Lottie Moon Christmas Offering

Lottie Moon Christmas Offering 2010

Week of Prayer, Nov. 28-Dec. 5, 2010

May the peoples praise You, O God; may all the peoples praise you (Psalm 67:3, NIV).

It’s a beautiful vision: People who speak Kirmanjki and Kabyle, Thai and Tatar, and use sign language in Czech—all knowing and praising God. It’s a vision that comes closer to being realized every year as Christians seek unreached people groups to tell them the story of Jesus.

Southern Baptists have followed God’s lead to focus attention on bringing all the world’s peoples to Him. And God has responded to the faithfulness of His people. There is much to celebrate!

Are we there yet? Not yet.

But for the first time in history, we can identify the people groups that remain untouched by the Gospel. We can get there in our generation! But that last part of the journey may be the hardest. It will take all of us—our churches, our missionaries, our national partners, our Great Commission partners.

Southern Baptists must continue to increase their giving to support missionaries through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering®. They must pray strategically. And they must own the Great Commission as never before to see that all peoples know Him.

Day 1

Thai Prison ministry

The day Arti was released from prison, his aunt brought him to a Christian halfway house in Bangkok.

Arti had served five years for a drug conviction. During that time, his Christian aunt visited him, bringing a Bible and daily devotional readings.

But he didn’t really understand what he was reading until he arrived at the halfway house.

“I studied the Bible until I [was] sure that God loves me and Jesus died for me,” he said.

Pastor Soonthorn Soonthorntarawong established the house when he saw that newly released prisoners, often rejected by their families and Thai society, needed help. The first church in Thailand for former prisoners stands nearby.

The Lottie Moon Christmas Offering® helped make the halfway house and church possible. Both are outgrowths of a prison ministry begun in 1971 by IMB missionary Jack Martin. In the early 1980s, Pastor Soonthorn joined Jack in the work and eventually assumed leadership of the ministry when Jack and his wife, Gladys, retired in 1999.

Arti remembers the hopelessness that prisoners feel.

“They … feel that no one cares and no one loves them,” he says. “Only Jesus is the answer.”

Pray for the work of the Christian Prison Ministry Foundation that reaches into 60 of the 120 prisons throughout Thailand.
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