Your Donations to NTIM and Your Prayers for the unreached people groups living in and around Northern Thailand are making an impact in Thailand. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.
This is a short inspiring update of God’s Amazing Work of transforming the lives of “teenagers” in Northern Thailand. It is also a short “Thank you” to all of you who give regularly toward NTIM in Chiangrai. We now have two schools of work through NTIM, Grace Language School in Chiangrai and The Bridge English Language School in Payao.
The last 25 years, Hope and I have lived in Chiangrai and our field base is here with 5 full time Thai nationals that do most of the field work and help lead our English language platform called Grace Language School. They also help support all of the outreach and discipleship work that is being done through our church - Baan Athitaan Church. They also provide the legal covering and additional leadership needed for our new school in Payao.
Believe it or not, we have completed 27 years of living in Thailand and giving our lives so that some of the least reached peoples living in and around Northern Thailand may have a change to receive the message of our great Savior and choose to follow His leadership in their lives. After language school in July 2001, our family of 6 moved to Chiangrai in Northern Thailand where we have lived for 25 of the last 27 years.
As I shared with many of you in the past newsletter, what a great joy it is to serve the Living Lord and invest in making disciples and joining God in changing the lives of Thai teenagers from over 20 different ethnic language/people groups in Northern Thailand, including the Mueang (Northern Thai/Lanna People), the Akha, the Hmong, the Mien (Yao), the Lahu, the Central Thai, and the Isaan, just to name a few. Some of these teenagers are the first or second persons in their entire family heritage to become followers of Jesus, including half of my awesome Thai Staff. We are thankful for all the families of these teenagers and including the Baan Eden children’s home that has entrusted us with the spiritual care of being their church family.
Just last night, 4 trucks full of people (about 30 people) returned from an awesome Youth Camp hosted in the province of Nan, about a 5-6 hours drive from Chiangrai. Please take a moment and watch this brief video of our time at the camp that one of my Thai staff put together for the Northern Thailand Baptist Church Association. Thank you Pat and thank you also Gahn and Jay for your help in putting some of the pictures and video footage together as well. Here is the short video clip of our camp (Oct 20-22)
VIDEO OF CAMP.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuYU9dEEPuk
PREPARING A NEW GENERATION OF TEENS
Praise God for opportunities like these to invest and prepare a new generation of Thai followers of Jesus. Thank you to all those who donated through Northern Thailand Impact Ministry (NTIM) for our work here in Chiangrai, Thailand and we also want to thank those who gave through Baan Athitaan Church here in Chiangrai as well. Thank you also to everyone who prayed. Thank you for everyone who helped. Thank you for the open hearts of these teenagers. And most of all, thank you to God who is worthy of all our devotion that we can give Him.
We are still in the process of updating picture to our Facebook pages and they are not quite done yet. We are also very thankful for Ajaan Wut and his team that came and helped lead our camp. Here is a couple of pictures of the camp.
We sensed God’s special presence in all that we did together at the camp to invest in these precious teenagers God has put in our lives for discipleship and for the advancement of God's kingdom and for the glory of God in the great country of Thailand. But one thing you can see is the video is all of the genuine smiles on these teenagers’ faces. These are not fake smiles, these are the real deal, real expressions of hearts that are being transformed by the Word of God, The Spirit of God, and the church of God as we seek to reach some of the least reached people groups in our world today with the life-changing message of Jesus Christ.
Please remember to pray for the 100-120 people who were either “campers” in the camp or “helpers or teachers” in the camp. I am reminded of a passage tucked away in the Old Testament from the Prophet Habakkuk that reminds us to, ““Look to the nations! Observe! Be astonished! Be Amazed! Because I am doing something in your days—You would not believe even if you were told.” Habakkuk 1:5.
God is doing some amazing things in Northern Thailand.
Some of you may have read in our last newsletter that on September 17, 2026, we celebrated God’s Goodness of allowing us to serve His purposes over the last 25 years of setting up a legitimate and government registered English language platform now called Grace Language School. God has allowed us to teach thousands and thousands of teenagers over the years and many of them have become English teachers in the educational system here all over Thailand. But what is more important in my mind than that is that hundreds of these teenagers and young adults that started their journey of studying English with us, found out through our relationships, not through the classroom, that there is a God who loves them and has a wonderful plan for their life. Here is a short video clip of a few comments from that celebration:
Video of 25 Year Celebration
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGwCIY5mOp4
Hundreds of these teenagers have become followers of our Lord Jesus Christ and when we have camps like this where there is no English at all, these teenagers open up there hearts and God begins another level of transformation in their hearts, but not just in their hearts, but in the hearts of those who are helping and teaching and equipping. Let me just say very clearly, we have seen God do some incredible things reaching some of the least reached people groups in our world today which most of those people have been teenagers. Oh, that God might open the eyes of our hearts to see the great value in discipling and teaching these young people that we need to “unplug” from all of the things of the world that keep us from following after God’s Kingdom and His righteousness with all of our hearts. When we “unplug” from the world, we are then free to be “plugged into” the vine of our Lord Jesus where we find strength and purpose and meaning in our lives.
