Dear Friends & Family,

A big THANKS for a great year!  Greetings from Chiang Mai, Thailand.  As Audrey and I complete our first year of work overseas and settle into our second, we are overwhelmed at your kindness, generosity, and love.  You have taken time to support and encourage us on this journey and we want to say thank you.  When we first worked with Faithful Heart Foundation, we loved that the children were in families (not merely homes).   It is more expensive to do orphan care this way, but we believe the value of belonging to a family is more than worth the extra time and expense.  Thank you for helping make that possible.  2015 was a big year for Faithful Heart Foundation and for Audrey and me in particular. 

Faithful Heart celebrated the dedication of our first foundation-owned dorm.  Home of Comfort is home to 10 young men and our incredible dorm parents, Adjan Yay and Moi.  We are praying about building again in the next few years in order to reduce our monthly expenses.  Please pray about partnering with us for these future projects!

We successfully harvested two crops of rice from our Foundation land.  We also raised almost 70 chickens which were used to feed our families or sold to support our work.   We are still developing an aquaponics project which we hope will be used to the same end.  Many of our house fathers attended an Echo Asia Sustainable Agriculture conference and we are all excited about the possibility of finding more land to develop our agriculture projects further.  Please keep that in your prayers as well.  Land is generally cheap to rent, but expensive to buy. 

Our entire staff and children took part in a local mission trip to a Buddhist school in our area to teach English, introduce people to our good Father, and serve by cleaning the facilities.  Audrey and I (and hopefully Sher Pound—our English teaching expert!) will be returning on a bi-monthly basis to spend time continuing to teach the students.  Please pray for relationships to form and hearts to be open.  Audrey and I will be overseeing things at Faithful Heart for 4 months this year while our directors are in states raising awareness and support for the work.  Please pray for wisdom and patience. 

Audrey and I were excited to welcome my parents, Dave and Sharon Pound, as they accepted a call to come pastor our international church here in Chiang Mai.  And we are all excited to announce a new addition to our family in late July!  Please pray for our family here and especially for a good pregnancy and birth in Thailand. 

What we have found to be most encouraging from this past year is the sense of belonging that Audrey and I have felt here in Chiang Mai.  We truly believe this is where the Lord has called us to work long term.  There is always a bittersweet feeling leaving family and friends in our home culture, but there is also a wonderful confidence of being where we believe God would have us be.  We are excited to start a family and put down some roots in our community.  We love the work Faithful Heart Foundation does here, and we are excited to build on it in the coming years.  Thank you for praying and partnering with us and with Faithful Heart in shining the light of God’s love to these precious, vulnerable lives.  The very best part of working with these young people is seeing them grow and discover their God-given future and becoming a blessing to others.  You make it possible for our kids to have a family of their own, go to good schools, and even to college.  And you make it possible for Audrey and me to be here, supporting this work, encouraging these young lives.  Thank you for your on-going support, love and prayers. 

A whole lot of love and affection from Thailand, full of relentless hope in our good Father’s love for all His Children,

Matt & Audrey Pound

mattandaudreypound.blogspot.com * matthewdavidpound@gmail.com * joytotheworldfoundation.org (Live the Light)