SPRING VALLEY COMMUNITY CHURCH, BANGKOK

A Letter to fellow Churches and concerned Christians

Dear Church Pastors and beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

It is with great pleasure and joy for me to introduce our newly established and relocated Independent Pentecostal Church, known as the Spring Valley Community Church, Bangkok, which was first set up in January 2013.

This Church is now relocated from a rented bungalow house in Lam Luk Ka to this new rented 5 storey shop-lot at Saphan Mai, located in a busier suburb just north of metropolitan Bangkok.

I am the pastor for this Church, serving together with my wife, Jenny Ruth Kok. I am a Malaysian. Before coming to Thailand in September 2007, I have been serving as an independent voluntary missionary in several places in Asia, including India, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, Turkey. I was single then serving the Lord as a missionary for couple of months. Then I met Jenny, a Thai national in January 2008. We were married in April 2008 and together we have since served the Lord, first in India, then China and finally opting to serve in Thailand since 2010.

Our Church is presently located at a very busy, strategic and prime location, as it is near a bus stop (50m away), food stalls (10m), a private hospital (350m),a hypermarket (400m) and day/night market (1km). There are 5 large universities quite close to our Church; namely, North Bangkok University (2.5km), Krirk University (2.9km), Phranakhon Rajabhat University (3.2km), Sripatum University (5km) and Kasertsart University (6.8km). It is also close to the Don Mueang International Airport (5km) and behind our building are some 10 blocks of Apartment dwellings.

By now, we have done some basic touch up and facelift renovations to the rented 5 story shop lot premises, giving it a new life as a welcoming church.

In our planning, we intend to use the Ground Floor as a coffee/tea cafeteria for Christian Fellowship. The Church and worship sanctuary will be located on the 1st floor, the ministry training room on the 2nd floor, the pasonage on the 3rd floor, and a place for visiting missionaries on the 4rd floor, even the rooftop on the 5th floor could be used too (such as for getting a panoramic view of the surrounding).

Of course our main mission focus is to reach out to the local community (who are yet to know the Lord) and more so the university students close to us to get them to know Jesus Christ our Lord to place tracts and testimonies for them to read, to read the Gospel and His Word far and wide as He has commanded us to do.

Since establishing the Church, our Sunday Church Service in the previous house church has an attendance of between 3 - 12 members with most of them living  quite far away from the church. We have also started a Cell Group every Wednesday evening with an attendance of between 5 - 10 members.

We hope with this better location, we will  be able to reach out to a greater number and eventually to welcome more into the Kingdom of God and in time, with suitable resources to provide free tuition in language learning such as English, Malay and Chinese and other equipping to serve the Lord's purpose.

These are some of of our visions for God's work waiting to be done. Alone and with limited resources, we can only do so much to realise what God will entrust us.

We sincerely feel that the present new premises which God has favored us with could be more extensively used, So with this in mind, I am writing to you, Brothers and Sisters in Christ, particularly Pastors of Churches, to look into the opportunity and possibilty of working together with us in this vision to do God’s work in this corner of Bangkok.

Should you be interested, we welcome you to write us and even visit us in our new place. There is a lot that can be explored and done together for the Lord such as outreach to the students, evangelism with the local community, training in language learning ministry, healing ministry and etc.

You can visit our blog at http://faithwithyou.blogspot.com for more information.

I hope to hear from you soon, please do not hesitate to contact us for your ideas, assistance and etc, anything in furtherance of the Lord's work will be most welcome.

Blessings,

Rev. Steve Peter H S Kok

Email : faithwithyou@gmail.com

CHURCH RENOVATION APPEAL

Shalom All,

Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth!

Of late, Jenny and I have worked hard every day in trying to spruce up the new premises of the 5-storeyed building we plan to turn into our new church. Back breaking painting of walls and ceilings, getting help to fix up the minimum plumbing, throwing away accumulated unwanted broken pieces of furniture and things and cleaning up the place to make it look more welcoming as a place of worship.

Work in progress with what funds we have and more awaits to be done, when donations are in support of our efforts are available and coming in.

These are the encouraging words from our Lord Jesus: “It is more blessed to give than to receive” - Book of Acts 20 verse 35.

To many, those words make no sense. They love to receive. Yet the Lord is not saying that receiving has no pleasure. Many of us have experienced the joy of having someone care for us. Yes, there is pleasure in receiving; yet there is even more pleasure in giving. Jesus is saying that the pleasure of knowing that we have been used by God to help someone, exceeds the pleasure of being the one who was helped.

If that is so, then whenever we have the opportunity, we should do good to everyone, especially to those we love the most. Doing good may include a monetary gift, but it may also include a word of kindness or encouragement. To do good may involve us sending a card with a special note inside. It may include a carefully baked dish. Or, it may involve a helping hand to get a job done. It may be something as simple as a smile and a few moments of our time.

As reported earlier, our initial target was to raise some THB 300,000 (RM 33,334/USD 10,600) principally to enable necessary simple renovations to be done to set up a look able fellowship/ worship center to cater to the needs of this neighborhood of Bangkok.

For the past one month, we have collected almost THB 36,800 (RM 4,000/USD 1,300) to help us kick off the necessary renovation work for our new church. The money has come from a number of sources - from those who have been extraordinarily generous with private donations and from those social/charity welfare.

Given below are some snapshots of "work in progress"

Our floor plan and future renovation works needed are set out here:

Attached with this report is our appeal for funds for the setting up of our new church.

Should you need further information or clarification, please write us.

We will be more than pleased to update you with your queries.

Blessings,
Rev. Steve Peter H S Kok