Since he was an undergraduate student, Addy has pursued a vision to be a change agent in Thailand. We have watched him grow, including earning a master’s degree in educational management, a teaching certificate, and most recently, an M.A. in Ministry Leadership from Wheaton College.
Here is a current update on where he sees God leading.
Anusorn Kotchakreng graduated with a Master’s in Christian Leadership from Wheaton College. Addy earned the H. Wilbert Norton Award for the “student who has consistently demonstrated good scholarship in missions, and who has demonstrated through life and ministry a commitment to world evangelism.” Addy continues his work with The Well and the Glass of Water church plant.
Addy is grateful for the support, prayer, and encouragement of the entire Servantworks team. Thank you for supporting future leaders in Thailand!
The second quarter of the year is the “Hot Season” in Thailand. March, April, and May hit 100 degrees easily, and there is little rain or breeze. Kids are off school, and the temps make it a challenging time to be productive.
There are also fun opportunities, just like summer break in the U.S. – daily life has a bit of a different rhythm, and as always, our role is to pay attention to where God is moving and then do what we can to join him.
Here’s how that looked this year …
Thailand celebrates the New Year in April with water and blessings. The Thai new year is a special time of year when Thai people bless the elderly in their communities. Khru Ann and a few other staff partnered with the Baptist Bangjak Church to sponsor a New Year blessing for the elderly in the recycling slum community. They were blessed with love, a meal, and food to take home.
Hot season home visits. I joined Khru Ann for one of her visits to the slums on what might have been the hottest day of the year. We met the Burmese family developing a grassroots school for refugees and visited children playing while their moms pulled the labels off plastic bottles. We met with one of our alumni from The Well, and encouraged her to pray and hope.
Fun and learning during the break. We’ve been able to provide some family-style classes for a group of school-age boys, with English, art, Bible stories, and drums! We also had classes for students at middle and high school levels, including English, guitar, and drums.
Learning and helping during the break. We were thankful to have AJ, a Thai Bible school intern, help with music classes, daily activities, and our new church plant. What a blessing.
Back-to-school barriers. School starts in mid-May, and even free public schools have costs. We help alumni from The Well and families in our community with a small back-to-school stipend to help defray initial term expenses, like uniforms for growing kids.
One Glass of Water in the April heat. Our little church plant is named Nam Nung Gaew, or One Glass of Water. Add and Ann are leading this local body of believers. During our first week, we shared communion and took time to remember Jesus’ last days before Easter. This month we met on Tuesday and Thursday evenings to learn, worship, share, and pray.
One Glass online, too. Building a church and discipling people who work long hours and live far away requires creativity. We are creating short Bible/life video lessons to share online as part of our church plant’s ministry to new believers. (For more about this project, read Jim’s newsletter from March here.)
There is no one-size-fits-all for compassionate care. This season, several women reached out in need of extra care related to social service, counsel, and special support. Regardless of our years of experience, no case is the same. We must always stop, consider, and seek godly wisdom for how best to provide love and care. Our teams have been learning about limit setting, loving people who are not so easy to love, and that God is our main resource.
… But God’s compassion does fit all. We had a good visit with 15 women from our Chinatown community. We were a motley crew gathered in that church-provided air-conditioned room. Women ranged in age from 25-75, but most were in their later years. (Ages 44, 54, 64, and 74 represented!) God was with us. These women have desperate stories, and I was privileged to be in the room, watching them hear that God loves them.
By the time you read this letter, everyone will be back in school. Things will cool off (a little) with the rainy season beginning in June.
Like September in the U.S., the new year is a fresh start. New beginnings for our church, new classrooms for students, and new connections in the slum community and in Chinatown – but the same compassionate God, and the same goal of following Jesus through it all.
Sa poked her head into my office on a Monday morning. “I got a call from the government. There will be an inspection tomorrow. They are sending eight officials to review everything, make sure we are honest, and have all the documents correct.”
She paused. “I will confirm they are for real because it might be a scam. People sometimes pretend to be official so they can get money. But we should prepare, in case it is real.”
