December 1997
August 1997
February 1997
Dear friends,
There have been a lot of changes in our lives in the past several months. We have moved our offices and staff homes to the site of our new farm and are getting settled. There is a good spirit of unity and enthusiasm for our work together as we start anew in our new location. We had a "progressive" dedication ceremony (kind of like the "progressive dinners" where we went from home to home for different courses years ago for church socials) with our staff walking to various locations on the farm to sing, read the Word and pray together as we gave our land, buildings and staff members to God for His ministry here.
Now that the building is completed except for some final details, we are getting back to the farm production necessary to support our work. Please pray for our farm production staff and especially for Nuujon who administrates the work of all the farms, as they produce the pigs, fish, frogs, mushrooms, etc. for sale in the local market.
As you know the economic situation in Thailand is not good right now. This has not helped the man who is buying our old farm property make his payments on time. He is always at least a month late and has negotiated for smaller monthly payments and a longer time to pay his debt to us. It is essential for our ongoing ministry that he make his payments on time. We have appreciated your prayers in the past about this and request that you continue to keep our financial needs in your prayers.
Last month Jim and I made a quick trip to the U.S. at the request of the nominating committee for the position of Executive Director of World Mission for the Evangelical Covenant Church. Jim met with the committee as a whole as well as with the chairman separately and has felt God’s leading to accept the nomination for this position. The current director, Ray Dahlberg, will be retiring next year and the election for the new director will be held in June 1998 at the Annual Meeting of the Covenant Church. Jim and I will both be attending that meeting. If Jim is elected, this will mean a significant change in our future, including moving our home base to Chicago, Illinois. Please keep God’s will for our future in your prayers.
Our girls are doing well. Sheri is planning to go back to school in January. She’ll be majoring in accounting at the University of Central Florida’s Orlando campus. She and our grandson, Gabe, will continue to live with Helen, Jim’s mother, in Deltona while she attends school. She will also work part-time at the physical therapy center where she is working now. She has appreciated your prayers during this difficult period of time when her divorce became final. Please continue to pray that God will meet all her needs, both physical, emotional and financial as she maintains a busy schedule to complete her education.
Lisa will graduate from the Palm Beach Community College registered nursing program this month. Jim and I are happy that we’ll be able to be there to see her graduate. Please pray that Lisa will do well when she takes her state boards in March and will be able to find a good job nursing in a hospital near home. She and Carmen are living in Hypoluxo and Carmen has been promoted to restaurant manager of the restaurant where he works.
We are looking forward to Christmas and being together with our family in Florida. Jim and I will leave Thailand on December 16 and return early in January. Jim will have a meeting in Chicago on his way back and Joan will spend a few days with her parents in Oregon before he joins her there on the way back to Thailand.
As we celebrate Christ’s birth again this year, we send our best wishes to each of you for a Christmas season filled with the gifts of love, peace and joy that Christ brought to earth so many years ago.
With our love,
Jim and Joan Gustafson
P.S. Please note there is no change to our mailing address or phone numbers.
Dear friends,
The rainy season is here. The rice is planted and now it is raining every day which has brought some relief from the heat.
The last few months have been busy ones. Our daughters were here to visit us in May and June. Sheri brought her son, Gabe, and Lisa brought her husband, Carman. It was fun to have them here. Carman, being a cook and kitchen manager with high standards of cleanliness for the restaurant where he works, was definitely not impressed with restaurant kitchens in Thailand. Life seems very quiet now that they're gone. Gabe remembers Thailand as the place where everyone called him "baby." He didn't like that because he thinks he's a big boy of 3 1/2. But baby is one English word that most Thai people know so he heard a lot of it.
Sheri's husband didn't come with her to Thailand because in April, after 5 years of marriage, he decided he didn't want to be married any longer. So these past months have been difficult for her. Joan just returned from spending 3 weeks with her in Florida helping her with a lot of difficult decisions regarding their divorce and her future. Sheri (and Gabe when he isn't with his father) are now living in Deltona with Helen, Jim's Mom, which seems to be a good situation for them all right now. Sheri is working full-time at the physical therapy center where she worked before. She had to put her plans to go on to school this fall on hold while she tries to provide some financial and emotional stability for herself and Gabe. We'll appreciate your prayers for them as they start this new phase in their lives. We are thankful that she has some very supportive friends in the church she is attending.
Lisa has one semester left of nursing school and will graduate in December. She's looking forward to that. She and Carman will be moving into a new apartment in Boynton Beach in September.
Speaking of moving, our building project on the new farm property is progressing. We're all supposed to move into our homes and offices by the first of September which is coming soon. Please pray that the rain will let up so the electricity can be put in without delay. All of the pigs have already been moved. We'd appreciate your prayers that the man buying our current property will make his payments on time. He seems to be falling farther and farther behind each month. We need those payments to continue building our new offices and support our work here while we must concentrate more on building and less on farm production.
