I love being in Thailand. The longer I am here, the fonder my heart grows for the people.  The Thais need Jesus!!!  But, there is a specific group of thais that I would like to write about….the prostitutes. I have a challenge for you tonight. Later this evening a large group of us consisting of Christina and me, a visiting team from South Africa and Bible School students will be heading to the streets to minister to the prostitutes. This will be a brand new experience for all of us.

So this is my challenge to you…Please pray for us while we are out. We will be gone from 8 o’clock pm (3 hours from now) to probably 10:00 or 11:00. If you could stand with us in prayer for those few hours it would be appreciated so much. And it would be even more encouraging if you could leave a comment on this post letting me know that you will be praying. That way I can let our group know. Also, I know that I don’t need to mention this, but, please don’t just pray for us, but pray for the women we will be talking with. Pray that they would realize that they can be set free in Jesus’ name! That there is hope for them!

Thank you so much!

How can one express the sweetness of Christ’s love? Are there words? Because when I try to describe His ever steady and unfailing love…I am speechless.  And when I think of how he has made me his daughter and the bride of his Son, I am so overwhelmed that all I can do is smile and cry. What have I done to deserve this love?  Have I not sinned against him and broken his laws? Have I not broken his heart with my rebellion? So why has he placed me in such a place of honor and trust? His love is just sometimes…unexplainable.

Wow! Today marks 1 month and 12 days that I have been here in Thailand already, and, I can honestly say that everything is going very well. I can’t imagine being anywhere else at this moment in time. God has been so good to open my heart and show me things that I have never seen or experienced before.

Quite a bit has been happening here in the last couple of weeks. On the 11th and 12th, a few groups of students from one of the schools in Hat Yai came to our house to interview me for an English project. Long story short, It ended up that most of their questions were about Jesus and how to have a relationship with Him! And because there were a few groups from the same class, the Gospel was shared with their class probably 3 or 4 times!

Then, on the 14th, the team took the Bible students from Hat Yai on a retreat to the Pruett family’s house in Naratiwat. It was so much fun! I was able to reconnect with some of the students that Dad and I had met in January and hung out with them for a few days. It was an encouraging time together as brothers and sisters in Christ.  I also got to help Mrs. Pruett at their coffee shop which was opened a few months ago. That was also a lot of fun.

On the 17th, I went to a village with the Garsee family, called Ow Luk (at least that’s how I think it’s spelled). Being with Garsees and in Ow Luk was also a really neat experience. One evening we went to a rubber tree farm to show the Jesus Film to about 60 people. After the movie, we prayed for some people who needed healing in their bodies and guess what….they were healed!! And not only that, 22 people raised their hands to accept Christ as their Savior!  We just kept thanking the Lord because it was nothing that we did that could have turned their hearts towards Him.

Well, those are the biggest things that have been happening around here lately. I’m still taking Thai and doing outreach and helping Mary Beth with her children. And tomorrow morning I start teaching Sunday school class at church!

I’m sorry there are no pictures this time. I can’t find my camera cord!

And Oh! Did I mention that I just got back from learning how to drive a motor scooter???   God bless!

Hello from Thailand!!! I am officially here . Wow, what a great journey to a great place filled with great people.  It feels so good to be back with Brian & Mary Beth (MB) and their family again.  Tonight we had a very nice fellowship, worship, and prayer time with the Garsee family and Christina (fellow single girl ) I truly believe that the presence of the Lord was and is with us. It was encouraging to be with everyone.

 I haven’t really taken any pictures yet, but, I hope to start tomorrow. I did put one up of my little friend though – www.megan-picturesfromthailand.blogspot.com .

Thank you every one again for your prayers! I apologize if this post was poorly written, but, I am struggling with heavy jet lag at the moment.  

And oh, did I mention that it’s very hot here????…and that I have no air conditioning in my room? Thank the Lord for fans!!

As this post is written, my father, Tom, and my brother, John, are in Sudan with the rest of our team coordinating and distributing food, clothes, blankets, hoes, seeds, and other essential items to more than 1,200 people in the Internally Displaced People’s Camp in Loka. As far as we know, everything is going very well. As of a day or two ago, GRN had also been able to hire a team to dig a desperately needed water well in the area. We were able to work with a group from Yei, Sudan to dig the well. My Dad called yesterday at the moment they hit water and it was almost too hard to hear his voice because of the sound of water spraying everywhere! We praise the Lord for His goodness. Thank you so much for your prayers!

Without your financial help and prayers this distribution could not have taken place. Thank you for your help. It is very much appreciated!

Please continue to pray for my father and brother as they are in Sudan. We look forward to being able to share much more information with you about how the distribution went when they come home. God bless you!