Not a great start to the week.
Sometimes our lives must sound exotic and interesting to the average American. However, most of what we do is not “exciting,” and the red tape – the fine-print forms and documents; the tedious bureaucratic processes; the signatures, stamps, and seals – is one of those unglamorous parts of mission life.
Servantworks, was registered with the IRS red-tape machine to be a 501(c)3 non-profit. When Americans give to Servantworks, the gift is tax-deductible. We also have a Thai non-profit, a foundation called RCD. We’ve been working to get our tax deduction status for Thais who want to support our work by giving to RCD. The process is not as straightforward as the U.S. system, and we are submitting our last bits of paperwork with prayers and fingers crossed.
The day Sa popped by with her news, we had most of our paperwork in order but they wanted 3 years‘ of every type of record: financial of course, but also activities and case management. With one day to assemble everything, we canceled non-essential plans and went to work.
On Tuesday morning, we waited, as ready as could be, with stacks of paper ready to be pored over. I imagined eight officials sitting at a long table with their hot uniforms on, reviewing our documents and asking questions. At three o’clock they arrived; but only three people. Three officials finally arrived at three o’clock. They had already visited a few other foundations and were ready to be done. They glanced through the intro packs that Sa had carefully prepared and were quickly satisfied. They didn’t so much as glance at the waiting stacks of paper. They asked a few friendly questions, took a picture with Jim and our consultant, and were on their way in less than 30 minutes.
Why share this? Transparency is one of our communication values for Servantworks. It would be easy to tell shocking stories or pull on heartstrings to get attention. We hear distressing and emotional stories often. But we want to give you a well-rounded picture of all it takes to be present and do the work God calls us to.
We do very little, if anything, that one might consider glamorous. Volunteers from the U.S. have asked, “Are these women from the bars?” almost disappointed that they look like regular people.
Doing God’s work includes cleaning out desks, filling out paperwork, providing financial counsel, babysitting a 2-year-old, or caring for people in whatever way is necessary. It might include helping a woman move garbage bags full of her stuff across town, returning a phone call when someone wants help getting into a psychiatric ward, or coaxing conversations from a kid who wants to stay alone in her room too much.
There is little glamor in loving people. Mission life, wherever we live it, is about training our ears and eyes to notice what God is doing, including the small things. We might wish for glamorous or exotic adventures or complain and fuss about what feels menial. Yet we are called together to be in this world and do this work – to watch and see what the Creator of the Universe has planned.
Even when it interrupts our Monday morning.
We often refer to people we reach as “at risk.” God often talks about the fatherless.
I have a memory of Jim standing in the Gulf of Thailand with two young Thai girls, little arms wrapped around Jim’s legs, shrieking with delight as waves crashed and washed sand from under their feet. In those moments, the strength of a father allowed them to enjoy the wild ocean.
The fatherless—the at-risk—often cannot fathom safe strength. If they know strength, it is capricious and treacherous. For them, self-protection is the only option. Our job is to lead them to safety and joy in Jesus; this is the Gospel.
Here is how The Well team has been doing that in Bangkok these past few months.
In school… Dear and Addy continue volunteer teaching and developing relationships with staff and students at a local school, with the goal of sharing Jesus and helping to understand and reduce its high dropout rate.
On the streets… Six students who participated in the Brave Carpenter program a year ago now have skills in furniture making and carpentry. Three work full time while three are moving forward with education and part-time work.
A certain kind of work, that is … A few blocks in Chinatown are either the home, “workplace,” or both of dozens of women of all ages.
COVID catalyzed community. Ann has put together a small network of churches working on outreach and development projects in a nearby slum centered around garbage recycling.
Because “just” loving is actually a big deal.
Thank you for helping us care for these people with your prayer, your encouragement, and your financial support.
Fatherless are now everywhere. If we can help you take care of someone vulnerable in your community, will you let us know? We would love to hear from you, to pray for you, to encourage and share ideas.
