Dear Friends and Family,
Blessed Christmas and a joyous New Year ahead! What a year it has been for us as the pandemic winded down and ministry ramped up. God has been giving us lots of new things to do and it has been a very exciting time of learning, serving, and being blessed.
Mission Trip from Singapore
After hosting teams from Canada and America, it was the most exciting for us to receive a team from SINGAPORE! This month, we hosted a mission team from RiverLife Church that served with us for a week! It’s so refreshing to serve alongside fellow Singaporeans from our home church. During this trip, one of the goals was to help declutter and refurbish our community center. Our community centre is very old and cluttered from years of ministry. The RiverLife team was very committed to helping us have a more conducive space for ministry, and to store our equipment and supplies more efficiently. We are so thankful for their tireless work! We could even put a sofa in our supplies room for volunteers to rest.
Community Centre Christmas Party
The RiverLife team played huge roles in our annual Christmas party for the community! This is the first time since covid that we had a big party (in the past 2 years, we split up into mini parties over a week). The team whipped up delicious Singaporean food, did a Gospel skit, and helped with the logistics, AV, and setup of the whole event. We saw an amazing crowd of more than 80 kids AND their families joining us for the party. As the gospel message was preached, we saw people on the streets listening as well. With our small staff team, we would not have been able to pull this off without the support of the RiverLife team, and our social enterprise staff coming in as volunteers as well.
Home Visits
One of the most encouraging moments was when we did home visits with the mission trippers. Over the past 2 years, the mission trippers from RiverLife church in Singapore have been doing monthly zoom sessions with many families in our community. We had many touching moments when some of these families could finally meet their Singaporean friends face-to-face for the first time (some of them couldn’t believe their eyes LOL). The Singaporeans were warmly welcomed into their homes and it felt like they were meeting old friends. Through happy tears, the families also welcomed prayer from the trippers. On hearing the news that the Singaporeans are coming, two families even came together voluntarily to cook dinner for the team!
When we embarked on the “Missions from Home” zoom befriending project for the first time in 2020, we wondered many times if the idea would be fruitful. No one had done this before. Two years later, we finally saw how all the hours building relationships on zoom have definitely not gone to waste! This experience has shown us a new model for short-term missions. Short-term mission trippers would typically meet the locals for the first time during the trip itself. Before deep relationships can be built, the trip would have been over. Covid helped us to see the beauty of a new ministry approach where we build the relationship first before the trip itself, and we are excited to see how it impacts our ministry in the long run.
Social Enterprise Updates
God has been really good to our social enterprise team this year, with a good flow of revenue-generating projects, and many opportunities to serve and love. We received our first intern from Chiang Mai University and currently serve as a team of 8. We managed to tide through the many challenges with God’s strength. We end the financial year with a small amount of surplus and we are excited about the new projects we are going to start next year!
Our staff ran many web design and graphic design courses for youths over the year, reaching more than 40 youths and kids. We have also been partnering with ministries in Thailand to help them build up their branding and websites. We ended the year with a round of appraisals, and one consistent feedback from all the staff was how much they feel loved and challenged by the office culture that developed by God’s grace. We love that the culture we’ve built is one that speaks of God’s love while emphasizing the importance of growing in Christ-likeness at the workplace.
How can you pray for us?
After a long challenging Covid period, we experienced a great year of ministry in 2022. As we reflect on the year, we have so much to thank God for. Pray for us as we prepare for next year!
- Community centre: Pray for us as we “reset & renew” in the new year.
- Social enterprise: Pray for more new projects
- Both teams are going on our annual year-end Christmas break. Pray for good rest and that we will return refreshed in the new year.