Last month we got a picture of a woman being baptized. It was Oy, who came to me the last Sunday that we were in the church in Waeng Yai to tell me she wanted to be baptized. It is fantastic to see that it really happened  now. I was glad for four different reasons. (more…)

How do you work yourself out of a job as missionary? By making sure local Christians can lead the church as soon as possible, and are taking responsibility for further church planting. But how do you do that? It is one of the big questions almost all missionaries struggle with.  Daniel McGilvary, the apostle of Thailand, has the following suggestions in his almost 100 year old autobiography. (more…)

In the middle of Isaan is a university. It is located in the provincial town of Mahasarakham, and it still is a young university. It was only founded in 1994. Yet by now there are 42,000 students, almost as many as the official number of inhabitants of the town.

A while ago I walked around on the campus of the university. (more…)

A team member asked me: what are the most common mistakes starting church planters make? It wasn’t totally clear to me why he considered me a particularly good source for information of that sort. However, here is my recipe to fail as a missionary church planter:

1. Start ministry in an area where you know nobody, where your friends don’t know anybody, and where there is no opening for the Gospel that you know of. Then you can start with absolutely nothing, and do ministry exactly the way you like. It is also nicely slowly paced, so you won’t be too busy.
2. Make sure your friends are mainly in your home country. Because of Skype, your weblog, and Twitter there is no need at all to know your neighbours. (more…)

Mong lies on a tiny bamboo bed for 24 hours a day. His head has a normal size, but for the rest he has a miniature body that he can hardly use.  So it is not miraculous that for years on end Mong was depressed. But the miracle is that this is no longer the case! Mong lives in Kaeng Khro, an Isaan district with over 90.000 people. A Thai YwaM team shared the Gospel with him, and he came to the Lord. Recently during an evangelistic outreach in his village some other people also expressed interest in the Gospel.

This week I visited Mong and his relatives. I explored whether (more…)

Should missionaries teach English? Many of them do, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. This is why:

1. It is the wrong kind of ministry.

Only 6% of new believers in Thailand (more…)