
# Table of Contents

  1. Word form the Editor
  2. Part One No Turning Back
    1. Chapter 1 Focus on Siam
    2. Chapter 2 Four Set Sail For Siam
    3. Chapter 3 Welcome to the Kingdom of Siam
    4. Chapter 4 In The Field of Clouds
    5. Chapter 5 Due North
    6. Chapter 6 The Borneo House
    7. Chapter 7 Base Camp Established
    8. Chapter 8 Comings And Goings
    9. Chapter 9 The Walled City
    10. Chapter 10 Notice to Move
    11. Chapter 11 Tell of The King
    12. Chapter 12 Leprosy!
    13. Chapter 13 R & R
    14. Chapter 14 Romance
  3. Part Two Yours Crusading
    1. Chapter 15 Broken To Grow
    2. Chapter 16 The Sowers Went Out to Sow
    3. Chapter 17 The Rugged Life
    4. Chapter 18 Gaew Moon
    5. Chapter 19 Furlough – Oh Joy Oh Delight! (?)
    6. Chapter 20 Oh For A ... Tongue To Speak
    7. Chapter 21 Quiet Study and Urgent Need
    8. Chapter 22 A Jewel By The River
    9. Chapter 23 Two For Rabbit Hunter
    10. Chapter 24 New Station, New Recruits, Newlyweds & A New Baby
    11. Chapter 25 The Eye Of The Storm
    12. Chapter 26 Joy and Disappointment
    13. Chapter 27 Down Into The Valley

# Landmarks

  1. Cover

Table of Contents

Word form the Editor

Part One No Turning Back

Chapter 1 Focus on Siam

Chapter 2 Four Set Sail For Siam

Chapter 3 Welcome to the Kingdom of Siam

Chapter 4 In The Field of Clouds

Chapter 5 Due North

Chapter 6 The Borneo House

Chapter 7 Base Camp Established

Chapter 8 Comings And Goings

Chapter 9 The Walled City

Chapter 10 Notice to Move

Chapter 11 Tell of The King

Chapter 12 Leprosy!

Chapter 13 R & R

Chapter 14 Romance

Part Two Yours Crusading

Chapter 15 Broken To Grow

Chapter 16 The Sowers Went Out to Sow

Chapter 17 The Rugged Life

Chapter 18 Gaew Moon

Chapter 19 Furlough – Oh Joy Oh Delight! (?)

Chapter 20 Oh For A ... Tongue To Speak

Chapter 21 Quiet Study and Urgent Need

Chapter 22 A Jewel By The River

Chapter 23 Two For Rabbit Hunter

Chapter 24 New Station, New Recruits, Newlyweds & A New Baby

Chapter 25 The Eye Of The Storm

Chapter 26 Joy and Disappointment

Chapter 27 Down Into The Valley
No Turning Back:

The Beginnings of WEC in Thailand

by Nancy Ashcraft

Smashwords Edition

© 2003 by Nancy Ashcraft

# Word form the Editor

I'm probably one of few characters in literary history who got to correct the spelling of his own name. Not only am I a minor character in the story -- the second to the last paragraph of chapter 24 records my birth -- and I have had the privilege of editing this great work.

Some of my earliest memories include "Auntie Nancy", who lived in the village of Maw Tda with "Auntie Mary" Lewin, and made frequent excursions into Maesod, where we lived. Often, their arrival was preceded by their two dogs, Blackie and Danski, who pranced on before them as they walked the journey. Nancy had a great sense of humour, laughed at all my dad's jokes, and loved to give and receive a hug. I'm told that once, while the wind-up phonograph was playing the appropriate music, she dance the waltz while holding me as her dance partner. One evening, she said, "Can you send Robby to bed early, so I can play with his Legos?"

Some style editors would say that she uses too many exclamation marks. However, as I read the ironic humour that they punctuate, I still hear the tone of her voice (if you want to get the effect, just hark back to the Saturday TV cartoon, Scoobie Doo, and the tone of voice Shaggie uses when he's scared of something). Maybe, for that reason, I'm the wrong one to be editing this; I've left them in.

