Faithful Heart Ministry Was started by David & Shirley Callahan, a Christian couple who’ve worked to help orphan children and disadvantaged hill tribe people of Northern Thailand since 2001. Beginning in 2004, they sold and/or gave away their belongings and left South Carolina, USA to serve as independent missionaries in Thailand. They are commissioned by their local Baptist Church, but not funded or sponsored by a denominational agency. Their Christian compassion ministry is focused on rescuing orphan children and helping the poor & disadvantaged hill tribe people of Thailand.
Faithful Heart Foundation (FHF) has been dedicated to raise funds and provide management/oversight for many small orphan homes and Christian youth hostels. We pray additional sponsors will be inspired to help us open more family-style orphan shelters in the near future. Faithful Heart also provides ministry resources & emergency assistance to the poor who live in the tribal villages.
The mountains of Northern Thailand are dotted with small villages of people who emigrated from neighboring countries like Myanmar (formerly Burma), Laos, China, and Cambodia. These people entered Thailand to escape dangerous and oppressive living conditions. Thailand provided a safe-haven, but most villagers have never been given the full rights of Thai citizenship. In Thailand, hilltribe people face prejudice and blatant discrimination in employment, education, healthcare, and housing. For these tribal people, despair and frustration lead to feelings of hopelessness. Drug use, alcoholism, and violent crime are destroying family life. Child abuse and physical neglect are commonplace and most hilltribe children are physically or emotionally handicapped. Children in these villages are often orphaned or abandoned by their parents. Extreme poverty keeps most hilltribe children from attending public schools. We hope to break the cycle of poverty by providing orphans with a loving Christian family environment, ensuring they have adequate food & nutrition, and paying school tuition to guarantee their access to a quality education.
Dave and Shirley Callahan have dedicated their personal resources to this ministry. They took “early retirement” from business and heath care careers to dedicate their lives to Christian ministry in Thailand. Their modest retirement income provides much of their living expenses. However, the Faithful Heart Foundation depends completely on the generosity of individual donors & sponsors to provide funding for the orphans and hilltribe ministries.
Currently there are two US foundations which accept financial donations for Faithful Heart Ministries. They are the Full Heart Mission Foundation, in South Carolina, USA and the ISAAC Foundation in Vienna, Virginia. Both foundations can accept tax-free donations and financial gifts for the Faithful Heart Foundation in Thailand. All of the money donated to Faithful Heart is used for ministry expenses and financial records are posted regularly on this website. The Callahans serve as “full-time volunteers” and receive no salary or benefits from the foundation for their work.
