Meeting with other Christians became extremely challenging in 2021. Around the end of April, Thailand was gripped in it's third wave of COVID-19. New cases each day was soaring and meeting sizes were limited to 10. Some of the Christians in Pak Phanang didn't want to travel into town and the neighbours of the Pak Phanang ACTS Church didn't want anyone showing up anyway! ...
I arrived at Thung Song in South Thailand at 4:40am easter morning, after a mainly sleepless night on the train, but excited for my first Easter in Thailand (I missed it by 3 days on a previous trip), I found out I had some time before the first bus would go to take me partway to my destination 2 hours away, so felt I should check to see if the nearest church had a sunrise service. I walked there just a little after 5am, a bit apprehensive as I wound my way through some dark alleys, but in the end, I found the church in the place google said it would be. There was an older guy just tossing off a cigarette and I asked if there was a sunrise service there. He said there was one at some other location and he was just about to go there. He said hop on the back of his motorbike and off we sped into the darkness, with me not really knowing where I was going. We went out of the city, heading towards the mountains with a gorgeous view of the moon above, shining on the mountain jungles a little ways away.
Some of us had the privilege to be invited to a new church building dedication in the city of Nakhon Si Thammarat. Full Gospel church of NST also was celebrating 46 years of being a church. It was a wonderful sight to see churches and church leaders from all over the area come and celebrate this occasion. There is a very small population on believers in Thailand and even smaller numbers represented in the South, so it can easily get discouraging to see how small the groups are compared to the whole population. That is why Christians in South Thailand will always take the opportunity to join other believers so they can be mutually encouraged.