July 2007

Dear Friends,

During Thai summer (April and May) Rob and I enjoyed a superb tour in the United States with the Thai drama and dance team from the Christian Communications Institute. We saw many of you, and are grateful for all the love shown us and the team by the churches and individuals who hosted us. We made or renewed friendships with many wonderful people. The highlight was performing at the Thai Buddhist Temple in Chicago, where we felt almost like we were in a village in Thailand.

We enjoyed good family time with my parents, our daughter Anna (I camped out in her dorm room at Whitworth and got to see college life from the inside!), and Rob visited with his sibs, and watched his eldest grandson, Ben, graduate from high school. We’re glad the rest of our crew are here in Chiang Mai with us, teaching, helping refugees and internally displaced people in Burma, doing video work, and being delightful parents and grandkids!

Khae( right) with a friend from Japan at the closing party of our international work camp with Keisen University.

Your prayers are being answered. I’m encouraged by signs of strengthened spiritual life on the Payap University campus. A couple students have come to my office for counsel, and then after dealing with whatever was on their mind, they asked how to become a Christian! One of them, Khae, has been interested in the Christian faith for a while. I got to know her three years ago at one of our international work camps. Her Christian friends have been sharing with her, and at this year’s camp she experienced God as real through wonderful answers to prayer. In my office that day, she told me that she’d been reading the Bible more, and realized that if God was really God, she better let God be “the boss” in her life and seek to live according to God’s ways instead of her own. I thought that was a bit of insight that many lifelong Christians could benefit from! It was a joy to pray with her as she took a well-considered step to trust in and follow Jesus as her Savior and Lord. Khae illustrates the kind of gradual relationship-based evangelism that is most fruitful in Thailand (and everywhere?).

Khae is one student who has received some of the best that Payap University has to offer. We have offered an environment where she has discovered and developed her gifts. She is a compassionate young woman who loves serving others, and she has been active as a student leader and a significant help on our work camps. She also illustrates one of the university’s limitations. When government loan options and family support for her education dried up this year, our limited scholarship help was not adequate to enable her to continue studying with us. Khae is now completing her education through an open government university. Because Payap University is a private university and dependent on tuition and fees, we are not able to serve all the students who would like to study with us. We hope to build our endowment for scholarships to a level at which finances would not be a barrier for anyone.

Another sign of spiritual life is a growing number of small prayer and fellowship groups. We started a staff cell group several years ago that has grown, and this year two more staff groups have begun. A group for faculty in our business administration school got started last year, and the nursing school has just begun a group. For many years the nursing students and theology students have had Christian student fellowship groups. Three years ago we started one in the music department and last year we started an international students fellowship and Burmese students group. Our goal is to establish small groups throughout every department and then join them together for occasional worship, fellowship, and service opportunities. Small groups are where real life and love happen. Pray for God’s leading and blessing these groups. Pray also for our Spiritual Emphasis Week from August 6-10. On the last night of the week, we’ll have our first “Wake Up Payap” worship event for all the Christian students on campus to join together in full-on worship and prayer for God to bless Payap University and to use them to show God’s love to their friends and teachers.

Thank you for your prayers and support,

Esther Wakeman

The 2007 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 119

P.S. If you would like to receive a DVD introducing us, Payap University, CCI, and our work, please send me an email at Rob Collins and Esther Wakeman and I'll make sure you get a copy.