Dalton and Anna Thomas
Frontier Alliance International | Israel and Syria
What’s the story behind the founding of FAI?
We served with a prayer and missions base in New Zealand for seven years. During this time the Lord began to stir in our hearts the need for the Gospel in the Muslim World. In 2011 we prayed about the best way to engage the Middle East and we felt the Lord’s leadership to pioneer a new organization.
With a small group of friends, and with counsel and prayer from trusted mothers and fathers in the faith, we began Frontier Alliance International in December of 2011 and continue to serve as the organization’s directors. Since founding FAI, our family [the Thomases have four children, ages 2 through 8] has lived in Turkey, Iraq and Israel.
Describe your work with the organization.
As directors of the mission, our roles vary from giving leadership, vision and oversight for all of our team leaders in the region, to also providing leadership to our specific location and project. We are currently living in Israel and oversee the development of ministry in Israel and Syria. Our primary role in this phase is pastoral care, briefings, debriefings and resource management for discipleship-oriented humanitarian relief in conflict zones.
What are the biggest challenges you face in this work?
Spiritual warfare is a very real and serious thing. When engaging with this region of the earth, we are engaging and provoking ancient powers and principalities of the air that for centuries have been left undisturbed in their darkness. Even the desire in the heart to engage in this region of the earth in any capacity for the Gospel is an invitation for the enemy to try to discourage, deceive and ultimately destroy. Even as we recognize our fight is not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities of the air, it takes much prayer, saturation in the Word and discernment from the Holy Spirit to not get distracted or disillusioned by the attempts of the enemy.
When we engage in dangerous regions of the earth, we expect the most difficult thing to be the physical danger of the location we are serving in, or even the difficulty in engaging with a foreign culture, but we have found the most difficult area this is fleshed out is in personal relationships within teams. We need constant prayer for unity and love for one another to grow. There are so many other challenges, but if we operate in anything less than a spirit of love for one another, we undermine every effort we make in our mission.
Do any particular successes stand out in your time there?
After a year of being in Israel, we have established considerable relational equity with the Israeli Army and with local Syrian authorities that we are so grateful for. This enables us to pioneer and develop openly and freely on both sides of the border. It has been such an encouragement to see the Lord open doors we could never have dreamed of opening up for us. We have truly seen the Lord’s miraculous provision and His perfect shepherding since we stepped foot in the land one year ago [on April 3, 2017]! We have seen numerous teams of medical professionals with a deep love for Jesus – more than 30 people in a mid-term or long-term capacity – give their lives to work in Syria under incredibly dangerous circumstances inside war zones to be salt and light to a people that have been oppressed for eight years now in this ongoing civil war. They are finding kindness from a people that they themselves have been taught is their enemy from both the Israelis and the Christians. It is a humbling project to be a part of.
How do you see God at work through FAI in your location?
Because we are working with both the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and local Syrian communities in Syria, we are seeing hostilities that both groups have had towards Christians and each other crumble and break down. We are working with men and women who have never had any personal relationship with Christians in their lifetimes, and we are developing relationships with them that are as strong as family bonds. Seeing their guards come down and their fears and misunderstandings of who Christians are begin to disintegrate is one of the most rewarding things to see.
What is a fun fact about the culture where you live or the people you minister to?
We live in the northern tip of Israel in the Golan Heights, where there are 24,000 Israelis and 24,000 Druze. The Druze are a secret religion minority people who came from Egypt and today live predominantly in Jordan, France, Lebanon, Syria and Israel. This is a fun fact to me, because it’s a small picture of the diversity of the country of Israel. The various people who live here from different backgrounds, cultures, nations and religions is stunning. We are learning new things about this beautiful land daily.
What about the country is the most God honoring and/or the most challenging?
The Middle East as a whole has always convicted me and humbled me by the warm and welcoming hospitality its people show. There isn’t a country I have lived in or visited in this region yet that hasn’t shown such a humbling service of hospitality. They invited you into their homes with no schedule or time restraints. When you enter their home, you are the priority and they feed you and supply an endless stream of hot drinks such as tea and cardamom coffee. They sit with you patiently for hours and serve you selflessly without an ounce of resentment in their hearts. It is truly beautiful and I think displays a characteristic of God in a way that the West is lacking.
The challenge is probably the same as the honoring. We are Westerners, so over the years the Lord has had to condition us to be ready and available for long hours and odd hours to be accessible to the people we are ministering to. This is a sanctifying and flesh-killing process. We are used to having our own time and our own space, and we found in our own lives it became a sense of entitlement. The Lord has faithfully been delivering us from this, and we are still on that journey! The idea that this culture wants you to just drop in to their homes any time and that they expect you to is a difficult one to get used to when you grow up in a culture that requires appointments with time limits.
How can we pray for you?
Please pray for:
We served with a prayer and missions base in New Zealand for seven years. During this time the Lord began to stir in our hearts the need for the Gospel in the Muslim World. In 2011 we prayed about the best way to engage the Middle East and we felt the Lord’s leadership to pioneer a new organization.
