TAN Mission Report November 2011

Mission to Thailand & Myanmar

As I sit here looking over the pictures of my mission trip to Thailand and Myanmar, I am overwhelmed to see how God used me to touch so many people.  I can almost feel the hunger and presence of the Holy Spirit that were present at all of the meetings we did.  This year, Linda Easton was able to go with me.  What a team we made and what a wonderful job and help she was!  We ministered and taught in thirty-two meetings while gone during our trip of twenty days.

As many of you were aware, our first portion of the trip took us to Thailand.  The news we kept getting only days before we were to leave looked like the meetings were going to have to be canceled because of all the flooding.  Many of you emailed us that you were praying with us that the rain would stop, the sun would come out, and the new anticipated round of rain would just go away.  Well, that is actually what happened!  When people kept asking us if we were going, we knew that God had it all under control if we would all act in faith and pray.  Just literally a few days before we arrived, it dried up.  The rivers went down, and when we arrived in Chiang Mai, Thailand, we had only a few adjustments to make.  In Thailand, we worked with Dr. Buakaub, the director of Every Home for Christ in the country.  I had given her a copy of my Women for the Harvest book last year when I was there, and she contacted me saying that not only did she personally want to translate both the book and syllabus into Tai, but she wanted me to come teach it with her as my translator.  For two days, we taught and encouraged the top leaders in the city who will in turn take it back to their churches.  Then we left for the Karen tribe several hours away.  We slept in what I would describe as a tree house and learned how to brush our teeth and spit out the window and all kinds of new adventures.  The people we taught were former animists, determined to learn how to minister and save the rest of their tribe.  It was awesome to see the Holy Spirit come down on them, slaying them in the Spirit without anyone touching them but Himself.

Then we were off to Yangon, Myanmar (formerly Burma).  Pastor Dong Mang who used to be a student at World Harvest Bible College told me years ago that one day I would be teaching my class to his ladies, and it surely came to pass.  He has a real heart to train and teach women to be all that God has called them to be.  He, too, had the Women for the Harvest book and syllabus translated into Burmese.  We started in Yangon to a packed church of eager learners.  For hours, the women sat and took notes so eager to learn, so eager to be used by God.  Many came to receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit and to receive the power to do this from it.  Many came to be released to operate in their gifts.  The Holy Spirit truly had His way.  There is nothing like a woman mentoring another woman to step out and use what she has.  All any of these women needed was our example and permission to be used in the ministry.  Then they received the freedom to decide to do what they sensed God was putting on their hearts.  Onward we went to Mandalay.  The tourists flock there to see all the Buddhist pagodas and shrines.  Linda and I went into one and watched them intently as these poor, deceived people knelt and bowed before a dead Buddhist statue.  Some actually bought sheets of gold to rub onto the huge Buddha statue to honor him.  It brought tears to my eyes and even more determination to raise up women to go out and teach deceived people the truth about our living God, Jesus Christ.  The women’s conference in Mandalay was the first they had ever had.  What a move of God we had!  Forty came forward to be released into the five-fold ministry.  When they came up and we prayed for them, the Spirit fell and all were in one accord and it was like the book of Acts--crying, laughing, shaking, spontaneously falling out in the Spirit.  Then a group came up that felt called to be missionaries.

What a living God we serve!  Thanks to so many of you who said they were praying and to the ones who gave to make it all possible.  These truly are the last days and though the floods tried to stop us, the scripture we stood on was Isaiah 59:19, “So shall they fear the name of the LORD from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard against him.”  God’s Spirit is being poured out to those who are hungry and through those who are willing to be His vessels used for His glory.