Prayer Changes Things (Vol. 29)

We just sent a newsletter out a few weeks ago, so this is just a brief update with important prayer points for the next few months.

Praise: God has been very faithful to us that despite continuing to be under funded, we have been provided with many necessities for our life here in Chiang Mai, Thailand. During the most recent outreach in Southern Thailand, we often witnessed God intervene and provide all we needed for our production. We are happy to have over half of the finances we need for this upcoming conference trip to the USA. Give praise to God for all he has done to keep us active in ministry here in Chiang Mai.

Bangkok flooding: Thailand is experiencing the worst flooding in 50 years because of a very wet rainy season and overflowing rivers. Unfortunately, the water has flowed south into Bangkok to get out into the Bay of Thailand. Not only are millions losing everything, hundreds have been killed and there is concern that the entire crop of rice is ruined. Rice is Thailand's greatest export and will have devastating effects on the economy. Please pray for those in charge, and those being effected, that they would come to trust the true Creator and that Thailand would recover from the flood.

Pattani Malay Outreach: .

Steve and the team recently returned from shooting an evangelistic film for a Muslim people group in the south of Thailand. Please pray post-production (editing the film) would continue to go smoothly and that through this evangelistic film many would come to know and understand the Gospel. Among the several million Pattani Malay in Thailand and Malaysia, there are only a few hundred known believers. Pray for a breakthrough in reaching these people and for the handful of faithful missionaries in that area.

Call2All Global Congress in LA: Our family has been asked by our ministry to travel to Los Angeles to participate and present at the Call2All Missions Conference. This is a very strategic meeting of missionaries from all over the world who are interested in completing the Great Commission. As a ministry we are leading the conference's first ever "Media Track" to teach and equip missionaries how to use media to increase the effectiveness of their ministries. We are excited about this opportunity and Steve is one of the event presenters sharing about cross-cultural filmmaking. We are personally short in our finances for this trip, so please pray for the provision we need. Pray for our team to find favor with new partners and to encourage and equip many missionaries there. We will need stamina, focus and unity in the long days ahead

Travel: We will leave for the conference in LA on Monday, November 21st and we will return to Thailand on December 31st. Sometime after December 5th we hope to fly to Boston for a short break to be reunited with family over the Christmas holiday. We are so excited to see Samuel most of all! Please pray for safety in travel on many long flights and layovers and for our timely arrival of our luggage. Continue to pray about our finances as we are hoping to avoid going into debt to cover the travel expenses.

Apartment: Until recently we have been living in two bedrooms in a shared house that serves as Create Thailand's main office in Chiang Mai. This has been a good arrangement during the School of Frontier Media, especially before Allyson, Rachel and Abigail arrived. Now we have rented a little apartment nearby and will be moving in just before we leave for Los Angeles. Having our own apartment will be a great blessing and we are really excited to settle in. There are a few start-up costs including purchases of appliances and furnishings that come with setting up a new home, so please pray for provision there as well. Regrettably, after signing the lease our relationship with our landlady has been unnecessarily strained over some misunderstandings. Please pray for her and for a restored relationship with us in the future. We hope to both call this place our home, and for it to serve as a place of hospitality for our Thai neighbors and missionary colleagues!

School: Through all this travel and transition, Rachel and Abby are working diligently on their homeschool. It's been a lot of work and we are frequently feeling a little discouraged and overwhelmed. Keeping on top of studies during this upcoming trip will be especially challenging. Would you please pray for encouragement and diligence for all of us? Samuel, also, is finding his Sophomore year to be very challenging so he could use prayers as well!

Thanksgiving: In this season of Thanksgiving we give thanks to God Almighty for the provision that has enabled us to achieve this calling on our lives. We know we are extraordinarily privileged to serve God in this capacity as media missionaries and we love our jobs serving the Lord full-time. We also give thanks for you: your prayers and your frequent financial contributions make it possible for us to continue this ministry. May God continue to bless your efforts to give the least reached peoples of the world an opportunity to see and hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ for themselves. Thank you for being a part of our team! Happy Thanksgiving!

