Christmas is love in action

Christmas is love in action. Every time we love, every time we give, it's Christmas.

Dale Evans

Five years ago, God put a vision in our hearts for YWAM Ratchaburi. 'YWAM Ratchaburi exists to see every generation in Ratchaburi touched by the love of Jesus'. A vision so broad, but yet so evidently in His plan for us as we look back now at all the different areas that He has lead us to minister to over the past five years. It was evident even in the short span of one month as we ran our yearly Christmas outreach over the month of December.


In the nine Christmas parties and three days of Christmas carolling that we were involved in this past December, we were able to reach out to Burmese laborers, a Karen Hill Tribe, patients and staff in the Ratchaburi hospital, churches and the communities surrounding them, people at the famous floating market in Ratchaburi, government officials, prisoners, schools, and people in Ratchaburi town.


Rich and poor. Well known and unknown. Young and old. Thai and non-Thai.  God loves them all and opens doors for us to minister to them. He truly is amazing and we'd like to thank Him for allowing us to be a part of His plan here. May every generation in Ratchaburi truly be touched by His love. To God be all the glory!

Christmas 2011

“And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, 
stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. 
It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. 
And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore. 
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. 
What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. 
What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.” Dr Seuss

What does Christmas really mean? It certainly doesn't come from a store - although in many parts of the world today, you would think otherwise. In Thailand, the Christmas trees are already up in the stores. Dancing Santa Clauses with fake snow, reindeer and twinkling lights. Christmas really does mean so much more than all of that - and each year, we take the month of December to bring the real meaning of Christmas to people in Thailand.

This year we will be hosting a number of Christmas parties - in the Burmese community near to where we live, in the local prison - and possibly in a Karen village and a school. We also always help to facilitate many other Christmas parties run by other people and churches. This year will be the second year in a row that the churches in Ratchaburi will gather together to hold an evangelistic Christmas event in Ratchaburi town and we are excited to be a part of it.

Would you like to help us to give a special gift to a Burmese or Karen family this year? Would you like to help us to bring hope to one of the inmates in the local prison? We know that Christmas is so much more -will you help us to bring the message of light to those who are walking in the darkness?

Please pray for us this December. If you would like to make a donation towards any one of the Christmas parties, please contact us, or give online here.

Identity and dreams - Camping trip Nov 2011

Identity and dreams. Finding ones identity in Christ and dreaming God's dreams. This was the theme of our third camping trip this past 18-20 November.

In beautiful surroundings with new and old friends, the kids enjoyed a special weekend of fun and games, and learning more about their Savior. 40 kids - from Thai, Burmese and Cambodian origin and 40 adults from many different nations supervising! 

Thank you so much for those who helped to make this camp happen.

 Our prayer is that each of these special lives will grow closer to God. Will you pray for them too? 

Burmese love Thai people

Today many of our Burmese friends took the day off from work to come and help with the sand bagging effort. These people live from day to day, relying on every days pay, and they only get paid for the days that they work. They love their Thai neighbors, even though sometimes the sentiment is not mutual. We truly love working with such special people!

Before the work begins

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The kids came along too!

Lending a helping hand - sand bags for flood prevention in Bangkok

Trucks to transport the sand bags to Bangkok and surrounding areas

Some locals filling sand bags

The principal of the Christian school in Ratchaburi came with some of his staff

students from the Technical school in Ratchaburi helping out

Thousands of bags - so far there are around 200,000 to be filled. The Government is hoping for up to a million bags to be really effective in preventing the floods, but so far there is not enough of a budget. 

One of the local pastors 

closing the bags 

Moving the bags into the trucks to be transported to where they are needed most

feeding the volunteers

A local pastor with his family and some church members

pastor and his wife

A pastor and a church elder

Noiy - YWAM Ratchaburi

Husband and wife from Kenya lending a hand

Noiy with the Senator in charge and directors of various government departments

Lords tents camping 3

“Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true” Lyman Frank Baum

There’s something so special about being with someone as one of their dreams comes true. Working with the community of Burmese children in our Rice Seeds Program, we have been able to not only encourage them to dream beyond what seems possible, but also to be with them as they have been able to live some of those dreams out.


Encouraging them to dream beyond their community at first was extremely overwhelming for most of them. With parents who are laborers on a building site, many things seem completely out of reach to the kids. We started small – asking them if there is something that they dreamt of that they would like to do. They wanted to go camping – in tents and sleep in sleeping bags.

 With the help of a number of wonderful sponsors, we saw that camping trip happen and loved hearing stories from the kids of how they slept all night in their sleeping bags (in the sweltering heat of the Thai summer), because it was their dream, and it had finally come true. The kids spent 2 days doing all sorts of activities - including learning to make their own food inside pieces of bamboo. Most importantly, each of the kids had a chance to learn more about the God who loves them, and thinks that they are truly special – special enough not only to be allowed to dream, but to see those dreams come true. God loves them no matter what their background is or what their parents do.

On the18-20 of November we will take a group of kids camping once again. This will be our third camping trip with our Rice Seeds kids. On our second camping trip (last November), we joined together with Kings Kids Thailand, and ARK international. ARK brought some kids that they work with, mostly from slum communities in Bangkok. ARK will be joining us again for our trip this November, as will Baan Chu Jai, a social development center for teens in crisis.

 We will be travelling to Kanchanaburi for this particular camping trip and have been so blessed to have been given the location for free for the weekend. We do however have other costs that we need to cover (food/transport etc) with a total of around 80 people attending (40 children and 40 adults - staff and volunteers making sure everything runs smoothly).

We love that our Rice Seeds kids are coming with us again, and we are excited about what God is going to do in their hearts during the camping trip. We are also thrilled to have more kids joining us, all from different and difficult circumstances, but none any less special to God. 

We look forward to being a part of more kids dreams coming true. Would you like to have a part in helping to make this happen? We need to raise around 30 000Baht to cover the basic running costs of the camp and we certainly will be needing a lot of prayers (especially at this point that there will be no flooding anywhere near the campsite as there is a lot of flooding in central Thailand at the moment.)

If you would like to make a donation, you can do so online here. Please make sure to specify that the donation is for "The Lord's tents camping 3".

If you would like more details as to how you can pray, please contact us: ratchaburi@ywamthai.org