by Joe Henry

One by one, as sweat slowly began to mark their saffron robes, the monks pounded stakes into the ground one humid morning in suburban Chiang Mai, Thailand. As their work took shape, it became apparent to people in the Kwan Wiang neighborhood what the Buddhist leaders were doing: building a tent in order to take offerings to appease the community spirit, so obviously angered to have killed three people in car accidents on successive weekends.

On that same Sunday morning, Ogaat Soiraya and his family drove by the tent as they headed out of their neighborhood to a nondescript townhouse just down the road, a townhouse which that day would begin serving as a new tabernacle to the glory of God called Cool Shade of Life Church.

Pastor Ogaat had been preparing for this day for many years. After receiving Christ as His savior in 1998, Ogaat was growing very slowly in his new faith. He accepted the claims of Christ but was unsure of how much to commit to His lordship. One day in 2001, that attitude changed in a heartbeat. His 4-year-old son was playing with friends when a car struck him. The accident horribly damaged the boy’s leg, likely leaving him a cripple, according to the doctors. Instead, trusting God for healing, the family began a long, arduous journey through rehabilitation and surgeries to repair and lengthen the son’s leg. It was during that painful process that Ogaat promised God that he would serve Him alone if only his son could recover. He did. And from that day forward, Ogaat surrendered his life to God.

That new allegiance took shape quickly as Ogaat decided he could no longer work in the southern capital of Bangkok, separated from his wife and two children. Instead, in 2002, he moved permanently to be with his family in Chiang Mai, a city of 1 million people in the northern mountains. Led further by the Lord, Ogaat and his family began going together to Chiang Mai Baptist Church, where Ogaat soon began a two-year course of study in the church’s small Bible center. As part of his training, Ogaat led a small group in his home consisting of mostly family members at the start. He was mentored by the church’s pastor and an American missionary who taught at the Bible center. In a year, the small group was taxing the space available in their small home in Kwan Wiang.

While this amazing work of God was unfolding, another family was working in Chiang Mai, unknown yet to the Soiraya family. This couple and their four children, missionaries with PIONEERS, had arrived in Chiang Mai with a vision to plant churches but with an openness as to how the Lord would work out the details. After almost a year of intense language study, the couple decided to continue studying separately. The husband stayed with the same teacher, while the wife moved under the tutelage of a new language teacher, Khruu Dtaay, the wife of Ogaat Soiraya.

The two women made an immediate emotional and spiritual connection and were able to talk at length about their lives and their dreams and about how they felt the Lord was leading them in life and ministry. Those conversations, shaped over days and months, led them to realize that they might be able to work together in ministry. It was only after many months that the two women finally brought their husbands together to meet. The PIONEERS missionary and Ogaat shared a close connection quickly as well, feeling like-minded on the important (doctrine and spreading the Gospel) to the interesting (they both were saved at the age of 26) and the quirky (neither likes coffee!).

They joined together in ministry to the small group, which was flourishing and bringing in new members consistently. One Thai couple from that small group is preparing to plant a new church, while another family hosts its own small groups that have brought several people to salvation in Christ. As for the Soirayas, they and three other Thai families from that small group felt led by the Lord to start their own congregation. They prayed and planned with the missionary family for a year. Finally, just 25 months after the PIONEERS family arrived in Thailand, they and the four Thai families opened Cool Shade of Life Church on that same humid day that saw a group of Buddhist monks pleading with the principalities and powers to stop taking lives in the Kwan Wiang neighborhood.

That first day – Nov. 19, 2006 – there were 13 adults and 11 children in attendance. Since then, the Lord has led the church members to reach out in love to their families, friends, and co-workers, drawing four more Thais into the kingdom of God and leading others to ask questions about God and eternity. After 10 months, there are about 25 adults and 16 children in attendance every Sunday morning. And the small group that began in 2004 in Pastor Ogaat’s home continues, bringing a dozen or more adults together to pray and study the Word every week.

What is next? Already, two of the church elders are attending the same Bible center from which Ogaat graduated and are praying about future service for the Lord. Another couple, who are serving at the church following graduation from Bangkok Bible College & Seminary, hope to marry and open their own church in two years. As for the church members, they want to be a loving and effective witness to their neighborhoods; they desire to lead people to Christ, who can free them from evil spirits and empty Buddhist rituals; they desire to train effective church planters who can multiply the impact of Cool Shade of Life Church in Chiang Mai and surrounding towns; they desire to see a powerful movement of God and His church among the 1 million people of Chiang Mai province.

How will that happen? When Thais take hold of the cool shade (Hebrews 4:9-11) that God promises to His children rather than clinging to the vain religious rituals that keep them bound to fear and evil.

To God be the glory!

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