September 2025 Newsletter

I have sat down and tried to write this newsletter now more times than I can count. The first draft started on the first Saturday morning of September, after waking up from a late night where we had just flown back up to Chiang Rai from Bangkok. 

As I was writing the draft that morning, the kids woke up, so I put it away and told myself I’d finish it later. However, at 11:30 that morning, something totally unexpected happened that I am still processing through, which is that my son Theo had what is called a febrile seizure, while in my arms. I have already recorded the event on Facebook, and this is what I wrote: 

Today we had a very scary episode. Without any warning other than acting sleepy, my son Theo, who is 18 months old, walked up to me, climbed into my arms acting like he just wanted to nap, and started shaking violently. My worst fear was immediately realized as I picked him up and he was having a strong convulsive seizure in my arms. We were in a play area at a department store and I grabbed the employees and asked them to call an ambulance immediately and find a doctor or nurse somewhere in the department store. I laid him down on the padded bench seat just as Liz walked up (this all happened within 60 seconds of the violent shaking). He started turning blue. A nurse heard me scream out into the food court, just outside of the play area, and showed up right after Liz. I have never prayed harder in my life than I did in the following minutes. 

Liz asked me to go get Mary Ella. She was still playing and didn’t know what was happening yet. I let Liz and the nurse take care of Theo as I went to talk with Mary Ella and explain what was happening in a way a kindergartner could understand. We prayed together for little brother and waited for what felt like hours for the ambulance to arrive.

Finally, they got there and loaded him on the stretcher. A crowd had gathered, one of the employees was in the corner crying, and the world was spinning as my mind constantly bounced back and forth from hope to despair. This all while keeping a calm composure for my wife and daughter. Both of them made me so proud today. Not only did I realize how strong my wife is under extreme pressure, but I also realized how mature and strong my daughter is. 

Right now, Theo is at the hospital overnight. Liz is staying with him and I brought Mary Ella back to the grandparents’ house for bed. His condition seems to be stable now. At around 5PM local time, he woke up enough to finally breastfeed. Then at around 8PM he woke up and looked around the room for the first time without crying, before falling back asleep. 

For now, we have hope, even though we haven’t figured out what caused this yet. They have done an MRI scan and found nothing abnormal in his brain. The guess right now seems to be a virus or bacterial infection, but so far they haven’t discovered what it is exactly. 

I’ll update in the morning Thailand time. For now, please keep praying for our little man. And thank you to all of you who have reached out to ask how he’s doing. We feel your love and prayers.

After coming back from the hospital, we had to turn around the next day and go to Laos for a scheduled trip for our visas. The visa I’m on now requires me to at least leave the country once every six months. That was a relatively uneventful trip, but crossing borders is always stressful, and I wasn’t exactly excited to take my son who had just had a seizure to a small mountain border town in a communist country. Needless to say, I had a lot of prayer and thanking God for his provision and protection after that trip. 

Then we came home only to wake up with sickness (either from food in Laos or it was what originally gave Theo his seizure) and wake up to the news about Charlie Kirk. Charlie is a fellow Christian and conservative who runs in the same circles I do, and knew a lot of people. I didn’t know him, but people I know did, and like millions of people around the world, I was shocked, sickened, and scarred from seeing the video of the assassination.

It has taken me a solid week to recover from that week, not only because of all these events, but because we also moved back up to Chiang Rai. 

This is news that I wanted to announce under less stressful circumstances, but we felt God’s leading to close down the Bible study we had started, and come back up North. There are many reasons for this, but the primary one was funding and attention. I allowed myself to spend too much time thinking about how to build a church, and not enough time thinking about how to fund it. This is my fault and I take full responsibility for it. I am a fool who is still learning every single day. I am a zealot who thinks too much about people and ideas and hates doing paperwork. And I can complain that this is just my personality, but the reality is that every mistake I have made was warned about in the book of Proverbs. I have had to go back and revisit the wisdom literature of Scripture and confess where I have not practiced these principles. I maintain that everything I have done has been out of love, and I know that love covers a multitude of sins, but I am still ashamed. 

Even so, I am encouraged for many reasons. One reason is because everyone, including the loved ones we left in Bangkok, have been understanding. Another reason is because, despite me wanting to move there and plant a church, my kids just do better in Chiang Rai. 

We are looking now at how we can serve here again, but I think much of it will look like it did before— sharing the gospel with our neighbors, teaching, and volunteering in the church. Once I get our finances settled, I would also like to put much more attention to making Thai Bible teaching content online. This was something I experimented with just briefly a few years ago, and it bore much fruit even in just that short window of time. I have been feeling for some time that media would be a better fit for my particular calling than planting here in Thailand, and I feel more affirmed in that now.

Even though things didn’t work out the way I envisioned them, our time in Bangkok was not a waste. We were able to help our friends’ church plant during the first few months of its existence. That is poetic to me. We went down to put together a team and plant a church, and instead, we ended up helping someone else plant theirs. 

We were also able to pour into the life of our housekeeper. She is a single mom who is originally from the city of Buriram, and of everyone we left there, she was the one we shed the most tears with. 

I don’t know exactly what’s next. I said in March that we make our plans in pencil because we never know if what we dream of will work out. In fact, the last thing I want to say here is partly an encouragement to myself. And that is— risk is right. No matter what we risk in sharing the gospel, planting churches, or serving others, whether it turns out the way we thought it would or not, we have done right by simply stepping out and taking the risk in the first place. 

Thank you to those who pray for us and for Thailand. Thank you for those who are praying for our nation and for our world right now. As an optimist, I see the battle we are in as just one more step in winning the world to Christ. Yes, it’s hard. Yes, some of us will have to pay the ultimate price, just like our brother Charlie did. But whether it’s moving to a big city in Asia to plant a church, or going to college campuses knowing there are radicalized students, the risk is always worth it, because we have a savior who took the ultimate risk for us. 

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