Sarah Brown never imagined baking would help her reach the women of Bangkok’s infamous red-light district. And women like Mam* trapped in their work there never imagined that baking would be able to bring them out of it. “It still seems very bizarre to me,” Sarah says laughing. “Using cake decorating to win people to Jesus. But you know, nothing is bizarre to Jesus, and he can use whatever skills you have.” As strange as it seems, when Sarah traces God’s hand in her call to overseas mission all the way back, it did begin with baking a cake. Unbeknownst to Sarah and her husband Paul, that was the first step on a journey that took them all the way to Thailand. Though initially sceptical about how God could use their skills, the past decade of serving him has taught Paul and Sarah to keep saying yes to the plans he has in store.

After Sarah agreed to bake a celebration cake for a colleague going on maternity leave, the requests kept rolling in. “I just couldn’t see the beauty of it,” she explains. “I thought everybody’s mum taught them baking on a Saturday!” Soon she was working part-time, running a cake decorating business and being asked by organisations working with homeless people, vulnerable women and children with learning disabilities whether she could share her baking skills with them. Sarah feels very strongly that God was preparing her heart for what he had in store for her next: using these skills to help vulnerable women even further afield, in the red-light district in Bangkok. And having said yes to God’s call to serve overseas, she soon found herself saying another yes – after she met Paul during her training year with BMS and they decided to get married!

Sarah and Paul began serving with BMS in Thailand in 2012. Both felt amazed that God had work in their skillsets prepared for them there – Sarah, working with the vulnerable women supported through BMS’ partner at that time in Bangkok, and Paul strengthening the skills of the accounting department and teaching the women IT skills. It was a far cry from what Sarah had envisioned as mission work, but, really, it made perfect sense. “I didn’t realise I could use my creative skills on the mission field, so I thought I would have to teach English,” she says. Instead, she was supporting vulnerable women every day, just as she had been in the UK. She met women who had been trafficked from Africa, Eastern Europe or South America, believing they would be working in hotels, and women from Thailand who saw no other choice but to work in the sex industry. Paul and Sarah’s roles were designed around giving those women another choice. “As a team, we used to go into bars to meet with the women. To befriend them, really,” Sarah says. For the women that did want to come out of their situation, the team was on hand to help them into alternative employment and training, such as baking, jewellery making or IT classes. “I could honestly say there was spiritual warfare in those places,” Sarah explains. “It was very, very dark.” But for women like Mam, meeting the volunteers changed everything.

Mam is just one of the people Paul and Sarah supported over the years, first through the centre in Bangkok and later working with vulnerable young boys and girls through BMS’ partner in Chiang Mai. After leaving her old life behind, the mother-of-one became a Christian through the daily Bible studies and witness of the Christian workers. “She had a really beautiful heart,” says Paul. “And she came to love God. Her wish really was to become a missionary.” Mam was desperate to share how her life had changed, and she began to accompany the team on outreach visits to the red-light district, sharing her story of salvation with women still trapped in it. Mam now works for an NGO in Thailand and is still engaged in evangelism. After Paul taught her bass guitar, she also leads in a worship band.

As Paul and Sarah prepare for their new roles in January, they’ve asked BMS supporters to pray with them:

• Please pray for the Covid-19 situation in Thailand, where so many are still waiting to be vaccinated. Pray for comfort for people who are struggling to support their families due to lost work. Ask God to protect people in a nation where suicide rates are sadly rising.
• Please pray for our transition to the new organisation – that our relationships with the Thai Karen people would develop and flourish. Please pray too for good health.
• In Thailand, only one per cent of people would call themselves Christians. Please pray for creativity in our outreach as God uses us to witness to those we serve. Pray also for Christian groups living amongst the hilltribes where we’ll be working to have the confidence and courage to share the gospel powerfully with others in their own mother tongue.