preached at a house meeting on Saturday afternoon (see above) where among them are three young adults who were the first and only believers in their household.
We preached a bilingual sermon (with Ai Cheng translating to Mandarin) at the church on Sunday morning.
We held a night session for the older youth in the student centre where we conducted games and ice-breakers to get to know them better and Bethley shared her testimony at the end.
Do continue to keep the ministry in Arunothai in prayer as Pastor Lee seeks to find a suitable successor to take over the reins of the ministry there.
“He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” Luke 10:2