PJ Hudson, a missionary and christian music producer in Thailand, has a deep passion to see the Thai people healed through worshiping God. He considers worship to be the driving force of a living relationship with Jesus, and the means to personal revival, healing and restoration.

The difference that worship makes in a life was revealed to PJ at a very young age. “My parents were divorced when I was 5, about the same time my mother introduced me to Jesus…   there were a number of years that we went through as a family that were quite difficult…”    PJ, the 3rd child out of 4, was born in suburb of Los Angeles, California but spent most of his life growing up in a small town near the cascade mountain range of rainy Washington State.   “My mother and her new husband had a difficult time finding a job after we moved, and I remember when times got so lean that I had to go with my step-dad to rummage through the garbage dumpsters of grocery stores trying to find expired food that we could eat.”

Despite several years of unwillingly adjusting to a new home, a new father, a new school and not many friends, PJ remembers the joy he had in his relationship with Jesus.  He fondly recounts times of intimate worship and just being with Jesus when he was a little boy…”  I remember my mom giving me this rectangular black tape recorder that had one built-in speaker, remember those from the 70’s? The sound was mono and the quality was terrible, of course back then we were all amazed at this little piece of technology…   I would pop in my mom’s worship tapes and sing along as loud as I could, back then my favorites were songs such as “I’ll fly away”, “I’ve got a river of life” & “Power in the blood”,  and I loved listening to a tape series that my mom gave me called “Hi God!” I can still remember the opening line “Hi God how do you feel today? Can you hear us God? We’ve got a lot to thank You for today, You’re our best friend God...” I was pretty shameless in my singing, of course I was too young to really know that I was also a fearless little worshiper”. 

It was times like those that saw PJ through the trials that life had hurtled at his family. Worship music always had a profound effect on him, and some of PJ’s early Christian musical influences came from a mixture of Keith Green and Petra.  “I first heard Keith Green when I was about 10 or 11 years old, and I really thought he was writing the songs of heaven, there was a quality in his singing and music that made me feel like I was flying through heaven…”,   “Petra had a good influence on me when I became a teenager and started walking away from God, I thought “God gave rock and roll to you” was a cool song …”.

During the time he was 10 to 12 years old, several things happened that turned out to be very important to his future. While PJ was attending a Christian school, a visiting preacher gave a moving prophetic word to PJ,  “This guy come to my school and was praying over each one of us, when he started to pray for me, he suddenly turned around and began weeping… this went on forever, it seemed, and finally he turned around and told the vision that God had just given him, I was freaked out, to say the least.”  While PJ does not want to disclose the details of this vision, which in part has yet to come to pass, he will say it had to do with him being a missionary in an Asian country, among other things, there was also a part of the vision that PJ forgot until God reminded him after he was married, that he would marry a singer!   “Initially, the prophetic word had a negative impact on me, I didn’t want to be what the guy said I would be, and I wasn’t interested in doing what he said I would do, and his vision was quite detailed…  so I began to grow cold in my heart towards God.”

With the difficult boyhood years behind him, PJ broke away from his strong belief in God and walked down his own burdensome chosen path until he was 21 years old, even though God had spoken clearly & literally through a revelation, warning him about his attitude (Revelation 3:15, in fiery words right in front of his eyes!). “I guess I just wanted to do my own thing, you know? I went to a small but very good Christian school for a few years, but I was stubborn, refused to listen to God, and began drinking during my teenage years, getting into some trouble…”.   At the same time, God began to bless his family as his step-father became a non-paid chaplain of a county jail and the Snohomish county jail ministry was born. “I saw God provide for us in ways that I couldn’t have imagined, even while I was despising God in my heart… I guess that provided some foundation for me to be able to live as an unpaid volunteer missionary, I’m pretty much immune to the word “lacking” now, I mean, when you’re mother receives a notice from the bank that they will come to take the house in a week, and a mysterious check shows up in the mail the next day, or when we don’t have milk or bread and a friend knocks on the door with an armload of groceries, you begin to realize the meaning of God’s love and how the love of His servants is able to change lives, even when you’re doing everything you can to get away from His love.”

PJ continued in his personal rebellion against God, though he continued to pray that God would help him, it seemed his prayers were bouncing off the ceiling until one crucial night.   “My journey away from God ended about 3 months after I turned 21, I was going to bars with my friends and God began opening my eyes to the ugly condition I was in, I saw it mostly through the bitterness of the older men and women in the bars, they would talk about how much they hated this, that and the other thing, and often talked bad about their own husbands and wives, or boyfriends and girlfriends… God shook me up and said “That’s you in 20 years if you don’t stop and follow me… I have too many plans for you, don’t waste my plans for you,” well, I didn’t want to waste it!”.   So, PJ went straight home from the bar and turned back to God, alone in an emotional night of confession, repentance and prayer… while he was still drunk!   “You know, when you have a heart that is truly aware of your sinful condition and you start crying out to God from that place, it doesn’t matter what condition you’re in, or how bad you’ve been… God is quicker to give mercy and love than He is to pass judgment”. 