Similar to our previous Newsletter update, we want to help you know how to better pray for the teenagers and young people that we work with and the leaders who lead these teenagers. Here are 5 clear ways you can pray more effectively for the young people that we work with every single day of our lives.
Prayer Request #1 - Pray for God To Send us more teenagers (Jr. High and High School) to study English with us who do not know or have never heard a clear presentation of the gospel of our Lord Jesus. Yes, we live in one of those places in our world where 98-99% of everyone living around us is either a practicing believer in Buddhism with a mix of animism and spirit worship or they are a practicing worshipper of the spirits of their ancestors with a mix of beliefs from Buddhism and other aspects of Animism. We do have a very small Muslim presence and a very small Christian presence but Northern Thailand teenagers know very little about what the Bible teaches about how to live a life that pleases the God who created them. Please join God in God’s desire for God’s people to pray for the eyes of these millions and millions of Thai Teenagers to see the truth found in Jesus Christ and become genuine followers of our Lord Jesus. How can they see the truth if no one tells them? We are here living among them so that we can tell them but relationships must be built before they will give you the right to speak into their life. Which leads us to the second prayer request.
Prayer Request #2 - Pray for our Teachers who Teach English at our language schools (GLS & BELS), both our Native English Teachers and our Thai Nationals, that they would live lives as the “Salt” and “Light” of our Lord Jesus and intentionally build relationships of trust based on genuine love and concern for our students.
We believe teaching English with integrity and to the best of our ability is something that honors God and allows us to build natural relationships with people who become our English students and then we also have access to their whole family. We do not use the classroom as a “preaching point” at all but to 1) genuinely teach English and 2) build relationships of trust. So, please pray for all of our teachers to be the best teacher of English that they can be, and to intentionally lead their relationships with their students in the direction of being the “salt” and “light” of Jesus.
Prayer Request #3 - Pray for God To Send us more university students to study English with us who do not know or have never heard a clear presentation of the gospel of our Lord Jesus. Yes, as we shared in “prayer request #1,” most university students in Northern Thailand know very little about what the Bible teaches about how to live a life that pleases the God who created them. We are here living among them so that we can tell them but relationships must be built before they will give you the right to speak into their life. Would you pray for God to send us more university students that we can begin to build the right kind of relationship with them that can lead to the sharing not only of our English skills, but sharing the love of Christ with them in practical ways. Which leads us to the fourth prayer request.
Prayer Request #4 - Pray for God To Send us more Volunteer Teams Yes, we love to host volunteer teams from Sunday school classes, from small groups in churchs, and from church mission teams especially those who are coming from an educational background. We go into government schools all the time to host “English Fun Day” camps and God has so organized our platform of “Teaching English” as a natural way to utilize native English speakers with their automatic command of the English language to help our English language school provide the community with English skills but couched with a heart and life that wants to be the salt and light of Jesus in culturally appropriate ways in places that have very little Christian presence like places here in Northern Thailand. Write me at pray4ntim@gmail.com and let us begin a conversation about a possible “mission trip” in 4-6 or more months from now. It starts with you sensing God’s move in your heart and you taking the next step to write us. If God is in this, it may just change and entrich your life tremendously as you go to the ends of the world carrying the greatest message you could ever carry to some of the least reached “ethne” (one of the key Greek words in the great commission) in our world today.
Prayer Request #5 - Pray and Ask God to provide our work through NTIM (both the main work in Chiangrai and the new beginning work in Payao) with the financial resources needed to continue to advance the gospel in and around Northern Thailand for the millions and millions of Thai, Chinese, Laotians, and Burmese peoples living among us. Here is a “Prayer Card” you can print and put in your Bible or put on your refrigerator to remember to pray for the Teenagers of Northern Thailand.
There is one thing I have learned over the 40+ years of being a follower of Jesus and that is the truth that God listens to prayers of His people when they come to Him in faith, in humility, and in dependence upon His grace.
PLEASE FORWARD THIS EMAIL NEWSLETTER TO ANYONE YOU KNOW THAT MIGHT WANT TO KNOW HOW TO PRAY FOR THE YOUTH OF NORTHERN THAILAND AND THE NEXT GENERATION OF FOLLOWERS OF JESUS IN THAILAND.
Please remember to keep us and all the people living in an around Northern Thailand in your prayers. Grateful and Happy to be Serving Our Awesome God through NTIM as a non-profit 501(c)(3) charitable organization based in the USA. We are committed to going to the least of the least reached people groups primarily in the heart of Southeast Asia where poverty is high, education is low, needs are great, unreached people groups (UPGs) are all around us, and the love and message of Jesus is needed to transform lives.
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Financial support can be given through NTIM.
You can send donations to support God’s work to NTIM. All donations made are tax deductible and can be made either online at www.gontim.org or mailed to NTIM, P.O. Box 26115, Birmingham, AL 35260 If made online, you can click the “general” button and these funds are directed to the Main NTIM team Field headquarters in Chiangrai and overall finances that I personally manage, or you can click the “project Payao” button and these funds will be directed to the NTIM team in Payao led by Doug Piper. If you would like to get on our email update listing, please send me an email at pray4ntim@gmail.com Michael Johnson, VP and Director of Field Operations for NTIM.
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