A key priority we have written about extensively is community transformation as the best way to fight sex trafficking. We have scratched the surface of that a bit in our large, dense neighborhood, with the overall dream always being to grow neighborhood churches.
We have known Addy and Ann for many years, including their dream for education and discipleship for needy children and families. In late 2021 we made a commitment to help them towards that vision, which now is focused on growing a church that can reach folks at the bottom. They then hope to begin a small Christian school connected with the church.
We are currently providing financial support as seed money, and Addy was blessed with a full scholarship for an M.A. at Wheaton Graduate School. He is in a hybrid program, studying online while coming to the U.S. for short intensive classes. His first U.S. visit was last October, and 3 more trips are scheduled for this year.
Here is Addy’s story:
My father was alcoholic and my mother addicted to gambling. My dad drank almost every day, especially on payday, and my mom often frequented gambling houses. They fought a lot so I hung out with friends as much as possible to avoid being home.
At age 12 I learned that I would not be able to attend high school because my parents had not paid my fees at primary school. Mom had spent Dad’s earnings on gambling debts. Not long after that my parents broke up, and I had to move in with my grandparents in a distant area of Bangkok.
My older cousins also lived with them. They were drug dealers who began using me to deliver drugs, and with my pay I would play at the video game shop and hang out with friends. I thought my life would go nowhere, but one day a friend I played soccer with invited me to a Christmas party at his church.
I always remember my first step entering that church. I had a warm feeling, sensing love that I had never known. I wasn’t yet open to Christianity, thinking it was a foreign religion, but my church friends kept inviting me to play soccer. They and other church members treated me in a way that was amazing and wonderful. That made me want to know God more, so I started reading the Bible, and began to see who God is, and how Jesus died for everyone. I decided to become Christian on January 6, 2002.
My friend told me to ask God anything I wanted and He would answer. The first thing I prayed for was to be able to go back to study. A few months later I had a chance encounter with my aunt (which I know for sure was God’s plan), who had learned that I was not studying. She asked if I wanted to go back to school, and I said yes. The following day she went and talked to the headmaster of my old school, and he gave her my diploma. I was so joyful that I cried and had no words.
Tired of my living situation, I asked my pastor to let me stay at the church for two weeks. He said yes, and I ended up staying there five years. The church supported and trained me in the way of God, and funded my high school costs. I can honestly say that without their God- inspired help I would still be a lost person. That is why my life is for Christ.
During my sophomore year in University while studying for an English degree I was doing a report about the problems of Thai teenagers. I wanted a pastor’s perspective on this issue, so a friend at church introduced me to Jim Larson at The Well. When I first heard about what The Well was doing with women at risk I thought, “Is it possible that there could be such a ministry in Thailand?” Jim talked about doing ministry where “love comes first” as Jesus loves us. So I started rereading the Gospels, and saw how Jesus was always with the poor, the broken, the abandoned, the widow, and the orphans.
Later during my senior year, I did a report titled “Educational Inequality Between the Students in Bangkok and the Rural Areas”, and I came to interview women at The Well, and was able to work there as an intern. After I graduated The Well team invited me to join as full-time staff.
I worked with The Well in Bangkok for 4 years, and meanwhile completed a master’s degree in educational administration. My wife, Ann, and I also had the opportunity to work for 18 months in a rural community in northeastern Thailand where we learned a lot about its people and culture, and gained experience developing young people through education and the love of Jesus.
God then opened an unbelievable door for me to teach at Triam Udom Suksa school, the top public school in Thailand. I taught there for four years while also completing my teacher certification requirements. But I wanted to work in a Christian educational ministry, and God led me to work at a Christian university to gain experience in higher education as well.
I believe God has built my life step by step, He has given me such broad experience as preparation to lead an educational ministry that helps poor, broken, and underprivileged kids to touch the love of Jesus in all areas of life, spirit, body, emotion, and social development, and build their lives in His kingdom.
The education center that I envision will be a ministry of a local church, as I believe that the Church is the center for building God’s kingdom. Ann is gifted organizationally as well as working with small kids. She shares this vision, and by God’s grace and power we will work towards it together.