Spotlight On Missions
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Michael & Laura Beth Strong • Minneapolis, Minn.
It’s a new year, and we are in a time of assessment and planning. I am seeking the Lord as to how He desires to accomplish the work He has for us.
• Ending (And Beginning) On A High Note — We ended the year celebrating the coming of Christ through the incarnation, and we are beginning the year planning in light of His second coming. He has guaranteed success in reaching all His lost sheep with the gospel (Acts 1:8; Revelation 7). That is a truth I hold dear, a truth I have learned to live clinging to each day. It is the promise that empowers our ministry the most in the hard times, the slow times and the days of trouble.
With each passing month in church planting, I have become more sober-minded about the work and what it means to walk by faith in completing it. I sit at my computer today with a peculiar stillness at work in my heart. I am not distraught because I know success is guaranteed — not by me or my efforts, but by King Jesus who has promised to build His church (Matt. 16:18). I’m similarly void of being overjoyed because I have felt the pain the work includes and know, with each passing season, there are hard things that are ahead of us, things God will use for my good, despite some being meant by others (human or spiritual) for evil (Gen. 50:20; Rom. 8:28). So, by God’s grace, I woke up and spent time talking and listening to God, and He reminded me it is not an “off” day. It’s another day to take up my cross and follow King Jesus.
• Will you pray for us? — Would you please pray for us to make connections? Would you also pray for the Lord to lead us into effective gospel conversations where His Spirit will be at work bringing about salvation and new birth? Would you pray for each person who goes out to have confidence in our Lord and His Word? We desperately need the prayers of the saints on our behalf. It is very dark in Minneapolis and the Twin Cities metro. Thank you for praying for us.
• A Major Opportunity: Good Friday Service — I left the prayer request above the same as last month. I see no need to change it. We still need connections, gospel conversations, boldness and confidence to share the hope we have in Jesus, and, on top of that, a growing desire to be “All In” with King Jesus at all times. But I would like to add a praise and another prayer request. We have been asked by the church that lets us use their building, along with the other church plants and ministries that also meet there, to oversee this year’s joint Good Friday Service. It is an awesome responsibility and one I do not take lightly. I usually attend and serve however we may be called to in these services but have not sought to be the lead on one.
Worship is very important to me, and I have some culturally counterproductive views on how that worship should be administered based on the Word. To accomplish this goal, I will be asking the other groups to embrace a longer sermon, a breakout group Bible study at the end of the service, and a mostly more hymn-based music selection. I do not desire to stand in the way of anyone worshipping God with all they are. At the same time, I want to honor God and lead the sheep He has given me to serve in a way that elevates the Word to what I believe is its rightful place.
Each of the churches value the Word and care deeply about how worship is administered, and each of the churches loves Jesus and loves the other churches. My issue is less about what we are doing differently and more about feeling inadequate to serve everyone well. So, will you pray for my faith? Will you pray for my heart? I need to trust the Word that says it is Jesus, not me, that builds His church. I need to trust the Word when it says the Holy Spirit is not able to be controlled or summoned but is like the wind and comes from who knows where and falls on whomever He chooses. I need to believe the Holy Spirit convicts, renews, restores, gives life and heals, not me. I need to be free in my heart and mind to study the Word, be faithful in exegeting and preparing to teach it and leave the results to God and God alone. I need to seek God for love for those who will attend, but especially love for the God we gather together to worship and to focus on pleasing Him rather than trying to figure out how to get to a specific response or outcome.
Thank you for your prayers.
As I have been praying and seeking God for a text, I settled on John 17 — Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer. This is the prayer He prayed before He went to the garden to pray and prepare for His betrayal, unrighteous trial and crucifixion. My prayer is each person will see the heart of King Jesus, our Perfect High Priest, as we unpack what was on His heart and mind at that time. More than just seeing His heart, my hope is all who hear will understand how wonderful He really is and love Him more after the service than when they arrived. Only God can accomplish that feat. Anything I write will feel like it is too weak, simple, wordy or confusing to accomplish it, so I need to really know He can do miracles with a sinful, weak, simple man’s work. He has done it before, and He will do it again. That is my hope.
Here’s to a year of looking forward to watching God do more than we can ask or imagine.
Thanks again for your prayers and financial support. We praise God for His care through you. And all the souls who now know Jesus because of your partnership in taking the gospel to Minnesota also thank you. God has given us a unique ministry. We serve in a hard part of a hard city. Overcoming the challenges of poverty, broken homes, incarceration, mental illness, physical illness and violent crime keeps some groups and individuals from coming to join us to serve here. I get that, but it doesn’t have to keep us from reaching the people of North Minneapolis together. Thanks for considering partnering with us.
