After several years of seeking registration for its Central and Southeast Asia (C-SEA) office in Thailand, SIM has entered into partnership with OMF Thailand. Leaders of SIM C-SEA and OMF Thailand signed a formal Memorandum of Understanding on April 18, 2007.

Overseas Missionary Fellowship (OMF), formerly China Inland Mission, was founded in 1865 by James Hudson Taylor. OMF has a long history of serving in East Asia, and a wide variety of ministries in Thailand.

"I am very grateful to OMF ... [for their] willingness to bring their experience and status in Thailand to bear on assisting us to get started here," said Elmer Warkentin, SIM C-SEA director. "I sense they are also grateful for the contribution that SIM C-SEA will make to their work here in Thailand."

"Our original plan of operating kept us from deeply involving ourselves in the life and people of Thailand," commented Elmer's wife Elvira. "We would have been parachuting in and out ... and not seriously feeling the burden of Thailand's unreached."

With this partnership, SIM C-SEA will join OMF Thailand's church planting efforts among the Thai Buddhist communities, which remain largely unreached.

Warkentin concluded, "We are confident that this is the path God has for us at this point. We step ahead by faith into the future."