For nearly all Thai men’s entertainment workers, their job isn’t a career choice, but one from necessity and/or hurt. We started meeting and getting to know our first Thai bargirls on a visit in 2003, then more in 2004, and are still working to help them today. Getting started took some adjustment, to say the least.
How does one decide that God is calling to go somewhere? For both Jim and Judy Larson, the story starts all the way back in childhood. Mentioned in the video: How We Got Started focusing on poor and/or broken people… Read More »How We Chose Thailand
For as much as our educated and get-it-done Western brains want to solve problems through planning and policy, the strategy of Jesus is ultimately the only way.
I remember my first experience with a wild-eyed teen girl. In the late 70’s my Wheaton buddies and I started traveling to Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood to help with a fledgling church start. A sizable member of Uptown’s many ethnic groups… Read More »Growing Up Wild
Jim grew up on a farm in Illinois; Judy was the child of missionaries in Argentina. We met at Wheaton College and were both challenged away from middle-class comfort and safety. We got together as a couple while reaching out to the chronically mentally ill and others in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood. Here we discuss our introduction as young adults past the usual hurdles of fear and discomfort, into the joy of caring for folks at the so-called bottom.
A nineteenth-century poem, attributed to George MacDonald, depicts the dilemma of the call to follow Jesus to hard places, or remain safe and comfortable.
Bpop and Dao have a ministry to those at the bottom, the ones Jesus says his sheep normally care for. Jim sat down to interview them about their heart for the people of Thailand.
In the early morning of February 10, a man I will call “Bank” broke the front glass door of our main building at The Well, which hosts the Glass of Water church, because he thought we had taken his daughter… Read More »Broken Windows
Ever so often, I open Google Earth and explore some remote place, perhaps Illinois, Iowa, or Patagonia, imagining living there until the end of my days. It invokes a feeling of longing, not unlike John’s island in The Pilgrim’s Regress. Judy and I would live… Read More »We Can’t Quit Now
Serving Jesus starts with family. Judy Larson’s dad, 98, recently had to move from home care to a simple nursing home. She reflects on the wonder of life as the end nears.