My Testimony

Sawadee Krup. My name is Daniel. I have been a missionary in Thailand with my wife, Sharon, and 4 children under the Methodist Missions Society of Singapore (MMS). 

My family moved from our home church in Melbourne Australia to Thailand in April 2008. We came to Phrao, 100km North of Chiang Mai in response to a request to help set up a boarding house for hill tribe people in a local church. We had already been praying to be sent to the mission field for many years before, and we saw this as an open door to answer the call of missions. 

But not long after we arrived in Thailand, things began to sour when our relationship with the local church broke down. We thought carefully about whether we should return to our home in Australia and end our Mission adventure when unexpectedly a Thai mother approached us and asked if we could teach her two children English. We accepted and they turned out to be the most difficult boys to teach, but they were to be the first steps of the journey that would lead to the Little Candles School. 

Before long, two boys became 4, and 4 became 8 as other parents heard of the opportunities for their children to learn English with a native speaker. After a month we had 40 students coming to our English classes across the weeknights in a small shop-lot that we began to rent. On the weekends, the parents requested a kinder playgroup for the younger siblings; where we introduced Christian teaching through songs, games and crafts to illustrate bible stories. A few parents from the playgroup then began requesting if their children could learn with our children as we home-school them. This became the beginning of a nursery that started part-time and became a full-time program registered with the Ministry of Social Development in 2010. When nursery had started with 4 children + 2 of our own. And soon grew to 30 children in a year, and 120 children the following year. By then we began to think of purchasing land and building a kindergarten. Raising funds from our Australian supporters, we set up a Foundation in Thailand to purchase land and start construction of a kindergarten that was opened and registered with the Ministry of Education in January 2012. The project cost almost 8 million baht on completion.

10 years on the kindergarten has an enrolment of 165 students and is financially self-sufficient. Construction to extend it into a primary school is currently being undertaken, following the transfer of the land and buildings to MMS’s subsidiary in Thailand, MMF last year. 

On the site of kindergarten, we also formed a fellowship group among the parents and staff which has now grown into a fully registered Methodist Church. The church has seen almost 50 Thais give their lives to Christ and be baptized, many of whom came from non-Christian families.

In January 2021 tragedy struck. Sammi suffered a brain hemorrhage and went into a seizure. We rushed her to the hospital only to discover that she had an abnormal tangle of blood vessels (an AVM) that had burst. Although the bleeding had stopped, it was vulnerable to rupture again at any moment. The following months were clouded with fear and uncertainty as she went through many tests to establish how to remove the AVM. Yet it was also a time that brought our family closer together and rooted our trust deeper in the Lord, as well as bringing many concerned supporters to our help. We finally settled for an open skull operation which was successfully carried out 5 months after the initial incident – all this while continuing to oversee our school and church ministries. Nevertheless, we were greatly encouraged by the outpouring of love and support shown to us during those challenging times. 

In March 2024 after 3 years of planning and construction, we praised God for the opening of the Little Candles Methodist Primary School. It was the culmination of many years of prayer and vision casting that would see a new generation of children in Phrao grow up in the knowledge of Christ. And the story continues…. 

After 16 years on the field, I have learnt one thing; it is not the achievements that I treasure the most, but the experiences of raising my family on the field; the birth of my two younger daughters, the marriage challenges, the education of my kids, the health scares – and after all that still being together as a family, and closer to each other. That’s what I have learnt that missions are all about portraying God’s presence through your family. 

Pastor Daniel Loo

Aug 2024