Progress Report! – Right now I am working on getting my visa application out so I can actually get into Thailand. I am praying that it goes through smoothly and without a hitch. I am also praying that they will grant my request for two visas instead of just one because one is only good for 60 days or something. If I am able to get two, the process of trying to stay longer will not be as much of a hassle.

Prayer Need – In the past few days I have been chatting with the family I  will be staying with, and I have found out that they have opened their home to two young Thai girls (ages 10 and 9). These girls come from a very sad home situation. Their father is a drug addict, their mother is a prostitute, their grandfather is a alcoholic and the grandmother is so old and feeble that she can barely move. They also have several younger siblings that have no clothes and their playground is a dump. The youngest is a year old. 

The Lord has softened the parents hearts enough to allow the two oldest girls to leave so they can finally go to school. They had their first day yesterday!  It is everyone’s prayer that these girls will be able to lead a new life and come to know Christ as their Lord and Savior. Not to mention that is our prayer for the whole family. It would be wonderful to see God free them all from the life that they are currently leading. 

Because the oldest children are no longer at home, there is the concern that the other children are not being taken care of at all. The 10 year old had pretty much become their mother because the real mother is barely ever home. 

When you think about this family, could you please lift them up in prayer? This is just one family out of so many in Thailand that need Jesus.  Please also pray that the Lord will give the Stubenrauchs and Pii Thak (single Thai women that I will be sharing a house with) wisdom and discernment with these girls. I would also appreciate prayer because i have learned that I will be with these girls a lot and I really want to be a good example to them of Christ and as a sister and friend. Thank you!

I have some wonderful news to share. GRN has raised almost $20,000 for the IDP Camp in southern Sudan!!! This is truly an act of the Lord. It has been amazing of how many people have responded so quickly to reach out to these people. To date we have been able to give about 200 children food supplements!  Pretty soon my father and my brother will be going back to get everything else. And praise God, we will also be able to drill a well!!!! We’re hoping that enough money will come in so we can also buy bags of food for the village. Thank you so much to everyone who has helped by praying and giving your sacrificial gifts!

As many of you know, my father and a friend recently returned from Sudan. While they were there, our GRN team had an opportunity to visit a new IDP (Internally Displaced People’s) camp that has settled in Loka (Home of GRN Sudan). The situation is critical! These people were displaced by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The LRA had raided their village repeatedly in 2008. During these raids, they abducted eleven people (two were found dead, three escaped, and six children remain missing).

These people have nothing. They are boiling leaves and eating them as their main source of food. Malnutrition is setting in, and the planting season has just begun, with little hope for making it till the harvest. Disease and infection are common. Rainy season has just begun, which means the mosquito population will increase and malaria will take it’s toll. Water is also a major concern. Loka already had too few wells and adding this many people to these vulnerable wells is making the water situation very unstable. The need is great!

Both my dad, Tom, and my brother, John,  will be returning May 5th to take much needed aid (Blankets, nutritional supplements, secondhand clothes, mosquito nets, medicine, hopefully a water well, and food items) to this camp.

Please watch this video and if God puts it on your heart to help, then please do. You can do so by going to GRN’s website www.grnconnect.org  and clicking on the “Partner With GRN” tab or you can send a check to GRN with “IDP Camp Sudan” written in the memo (address is on the site).  We promise that EVERY PENNY will go to help bring aid to these hurting people. This is not about us, it’s about helping those in need.

To catch just a glimpse of what the LRA do to the people they attack and abduct, I encourage you to watch (with *discretion) this video. It’s a whole hour long but please trust me, you won’t regret watching it. And please, don’t just watch, but try your best to DO something about this whether it be through the foundation this video is from or through us at Global Response Network. 

*Warning – Please use discretion : Very graphic and a swear word is used in this film. But, please don’t let that stop you from watching it. The point of the film is so much more important.

The Botkin sisters, Anna and Sofia, have been posting some very good and encouraging posts on their blog lately, or should I say as always.

If you are single, or are a parent with a growing daughter, I highly encourage you to visit the Visionary Daughters blog. Anna and Sofia are godly young women who are daughters still living in their parents home. On their blog, they share practical, yet very important ways they have learned or are still learning to keep their hearts right before the Lord in their daily lives and as they wait for their future husbands.

Their latest post pin points an area that every girl that I know of has difficulty with. It’s called, How (Not) To Heat Your Veins and Fire Your Brains, and it hits the issue of keeping our hearts pure toward men head on.  Another great post on ways to make sure we are not wasting our days away is Am I Wasting My Life? and it’s just a post or two below the other one. Please read them! And please also feel free to come back and leave me a comment with your thoughts on what you read. If you are one that does not agree in what you read, all I ask of you is that you would please be respectful to myself and to the Botkin sisters and understand that I have the freedom to delete any comments that  are not written as so. 

God bless!