The Future Foundation – Lance & Ruth

A friend of ours recently got in a scooter accident and sustained injuries requiring surgery that she couldn’t afford. With the help of one of our supporting churches, First United Presbyterian of Houston, we were able to raise enough money to cover her surgery and the following 2 months of recovery time. We praise God for your financial support from the States that enables us to help others as God brings them to us.

We have been so so busy over here! (which is why I’m just now finally getting to updating our blog for the past many months) However, as you can see by my first sentence, Thai culture is settling into my brain somewhat. They repeat words for emphasis or illustration and you’ll often hear Thai people use that same language structure when they try to communicate to you in English: “many, many” for “a lot” or “same, same” for “It’s the same thing/price.” As a point of interest: their sentence structure is dead opposite of ours, ending a sentence with the verb, but it’s the same in Chnese so it wasn’t a completely new concept for us. We often see Thai and Chnese relate in the same way that Romance languages relate, which is so interesting. Sometimes even words are the same, just with a different tone (making it so much harder to remember which one is Thai). So knowing Chnese has been both a help and a hindrance.

A bajillion ministry things are going on and I’m not sure how to cram them all into this update without making it too long. This post I’ll focus on the foundation we have our visas through so as not to barrage your brain with more information than you have interest. As I mentioned in February, we have partnered with a local Thai foundation for our visas. Through this we are able to do our ministry of facilitating missionaries reaching closed countries or unreached people groups, while the foundation provides the opportunity for us to be involved in the local community and directly with minority groups here.

The foundation is involved with various humanitarian projects and as the people do their work among the nationals, as Christians, they also share the gospel. One of the latest projects we are pursuing is determining the viability of making cheap and easy-to-produce air purifiers using a water filtration system for the Thai guys Lance plays soccer with. This way we can provide our friends with air purifiers for the burning season (here farmers burn their fields after harvest making February and March filled with smoke and hard to breath), while also teaching them how to do it, so they can pass on the knowledge to the impoverished Thai villages where they put on free soccer camps paired with a clear gospel presentation.

The guys doing the soccer ministry also do soccer for the Thai and missionary kids in town on Saturdays. Our boys have really enjoyed being involved with this and making new friends. (That’s Josiah taking his turn.)

Teaching and training local Thai communities are a main focus of the foundation. They have established a restaurant where they teach (hands on) small business and entrepreneurial skills from book keeping to store management and business organization for locals seeking to start their own businesses. They also use the restaurant to provide food and meals for the various relief and aid situations that they get involved with.

Recently, we were made aware of a group of children separated from their parents because of COVID. We weren’t clear how the situation came about (things are not always dealt with here in a way Westerners would find logical) but the end result was that for a period of time, while their parents or caregivers were quarantined, the children were stuck somewhere with a group of caregivers and in need of supplies. Lance was able to go with a few other foundation members to purchase supplies for the children, such as diapers, milk, and breakfast porridge, as well as supplies for the caregivers, such as instant noodles and coffee. As these type of needs arise and are discovered by the foundation, we are able to step in to be involved in areas we would otherwise never know about. These impromptu needs usually make hash of our plans for the day (or week), but we are glad to have the opportunity to be involved.

Thank you for your continued prayers,
Ruth – for the Baker family.