On Sunday, the team enjoyed a slower-paced day, visiting two churches – Chiang Mai Christian Fellowship (CCF) and Chiang Mai Community Church – where we heard two excellent sermons and then enjoyed a team dinner in town.
On Monday, we said goodbye to the FBR ranch and traveled by van 6+ hours to Mae Sot, which sits on the border with Burma and is the main border crossing for the two countries, meaning that the city is full of people displaced by the war. It also has a sizable Muslim population, which we experienced when we had our customary breakfast at The Lucky Tea. While in Mae Sot, we spent a lot of time with Outpour Ministries. Outpour minsters in a number of different ways, but their main focus is on helping babies and young children who have been abandoned at the border or sent across by families in order to spare them from the war. They are very nearly finished with the first building of a new ministry center that will include 4 safe houses for children and families. It’s amazing to see the progress they’ve made in just the past couple years. When we visited in 2022, it was just an empty field. It’s exciting to see how the Lord has brought this dream to reality and we can’t wait to see it completed.
After lunch, we hopped back in the vans and headed south to the town of Umphang, where we will be staying with our good friends Oswald and Sriporn, who have faithfully served as our translators for many years and have had a very fruitful ministry, particularly to children. In order to get there though, we had to go through the mountains on a road famous for its 1219 curves! Tune in tomorrow to see if we made it (hint: we did!).
