Friend - Hello from Thailand!

This is the first opportunity I've had to communicate much since
our ministry trip here began - the schedule has been quite
intense

So to bring you up to speed, I'm here in the city of Pattaya for
a festival called Pattaya Praise. This is a worship, prayer and
mercy ministry festival that was originally founded a few years
ago by Irish friends who were living here at the time.

Pattaya is the sex capital of Thailand!

It started out as a small fishing village but during the Vietnam
war it became one of the main 'Rest & Relaxation' drop off
points for American and since then it has grown into the epicentre of
prostitution that it is today.

Our job is to serve the city with worship and prayer in both the
churches and the bars (brothels).

As I write this I'm about to head off to play bass in our first
bar gig of the trip, I led worship in one of the partnering
churches this morning.

It was an amazing and humbling privilege to worship with the
local indigenous believers who are so open to having us come
and serve them.

Tomorrow sees us doing an outdoor worship event in the city plus
an all night worship/prayer event. Saturday is more music and
worship in the bars/brothels and I'll be leading worship again
on Sunday morning when my good mate and team leader Ian Hannah
will be speaking at another of the partner churches.

The highlight was going on the slums ministry trip. On our way
there we stopped off at a church that does ministry to the
people living in the slums. They provide free day care for the
children of the slum dwellers because they often have to go to
the rubbish dumps of the city to scavenge and normally they have
to either take their kids there or leave them unattended. So this
church offer to take care of them during the day.

Here's a video clip of the kids all sleeping on the church
floor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXWpsVQBpSY

When we got to the slums we did some kids songs and gave out
some toys, balloons etc to the other kids there. Rick (our
trumpet player) shared his story really well and we offered to
pray for healing for anyone who wanted it.

We prayed for a guy called 'Kay' who was paralyzed down right
side - he said he felt warmth in his heart bit we didn't see him
healed at that point. Then we prayed for an elderly lady called
Tang Kom. She couldn't see properly from her left eye and
suffered from pains in her legs below her knees.

After prayer she claimed that her eye had greatly improved and
her legs felt much better - that was really encouraging.

One of the most striking things was how open and appreciative
the folks were in the slums, they live with so little, and I'm
sure they'd like live to be better, but still they had genuine
smiles and thankfulness.

I've run out of time - I'll do a full blog update when I get
back to Ireland next week.

In the meantime here's a quick video of the one and only
rehearsal we've managed to cram in for our gigs while here in
Pattaya!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn8khxzyv4M

Enjoy!

Cheers - Andy