Dear Friends and Partners in Ministry,

By the time you receive this newsletter, five months will have passed since our arrival in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Those five months have clearly been a time of blessing for us here: our settling in, the provision of housing and friends, steady progress in language learning, a church home, schooling for the children, and exciting new experiences of many sorts.

The time has come to update you on the nature of the work we will eventually be doing here in this northern part of Thailand. The Christian Volunteers in Thailand program (which Glen will be directing) is almost 40 years old and is a precursor to our own PC(USA) Young Adult Volunteers program. It was developed by PC(USA) missionary Konrad Kingshill as a vehicle for getting young Americans into short-term positions in the mission field and to assist the Church of Christ in Thailand in developing their schools. At the time, Kingshill was serving as the director of English language programs of the Church of Christ in Thailand.

Over the years, the program has provided extensive support for the English language teaching programs of the Church of Christ in Thailand (CCT) schools. A typical assignment has been for young Presbyterian teachers to spend two years "team teaching" with Thai English teachers. They are provided two months of Thai language and culture studies, a place to live, and a nominal salary (commensurate with their Thai colleagues). These "short-term" missionaries are tasked with: assisting the Thai teachers of English in the actual teaching and lesson planning; broadening the teachers’ knowledge of teaching styles and methodologies; helping to form English language clubs for students; leading Bible studies; and assisting in local CCT congregations.

Why the stress on teaching English? English has established itself as the language of business and commerce in most of the world. In order to compete in the world market today, young people need to be conversant in at least English as well as their "heart language." With the increasing dependence on the Internet (primarily an English-language medium) a working knowledge of the language is essential. But there is also a wonderful element of faith development in this program as well. The English language programs make an excellent means of evangelism, since the Scriptures can be used as a textbook and Bible clubs can be used to evangelize the large Buddhist population in the Christian schools (estimated to be approximately 80 percent). Each year the schools carry out a weeklong revival in which the English teachers become deeply involved. The director of the Office of the Education Ministry (which overseas this program) is a product of that evangelistic revival and is therefore deeply committed to this program. All in all, the entire program is a vital part of the Thai educational system, receiving the support of the government here as well as the strong support of the churches.

We covet your willingness to pray for our work here, particularly in the areas of adjustment and language learning. Our primary task, in this first year, is to learn the Thai language—a "tonal" language. Additional prayer concerns are for emotional, spiritual, and physical health for our family members back in the United States.

Please do not hesitate to post this letter on your church’s bulletin board, to use any portion of it for mission interpretation, to utilize it in your personal devotional and prayer time, or to raise the issue of "missionary support" in your respective congregations.

If you are interested in learning more about the development of this ministry we invite you to consider the following possibilities for partnership: Prayer Partners, E-mail Updates, Supporting Friends and Congregations, and the Mission Connections Program. If you’d like additional information about how you can be praying with and for us, be kept better informed, or be financially involved, then drop us a line and let us know. We value the opportunity to partner with you and keep you informed as to the wonderfully exciting work being done in this part of God’s wonderful creation.

In His Vineyard on Your Behalf,

Glen, Carol, Zach, Natalie, Jacob, and Caleb Hallead