Half a century ago, Pastor Stephen S.F. Lee swam across the sea from the China Mainland to Hong Kong…got free help by grace from a Western couple (including going to seminary), went to Canada, and eventually became a pastor and a church planter. It was in Canada that he first set up the Grace Foundation to provide accommodation for the elderly, but while he was in Thailand for a visit (that was more than 10 years ago), he came across the Golden Triangle, which borders on Thailand, Myanmar and Laos. This area used to be home for drug dealers and gangs, with a culture of drug addiction, pornography, and human trafficking permeating the whole area. But what Pastor Lee saw then, and had compassion for, were the many ethnic minority peoples living in this area who were bent on worshipping ancestors, ghosts and idols. It was clear that these unreached peoples desperately need the Lord.

Truly, the darkest place would need God’s divine Light to shine. Missionaries have come and gone in this area near Chiang Rai, Thailand. One of them, David Zhang, was an alumnus of Pastor Lee’s Seminary School in Hong Kong. More than 30 years ago, David Zhang arrived at the Golden Triangle on a white horse, and wherever he went, he set up shop on the streets to preach the gospel.

By God’s grace, Pastor Lee had a similar vision for the work laid before him. He recognized that this is a fertile missionary field. With like-minded Christians, he set up the Grace Missionary Training Center under Grace Foundation (Thailand), with a mission to minister to the orphans there by not only giving them a home, but also helping them to grow up into responsible individuals in their communities, bearing effective Christian witness to God’s grace.

This Grace Missionary Training Center is not a simple run-of-the-mill orphanage or missionary training center. It has a specific mission, i.e., to fulfill the vision of Apostle John as revealed in Revelation 7:9-10. Pastor Lee had read this passage many times before, but he did not realize until then that this vision was not only the last of Apostle John’s visions, but also the greatest. In it were the numerous peoples in white robes coming forward from different nations and speaking different languages to praise God and Jesus Christ, the sacrificial Lamb for the salvation of mankind. The Grace Missionary Training Center emphasizes not only Biblical training but also training in languages (Chinese, English, and Thai) as well as practical living skills (as teachers, barbers, farmers, poultrymen, pig breeders, etc) before sending forth these ethnic-minority youngsters as missionaries, so that they are equipped to be both preachers and teachers in their own villages, sharing the gospel with their fellow villagers in their own mother tongues, while being able to make a living on their own. As Pastor Lee so often points out, “I think this is the most effective method of training missionaries.”  To this day, nearly 100 such youngsters (many of whom are orphans) have been trained. What a miracle! To God be the glory.

Currently, our founder, Pastor Lee is no longer actively pastoring in his advanced years, but he is never tired of continuing to serve the Lord and preparing the way for the Lord’s Second Coming.