From Issan to Seattle

We arrived back yesterday to a gorgeous, sunny Seattle morning and awaiting loved ones!

We were all exhausted from our non stop schedule, jet lag and spiritual roll7er coaster of the past ten days .

Yet, as drained as I may be, I cannot help but reflect on what I saw. And while I saw a lot of evil and the worst that humanity has to offer, I also saw the best of God.

I saw God in a determined, charismatic pastor from Phi Mai named Pauline. Pauline gave up a family business, the promise of a secure future and comfortable life to start the FIRST christian church in a part of Thailand that is 99% Buddhist. This church has grown to over 100 members and has created a "cell group" that evangelizes to small, rural villages, in the middle of rice fields, consisting of rice field laborers that have never heard of Christianity. In one village that we visited, 50% of the residents have given their lives to the lord!

I saw God in the faces of Pattaya church members who shared their testimony of being able to go from the entrapment of sex slavery to business owners. These owners now want to grow their businesses so they can hire women out of the sex trade and show the love of Christ.

I saw God in the faces of the care takers at the Pattaya Orphanage. These care takers work day and night to provide a safe, clean home for 100's of children. Many of the babies are left with them because the women had become pregnant while working in the sex trade and, due to Thailand's poor social services, the women have no choice but to give them up. The Orphanage not only provides a great home, it provides education up though college.

These are just a few examples from the spiritual war taking place in Thailand. The devil may be winning this battle, but God will win the war! I will leave you with a quote from Pastor Pauline

"This is a spiritual war, the people of Thailand worship idols and the devil has a friend with the people of Thailand, but this will change, this is our Thailand, our people and Christ will win". Amen.

Craig Little

Back to Bangkok

Thank you for the prayers.... they work!

We had to stay one more night in Pattaya due to the Political Demonstrations in Bangkok....

I need to sign off and will post more later. Sorry.

We need your prayers....

If you are the praying kind, we could use your prayers. It is very hot and humid here, we start our days at 7am and often end at midnight. Most of the team only get 4 hours of rest a night or so... so, needless to say, we are tired and need strength to be able to handle the long days and emotions of what we are seeing.

We have been in Pattaya for 2 days and it is like Las Vegas on crack... to compare it to anything that could give you a sense of what we are seeing. Last night was one of the most difficult nights for all of us. We saw hundreds of Thai girls, many of them 13-15 yrs old, walking hand and hand with white men in the 50s-70s biding time until the inevitable events of the late night. We see girls that have been kidnapped from E. Europe. and forced into sex slavery. We saw Thai boys that were trafficked at the early age of 5 years old because they looked more feminine than the other buys their age.... and were forced to become transvestites and prostitute themselves., usually to gay men. These boys are called "Lady Boys" and often kill themselves at an early age because of what they have lived through.

Words cannot express how bad my heart hurts [as well as our whole team]. I have never felt so burdened like this. We have now seen the full circle from the starting point of the small villages and then seeing the women and men in the bars in Pattaya and Bangkok. It feels like I have walked through the worst nightmare you can ever imagine.

We are spending our last night in Pattaya tonight and catching a flight at 5:45am to Chaing Mai for more business meetings all day. We will arrive back to Bangkok at the Christian House around 10pm.

Please pray for strength for the team.... we need it.

We missed the Elephant

Day 3:

We started our day with a time of worship and morning devotion with the team. Today we traveled around the city of Khorat. [4 Hours North of Bangkok]. We visited a silk factory called Matchada Thai Silk, & then a local family owned pottery business. The people work very long days in the heat doing physical labor. At the silk factory they make about 170 Baht per day [This equals around $4 USA... so, the cost of a Starbucks drink]. We were able to purchase some of the silk scarves that were made. The family that owns the pottery business demonstrated how to make a clay statue from start to finish. They are a family of five, and together make around 500 Baht per day [this equals around $15 USA]. They asked us to pray for them and their business and they were invited to a meeting we were already attending later in the day.

