This coming Saturday, July 30th, will mark our 4th week in Chiang Mai, Thailand. We’ve settled into our home which we have sub-let until January 2, 2023. We’ve also visited Grace International School and Stephani is now doing some online training to prepare for the new school year, which starts August 1st for teachers and August 10th for students. We now know where to buy groceries and have started using all of the phone apps that are essential for living here: Grab (food and car rides), Bolt (car rides), Food Panda and Tuk (food delivery), and Lazada (think Amazon in Thailand). We’ve also visited 2 of the international fellowships here and have enjoyed our experiences, especially because we hadn’t been able to attend an in-person church since the first week of January 2020.
Ken has also started driving in Thailand, the car came as part of the sub-let agreement. Driving in Thailand is kind of a daunting task because of the necessity to drive on the left-side of the road. Driving will allow us to cut some costs, Grab & Bolt rides were getting expensive, and it will give us more of a sense of independence and the assurance that we really can do this life in Chiang Mai.
While Stephani is preparing for the start of school, Ken has been reaching out to our supporting churches and supporters in an effort to arrange meetings and to help them switch their support to our new organization, Crossworld. If you’d like to know more about Crossworld there are links below:
Crossworld: https://crossworld.org/
About Crossworld: https://crossworld.org/about
He’s also been attempting to build a bridge for our finances until we’ve raised full support. To that end, he’s applying for 2 jobs with Compassion International, they have offices in Chiang Mai, and he’s also been exploring some remote work with some companies who are needing information technology help. We would greatly appreciate your prayers for favor both in the short and long term
Our plans with Crossworld are to do discipleship-related ministries; we’re still praying about where to join God in His work here. Of course, the discipleship that Stephani will be involved with will be focused on her students at Grace. For Ken, there are tremendous opportunities here: there are two refugee camps to the north of Chiang Mai on the border with Myanmar and there are several organizations who are doing ministry here in Chiang Mai where we could also help.
In regard to our support needs, in 2016 we were fully supported and in 2018 when we returned to China we communicated with our supporters that we would not need full support and asked them to bless others with the money that they had been giving us. Our goal today is to return to the same level of support that we had in 2016. At present we have raised about 25% of those needs.
Getting out of China and into Thailand was very expensive; flights and moving expenses were very costly. Setting up a home and living in Thailand has also been a little more expensive than what we budgeted for and the school enrollment and health exam fees have to be paid. If you’d like to know more about our plans and what we need in regard to support, please send us an email, we’d love to meet with you to share our hearts. If you’d like to support us through Crossworld the link is below:
Crossworld Support: https://crossworld.org/give/support-a-disciple-maker
Notes for support: Name – Ken & Stephani Clouser & Support Account: 40586
If you’d prefer to support us by mailing a check to Crossworld:
- Make a note on the check with our name and account number (Clouser, 40586)
- Mail to: Cross World USA, Finance Department, 10000 N Oak Trafficway, Kansas City, MO 64155
If you’d like to help us with our immediate needs and do not need a receipt, you can also use the link below:
Thank you for your prayers,
Ken & Stephani Clouser