Mission Partner: Luke, Alison, Banya & Anna Blacker

Church planting in Thailand with OMF

“Is Christmas the celebration of Santa’s birthday?”

A Thai lady asked me as we handed out Christmas presents in our Thai neighbourhood.

Many Thai people live in a district with no church, and few or no Christians. 99% of Thai’s are Buddhist in Central Thailand. This is the country to which we have moved to. A country where many of the people have little or no understanding of Jesus and his love for them.

A bit about us:

We met at the Belfrey when we were 12. Growing up at the Belfrey we learnt so much about God and were encouraged in our faith by the youth leaders. It was during a Sunday evening service at The Belfrey when we were teenagers that we both felt God saying to us that he was preparing us to work for God overseas. We were both willing but didn’t know where or what God had in mind!

After a couple of short-term mission trips to a Thai charity in Thailand Luke felt God confirming that Thailand was the place he wanted us to go to so we started to pray and prepare for moving to Thailand.

We got married and lived in Hull for five years and finally in 2012 we moved to Thailand for a year to volunteer at CCD Thailand. We loved the work, and the place so much we ended up staying for over 3 years. We became parents to 6-year-old Banya (now 17) whilst we were there.

We spent three years at All Nations Christian College being trained and equipped to serve God in Thailand, Anna was born during our first year of studies. In 2020 the four of us returned to Thailand, this time with OMF.

After 6 months of intensive language and cultural study at the OMF language school we moved to a small rural town in Central Thailand. There we continued to learn Thai alongside ministry partnering with CCD at one of their community projects and supporting a Thai Christian International School. These 3.5 years were largely dominated by the pandemic and surviving lockdowns. Mae was born in the middle of a lockdown, the lack of traffic made it very easy to get to the hospital!

We have just had a year Home Assignment back in York and in August 2024 we are heading back to Thailand with OMF, but this time to a place called Nonthburi, which is a busy market town on the outskirts of Bangkok. We are excited to see what God has for us to do in this new area. Although we don’t know exactly what we will be doing, we know we will be living our lives for Jesus, sharing our lives with the people we meet and hopefully pointing people to Christ in all that we say and do. blackersinthailand@gmail.com