Besides just a few style corrections, I also reedited and/or omitted just a few personal details of some of the players in the story, for the sake of making this work suitable for the wider audience. Perhaps some, such as current WEC missionaries on the Thai field, might benefit from some of the more intricate details. If they do, there's a copy in the mission archives in Tak.

I found that copy while I was working on my mother's book, Cracked Earth, and thought it would be useful if it were in a more accessible format. It was an old dot-matrix print out, which is not conducive to ORC scanning. Most of the editing I did was to correct the numerous scanning errors. In fact, I had to re-type parts of it.

Along with old letters and notes, as well as accounts by other missionaries, Nancy quotes from Cracked Earth in this work. She goes into far more detail than my mother did, but covering a shorter span of time. It serves a different purpose, which I think that readers of my mother's account, will also appreciate.

I hope that others will find this as inspiring as I did. For me, it was a re-discovery of my own heritage. Others will at least realise what it was like to travel to, and work in a totally different environment, as rural Thailand was in those days. Even modern Thai, sending their Instagrams and Tweets from the farthest corners of Thailand, will be amazed at the difference in lifestyle. At least, we can appreciate the dedication and the seemingly unrewarding toil that went into tilling the soil for the spiritual harvest that others are now reaping.

For the record, my name is "Robby" as my mother spelled it, not "Robbie".

Over to Nancy...

# **Part One**  
 _No Turning Back_

## Chapter 1  
Focus on Siam

At the close of the Second World War, Siam was so unknown by the outside world, it appeared mysterious and hidden. The ancient kingdom was said to have a population of seventeen million, though a thorough census had never been taken.

Tales were told of golden palaces belonging to a line of kings that had ruled for almost two centuries and of graceful temple spires crowning a thousand hillsides. There were reports of sparkling gemstones and tropical rainforests of towering teak trees.

Norman Grubb, acting as secretary (leader) for the British Home End of WEC, doubtless read the descriptions. He doubtless heard the praises. And they left him untouched, unmoved.

It was the shocking statistics, the account of province after province with,

"No Christian witness,

No Christian witness,

No Christian witness.."

that brought him to a stop. Considering Siam brought him to his knees and finally to action

As far as advance to foreign fields was concerned, the war years had kept WEC to a holding pattern. Travel abroad and the flow of funds between nations were largely limited to the military. So the mission had concentrated on strengthening the home bases and recruiting prayer groups and partners for that day when advance around the world would again be possible. Now with the war over, borders were open and waterways free for civilian travel. And WEC was mobilized, ready to move out.

WEC leadership was looking for new targets, new fields, new lands. Where were we to invest lives to win this lost world for the Lord of Glory?

The statistics drew Norman Grubb's eyes to consider Siam. Throughout the era of modern missions, Burma was considered territory belonging to Baptist missions, Siam belonged to Presbyterian missions and Indochina to Methodist missions. This was not a matter of international law but simply comity of missions, that courtesy agreement among missionaries to respect each others work and area. Only faithfulness to their own word held agencies and men to their agreements.

Comity of missions was a practice that most perfectly fit WEC policy. The very ethos of WEC assured that we would not seek to work where other Bible-believing evangelical missions were established.

Did this mean that Siam, an area reckoned to belong to Presbyterian missions, was a closed door to us?

Before the outbreak of war, vast areas of Siam had not been evangelized. The Presbyterian mission had no plans to expand their work beyond their existing stations, so they were willing for other mission agencies to enter the land and establish work outside of their area of influence. Several missions had entered Siam and begun church planting but always within agreement and alliance with the Presbyterian mission.

At the close of the war, as Norman Grubb was studying the situation in Siam, he found that, as there were still many provinces without any missionary endeavor at all, the invitation was still in effect. Missions that would work in harmony with the Presbyterians and the other already established missions, were free to enter.

