A Discipleship Play-by-play

You might want to know what we do all day. What does our discipleship look like? We usually do a 2-3 hour Bible study each weekday Tuesday-Friday. We have no curriculum but the Bible. So, we will open a passage choose 5-10 verses and talk about them for a couple of hours. Usually it will go from about 10:30 until about 2pm when everyone gets hungry. Then in the afternoons we get some work done — which is an important part of discipleship — not to just have people with a bunch of Bible knowledge in their heads, but no heart for ministry.

We have now gone like this, a couple of hours per paragraph, verse by verse, book by book, through Colossians, 1 Timothy, 1-2 Peter, Philippians, Galatians, Ephesians, and it has made a huge difference for all of us. Off and on, we will also read and discuss books together.

Church update

Just past our 1st anniversary, the church is starting to show more signs of maturity. People are doing a good job taking on different leadership roles and have their own areas of responsibility. This month Jack started a music-teaching ministry at the church, Poo has stepped into the role of Activities Director, and Lay has joined the kids teacher rotation.

We will also have our first Lord’s Supper as a church here in a couple of weeks!

Progress Update on getting our legal Foundation

Praise the Lord, thank you to several churches, we believe that have what we need for the legal Foundation getting set up here in Thailand. This is comparable to getting a 501c3 non-profit set up in the States, but holds a lot more importance for us as foreigners.

The laws and regulations are more fluid here, and with a new military-led government, and the first new king in 60+ years, this is especially true recently. So, pray that the Lord would help us through as we work over the next few months to complete the process. We have talked with several lawyers and so far are hearing some conflicting reports, so pray the Lord would guide and give us wisdom in this.

The next step for us is to complete this process which could take 3-6 more months.

Praises

• The Lord has provided the money needed to establish the legal organization for future ministry

• All the spiritual growth that we see in our church that is hard to explain in a prayer letter!

• Grace was needing a root canal for a tooth she killed and was turning black, but it somehow healed itself. So, that’s good because that was going to be expensive!

• A wife that manages 3 kids, homeschool, teaching at church, and kids ministry all while loving me! Her birthday just passed and I am thankful that the Lord allows us to do this together.

Prayer requests

• For wisdom as we meet with with lawyers to get the organization set up

• Wisdom to know the right timing and steps as the ministry grows

Yours for the Gospel in Thailand,

Philip & Lori Bassham

(Claire, Grace, and Emma)

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