With a small group of friends, and with counsel and prayer from trusted mothers and fathers in the faith, we began Frontier Alliance International in December of 2011 and continue to serve as the organization’s directors. Since founding FAI, our family [the Thomases have four children, ages 2 through 8] has lived in Turkey, Iraq and Israel.
Describe your work with the organization.
As directors of the mission, our roles vary from giving leadership, vision and oversight for all of our team leaders in the region, to also providing leadership to our specific location and project. We are currently living in Israel and oversee the development of ministry in Israel and Syria. Our primary role in this phase is pastoral care, briefings, debriefings and resource management for discipleship-oriented humanitarian relief in conflict zones.
What are the biggest challenges you face in this work?
Spiritual warfare is a very real and serious thing. When engaging with this region of the earth, we are engaging and provoking ancient powers and principalities of the air that for centuries have been left undisturbed in their darkness. Even the desire in the heart to engage in this region of the earth in any capacity for the Gospel is an invitation for the enemy to try to discourage, deceive and ultimately destroy. Even as we recognize our fight is not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities of the air, it takes much prayer, saturation in the Word and discernment from the Holy Spirit to not get distracted or disillusioned by the attempts of the enemy.
When we engage in dangerous regions of the earth, we expect the most difficult thing to be the physical danger of the location we are serving in, or even the difficulty in engaging with a foreign culture, but we have found the most difficult area this is fleshed out is in personal relationships within teams. We need constant prayer for unity and love for one another to grow. There are so many other challenges, but if we operate in anything less than a spirit of love for one another, we undermine every effort we make in our mission.
Do any particular successes stand out in your time there?
After a year of being in Israel, we have established considerable relational equity with the Israeli Army and with local Syrian authorities that we are so grateful for. This enables us to pioneer and develop openly and freely on both sides of the border. It has been such an encouragement to see the Lord open doors we could never have dreamed of opening up for us. We have truly seen the Lord’s miraculous provision and His perfect shepherding since we stepped foot in the land one year ago [on April 3, 2017]! We have seen numerous teams of medical professionals with a deep love for Jesus – more than 30 people in a mid-term or long-term capacity – give their lives to work in Syria under incredibly dangerous circumstances inside war zones to be salt and light to a people that have been oppressed for eight years now in this ongoing civil war. They are finding kindness from a people that they themselves have been taught is their enemy from both the Israelis and the Christians. It is a humbling project to be a part of.
How do you see God at work through FAI in your location?
Because we are working with both the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and local Syrian communities in Syria, we are seeing hostilities that both groups have had towards Christians and each other crumble and break down. We are working with men and women who have never had any personal relationship with Christians in their lifetimes, and we are developing relationships with them that are as strong as family bonds. Seeing their guards come down and their fears and misunderstandings of who Christians are begin to disintegrate is one of the most rewarding things to see.
What is a fun fact about the culture where you live or the people you minister to?
We live in the northern tip of Israel in the Golan Heights, where there are 24,000 Israelis and 24,000 Druze. The Druze are a secret religion minority people who came from Egypt and today live predominantly in Jordan, France, Lebanon, Syria and Israel. This is a fun fact to me, because it’s a small picture of the diversity of the country of Israel. The various people who live here from different backgrounds, cultures, nations and religions is stunning. We are learning new things about this beautiful land daily.
What about the country is the most God honoring and/or the most challenging?
The Middle East as a whole has always convicted me and humbled me by the warm and welcoming hospitality its people show. There isn’t a country I have lived in or visited in this region yet that hasn’t shown such a humbling service of hospitality. They invited you into their homes with no schedule or time restraints. When you enter their home, you are the priority and they feed you and supply an endless stream of hot drinks such as tea and cardamom coffee. They sit with you patiently for hours and serve you selflessly without an ounce of resentment in their hearts. It is truly beautiful and I think displays a characteristic of God in a way that the West is lacking.
The challenge is probably the same as the honoring. We are Westerners, so over the years the Lord has had to condition us to be ready and available for long hours and odd hours to be accessible to the people we are ministering to. This is a sanctifying and flesh-killing process. We are used to having our own time and our own space, and we found in our own lives it became a sense of entitlement. The Lord has faithfully been delivering us from this, and we are still on that journey! The idea that this culture wants you to just drop in to their homes any time and that they expect you to is a difficult one to get used to when you grow up in a culture that requires appointments with time limits.
How can we pray for you?
Please pray for:
- Unity within families
- Unity within teams
- Strength and grace for each missionary, to be refreshed and revived andremain connected to the Vine as we serve
- For souls to be saved in the locations we are ministering in
- For a local gospel witness to emerge in both Israel and Syria
- For protection for our teams and the people we are ministering to both physically and spiritually
- For wisdom from heaven as we pioneer and develop
- For resources