The Usual Sunday Morning Crowd

Most of these Shan kids walked about a mile to come to Sunday School. The first contact they had with the Gospel was mid week after-school English and Thai lessons and Saturday morning Bible clubs. Short term teams and individual volunteers from Thailand and other countries have helped the full time workers in reaching out to these children and youths.

Shan Family Development Center

Size of Land: 2,000 Square Meter
Cost of Land: 2.2 Million Baht
Funds Raised: 1 Million Baht (last update June 2008)

We have signed a contract to buy the land along with a deposit of 200,000Baht in June 2008. We are praying that we can fully pay for the land by the end of September 2008.

Vision for the Center
During the past seven years in Mae Sai we have been renting various pieces of property for children and youth ministry and literature production. During these years the Shan population in Mae Sai has been increasing, and the town itself has become more of a center for the wider Shan community.

Therefore we are seeking to purchase a 2000 square meter piece of land with a house on it in order to establish a permanent Shan Family Development Center. The main purpose of the Center is not to draw together all the ministries and house them under one roof. For if we do that, we are limiting our growth to the perimeter of that one land. Our objective is two fold.

1. We want to unify our main resources in one place for the purpose of education, training and providing continual support for the various programs of existing ministries in the different villages.
2. We want to see the Center acting as a place for the equipping and empowering of locals for continual expansion of the ministry to reach more Shan, expanding our reach into new areas of ministry.

Through this Center, we seek to provide better quality long term assistance to Shan students whom we are helping and also be able to organize programs related to health and child rearing to benefit parents as well. As opportunities increase for ministry in Burma it will be possible to organize seminars to help Christians from across the border to establish children's and youth programs there as well.