letter from Missionary Paul Kim

Dear Friends,

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY! Thank you for supporting and praying for Thailand, which means land of freedom.

SARAH AND THE KIDS are on an unofficial visit back to California; they will be back home on August 19. “Unofficial” means they did not use GP funds; Sarah’s sister purchased the plane tickets for them. They do not have a car or a cell phone; if you would like to visit them please plan to pick them up and drop them off. I’m pretty much out of Bangkok most of the summer working with visiting mission teams. I am happy to host them, and still try to maintain my weekly ministry duties.

LOTS OF VISITORS

My brother, Daniel (see photo above), who teaches Old Testament at Covenant Seminary (St. Louis) visited on June 1 – 6 and taught an entire class (30 hours of class time) in our seminary, while I acted as the sole translator; that’s my dad’s idea of a good family reunion.

A team from Pilgrim Church in New Jersey visited on June 2 – 12, teaching English, playing with the orphans, visiting a village of the Karen hilltribes near Myanmar, and also taking our center a step closer to going green with a gift of three push reel lawn mowers. See the photo on the left by Rev. Joseph Chu. Next step, wind mills and solar panels! Their senior pastor, Rev. Paul Yang, is the chairman of the international board for GP.

GP Thai had our annual conference (ARESCO) in Cha-Am, a beach city in southern Thailand, from June 15 – 17. Against my express wishes, they decided to make me the GP Thai Field Coordinator, which means I’ll have to cut down on my regular ministry duties; my job description is the run errands for the Field Director.

A group of 12 high school students and graduate student TA’s from Washington Leadership Academy (Dr. Myung-Ken Lee, Mercy Corps) visited on June 13 – 19. They taught English and played with the orphans, but also devoted a lot of time for field visits and seminars, and even a research paper at the end; the program was designed to encourage students to learn some of the international issues NGO’s are concerned with in Thailand, and apply what they learn here; some have started high school clubs in the past. See the photo above right by Christina Yoon.

I’m in the middle of helping my parents host a 120-member international mega-team of church leaders from Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines and Thailand; they are here from June 29 – July 15. We’re doing a lot of simultaneous translations. A team from OM/Doulos ship will be in Chonburi Center from August 17 – 23, hanging out with the seminary students (English Camp, basically) and leading our weekly services and outreach events. Then a team from New York Presbyterian Church will visit on August 4 – 15 (Rev. Daevid Yoon, English Ministry).

GLOBAL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY: I am teaching Ecclesiology and Eschatology, as well as Beginning New Testament Greek. It’s fun to teach Greek in Thai; you should try it. Special thanks to John Chen for the helpful digital resources.

Please pray that God will help the various teams to learn about His work here.

In Christ,
Paul Kim