Laos Trip 2023

Hello Church! Our Team is Heading to Laos! We will use the following platform to keep you up to date with news from the trip, prayer requests, video updates and more! Stay tuned! 

Hello from Nam Pien Yorla Pa Encounter Church Family!
It is now late Saturday evening, and we just wrapped up the second day of our retreat at resort inside of a “Protected Forestry Area Along Nam Pien River,” which is about an hour’s drive from Vientiane to the northeast.
We are spending the weekend retreat with an absolutely AMAZING group of believers who have banded together to form what they call the LPF, or the Lao Professionals Fellowship. Their vision is to have a network of Christian leaders and professionals all supporting each other and working together to advance the Kingdom, in a way that brings up disciples who also have the ability to financially sustain their respective ministries.
Just to backtrack a bit, we did have one last half-day in Vientiane on Friday before catching our shuttle to Nam Pien. While Brian, John and Dan Rossi had business to attend to, Buosay and Michael went on another tuk tuk excursion. This time around the mission was to visit a local school where Boss could see Lao learning in action, and seek advice on how he could teach Lao reading, writing and language to people back home in the States. Boss was able to gain some great insight from one of the lead administrators at the school, and she also directed them to the store where the school acquires its educational materials.  Language and writing books were acquired, and so Boss and Michael thanked God for a mission accomplished.
Back at home base, we prepared to depart for our weekend retreat. We drove for about an hour, making a couple stops along the way to pick up a few new friends – members of the LPF, Thip and Peak (this author wasn’t told how to spell her name). At the end of our drive, we arrived at a lush, jungle-like area in which our resort was hidden deep within.
We checked into our rooms, met all the folks from LPF, and later that evening shared our testimonies with one another. The Encounter folks went first, which included Pastor Luutu. Now, we’ve come to learn that Luutu is quite a stoic man. He is gentle and kind, and always seems to be strongly perceiving his surroundings. But let us all be witness – his testimony was extraordinary, and incredibly inspiring. His stoic and gentle demeanor went out the door, as he spoke with passion and excitement for what God has done in his life. We were kicking ourselves afterwards for not recording it!
All of the Encounter group’s testimonies were amazing to hear – so amazing that they took up the whole night. So our fellow retreaters were gracious enough to save the bulk of their testimonies until the next morning.
We were then thoroughly encouraged, even blown away I might say, by the unbelievably amazing (has amazing been said enough?) stories and testimonies we heard from individuals who have been used by God in mighty, mighty ways in Laos. Individuals facing persecution, arrest, shunning by their own parents, family and friends, lack of physical space and resources, doubts, hardships… you name it, these believers collectively have overcome so much. Young men and women who counted the cost and found it worth their lives to advance the gospel in their villages and provinces. Great sacrifice and servitude were exercised by these members of the professional fellowship. Please be sure to see our prayer requests, as many arose after hearing these incredible testimonies.
We encourage you to ask us to share some of these peoples’ testimonies when we return from our trip! They are undoubtedly worth sharing.
We then spent the rest of the day with some interactive exercises and lessons on discipleship, which were lead by our own Pastor John and Brian Lutolf. The mission team and LPF members were encouraged and enlightened with the importance of discipleship, how scripture says it should be done, and why scripture says it is so necessary. By the end of the day, new relationships and understandings were built through the day’s exercises.
If you’ve made it this far down the post without skimming, we thank you for joining us and hope that you have been inspired like we have! Today’s testimonies and discussions with the local hands and feet of Laos have greatly encouraged us. They have brought immense hope for great things to continue all over this country. The leader of the LPF, Thip, said that he desires his fellowship to “Dream Big” when it comes to how God will use them, and our time together at this retreat has reinforced that although at times we ourselves may not be able to do something, God can. The almighty Yahweh is moving in Laos.
Please pray for us and our brothers and sisters of the LPF in the following ways:

• Pray for sister Peak’s family to accept Christ, as they have disowned her for converting away from Buddhism.
• Pray for the perseverance of all Laotian Christians who are shunned by their friends and family for abandoning Buddhism, and who are heavily persecuted for practicing Christianity.
• Pray for the people of the village of Nong Kheng, where our brother Pastor Xieng and his house church have received official recognition by the Laotian Evangelical organization. This is a rare feat in Laos where these churches are closely monitored by government forces, and official recognition only puts a larger target on them.
• Pray for Pastor Xieng’s network of pastors and church leaders who are currently imprisoned. 11 were originally arrested, 3 were released after signing documents that denounced their Christianity, 8 remain imprisoned.
• Pray for sister Nang to find strength and empowerment through Christ to consider herself a strong leader and mighty woman of God, as Dan Rossi attested to, and eradicate any sense of inadequacy she might have. Pray for her to find the energy to tend to her parents in one village, and her own family and ministries in another, requiring tireless travel and service.
• Pray for our relationships with the men and women of the LPF to be lasting and impactful, and that our alliance achieves great things in Southeast Asia.

Hello from Vientiane Encounter Church Family!
We have just completed our first full day in Laos, and are enjoying times of prayer, discussion and meditation, and true fellowship. And of course, exploration! Despite the triple digit, high humidity weather, we were able to take in the city and its sites via tuk tuk (rickshaw commonly found in Southeast Asia) and get a better feel for the capital of Laos.
Our travel day was full of ups and downs, with multiple scares of documents or boarding passes not being accepted along the way. We had three flights: San Francisco to Taipei, Taiwan, 13 hours; Taipei to Bangkok, 4 hours; and finally Bangkok to Vientiane, 1 hour.
Pastor John’s phone was all but lost after our second flight! But thankfully just as we had given up and walked off the plane, an airline agent presented his iPhone to him out on the walking ramp. He really enjoyed that experience 😊
When we arrived in Bangkok, we were tasked with finding Pastor Luutu, who was by himself in one of the largest airports in Southeast Asia! Mind you he had just flown on an airplane, left the continent of Africa, and arrived in an Asian-speaking land all for the first time in his life. He wandered around on speaker phone with Brian for what seemed to him like an hour, until he finally stumbled on the group of Encounter men, and was welcomed with excitement, relief, warm embrace, and thanks to God.
The last challenge we faced was getting Luutu’s Lao Visa approved at the Vientiane airport’s customs. After standing in line for a few minutes, customs agents approached Luutu and brought him aside into a closed-door room. We did not know where they took him, and this caused us quite a bit of worry. But about 7-8 minutes later, he emerged from the room, got back in line, had his discussion at the Visa desk, and his passport was stamped for approval! Another rejoiceful moment for sure.
We thank you for all of your prayers for our safe and smooth travel – they were definitely heard by our Lord, our protector and sustainer. We gave thanks as a group to God for seeing us through and getting us to Laos in one piece.
After our first full day, we have sensed joy, excitement, despair, darkness, and a bit of fatigue from the time change. Vientiane is full of wonderful, kind, generous people, but shrouded in the darkness of Buddhism, economic frailty, and political and social oppression that goes far beyond what we might ever perceive to exist in the United States. Our hearts grow for this country and its people every hour we are here.
You can pray for us in the following ways:

• Pray for the people of Laos to receive Jesus, as always
• Pray for the Christians of Laos to maintain hope and steadfastness
• Pray that our presence encourages and strengthens the missionaries and local ministry leaders
• Pray that God opens new doors for Encounter and our partners to advance the Gospel in Laos