Siripong & Jessie’s Yaebeang • Thailand
We hope it has been a good new year for you thus far. We don’t know about you, but we have felt like January has lasted forever! Here are a few recent updates about our live and ministry here in Bangkok, Thailan:
• Ouan’s first sermon — I mentioned last time that there were a few people from our church that have been given opportunities to practice preaching. This month, it was Ouan’s turn to preach. This was his very first sermon! He preached from Col. 2:6-10 and we thought he did a good job, especially with it being his first time preaching. After the service, some of us men got to debrief and give him some feedback on the sermon. To be honest, as a pastor and someone who has been helping these guys prepare their sermon, I was probably more nervous than they were! I praise God for these men. Please pray for them.
• Pray for Ann — Ann has come to our church a few times now. She is friends with the guy in the picture, who is a member of our church. We invited them to our home one day. I gave her a Bible with a piece of paper (that I created for those who have never read the Bible before as an initial guideline) titled, “Where should I start reading?” I encouraged her to read according to that list and ask any questions that she may have.
To my surprise, she came back a week later saying she had read every day and finished everything on the list! It’s a lot because it consists of the birth, death and resurrection of Christ from the Gospel accounts, plus the book of John, Acts and the sermon on the mount! We hope to continue talking to her and sharing the gospel with her. Please pray for Ann’s salvation.
• Our neighbor at church — We haven’t seen our neighbor — her name is hard to spell in English because you don’t have that sound and the closest would be pronounced “Dom” — in some time, so Jessie went to check on her on a Saturday and invited her to church. We were thrilled to see her and her son at our church the next day! That was their very first time to attend a church service. They heard us sing, read the Scripture, pray and preach the gospel. We don’t know if/when they will come back again but pray that God will continue to give us the opportunity to be a good witness to her.
• New book (2nd Edition) — We recently received some copies of my book as a gift from the publisher. It’s the second edition of my devotional book. There are minor changes as far as the content inside, but the outside cover is completely different now. We already gave some away to people from our church and the publisher will work on distributing it to various bookstores. In this book, each day the readers will be meditating on scripture from both the Old Testament and New Testament, while understanding the meaning as well its application. Please pray that the Lord will use this book to draw readers closer to him through His Word.
• New member(s) — We rejoiced to welcome a few new members to our church family. They have been coming to our church for some time now, so we are glad they officially decided to be a part of the body. They are still several people that have been attending but haven’t joined due to different circumstances. Please pray for them. For a lot of Christians here, church membership and the thought about seriously committing to a church is still relatively new.
• New Worship Team — Last month, a member of our church who helped lead worship suddenly left our church to go a different one. In a small church plant like ours, it makes a big impact when things like this happen. So, in the past month or so, we’ve been seeking out and encouraging others from our body to fill in these roles. By God’s grace, we have not only one, but two new guys that have stepped up and have been helping us lead worship — one guy plays the guitar and the other sings. Both are doing a wonderful job. I’m thankful for them. Though it’s not completely the same context, it reminds me of a Thai saying that goes, “Tough situations can create heroes.” There are still other roles and responsibilities in the church that we need help with, so please pray that God will raise up people for those tasks.
• New Ministry — It has always been my passion to not only preach and teach faithfully, but also to train other Thai pastors to do the same. So, we are excited to announce that we are planning on launching a new ministry called “Thai Expositor Ministries” to equip, encourage and energize Thai preachers to faithfully preach the Word of God. (The name, the logo and other details are still a work in progress).
One main thing I plan to do through this ministry is to host preaching seminars/trainings, both at our church in Bangkok and different parts of Thailand. Moreover, I hope to assist Thai pastors/preachers I have met through these trainings and help them to fulfill their calling in any way I can.
We are currently looking at some dates to host the first preaching seminar under this new ministry. We were going to host one within the first few months of this year, but there are several changes at the church at the moment that need special attention, so we are looking at pushing it back a few more months. We will keep you posted. Please pray for the effort of this new ministry, alongside other responsibilities that we already have going on.
• Visitor/Ephesians 4 feedback — As I preach each Sunday, it’s not very often that people will want to keep talking to me and other members about the sermon they just heard. But since I started Ephesians 4, I praise God to see that He is doing some great work in the hearts of several people. The last few times I have preached, at least a few people have come up and shared how God has worked in their heart. A lady who lives nine hours south of where we are joined us one Sunday because she was in town for work. She told me, almost in tears, that she has been struggling in the areas that the sermon addressed that day. I’m excited to see what the Lord has in store for us in the rest of Ephesians 4 and the rest of the book. Please pray both for me and all those who will hear His Word.
• Visitors — Due to the distance, it’s very rare that any of our supporters from the US happen to be in this part of globe, but we rejoice whenever it happens. Recently we got to see and spend some time with Sean and his family while they are visiting Thailand. They got to join us for worship and met several of our people. We are grateful for them, and all of you who are standing beside us in our lives and ministry. May the Lord bring some of you our way in the future!