We went to a local mall food court for lunch and ate lunch for $1.50 each.

Then we went back to the hotel for debriefing about our business meetings thus far.

We headed 30 minutes away to a church to meet local business owners. On our way to the meeting Jeff casually asked, "Did you see that elephant walking on the side of the road?" We all said "No!" and began looking out the windows... and he said we had missed seeing it. We were all upset and laughing that Jeff mentioned it after the fact so we unable to enjoy seeing a baby elephant walking on the side of the street.

The meeting at the church lasted around 2 hours. There were 37 Thai people present and half of them owned their own business. Some of the business owners included: Convenience Store owner, Cosmetics sales, Toner Cartridge manufacturer, Pottery shop, Dentist, Herbal Supplement Drinks and more... We asked them many questions and learned more about the obstacles of making a living wage. We are still in the information gathering stage and are beginning to see similar themes throughout each meeting.

We headed back to the hotel and enjoyed dinner together.

Tomorrow we were planning to head back to Bangkok, however, media has suggested there might be political demonstrations and 10,000 cars headed to Bangkok... we may go to Pattaya instead. We will see how the news is in the morning.

Sawadee from Thailand!

DAY ONE:

After 27 Hours of Travel we made it safe and sound to Thailand. We arrived at 2am on March 10th [In Thailand] and the team has checked in to the Christian Guest House in Bangkok. Other than a little sleepy everyone is doing great! We will have a short night of rest before we have a 3 hour drive up North for Business Meetings tomorrow. We will update when we can! Thanks for the prayers!

DAY TWO:

Well, it definitely was a short night sleep... we woke up early for breakfast and piled into two vans. We headed North to Phimai. [It was a 4 Hour Drive]. We stopped halfway and enjoyed lunch and bottled water for under 1 buck per person. Fried rice, chicken, and veggies. We arrived at the Phimai Christian Center where we held a three hour meeting with about 20 people including local business owners, students, and members of the church. Our time and discussion was very enlightening and productive which gave us a better understanding of the need and opportunities for the people there.

Immediately following, we had an opportunity to visit one of the local factories that produces bedding. Then, we took a tour of the incredible ruins, Phimai Historical Park in Nakhon Ratchasima. The ruins were from the 11th century AD.

Pauline, the pastor of Phimai Christian Center invited us to attend a cell group meeting (similar to a bible study). We drove about an hour an half on pretty rough road conditions to a very remote village of only thirty homes. After a deeply moving time of worship and teaching (all in Thai), we had an opportunity to pray for the whole group. We also prayed for a boy who has been blind for sixteen years (please lift him up in your prayers).

After another hour and a half of driving, we arrived in the city of Khorat where we'll be staying for two nights. 

P.S. We have very limited internet access here so updates might not be as frequent as we hoped for.


P.P.S. We wanted to show you some images, but we are having some technical difficulties at this time (AKA super-slow internet).

Our Business Objective

Our objective is to work with partners and agencies across Thailand to help establish sustainable business opportunities that will support the broader program to end human trafficking in this country. Our strategy includes working at certain points of intervention as girls and boys leave home in hope of finding better opportunities and end up in bars, brothels and the streets. Specific areas of focus include the villages of the northeast region Issan (primary region of origination) and the destination city of Pattaya (primary city of focus) where human trafficking is extremely prevalent. The model for this intervention program includes the four areas below.

The business team will focus specifically around education, support and transformation as it applies to identifying scalable and repeatable economic models that replace these brothels and bars. A successful program requires involvement and support across our local partners as well as local non-profit organizations, businesses and the Thai government (Proverbs 15:22).

Our Mission and Vision

Mission
To develop and implement an economically sustainable business program in Thailand that will serve those impacted by human trafficking though the mobilization of the church in conjunction with local professionals, organizations and agencies.

Vision
To change the world by transforming the lives of those who cannot speak for themselves through education, economic opportunity and a stable future.