This week Jim is in Chiang Mai speaking at the Asian Institute of Christian Communications. This is an annual educational conference directed by Viggo Sogaard of the Danish Covenant Church. We continue our relationship with the Danish Covenant Church through our work together in various Thai organizations.
We have a short-term missionary working with us in Udon for a year, teaching English as a second language to some of our Thai co-workers. We are enjoying having Walt Wolf, from Grand Rapids, Ml here. His teaching is a big help as Jim and I are the only English speakers and all interactions between other staff members and visitors from overseas must be done through translation. Walt's teaching will help them be able to communicate more effectively.
In May Jim took two Thai government officials with the Department of Public Welfare to the United States to see some of the work of the Covenant there especially related to helping the needy. They also met with some government organizations and saw the relationship between the public and private sectors in providing assistance It was a very positive experience for the two officials who went and strengthened the relationship of our Thai organizations with the government.
In our last letter we mentioned the threats on the lives of some of our coworkers. One of the men was in prison for 6 months and is now out. The other two who jumped bail earlier are now in prison for a year so are no longer causing problems. Please continue to pray for their sincere repentance and that God will bring them to know His love and grace in their lives. We thank Him for his protection for us all.
We thank you for your support for us and for your prayers. Please continue to pray for safety for us all as we travel on the roads of Thailand where it seems that people drive crazier every day. Also for health and stamina especially for those involved in the building program during these final days when we must meet a deadline for moving.
Our love and prayers are with you,
Jim and Joan Gustafson
P.S. When we move, our mailing address and telephone numbers will remain the same as before.
Dear friends,
Winter is over in Thailand and now the weather will be getting hotter and hotter until the rains start in May. It’s hard to believe the cold weather some of you have been enduring recently as we enjoy the warmth over here. Soon it will be warmer than we enjoy!
We’ve had some trials and blessings in the past six months. We appreciate your prayers for our safety when the lives of several of our staff were threatened by a villager who had sold land to our foundation for a development project over ten years ago. This transaction was fair, legal and final and he was very satisfied at the time. But now that the value of land has increased tremendously in that area, the former owner decided he wanted the foundation to turn the land back over to him and threatened anyone who he thought would have influence. He and some cohorts even held Sanit, one of our coworkers, at gun point threatening to kill him if the land wasn’t given to them but God gave Sanit the words to say to talk them into letting him go. After continued threats the Udon police arrested this man and two others in front of our farm where they had come asking to see Jim. After a week in jail they were let out on bail and now they have disappeared from the area. We are relieved that the threats have subsided. We thank God for His protection during this time. Please continue to pray for these men that God will work in their hearts to remove the greed and violence from their lives. This sounds very dramatic, and it was very scary for those involved, but people are killed for less reason than this over here. At the same time during national election campaigning the newspaper would list the number of campaigners who had been killed to date each day. An example of what another world this is and how much the people in Thailand need Christ’s love in their lives!
We are blessed to work with a wonderful group of people here in Udon. We a seeing continued growth in our staff. They are working together creatively to bring Christ to the people of rural Northeast Thailand. We are starting some new agricultural development projects as well as forest conservation projects and continuing with well-digging to provide the resource of water much needed in this area.
We are currently in the process of building a new office and staff homes as well as pigpens and fishponds on our new property farther from town. The new farm has a great water resource from a large reservoir with a canal running right past it. We hope to move to the new property as soon as we can and will sell our old farm that is on the main highway between Udon and the border to Laos. The old property will bring a good price and we will be happy to be in a more rural situation and away from the terrible traffic on this busy road.
Our latest innovations on our farms are raising mushrooms and frogs. The mushrooms are doing great and we’ve been selling them daily since early December. We are just getting started on the frog project but have received good information and stock from a farm a couple of hours from here. So there’s never a dull moment and we keep busier than ever.
The Thailand Covenant Church now has churches in every area of Thailand. Last year we added churches in Chiang Mai in the North and we have just added a church in Surat Thani in the South. This new church is a part of the work of the Thai Faith and Culture Foundation head-quartered in Bangkok, an offshoot of our work in Udon.
Early this month a film crew from Tear Fund UK was here to film various aspects of our work, showing how the development projects relate to the life of the church - how it’s all integrated. Tear Fund has been a big help to us in funding our vocational training in sewing projects helping young women have work at home so they won’t be lured into prostitution in the big cities.
We are looking forward to visits from our daughters and their husbands in May and June. This will be the first time the girls’ husbands have been to Thailand and it’ll be good for them to see where Sheri and Lisa grew up. Of course we can’t wait to introduce Gabe, our 3 year old grandson, to all of our friends here.
As always, we thank you for you love and support. We depend on you prayers.
With our love,
Jim and Joan