Siam presented not just an open door for WEC but a compelling cry and an urgent need. Soon WEC sending bases, regional centers, prayer batteries, staff and candidates were focused on Siam.

While Mr. Grubb was corresponding with missions in Siam, he was also looking at the young candidates preparing to serve with WEC abroad. He wanted to find a team who could enter Siam and work together. He wanted a team thoroughly baptized into WEC principles, sensible enough to work in tandem with the Presbyterians and wise enough to keep from offending the Siamese officials. At the same time the team needed to be so empowered by the Lord that they could penetrate the darkness of that heathen land.

Norman Grubb couldn't help but notice one candidate who had volunteered to type his correspondence. She had a full-time responsibility as bookkeeper for the Mission but in her spare time she was typing for him. Here was the spirit he wanted the Siam team to exemplify.

Ellen Gillman had already been a part of the Mission family for almost nine years when Norman approached her with the challenge to "serve the Lord in Siam". Ellen's parents had entered WEC when Ellen and her older sister, Betty, were still schoolgirls. The two sisters were too young to officially become members of the Mission, but their parents so included them in their decision-making that they were not just involved, but totally committed to the vision and lifestyle of the Mission.

Those were the early days of WEC in North America. Each regional headquarters was a place of communal living and sharing with each other. The Gillmans took all meals with the entire household of whatever HQ where they were living. Mrs. Gillman was often in charge of the kitchen or of housekeeping arrangements. Ellen and Betty naturally took part in cleaning, cooking and laundry. And they both attended and took part in morning prayers except on school days. Later, on vacation from Prairie Bible Institute, the sisters slept in the girls' dorm with candidates who were on their way to foreign fields. Listening to candidates preparing to sail for Africa, India and Asia excited and challenged them.

Candidate training was not a matter of formal classes, rather a sharing of life, both physical and spiritual, through living, working and worshiping together. Betty and Ellen were already a part of that sharing without ever having applied to become candidates. In 1943, graduating from PBI, Ellen became an official WEC candidate, as had Betty before her.

While Norman Grubb was on a speaking tour in the United States, Ellen was working in the bookkeeping department of the Chestnut Hill HQ, just  outside of Philadelphia. Along with her own duties, Ellen offered to help type some of the mission leader's heavy correspondence. Norman Grubb, watching Ellen, felt that here was not only a willing worker, but a dyed-in-the-wool  Weccer ! He was reminded of his own words, "The team to open Siam should be thoroughly 'WECized'". In this young woman, Grubb found the single eye to WEC's commitment to world evangelization.

Norman Grubb's suggestion that Ellen should be a part of the Siam team was completely unexpected. Ellen was looking towards India. She now says that her first attraction for that land came from her love far Rudyard Kipling's  Just So Stories and his other books about India. Of course attraction and guidance are two very different things. But it is important to note that Ellen turned that initial interest in India into a very real spiritual concern. While she attended Bible school, she took every opportunity to hear speakers from India and to read everything she could get her hands on about that land. She even chaired several prayer sessions on India.

India was Ellen's focus. That land had filled her vision and she had no reason to suspect that God had any other land as His chosen place for her.

To those of us who know Ellen, her response to Norman Grubb's challenge comes as no surprise. She was not on the defensive, nor threatened that her independence and her right to find her own guidance were questioned. Though she was not wanting or waiting for someone else to tell her what she ought to do, nor was she unduly swayed by Norman Grubb's position in the Mission; she graciously promised to pray about the matter. To her surprise, the Lord did confirm His call to Siam.

* * *

Wilf and Evy Overgaard had joined WEC in 1942. They moved into the Seattle headquarters with their daughter Sharon, just seven months old. For the next four years they would uproot and move three times,  f illing needs in the expanding mission. In the middle of that time of adjustment, readjustment and further adjustment, a fourth member was added to their family. Paul was born in September of 1944.

