In February this year ISAAC members Phil Simpson, Aamir Shahzad and Warwick Murphy met for 2 days in Bangkok to begin planning for the first ISAAC Asia regional conference. Pax Tan from Malaysia Care was unable to make it to this first meeting but was kept fully informed and Warwick organised to meet him in early May to talk further.

The outcome of these meetings is that the first ISAAC Asia regional conference will be held in January 2010 in Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia Care has generously offered to do much of the groundwork in KL while the rest of us do the other organisational work.

Warwick, ISAAC’s regional representative for Asia (you can read about him in the case study section), said, "I believe that this will be a breakthrough for the role of ISAAC in the region. This will be a wonderful opportunity to bring together quite a diverse group of people and organisations in the one place for teaching, ministry, fellowship and networking. Conferences such as this serve to strengthen the relationships between organisations and therefore the Body of Christ, which can only be a good thing.

We already have much interest in such a conference from many organisations working in at least 10 countries in the region and we expect that interest to grow as we continue to prepare and promote the conference closer to the time.

We are hoping to have another meeting of some of the key people in the region possibly in January 2009 to share with them in more detail what the conference will be about. By that stage we should have a good idea of the list of speakers as well.

Although this conference is for the Asian region other people are most welcome to attend. An interesting facet of this conference will be the ‘buy one, set one free’ concept. This is simply an opportunity for those of us from more affluent parts of the world to attend the conference on the basis that we purchase a conference fee for someone else from the Asian region thereby making it possible for them to attend such an important event.

We are excited about this conference and we would appreciate your support in prayer for the organisation and the funding needed to make it happen."