Introducing the Wanthanakorn Family

 YWAM Ratchaburi would like to introduce the second of the two missionary families that has recently moved to Ratchaburi. Praise God for all that He is doing in and through them, and the great plans that he has for them.

Introducing the Wanthanakorn family

Our family is an Akha family from Chiang Rai. We believe that by the grace of God He has redeemed our families. And He has chosen our families to be the conduits of His love to many who are lost.

Our History

Alee was born into an Akha family that moved to the city when he was a child. Being a mountain boy, he was regularly teased by his friends. Alee felt that he hated being Akha.  He didn't know his worth and tried to commit suicide several times. At the age of 18, Alee had an serious accident due to drunk driving. He spent four days unconscious, and took many months to recover. By God's grace, Alee was able to walk again and when he did he also began to embrace his Akha heritage. He began tospeak Akha, serve with the Akha people and studied the Akha Bible at the Akha Foundation.

Alee loves to worship and bring a visitation to the people for support and walk side by side with them. By using his gifting for brewing and the taste of coffee as a medium, he tells the story of God and conveys His love through the beans.

Bum was also born into an Akha family. Bum's father understood the importance of education for his children and moved their family into the city when she was a child. Bum and her brother were also involved in a very bad accident when she was a teenager. Both Bum and her brother were seriously injured and took a long time to recover. Tragically, soon after, Bum's father also passed away. Bum's mother was suddenly having to support the family alone, and Bum had to find a job to help the family make ends meet. In 2008, God brought Bum back to Him in the most extraordinary way and she fell in love with Him.

Bum completed her Discipleship Training School (DTS) with YWAM in Chaing Rai in 2010. In 2012 she married Alee and Alee completed his DTS with YWAM that same year. They have 2 sons:Sadudee and Manna. The meaning of their children's names is to Praise God for nurturing their family every day.

In 2016 our family received God's calling as a missionaries to go to the unreached.

In this season, God has brought our family to Ratchaburi. We plan to host outreach teams that come to Ratchaburi and help the local church. We can see the grace of God in our lives. It's a very special life, especially for our children. Sadudee and Manna have seen and been touched by God for themselves and learned of His character through a lot of things that happened during the journey with Him. 

Introducing the Piawong Family

YWAM Ratchaburi would like to introduce one of the missionary families that has recently moved to Ratchaburi. We are excited to see the plans that God has for them, and look forward to sharing more of their story with you in the future. 

About the Piawongs

We are a family who among ourselves are very different even in language and culture, but we have one heart to see those who live in Thailand and neighboring countries know and experience the pure and unconditional love of God. 

Our focus is to disciple and pour love into families, children, and youth. Our goal is to one day see these people that we're reaching grow and step out to be leaders in their own families and communities, taking initiative to reach out through the unique gifts that God has given them.

 Our Background

 Noom grew up in a small village in Thailand. When he was in his twenties and after many years of involvement with alcohol, drugs, women and being the leader of a gang, God transformed his life through a YWAM DTS in 2006. He made the commitment to serve God and stayed on staff there in Chiang Rai for another few years.
Karis grew up in Australia and moved to Thailand with her parents in 2007. At the beginning of 2008, Karis did a DTS with YWAM Chiang Rai and it was there that God confirmed His calling on her life for Thailand and gave her a heart for Isaan (where Noom is from and where we ministered through mercy ministries, sports, music and discipleship from 2009-2016). In late 2009 after getting married and moving to Isaan, Noom started a cultural music ministry. The goal of this group was to share God's love with the people using their own unique culture and language. We worked together leading this ministry until 2013, as well as being guardians for a few teenage boys who lived with us from 2009-2012. However, after becoming parents to our first son Eliyah in 2011, Karis started to feel the time was coming for her to start pursuing her dream of reaching out to mothers-at-risk. This slowly evolved into a mercy ministry that reached out to whole families-at-risk. The initial vision was for it to be a home, but it ended up being more of a ministry that reached out to families in their own homes and communities. This, along with training, sports and music, was our main focus until late 2014.

Between 2015-early 2017 God did many things in our hearts by slowly "weaning" us off ministry and helping us to see how much more important it is to have an intimate relationship with Him. He took us on a 5-year journey of travel where we lived in a few different provinces in Thailand, learning how to live in Sonship and learning about what our true passions are. Now, after those 5 years we are now in Ratchaburi where we plan to stay until God says otherwise - and our hearts still beat for children, youth and families. We run the Bridge Ministry with another family who moved with us from North Thailand in 2021. Our heart is to connect/bridge and restore Thais hearts to God’s heart, to each other, and to the nations.

We have three children, Eliyah (2011), Solomon (2015) and Tidah (2018) and love to open our home for teenagers or young adults to stay. At the moment we have a high-school girl from Chiang Rai living with us. We are very passionate about journeying together as a whole family to live in God's love and bring that love to the people of Thailand.

Rice Seeds: When impossible becomes possible

When we first started our Rice Seeds Sponsorship Program, our heart was to teach the group of children that we met to dream beyond their own community. We wanted them to dream that other things were possible, even those things that other people had told them were impossible. They were a small group of migrant worker's children growing up in makeshift homes near the construction site that their parents worked in. What seemed impossible for these kids, are actually things that most of us take for granted: 

- the opportunity to not only attend high school, but to succesfully graduate
- the opportunity to pursue a university degree
- the opportunity to be granted citizenship in the country that they were born in, the only country that they have ever known as home.
-the necessary documents to do things that other people consider ordinary, like buying a house or getting a job
- being able to choose their own job, and pursuing one that they love, not just one that helps them make ends meet

When we first started, the two oldest children were 12 year old girls: Wanlee and Tuway. We didn't have any money to help them, but when they approached us to ask us to speak to their parents so that they could stay in school, that was what we did. 

