Dear Friends & Partners In Ministry,
I am in the final planning stages of traveling to the Annual Global Impact Conference (GIC) that I have the opportunity to participate in at our home church in Birmingham, AL at Shades Mountain Baptist Church every February. I am very grateful that my home church provides the resources needed for me to make this trip each year. Thank you Jeremy and Pastor Danny and all those who make this happen. It is a great time to celebrate with others what God is doing all over the world. It is a great time to share with others about what our awesome God is doing in and around Northern Thailand. And it is a necessary time to be recharged and refreshed in our heart to serve the Lord in this needy part of God’s world.
Over the last several years, we have taken some additional time to travel around to various churches and host a few “Taste of Thailand” events and we have been able to bring at least one of our Thai staff with us. This has been a very good thing. It gives our key Thai partners a chance to be exposed to “church life” in America, to speak specifically on what they see God doing in Thailand, to learn new ways of doing things, and to help them work more effectively with our partner teams and volunteers that come out to Thailand to help the ministry. This year as we prayed about whom the Lord would have us consider taking, the Lord made it clear to us that it should be our newest Staff Member – Garn.
We are very grateful that God sent us a very talented and godly young man to serve along side of us and help fill several leadership roles related to working with our young people and leading our whole worship ministry. This is a picture of Garn. He is not originally from Northern Thailand at all but is what we would call a “Bangkokian.” He is from the Central Thai people group. He has been serving with us for a little over a year now and is a great blessing to the work of NTIM, Baan Athitaan Church, and Grace Language School.
Like all of the other full time Thai staff folks, Garn is a first generation believer. In his “former” life, he was the singer/leader of a rock band and grew to love music and enjoy singing. Now God has taken this love for music and given Garn the opportunity to use his gifts and talents for the expansion of the kingdom of God and for the building up of His body.
We have written this update to give you a chance to be a special part of supporting and sending Garn to several mission events with me in America. Even as I write this email Garn is putting her paperwork together to request a tourist visa from the U.S. Consulate in Chiang Mai. He will be traveling to Chiang Mai tomorrow because he is scheduled for an interview at the U.S. Consulate on January 15 to request a visa to travel to the USA with me. Please remember to pray for God’s open door to with me. It will be a great blessing in Garn’s life and help him to know, to understand, and to serve our Lord better with internationals and international teams that come out to Thailand. We are anticipating that total costs associated with Garn for this trip to be approximately $3,000. Would you like to express your love and affirmation of sending Garn to America by sending a donation to NTIM with the note “Send Garn.” It would really mean a lot to us and to Garn if we were able to raise all of this in the next 3 weeks. Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Your Servant to Nations in and Around Northern Thailand for Jesus,
Michael Johnson
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Donations can be sent to: Northern Thailand Impact Ministry (NTIM),P.O. Box 26115, Birmingham, AL 35260 USA or given online at our main website: www.gontim.org
NTIM is a non-profit 501(c)(3)charitable organization based in the USA. We are committed to connecting people in need with people who care and are focused in the heart of Southeast Asia where poverty is high, education is low, needs are great, darkness is everywhere, and the love and message of Jesus is needed to transform lives.