ALMS First Newsletter Ever

Happy New Year, and greetings from Asia!

I'm sure many will be interested in hearing an update as to our activities here in South-east Asia. I will try to keep it short, but so much has been happening that I may have to leave out some things.

We spent our first weekend in Thailand at Chiangmai Adventist Academy, the school where Phoebe and I first became acquainted years ago. The occasion was that of a memorial service for Mr. Elden Lamar Smith, a previous administrator of the school and the one who introduced Phoebe and I. The occasion brought in a number of church officials, but we were the only visiting foreigners there other than his widow.

Almost immediately, the situation in Thailand was made known to us. In speaking to the president of the Thai mission, he urged us, both Phoebe and I separately, to take a look at the school in Ubon with over 300 students. He asked me to be principal there. Meanwhile, while visiting the studio just beside the academy campus, we learned of urgent needs both at the studio itself and at Sunshine Orchards near the border to Burma (technically Myanmar, but everyone here still calls it Burma). We also knew of needs with the church planters in Ayutthaya, there were other provinces where we could do church planting as well, and, finally, there was Laos.

During the next few days we traveled to Laos to take a look at their situation ourselves. I felt God calling us that direction, but Phoebe had always been more reticent. True, Laos was a formidable country for us to consider. The language is not the same as Thai, as I learned while staying with a Lao family the first few days. (I understand between 20% and 80% of what they say, depending on the topic and how thickly-accented their pronunciation is; whereas in Thailand, I am conversationally fluent and generally understand above 90%.) Laos proved to be a country in great need, and the laborers were few. We wrestled with the options.

Having returned from visiting Laos, we took a trip to Sunshine Orchards to see it also for ourselves. Again, we were met with the same great need of laborers. Again, our skill set matched a number of those needs. But what should we do? After prayer and much thought about the situation, I decided we would go to Laos. The needs there were such that if we did not come to fill them, the school, Eliyah Language Center (ELC), would almost certainly be forced to close. It had just lost three teachers and was down to one, having no foreign teachers and mounting bills with low student count. Additionally, there were several other good reasons for us to begin our work over here with Laos, including participating more closely with the translation work headed up by Brian Wilson.

We needed to go to Bangkok to work on the paperwork and other arrangements for our shipment from America. We contacted Mike and Marilee Kier and arranged to stay the Sabbath with them. That was a precious experience. It is so nice to spend Sabbath with Adventists! It was such a blessing to join them in participating at their church plant, and then visiting an estranged church member in the evening. At the little church in Ayutthaya, the members asked me to translate the Sabbath-school lesson, taught by Mike in English. I found it difficult, to be honest, and felt there were many terms which I had either forgotten or had never learned. If only I could study Thai and become fully fluent! However, after the Sabbath-school was over, several people commented at the special gift I had for translation, especially considering my limited time in the country (almost three years total). I translated again for the sermon, this time Thai to English. 

As the school term was to start on April 29 at the ELC, I went ahead to Laos while Phoebe stayed behind to work on paperwork for the incoming shipment we had sent over from America. That story is a phenomenal one, most of which must be told from her side. It was the perfect storm of events, as if set up by the devil himself, leading to what seemed an almost certain considerable delay, and if even a small delay were encountered, we could not possibly keep the Sabbath.