By the time Ellen was recognized as a member of the soon-to-be-formed team for Siam, Wilf and Evy had become indispensable members of the home staff. They moved across country to North Carolina, from Seattle, to fill in while that base's leaders were away. Later they were called to uproot again; this time to go to Philadelphia. They were needed to help move the headquarters to a new location. All this travel was undertaken when Sharon was three and Paul not a year old.

After just four months in Pennsylvania, they were asked to move to Canada to do the bookkeeping in the Toronto HQ. They were to coordinate the North American finances, take charge of candidates from Canada, and help run the Headquarters.

Officially, Wilf was the bookkeeper f or Canadian WEC, but he was often away on speaking engagements representing the Mission. In the Overgaards' thinking they were committed to missions and available to move at any time in any direction the Lord would lead. In the minds of the North American leaders of WEC, the Overgaards were the Lord's provision for the many needs of the Home End.

In the summer of 1946, WEC rented a camp facility at Round Lake, in New York State. Ellen calls the facility "rickety"! There, WEC held public meetings to present the need of a lost world and to proclaim the Lord's heart involved in sending His Gospel to the ends of the earth. Wilf was one of the speakers and Evy was in charge of planning, buying, preparing and serving meals.

At the close of the week of meetings, Evy wrote to a friend saying, "I know you'll be shocked to hear what God has asked of us." Her next sentence states, "We have volunteered for Siam." Obviously, in Evy's mind, God's requiring and their volunteering met together in partnership.

Evy goes on to write of how she and Wilf were talking quietly in bed after an evening meeting. Doubtless this was the only time they could have a quiet, uninterrupted conversation. A two-year-old and a four-year-old are well able to bring conversation down to a pre-school level (In that same letter Evy writes of how Paul was "just learning to talk and entertains us all with new words almost every day"). In Evy's account of that bedtime conversation, she says they spoke of how " o ne cannot very well tell others they ought to go, if one has not made every effort oneself".

They spoke of Colombia, a new WEC field. Evy felt no inner response to the need she had heard so often during that week of meetings. Then Wilf mentioned Siam. "Would you be willing to go to Siam?"

Almost to her own surprise, Evy answered, "Yes!"

"But it's a pioneer field and maybe we couldn't take the children," Wilf mused.

Even with that colossal possibility of being parted from their children, Wilf and Evy were still willing to accept Siam. For the Overgaards this was a sacrifice that touched the most sensitive part of their hearts. That God did not require this sacrifice until Paul and Sharon were much older does not take away from the painful surrender the couple made there at Round Lake.

"It was not dramatic," Evy wrote of that long ago conversation, "but it has a settledness and peace that indicate His presence and guidance."

The next day the couple shared their news with Ellen's father Edwin Gillman, and with Alfred Ruscoe, who was the leader of the Mission in North America.

It was an early WEC tradition to refer to every staff member in the way that Africans in the Congo would have pronounced their names, even if the staff member had never been to Africa . Alfred Ruscoe was called "Rusiko", the name he had grown used to in his years in Congo with C.T. Studd. But for Mr Gillman to become  accustomed to being called "Gillie" might have presented some adjustment. It is certain that Mrs. Gillman wasn't pleased about being called "Ma Gillie" as the Africans would have done. We can be thankful that this practice of using "Congo-ized" names died out within the Mission about the time the Overgaards became a part of the North American home staff. If it stretches the mind to try to arrive at what the Africans would have done with "Overgaard" it is even more mind boggling to consider Evy's reaction to being called "Ma" by all and sundry!

When the two Mission leaders were told of the Overgaards' call to Siam, Mr Gillman's only question concerned Evy's health. At that very time, Evy was planning a trip to visit a doctor in Michigan, leaving the two small children in the headquarters with Wilf and some willing staff members to care for them. The hope was that this Michigan doctor would be able to find out why Evy was always weak and exhausted. (Evidently no one considered that the birthing and raising of two small children in a headquarters situation, plus the upheavals of moving house over and over and the keeping up with a whirlwind like Wilf, could be exhausting!) Indeed, Evy battled with poor health all her years in Thailand. Perhaps one of the first points to be marveled at, concerning this initial team to enter Siam, is the fact that doctors passed Evy for the foreign field.

