Institute for Global Opportunities

Over the past few months we have produced a DVD which summarizes the development and implementation of our calling. From the establishment of the Institute in Chiang Mai, Thailand, to our mission experiences across Southeast Asia, this DVD will explain to you how and why we do what we do.

We have been so grateful for those of you who have supported this ministry with your prayers and gifts in the past few years.

God has blessed the ministry of the Institute for Global Opportunities in many ways. We have seen God open doors of ministry in villages and in Chiang Mai for the Gospel. We are humbled by the opportunities God has brought our way.

As we close our first year, our hearts are overflowing with a sense of God’s direct involvement in opening doors for IGo in Asia. Our first year students have been valiant participants in helping us tweak the training program and ministry tracks. This has brought us to adjust two things in our schedule for 2009.

My family and I spent the month of October in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I taught one three week course at the Institute for Global Opportunities. I was impressed with the commitment and dedication of the twelve students currently enrolled in the missionary training program at IGo. Most of these young people are planning to spend a significant period of time in the work of bringing the Gospel to others in cross-cultural settings.

No longer do we try to look into the future and vision what will be the end product of a student after completing a four month semester at IGo – it is finished, we have the results!

Before we look at what the results have been, let's look at what our goals were before we started. What kind of students were we wanting to send back to their homes? Were we even wanting to send them back to their homes?

Many hands have made light work as the IGo building is now remodeled and in the final stages of preparation for the coming students. The Thai construction workers, who resided in the building while working there, have all moved out. We are now preparing for the final painting before we purchase the equipment needed to begin classes. We have enjoyed several Sunday morning services at the facility already, and with the absence of carpeting and padded seats to deaden the sound, the singing was euphoric.

IGo’s four-floor training center

will include first floor administrative offices, a dining hall and kitchen, a second floor chapel and faculty offices, a third floor classroom, staff apartment and library, and fourth floor men’s and women’s dorms.

Cities. Villages. Steep mountains. Terraced rice fields. Bamboo. Lots of people. These words accurately describe the small part of China we saw, but they can’t fully describe the reality. As we traveled by bus, I sat in front and prayed, wondering how many people I saw had heard of Jesus.

In June my son Dallas and I had the privilege of joining some of the IGo board members and staff on a trip to Chiang Mai Thailand. Part of our trip purpose was to learn more about Asia and what God is doing there. As Val Yoder, James Stutzman and I met with various missionaries and Thai Pastors in Chiang Mai, we became aware of the spiritual needs in that part of the world.

As my son and I recently traveled with members of the IGo Board, we had two primary, corporate goals. The first was to explore the potentialities for ministry in Asia that would be available for IGo students to exercise their faith while involved in Bible, missions, personal development and theological studies. Several other articles in this issue of I Witness News highlight the vision-implanting results of those experiences by board members.