PJ found his passionate worship once again and to this day, has managed to never lose his fire to worship God. The dramatic turn that took place in PJ’s life after that moment of “drunken repentance” was clearly evident to even his friends and co-workers.   During the 2nd year of his renewed life, PJ found a new way to express his uncontainable heart of worship to God… the guitar. “I bought a $50 guitar at a pawn shop and asked a lady friend of my mothers to teach me how to worship with it, her name was Stephanie, my best friends mother, and she was a prophetic worship leader… so she began to teach me my first chords and began mentoring me in prophetic worship, as my gifting began to develop quickly, she said that God had told her that I would be blessed with her anointing times 100!”  

Within 3 months, PJ took his guitar and worship into the local jails and prisons, leading alongside his step-father once a month or more, and also began playing on the youth band at his church. From the moment he learned his first chords, he began composing his own worship songs.  “I wasn’t satisfied with singing other peoples songs, I wanted to sing my own songs to God, I was very jealous to express my OWN heart to God on my instrument, I guess that’s how you turn stubbornness into a positive thing.”

Those first few years of “catching” up with God provided the building blocks for PJ’s current worship ministry in Thailand. After serving as a “local missionary for 3 years in YWAM Montana, PJ moved to Thailand to be a full time volunteer missionary with Youth With A Mission, Thailand in 1998, and shortly afterwards, he met his future wife, Yam (Bongkote).   “The first time I saw her, my heart said something like “she is dangerous”, (hahaha), because I was an American missionary who just moved to Thailand with a grand vision, and she was a woman who I was deeply attracted to…”   PJ and Yam began working together in music and leading worship, and were part of worship band in Thailand called “Footprints” which was writing and performing original Thai Christian worship songs. Footprints is comprised of band founder & producer Danny Brown on keys; Yam, the lead vocalist and one of the songwriters; Debbie, another one of the lead vocalists; PJ on acoustic guitar; Shine (another songwriter) on bass; Seng on drums and Wern (founder of Grace Music and a leading producer for Grammy music, Thailand) on electric guitar. They have since added several other vocalists, musicians, and songwriters, becoming an artist “co-op” in a sense.  

“I guess when I really, really fell in love with Yam was when we were working in the recording studio together. She is an amazing talent and I was blown away by her.” PJ and Yam couldn’t have foreseen the things that would take place in the near future, after courting each other for nearly 2 years, and seeing the first Footprints album become quite successful and respected in the Thai church, they were married and had their first son, Sammy. At the same time, they were asked to start the School of Worship with Youth With A Mission, then were invited to work (voluntarily and freelance) with Grace Music, the Thai Christian music label that distributed Footprints, and then they began their own label, White Lotus Worship Music, under the administrative care of Grace Music.

“Looking back over the past 15 years, I am really amazed at what God has done, I can honestly say that when you give your life to God and hold nothing back, He will take you on a journey that will be unlike anything you’ve ever dreamed.” The challenge for PJ and Yam today is juggling between the increasing growth of both ministries that they are running, the School of Worship and White Lotus Worship Music, the demands of their 2 little toddlers (Sammy and Johnny), and just learning how to be a husband and wife.   “Our relationship is really an interesting one, everything we do in ministry includes one another and our 2 little boys…Sammy likes to hit whatever makes a loud sound (oh and drums too),and Johnny likes to scream and pluck the guitar, who knows, maybe we will have a tour with our family band some day? Hahaha!”

So, how did PJ come to be a producer helping to release creative, fresh and original Thai Christian music in such a short amount of time?   “Well, it was Gods plan, not mine… that’s the key. The only thing I had to do with all of this was the fact that I said “ok” when God said “will you?”  PJ is quick to say that people like Wern and Danny Brown played a significant role in shaping his musical talent and opening the door for him, and is quite thankful for their mentoring. Besides the acoustic guitar, PJ has added bass, keys, electric guitar and recently the rannad (a traditional thai log drum) to his musical tool belt. “While my performing instrument will always be the acoustic and electric guitar, it helps to be able to lay down tracks with the other instruments, and to understand what each instruments part should be in the studio version of the song.”

Some of PJ’s work as a producer and arranger is beginning to span outside of Thailand, but his heart and focus is to help the Thai people to worship God in ways that they never have before… and his ultimate goal, to see the whole nation of Thailand healed and turned to God. “My own life experience shows that there is healing and restoration in worshiping God, that is what I and my wife try to bring to the Thai people.” PJ and Yam are working to provide a worship resource center for Thai people and their churches all around the world, and also for the whole Asian region, offering anointed worship and inspirational songs, tools, training, motivation, and a voice that says “don’t ever let someone say you can’t do it, when God says you can”.

PJ released his own independent worship album in 2003 “Alive in Me”, which includes a duet (Life is nothing more) with his wife, and a lead vocal (All I want is you) by Phil Porter, the talented singer/songwriter and assistant director of YWAM Thailand. To date, PJ has produced 9 albums and has either produced, arranged, played or sung at least one song on over 20 albums. Yam has sung on upwards of 40 albums and has written many popular worship songs for the Thai church.

"As we worship God, we are communicating in our spirit to God, and as we praise the name of God, we are proclaiming to the people who He is, so that His name will be known in every nation. Let God be known through every aspect of our lives.AMEN!"
(Bongkote Hudson)

White Lotus Worship Music Last Update: January 25, 2007 -- Email: webmaster@whitelotusworshipmusic.com to report problems with this site