They were the first children in their community to ever attend high school. So, on the journey along the way, they were the first to reach every significant milestone. They faced many obstacles along the way, having to fight for their dreams each step of the way.  

Today those two girls have both completed their university degrees. One of them has been granted Thai citizenship and the other is in the process of pursuing her Thai citizenship. They are both working in jobs that they enjoy and helping to support their families. One of them is in the process of building a house.

Over a period of 13 years of walking in faith towards their dreams, the impossible of yesterday has become the possible of today. They not only succeeded at reaching their own dreams, but have opened the way for many others who have come after them. 

Praise God for the progress that we have already made in the fund raising effort towards our family ministry vehicle. We have covered 11 out of the 80 hearts already.

We still have a long way to go, but we are trusting that God will provide everything that we need in order to reach our goal.

If you would like to contribute, you can send funds to our paypal account:

a_prommathat@hotmail.com

or via the YWAM Thailand website here.

Prommathat Family Ministry Vehicle

 

Help us to be able to purchase a ministry vehicle as soon as possible so that we can keep serving effectively in the communities around us.

 Each US$100 that we receive will help us to color in one of the 75 remaining hearts to reach our goal of US$8,000.
To donate towards this need, you can click here.

Or contact us for more details:  ratchaburi@ywamthai.org

Reaching for new heights

Tao and Arm just finished twelfth grade. For some people that may not seem like a huge achievement, but both girls have overcome great adversity to get to this point.

Both girls were born in Karen families in Thailand. Arm was granted Thai citizenship at the age of 13, but Tao has not been able to obtain citizenship despite numerous efforts over the years. At the start of her high school years Tao moved schools and went to live at her new school in the hope that being in the district where most of the Karen people live that her attempt to obtain citizenship would be successful. However, year after year her dreams were crushed and she remains stateless after six years of living away from her mother and father.

Tao

Arm may have Thai citizenship, but as the fourth of seven children she faced much opposition from her family when she wanted to pursue her studies past middle school. None of her three older siblings studied beyond seventh grade and it seemed like she was destined to follow the same path. She dreamt of more and thankfully with the help of some of her friends, a sponsor who helped to cover her school fees, and a pastor who helped to speak to her parents on her behalf, she managed to stay in school each year. 

Arm

How do you stand up and fight for your dreams when everything seems to be against you? Almost everyone that we have met that has overcome adversity of some kind says the same thing – you cannot fight alone. There is always someone who stands with you, someone who believes in you, who helps you not to give up on yourself.  Arm and Tao have each had a number of people like that, people who have stood beside them and encouraged them when it seemed impossible to keep going. Teachers, pastors, friends, sponsors – they are not the ones that reach the dream, but without them the dream is that much harder to reach.

When we meet people like Tao and Arm, we are encouraged because we know that their story is so much bigger than a twelfth grade certificate. It is about community – people standing together cheering on someone else to achieve their dreams, with no motive of anything for themselves in return. 

In our years of connecting sponsors with children who need sponsorships, we have met many selfless people along the way, people willing to be a part of someone’s story without any selfish motives. If that is you reading this, we salute you for your contribution to someone else’s dreams. Thank you, whoever you are, wherever you are – you have made a difference.
Arm and Tao are in fact not finished their journey with us, but rather just beginning a new chapter. They are our newest university students in our sponsorship program, now reaching towards their bachelor’s degrees starting this June.  Tao will be studying a humanities degree majoring in English and Arm will be studying an arts degree majoring in drama and dance. We know from experience that the journey will not be easy – Arm will still have to face the pressure from her family to drop out and contribute to the family finances, Tao must continue to pursue her struggle for citizenship, hopefully finding a way before she graduates. There will be many challenges along the way, but with a community of people standing with them, we believe that they can do it.

This year, with Tao and Arm we will have a total of six university students and around thirty high school students that we assist. We are always looking for new people to partner with us to help us to continue supporting those who receive sponsorships until they reach their dreams of completing their education.

 If you would like to be one of those standing in the wings cheering them on, we would love to hear from you.

Walking in their shoes

We have discovered in the journey that we have walked with the children that we support to attend school that being given the opportunity to attend school is only one part of the equation. Being able to do it with as much dignity as possible is truly empowering. 

Children need the right equipment to follow their dreams, and in cases where their parents need to rely on sponsorships just to keep their children in school - the additional expenses that come along with being in school are often completely overwhelming. 

One of the primary expenses for school going children every year in Thailand is school uniforms. Part of the uniform that often does not get replaced due to their families limited budgets is the school shoes. We have seen many a child who has completely worn out the soles of their shoes, with their feet literally touching the ground when they walk.

Our wonderful friends at the International Community School  (ICS) in Bangkok recently helped us to start a fund towards purchasing new shoes for the children in two of the Karen villages in Suan Pueng for this coming school year, which begins in May. We would very much like to reach the goal of purchasing a new pair of school shoes for every one of the school going kids in the villages before the new school year begins. 

While 2 villages full of new shoes may seem like a huge goal, one new pair only costs around US$10.     

Join us in the joy of buying a pair of school shoes for someone who really needs them. 

If you would like to have a part in this project, you can donate online here.

(Please make sure to state in the note that it is for the Rice Seeds Shoe project)

Or contact us for more details: ratchaburi@ywamthailand.org