Institute for Global Opportunities

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.

Our recent trip to Thailand has been exciting, humbling, stretching and life changing. Our group spent several days in Chiang Mai where we observed multitudes enslaved in spiritual darkness of Buddhism. Perhaps the highlight of my time in Thailand was traveling a few days with a brother named Wright Dee. He lives in Chiang Mai and is from the tribal group called the Karen. Most Karen live in the mountains of Thailand and Burma (Myanmar) and were evangelized years ago by Adoniram Judson. Wright Dee has a deep burden for his people and longs to see them live for Christ.

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.