Starting a Church
It has almost been a revival. We started in December with 5-6 people, but in June 2004, the Church was numbering 23-26 people. Also, there were more people that got saved on rice-fields in the area during this time. All together we have seen around 20-25 people get saved, and some others healed. We have been working in and Thailand since 2000, but we have never seen results like this. Before this We saw maybe 10 people get saved since 2000, but God’s time for the Shan people is here!

Sad stories in the house Churth Mea Mau
One lady lost her husband about two years ago and is caring for her child and her elderly mother. Remember, these are refugees and they live in a culture where a woman gets a lower salary than a man. If a refugee finds a job they only earn approximately 2 USD per day (or 80-100 Thai Bat and one kilo of rice costs about 10-15 Bat). So, if this woman is lucky enough to find work, she earns less than 2 USD, and with that she has to feed her family, plus pay for their other expenses. Along with these hardships, this woman also has a big tumour on her right cheek. However, the good news is that we can see in their eyes that they have hope in God!
Another woman has a 2-year-old child that looks like a 6-month-old baby. She can’t grow or only grows very slowly and can’t walk or speak. The mother is married to a man who uses all of their money on alcohol. Amazingly, this woman is one of the most eager to know more about God. She studies the Bible, writes down the worship songs we sing and asks a lot of questions. meeting.

The paralysed woman
Tore, one of the missionaries tells one experince he had
One experience that had a great impact on me was a visit with a half paralysed woman. The couple that have the house Church in their home brought us to a relative that was paralysed on one side of her body.
We went to her bamboo hut that someone had made for her apart from the other houses.  When we came to the hut we understood way. The smell of urine and human waste was really bad, because she had to do everything in that hut. When we came in, the woman started to cry, and you don’t see that lot out here, because Buddhism teaches them to suppress their feelings. She told us that she had been like this for five years and we could see the hopelessness in her eyes.
We were able to tell her about the hope we have in Christ, and we put our hands on her dirty body and prayed for her.
Some days later when we came back with food and clothes for her, she could move her paralysed leg a little bit, something she could not do before. God had done something! Even though she still had a lot of fear, we could see that she had gotten some hope back. One woman that helped the paralysed woman became saved, probably as a result of what she saw happen.

Mario also have started up a Shan church in Chiang Mai, so the ministry has started two churches amongst this un-reached people group now.

View pictures from the ministy