Kindle a fire
That’s what we did for the following years! With small teams of two or three we prayed in the streets, we met with teams to worship on the highways and byways and shared the love of God to people whenever there was a chance. God spoke to us to have a place in Pattaya City - a place of Worship and Mission! Not only going with teams, but to establish a branch to live in Pattaya permanently. A vision from God was received and born. Having a place where people worship Jesus and host Gods powerful presence by creating this altar of praise and prayer for the city (worship), and then carry Gods power and presence to the people in the streets (mission).
Today we are aiming towards making this vision come true. We decided to take our 'Revival School on the Move' from Bangkok to Pattaya to ‘make camp’ in the city. In 2018 our students spent three weeks in Pattaya, in the next years we will increase the time of our stays and we started looking for a place to rent or to buy in Pattaya already. We will start with the Revival School on the Move, but it’s always about 'Worship and Mission'!
Having an outreach-team of our Revival School from Germany coming modelled this very well:
Make a difference
When we received the team of the Revival School they all were welcomed with this very phrase on a card: ‘You make a difference’. You heard that before? Sure - the chances are hight that you did. Making a difference is easy to say but how can you actually measure the imprint of affect to make? Well, there is a sweet story of a young boy walking the beach recognising the starfishes a strong tide had washed on the shore. In the heat of the sun they would become dry and surely die soon. There were thousands of them and he started picking them up and throwing them back into the sea. A man walking by also saw the thousands of starfishes on the beach and finally asked the boy: ‘Don’t you see these thousands of starfishes? Do you really believe you can save them all?’ The boy just had picked up another starfish and looked at it while holding it in his hand. Then he replied: ‘I don’t know if I can save them all, but can save this one!’ And with these words he hurled that starfish into the waves.
Being in Pattaya City sometimes looks like the shore in this story: There are more than 30.000 prostitutes living and working in the bars and literally lining up at the beach. There are hundreds of thousands of tourists coming from all over the world. Ten-thousands of Thais working and living in Pattaya hope to make some easy and fast money. Can we save them all? Jesus can! He is able. As we go there, we start doing it like the little boy: Picking one precious person after the other, sharing testimonies of the life-changing love of Jesus from heart to heart.
You can click here to read some testimonies from the amazing outreach we had in October.
Keep the fire burning
The decision has been made - we will sent Simon, who grew up in our fellowship in Luedenscheid and did the Revival School on the Move in 2017, with a team to Pattaya to establish a new and permanent branch of HELP International Thailand in Pattaya City. Starting with hosting trimesters of the school we want to see the vision of Worship and Mission come true and unfold in Pattaya. Jesus is absolutely in love with the people and we can sense that the time to invest in Pattaya is now. In the last months things are changing in the city where missionaries have ministered and prayed for years and years. To hear their recent testimonies proves how God increases his mercy over the city. Thai people are more open for Jesus and hungry for an encounter with his power than ever. Recently several hundred of people made a decision to follow Jesus on one day as 4000 christians flooded Pattaya to proclaim Jesus and share the Gospel. 
We want to train Jesus-lovers to reach out to those people for the reason of the promise of Isaiah 61: ‘The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to grant to those who mourn in Zion— to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.’
Serving the ‘brokenhearted’, the ‘captives’, the ‘bound’ and those ‘who mourn’ is what the Holy Spirit has anointed us for. You can easily find these kind of people in Pattaya and there is a message of hope: We go to Pattaya to ‘bring good news’ and to proclaim God’s favour and in the end we will see Jesus being glorified in Pattaya!
Join in
As we prepare to take these steps and to make the vision reality we also need wisdom and help on so many levels. You are very welcome to stand with us in prayer. We need favour and wisdom to get a house or a suitable place to stay in Pattaya, we need finances and resources and also we need people to join the team.But what we already have fascinates us: We do have a vision! It’s a vision of making the difference for a single person. It’s a vision to join the desire of the transformation of a whole city from darkness to light. The vision is simple and yet great - because we count in the power of the love of Jesus to impact peoples lives.
The vision sounds like this:
Establishing more Worship and Mission in Pattaya City … ‘that He may be glorified.’
You are welcome to join in!
