Dear family and friends,
Sawatdee from Bangkok. We wanted to provide you with some of the things we have experienced here in Thailand since arriving here about two and a half months ago. God was faithful to provide us with a condo to rent in the same building where we have lived the past three years and after getting settled, we began teaching again at Santisuk English School.
We had three classes for the school’s last month-long session of the year. Gary gave the Christmas sermon at Peace of Silom, the church plant at the school and we distributed many Christmas stockings stuffed with various goodies to our students and the people we have come to know who work in and around our residence. Each stocking contained a tract describing the meaning of Christmas. One 39-year-old student from China expressed that he was so happy to have received the stocking as his first ever Christmas gift.
We were able to take two of our students to a performance of Handel’s Messiah where a beautiful brochure was provided to explain the scriptural basis for the various parts of the production. Both expressed a desire to learn more about Jesus and we’re praying that they or others will accept our invitation to help them to learn the truths God has for us in the Bible.
It was a blessing to be here for the pastor of Calvary Baptist International Church’s farewell program and hear Pastor Martin deliver his final sermon before moving back to the states after serving in this church for the past 23 years. Gary felt privileged to be asked to offer the closing prayer after the program and pot-luck dinner given in honor of the pastor and his wife, Carrie. The following week we were able to join the Calvary Christmas choir and sing at a joint Christmas Eve service with the Burmese, Nepalese, Thai, and Karen churches that meet in Calvary’s building.
Before Christmas our school’s church family also went to a neighboring slum community and presented a program for the children and adults, while distributing food and prizes. Several of the children have been coming to Santisuk after their school to do their homework and are also attending the church during the bi-monthly Friday evening services. Some have also recently professed to believe in Jesus as their Savior. Our prayer is that the love shown to the children of these poor families over the past couple years will also help to draw their parents to have a relationship with Christ as well.
During New Year’s Eve we hosted a gathering at our condo to eat, sing songs, share testimonies of God’s faithfulness, pray, and watch the fantastic Bangkok fireworks from our balcony. The most exciting part of the evening was when one young college student asked Gary to pray with and for him to ask God for forgiveness from sins and to become a Christian. He is from a Buddhist background. What a sweet and glorious symbolic way it was for all of us to see an individual end the year and begin a new one as a new creation by God’s grace, drawn out of darkness and into His marvelous light. It’s such a joy to see him hungering and thirsting to grow in his faith and study God’s Word. Please pray for Nont.
Then on January 5th a team of 5 doctors came from the states, two of them being our sons (both dentists in the military), to join us and a Burmese pastor, wife, and son to serve on our Health Teams International mission team for two weeks. We drove about 8 hours to an area northwest of Bangkok to bring medical/dental care to refugee and asylum seekers from Burma (Myanmar).
Over 150,000 refugees are said to live in refugee camps along the Burma/Thailand border, however many thousands more are living in makeshift villages not recognized by the United Nations. They all have fled Burma over the years to avoid being killed after many had their villages bombed and burned down by the corrupt Burmese army. They are a mixture of Buddhists, Christians, Animists, and some Muslims. We were able to see, treat, and share the gospel of Jesus with around 500 during our 5 clinic days. These people have very limited access to health care and the condition of their teeth was very bad in many cases. Thousands are living in very primitive shelters and do not possess any proof of their identity (no passport, visas or ID cards). They see no hope for their future, but we know as believers in Jesus that a person’s true identity can be found in Christ as a child of God who has a glorious future beyond this broken world. “For if a man is in Christ he becomes a new person altogether—the past is finished and gone, everything has become fresh and new” (Phillips trans.). This is the message of hope we brought to these people along with providing relief from some of their physical suffering and pain.
The second week of our health care outreach was to slum areas of Bangkok. We were not able to serve many people because the poor do have access to medical facilities at a very low cost. The planning for next year will be to remain in the rural areas for the entire time our team is available to serve. We trust that the 150 or so people we did provide care for and who heard the news of salvation in Jesus Christ will have come to know the love of God through what we said and did for them from these slum communities.
Our sons Matthew and Jared remained with us for a few days after the clinic days were complete and we toured the city a bit and gave them the opportunity to spend Sunday afternoon with us ministering to the refugee families from Pakistan and Sri Lanka that we visit every two months. Our team from Calvary Church goes out twice a month to bring food supplies and spend time visiting with the families, sharing words of hope from the scriptures and praying for their needs. Our boys also got to be a part of the beginning of a men’s fellowship that met at our condo. Gary was asked to lead this group and explain why a men’s fellowship was a means that God could use to help encourage the young men in their walk with Christ. As we were finishing up with the meeting an unexpected display of fireworks erupted outside that we could watch from the balcony. One young man mentioned that perhaps God was giving us a sign of His approval of what we were trying to accomplish by starting this group.
Now we are preparing to embark on our second HTI outreach beginning on February 7th for two weeks in the jungles of the northeastern part of Cambodia. Most of the team members will be coming from a church in California. After we return to Thailand, we plan to again teach at Santisuk until we go back home in mid-April.
Please pray for this upcoming trip to Cambodia, that hearts would be opened to receive the gospel and churches could later be planted by those local pastors who will remain to follow up with the people. Pray also for the health and unity among the team members as we serve together with a common goal of sharing the love of God for the poor.
If you feel led to help support this outreach, we ask that you make your contributions through the means below:
Online giving option instructions:
Go to Bethlehem’s “Give Now” page at https://bethlehem.church/give/
Click on “Give Now” contribution option.
Log in or “Give As a Guest”.
Click on “Mission Trips Giving” tab in the center of top panel.
Select “MM Thailand 11/24” from the dropdown menu on “Select Mission Trip”
tab in the middle of the page.
Select “MOBERG, GARY” from the dropdown menu on “Select Team Member”.
Follow the rest of the prompts to complete your donation.
