August 2024 Prayer Letter

Pastor Sritone Kongkow is the president of the Mittam foundation. This foundation facilitates something like a dozen foreign missionaries with visas (my family included) who are spread out all over the country of Thailand.  Pastor Sritone also founded Lanna Baptist Church around 30 years ago and was pastor there for almost 10 years before moving to Chiang Mai and starting Wiiang Ping Baptist Church where he has pastored ever since.  Out of Lanna and Wiiang Ping over the years, I believe three other Baptist churches have been planted in Northern Thailand. He also runs a children’s home and a Bible Institute which trains young men for the ministry. 

At the conference he was asked to share his testimony which I had, surprisingly, never heard before.  He said that his father was a witch doctor who was a wild man.  No one could control him and so he was thrown in jail, not necessarily because he did anything wrong, but just due to the unnerving aspect of having an uncontrollable witch doctor running around.  It was in prison that two American missionaries met him.  They had a prison ministry and it was there that they preached the gospel to Pastor Sritone’s father to which he believed and was saved.  Upon his release he went back home and burned all of his witch doctor paraphernalia and began to teach and preach the Bible to his family and whoever else would listen.  At the tender age of 17 Pastor Sritone related that he surrendered his life to Christ to serve Him all the days of his life.  After a couple of years,  he had the opportunity to train and live in America for 8 years before returning to Thailand to start Lanna Baptist Church.

Of the American missionaries who led his father to Christ, he said that they returned to America a little while after his father had been saved.  They were in Thailand for maybe about 8 years, if I remember correctly.  Sadly, this is par for the course for many missionaries who come to Thailand.  Most last between 5 and 10 years before giving up and returning home thinking that their efforts were fruitless.  So, several years ago, but also after many years of ministry, Pastor Sritone had an opportunity to meet one of the men who had preached to his father in that jail in Thailand.  At that time the missionary was 92 years old and, as far as I understand, never had heard about Pastor Sritone before.  After meeting him and hearing that he was the son of the imprisoned witch doctor and all that God had done through his ministry, the American missionary (paraphrasing what Pastor Sritone related) exclaimed, “God has let me live all of these years so that I could see the fruit that can come out from just one witness.”

So, that was an encouraging and impactful testimony and a good reminder that, while we should go out and preach to everyone, even when we don’t see results, God can still bring forth an abundance of fruit from what we may even consider the most inconsequential of meetings.  Praise the Lord for His goodness, mercy and abundance of grace that He freely bestows upon us.