• Children’s Day — Children’s Day in Thailand always falls on the second Saturday of January. The schools will not have teaching on that particular day, but provide a full day of fun activities and give away gifts for the kids. Our church was able to go to a school that one of our member’s sons is attending and give some gifts to the kids on behalf of “North Bangkok Church,” as well as play some games with the students there.
Mickeal & Sharon Quillman • Zambia
Good things are happening! January and the start of February have been exciting and busy for us here in Zambia. We are still seeing God work in an amazing way. I love when things begin to happen that can only be a result of the power and authority of the One True God. We continue to see new souls reached with the gospel of Jesus Christ weekly, and the strongholds of the evil one beginning to break down.
We have reached into 17 villages now, with 14 of those making the walk to our first church, Chabantu Missionary Baptist Church. (It was 107 degrees this past week, too!) When planting season and “rainy season” ends, we will start new Bible study groups in many of these villages. Our prayer is that these Bible study groups will become future church plants. Many of those currently attending the church services are walking from 45 minutes up to 2 hours so they can attend.
This past Sunday, we had 102 people for services. Imagine 102 people praising God on a dirt floor in a building that is just under 700 square feet. It is a mixture of beautiful voices praising the God they have just come to know in a cloud of dust. Our current Bible study group meeting in the church building is growing weekly. Our members continue to invite their friends and family to come and see what God is doing, and people are responding. We had a workday this last week to clear some land beside the church building, and over 200 people showed up to help.
Speaking of the church building, we put new doors on the building and have begun leveling the dirt floor to be ready for cement. We are also hoping to be able to put glass in the windows in the coming months. This will help keep some of the animals and bugs out of the building, although I have become quite used to preaching/teaching while a chicken, goat, dog and the occasional pig wanders through. A few cows have poked their heads into the doorway to check us out, but they must be from another denomination because they don’t stay for long.
We have also started building toilet facilities for the church. We built a small “mud and stick outhouse” a few months ago, but it needs an upgrade. We have one hole dug, 10 feet deep by 10 feet wide and 16 feet long. This will allow us to build concrete-style outhouses over them. We made over 800 concrete blocks to be used for this structure, and we will begin making more concrete blocks for the other two toilets in the upcoming weeks. These will be the only toilets for any of the communities around us. These are very important for us, not just for privacy and convenience, but for health reasons. Since December, we have been battling a cholera outbreak here in Zambia. God has continued to protect us here where we are serving, but just a couple hours north of us, there have been several deaths reported.
Another area we are assisting the community is through a school for the local children. In order to attend school, the children, starting at age 4, walked for over 1 hour 30 minutes — this is if they attended school. The local leaders reached out to Sharon and me to see if we would advise them to start a school close by the church. Our primary goal here is not to build schools but to bring the gospel and make disciples. However, to reach people, you must walk alongside them. Discipleship is a life-on-life experience and truly caring for not only for their eternal needs but also their current needs. We see Jesus walking with His 12 disciples, sharing meals with them, training and discipling them so they could be shaped into His image. We currently have over 100 children enrolled in the school, Chabantu Baptist Academy, and they are meeting in the church building. The children attend weekly Bible studies as part of their curriculum.
This last week, we spent time cutting down trees to make poles for another structure so we could spread the children out for better learning. I had a small chainsaw I thought could do the job, but I soon discovered it wasn’t the “little engine that could.” So, several men took turns with a homemade axe and finally got the trees down and trimmed up into poles. We will purchase blue tarps in town to serve as walls this week. The toilets I mentioned will also be for the students and teachers during class.
Right now, the children only go to class for a half day as we cannot yet afford to provide for them. We were given a plot of land for the school to plant a field with corn and vegetables and pray that by the next school term, we will have enough food to feed the kids. The field was another praise for us. Not only was the land given, but we had the community come together to prepare the field and plant it. Everyone came with their oxen and plows and finished the 15 acres in less than 2 hours!
I mentioned the rainy season in quotes earlier for a good reason. It is called the rainy season because this is the only time of year we receive any rain; but for the last 3 years, Zambia has been getting less than 50% of the usual rainfall. Please pray that God will open the clouds and allow us to receive abundant rain in the next few weeks. The food stores here are already dangerously low, and another poor season would be devastating. The corn fields are already beginning to burn up and turn yellow from lack of rain, and irrigation is just not available. We have one well, known as a borehole here, for people within about an hour’s walking distance. Most of the people within the villages cannot miss any more meals because they are already close to starvation.
Please join us in praising God for all the souls being saved, the new choir team for the church, the new floor for the church and the toilets being built. We also ask you to pray with us for rain, for the five men being trained as pastors, for the cholera outbreak to end and for the stronghold of the witch doctors to continue to be broken.
Our needs for this ministry are a larger chainsaw, benches for the church, glass panes for the church windows and acoustic musical instruments for the church. (pastorquill@gmail.com)