A 17-member short-term missionary team recently traveled to the city of Chiang Mai in the northern region of Thailand.  ZOE Children’s Home is located outside the city.  ZOE is committed to caring for orphans and rescuing children from human trafficking.

A highlight of our trip was offering classes to those at ZOE, young and old alike, drawing on the talents and skills of team members.  Classes included art, crocheting, haircutting, storybook making, and English lessons.  I taught three sessions of floristry:  to the children, the youth and the adults.  I helped teach English and I also had the opportunity to teach puppetry to the Ministry School Students, who are part of ZOE’s evangelization outreach team.  We helped paint one of the rooms at the home and we prepared and served a large barbecue for the entire ZOE family.

What was most impactful to me about ZOE was the organization itself.  They take time to explain their goals and their structure.  It is easy to see that they have a firm foundation and a broad framework for the ministry with great potential for growth.  Presently, they have 63 children at the children’s home and hope to have 100 by the end of this year.  Although for safety reasons they could not talk about it much, they are actively rescuing children.

Part of ZOE’s mission is to share the good news of Jesus Christ to a people who have never heard of Him.  Partnering with the local pastors, they go into schools with the ministry teams.  Their preventative education includes teaching children about predators.

Our team went to a school in Chiang Mai and shared about Jesus through songs, a story, puppet show and crafts.  The ZOE outreach team provided preventative education.

We also visited a hill tribe village high in the mountains of northern Thailand and colder than we were prepared for! Upon arriving, we brought gifts to the villagers as we went house to house.  We shared the love of the Lord, prayed for any needs they had, and invited them to come to an outreach event that night at the community center.

That night the ZOE outreach team did most of the event.  Our short-term team sang a couple of songs and tried to stay warm!  Several responded to the message of God’s love that night.

We went to bed in a wooden home with no insulation and an outside squatty potty.  The thermometer dipped into the 30’s that night and no one slept the night through.  Instead of sleeping, we prayed, although some prayed “Lord, let this night be over!”

The next morning we went to the local church.  The pastor came to know the Lord while at university and then came to this village as the only Christian and started a church.  Today, there are several families in his congregation.  Normally we would have gone to a school for an outreach but children were not in class that day so we altered our plans.

Since the church partners with Compassion International, we helped with the Compassion International program which has about 200 children.

Well the 200 showed up and then more kept coming and coming and pretty soon we had about 600 children and 200 adults.  The village has 1000 people so almost the entire village showed up on a Monday morning! We told the story  of Father God’s love towards us, illustrated with a  puppet show.  When it was over, I asked if any wanted to know Jesus and little hands shot up all over the audience.  I asked them to stand so I could see them better.  The whole group stood up and I directed them to the ZOE outreach team members who gathered them in circles to answer questions and pray with them.  There were just under 130 people, mostly children, that fully responded.

We handed the pastor the response cards and he was overjoyed.  Never has the whole village showed up at his church.  As we drove away that day, I thought about how God had miraculously visited that faithful pastor in a most unexpected way, how our congregation on the other side of the world was a part of that miracle for him, and how he did not do anything different to receive the blessing of the Lord: it just happened suddenly!

To see more photos …click here