Southern Thailand Production Report: Vol. 28 November 2011

Southern Thai Muslim Film Production

In the past three years, Steve has contributed to three different Create International movie productions: Buddhists (Shan 2009), Hindus (Marwari 2010) and now Muslims. We are pleased to report that principal photography is now complete on our most recent production. Through many daunting difficulties and uncertainties, our Father enabled us to produce the first-ever evangelistic film in the Southern Thai dialect, contextualized for muslims in Southern Thailand living on the Malaysian border. As a ministry this may have been the first time we ever auditioned an Imam (Muslim religious leader), or that we were invited to a village by an Imam to shoot a film about the teachings of Isa Al Masih (Jesus the Messiah). Steve was really proud of the contributions of everyone on this production, and especially the SFM students who were on our film team. The film is now in post-production where it will be edited over several months, so you will hear more about it in future. In the meantime, Steve will be publishing one photo per day on Facebook with more details about the production. Thank you again for your prayers and financial support that has enabled us to create this evangelistic film for Muslims to hear the gospel for the first time. Your support will have a direct, lasting impact on muslims in this area.

Flood of the Century

You may have seen in the news that Thailand is suffering from what is being called “The Flood of the Century.” It is certainly the worst flood in recent history, and has had very serious consequences for the whole country. Bangkok’s 12 million residents are under the imminent threat of more flood water, and many places are already below six feet of water that will likely take a month or more to recede. Supermarkets all over the country are growing bare as supply lines have been cut off due to washed out roadways. Please pray for the people of Thailand and especially relief and rescue workers and those making some very hard decisions in the days ahead.

Call2All Global Conference

In our last newsletter we wrote about the upcoming Call2All Global Congress in Los Angeles (call2all.org). Of the $10,000 we require to cover the event and travel expenses, we are pleased to report we have already received sufficient funding for our biggest expense: our roundtrip airfare from Bangkok to Los Angeles. We are now hoping for the other half of our need to cover the roundtrip tickets from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, and for Los Angeles to Boston―as well as the hotel, rental car and meal costs. Thank you for your contributions that have brought us to the halfway point and for those of you who are already contributing to the rest of our need at this time. We depart on November 21st and will need all the funding to come in before then to be credited to our account in time. Your partnership with us will allow us to reach out to many other members of international organizations prepared to use media to share the Good News to more Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims worldwide. In the new few weeks, we are editing a behind-the-scenes video that we’ll share with film professionals in Hollywood to demonstrate how we create cross-culturally relevant evangelistic films. We are also preparing our presentation to train other media missionaries to use our techniques to effectively create evangelistic films. Your prayers and financial contributions are giving us a great shot at multiplying the effectiveness of our ministry a hundredfold. Maybe more. Only God knows, yet we are excited to think about the possibility of many others joining our effort to see more of these films made in the next ten years. Thank you for joining us in this exciting time of growth and expansion for our ministry. "

I have a strong sense from the Lord that this California Congress will help bring each of us into new levels of effectiveness. Opening up possibilities that we have never seen and helping us to achieve the best results possible in our callings." Mark Anderson, President of the Call2all.

Meet Wole, an SFM Student from Nigeria:

Weeks ago while Steve was teaching scriptwriting to many international students, Wole from Nigeria really blessed him by turning in this assignment during a creative exercise. We have his permission to share it with you. Wole writes: “Larry Airington was iCool's best salesman. So, when iCool ( a budding air-conditioning company) got an opening among the Yupik (Alaskan Eskimos), they did not think twice before handing it over to Airington. It was up to Airington to figure out how to sell Eskimos on air-conditioners! That is much like what Steve had to do this week. . . . teaching Scriptwriting to students who'd rather be out in the sun all day shooting video than to spend twenty minutes writing non-stop. However, by the end of the week, Steve's preparation, masterful teaching skills, and fun-pragmatic approach paid-off―every student had 3 or 4 “air-conditioners” all purchased from Steve! Thanks Steve for making authors out of budding directors, actors, gaffers, etc. I learned something new about giving careful attention to your herds this week as I watched our Speaker Steve teach us, interact with us during lunch and dinner, listen to us, go with us to karaoke, do the dishes, etc. I think that is a powerful demonstration of Proverbs 27:23: Be sure to know the condition of your flocks, give careful attention to your herds.” Thanks again, Wole.

Go here to see Steve’s Call2All Conference presenter profile:

http://call2all.org/Groups/1000080183/Call2All/Events/Call2All_Global_Congress/Presenters/Presenters.aspx