Dear Friends,

As the rainy season has closed in on Chiang Mai our work has continued with the various encouragements and frustrations that each day brings. Chiang Mai has seemed a little more like home at times this month as we have often been welcomed to a day by drizzle and gloomy skies. May has also been a month of settling into the reality of missionary life as we learn that things don’t happen everyday and neither can we expect them to. We enter our final month with a mixture of sadness at the short amount of time left and excitement at what God still has to achieve through us.

The Centre

The Centre was swarming with students and staff at the beginning off May as we had over 70 students studying with us and the YWAM (Youth With A Mission) team working with us. It was a tremendously encouraging time as many students would come to the parties, cooking nights and the Bible study on Monday nights. The team did a great job with the students and they were a lot of fun for us to have around. We were sad to see them leave after building some good relationships them. The last few weeks have been much quieter as the new academic year has started at the University and many of the students have been involved with the freshers activities. However, it was good to have a group of 4 Bible college students from America arrive last week to work at The Centre for 2 months, they started classes this week so there have been more students around which is encouraging.

My classes have been less regular this month as the students haven’t shown up as often as I would have liked. I have continued to have some good conversations with Prem (male) and Fong (female) in my first class, I continue to pray for more opportunities to share with them about Jesus. I have had some encouraging conversations with Fong but Prem who has been at The Centre for a couple of years now has a fairly negative attitude towards Christianity and is never very keen to engage in conversation about it. My second class has been more difficult as I have 3 girls who don’t always show up and so I have sometimes had some fairly awkward lessons with just 1 girl. I have had some good fun lessons with them but it is a little frustrating that they don’t come to any of the activities at the Centre which makes it hard to build relationships with them. Nathan and I will be finishing our classes this week; they will unfortunately be our last classes as we won’t have time to teach another set of classes. We will instead be preparing for the English camp which will be our last weekend here. Please pray for us as we prepare that we would be able to make this a real fun time for the students and that there would be many opportunities to share about Jesus to them.

The Living Room which happens on Monday nights has been really encouraging these last few weeks. Nathan has been leading it and has been going through the 6 “Two ways to Live” pictures which is a simple way to explain the gospel. Nathan has done a tremendous job speaking clearly and powerfully and inventing fun games to introduce the theme for each week. When the team were here it was very well attended but now we are changing it to a Tuesday evening to hopefully encourage more students to attend. Please pray for Nathan as he prepares for the next sessions and pray for the translator, “Bow” that she would be able to speak as powerfully and clearly as Nathan does in English. Pray too that students would come and that they would be really impacted by the things they hear.

Jeep Update

Hopefully you received my email a few weeks ago with the news that one of our former students became a Christian. Jeep now lives in Phitsanulok, a city about 300 miles south of here in central Thailand but we have continued to keep in touch with him and were obviously delighted when he decided to give his life to Christ. We are currently trying to put him in touch with a missionary we have contacts with in Phitsanulok who will hopefully be able to meet with him and take him to a church and introduce him to a good group of Christians his own age. Please continue to pray for Jeep that he would be able to quickly find a church he likes and continue to grow in his faith.

India

As I mentioned in the last prayer letter we will be taking a short break in the north of India next week. We will be travelling with some friends from SIM in Chiang Mai to a town where they used to work. It is at the foot of the Himalayas and from the one photo I have seen of it, it looks an extremely beautiful place. Hopefully we will be able to have a very relaxing time, reading books, walking and taking some time to reflect on the past few months. Please pray for safety as we travel to India and within India and pray for a relaxing and rewarding time. We will leave on the 7th June and be returning to Chiang Mai on the 15th.

A date for your Diary’s

On the 22nd July I will be speaking at my home church St Nicolas, Newbury at the 6:30pm service about my time in Thailand. There will obviously be much to share about my time at The Centre and all the things God has been doing in me and through me. I want it to be a celebration of God’s amazing grace in giving me this opportunity to serve him in Thailand these 6 months and the work which he has been doing. It would be tremendous to see as many of you there as possible, so if you are within reaching distance of Newbury then I would love you to be able to come. If you need directions you can find them on the website at
www.st-nicolas-newbury.org .

Prayer Points

• Praise God for Jeep that he has come to know Jesus personally and please pray that he would continue to grow in his faith.
• Praise God for the YWAM team who did such a great job and had many opportunities to share their faith with the students.
• Praise God for my classes with Prem and Fong and the relationships I have with them. Thank God for all the opportunities he has given me to share with Fong in particular.
• Praise God for this opportunity to share about my experiences at St Nics on 22nd July. Please pray for wisdom as I prepare and think about what to share.
• Please pray that we would be able to make the most of our last 4 weeks at The Centre and with the students. Pray that we would have good opportunities to say goodbye to all the people we have built relationships with these last few months.
• Please pray for safety as we travel to and in India and please pray for a really fun and fulfilling time.
• Please pray for all the activities at The Centre that they would be great fun for the students and that they would be drawn closer to Jesus.
Thanks you so much for your support and prayer and I look forward to seeing you all again soon.

God Bless

Paul Zealey

Being English I'm not used to earthquakes so the fact that Chiang Mai was hit by a big earthquake last week is really quite exciting. Newspapers claim that it was 6.3 on the Rickter scale and its epicenter was just 260km from here. The funny thing, I didn't even feel it. As I sat in The Centre on Wednesday last week, cutting out stars to decorate for the Friday Night Party - we were having a space theme - it came as quite a surprise when students started greeting me with the exciting news that they just felt an earthquake. Apparently it lasted a good 45 seconds but fortunately didn't cause any damage to buildings. I'm actually very disapointed I missed it, I'm not sure how it is possible to miss an earthquake but some how I managed.

Dear Friends,

The Centre was an extremely excited place to be yesterday as we heard news that one of our students Jeep became a Christian. Jeep was only at The Centre for a couple months arriving around the same time as us and then leaving a few months ago. He is now living and working in a city called Phitsanulok about 350km south of here but we have continued to keep in touch with him and pray for him. Jeep always seemed very interested in Christianity when he was at The Centre and he always enjoyed talking to people about Jesus. When he left we wondered if that would be the last we would see of him and if this would be the end of his interest but instead this was only the start. It wasn’t long before Jeep started phoning me and Nathan and the other staff at The Centre and telling us how God had been answering his prayers and asking us lots of questions. It was always difficult for us to talk to him as his English isn’t the best and so we were never sure how much he understood and most of the time we weren’t sure we understood him.

Yesterday he rang Nathan and had a short chat to him before talking to P’Opal who explained a few things to him and asked if he wanted to become a Christian. Over the last few months God has been working so powerfully in Jeeps life as he has had to make decisions about his career and ended up setting up his own business. It is so exciting that now he has recognized God’s grace in his life and made a commitment to follow Jesus.

Thank God for Jeep and that he has come to know Jesus. Thank God for bringing him to us at The Centre and for the encouragement he is to us. Please pray for Jeep as he starts the journey of the Christian life, pray that he would quickly be able to find a church and that there would be Christians around him who can encourage him and teach him. Pray for the staff at The Centre that we would know how to keep in touch and help him in whatever ways we can. Thank you for your prayers they are so clearly making a huge impact on our lives and the lives of the students.

God Bless

Paul Zealey

Moogatar has to be one of my favorite places to eat in Chiang Mai and my advice to any tourist would be to give it a go, it is certainly an experience. We ate there on Saturday night with a couple of students and some of the YWAM team we have been working with along with around 600 other people. Moogatar is basically a huge eat till your sick buffet where you pay 150 baht (about £2 or $4) and you can eat as much as you like. It is in what might be described a huge open cow shed just off a main road with a stage at one end and a very long table through the middle of it. On the table at one end is all kinds of raw meat, seafood and vegetables, in the middle is some cooked food, lots of deep fried meat, flies and chicken feet and at the other end is the largest assortment of fruit and ice cream you have ever seen. Each table has its own mini coal barbeque so you can cook for yourself and a large supply of coke which you need to drink a lot of as hygiene isn’t quite up to UK standards.

We had a great evening chatting together and eating some very nice if not weird food. Dai, one of the students persuaded Nathan to eat a rather suspect piece of meat and then told him afterwards it was a chicken foot.

In other news, The Centre is now a very quiet place as the team have now left and moved onto their next place in Chiang Rai before heading back to Australia in a few weeks time. We have another much smaller team arriving next week, just 4 Bible College students from America so it will be good to have a few more teachers and students around. We now have our visas and tickets for India; we leave in 3 weeks time so we’re really looking forward to that. Finally I have to mention the rain, it has been pouring down every day for the last week so the rainy season has certainly arrived and will be here till we leave which is annoying but can be fun!

People tell me that Gap years often change you as you experience new things and meet new people. While I know this to be true I didn't quite expect to change in this way. I have never been a great fan of any kind of animal but the worst were by far Dogs. Dogs have a habit of coming near me, wanting to play with me and frankly I never wanted anything to do with them and certainly didn't want to touch them.

However, one of our friends has a dog and as we see her a fair bit I was forced to become a little more accepting of these nasty animals. Now, I actually quite like Gracie and we have some what of a good relationship. I still don't like dogs much but this one is rather cute don't you think?