Wilf relates that when they faced Alfred Ruscoe with the news of their call to serve in Siam, he just looked at them for a moment. Mr. Ruscoe had the profile of a hawk and his eyes were deep-set and hooded. It was impossible to read his reactions until he became animated. If he just silently looked at you, you could imagine approval but you were more apt to feel that the hawk was about to pounce and devour.

Ruscoe regarded Wilf and Evy for what seemed an eternity. Was that gleam in his eyes approval or anger? Then, without a word, he turned on his heels and walked away!

Wilf and Evy were left to wonder: what would come next? Were they bound to be permanently on the home staff? Or were they free to follow what they now felt was the Lord's leading to Siam?

They had accepted WEC as being the Lord's choice for them, so the WEC leadership was a part of His perfect will for the Overgaards. They would accept Ruscoe's decision as the Lords will. But they really didn't have any idea what that decision would be.

The next morning, Mr Ruscoe sought them out and explained that the Lord had told him, in the night, that there was a spiritual law: "Before you can get, you must be willing to give." The home end of the Mission was in need of recruits to staff a new headquarters in Philadelphia and the many regional centers across the country. Wilf and Evy were needed where they were, and it was hard for Mr Ruscoe to give them up. But in a struggle before the Lord, he had learned a principle of faith.

Freeing Wilf and Evy to head for Siam, Ruscoe added to their assurance that this was the Lord's will and way for them.

* * *

Not long after the Overgaards heard the Lord's call to Siam, Fern Berg began to realize that the Lord was leading her to step out and become a part of the Siam team. Fern, of Scandinavian background from rural Minnesota, had had university training in home economics and further schooling from Philadelphia School of the Bible. WEC's emphasis on deeper life, and the climate of hunger for His fullness and His pleasure, had strongly drawn and claimed her. As conversation and prayer emphasis in the headquarters centered more and more on the advance to Siam, Fern awakened to the prompting of the Lord. She, too, was to be a part of that advance and Siam was to become a part of her life.

Fern tells us that the fusing of her life with Siam began with the practical job of acquiring an "outfit" to last approximately five years. The outfit of early missionaries was clothing, medical supplies and household goods. It was everything a person could imagine that they would need for healthy, wholesome living in a land far from their usual sources of supply. The members of the Siam team were each looking at five or six years, till furlough time would bring them home to drug stores, shoe stores, and department stores.

Fern says she, with helpful friends, was busy sewing dresses and pajamas of light weight cotton. Fern, eminently practical, would make sure that every article to be packed would be cool and comfortable, easy to care for and absolutely necessary. How then did she acquire seventeen purple, woolen snoods?!!

Well into her second term, Fern would laughingly examine these items so carefully packed in a storage drum. For a younger generation the explanation should be given: The snood was a loosely woven net worn to confine long hair. During the second world war, women working in factories were required to wear snoods to keep their hair from getting tangled in the machinery. Purple woolen snoods were hardly a necessary part of a practical outfit for Siam. In fact no use was ever found for them!

* * *

Farewell and dedication prayer meetings were held in home churches and regional WEC meetings all across the country. Wilf particularly remembers a conference in Oregon just a week before they were to sail. The entire Siam team was there. When a new chorus was taught, each of the team members felt its message was to strengthen their own personal commitment. Each of them found encouragement, a personal touch from the Lord. The chorus was, "I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back."

For Ellen, the memorable farewell was in Southern California at the El Monte HQ just days before their sailing. Perhaps this was important for her because her own parents were taking part in the service. Ellen recounts that Lon Fulton from the Japan field, and Doc Morris from the India field, were there to lay hands on the Siam team and commit them to the Lord and the great work that was before them.

It needs to be remembered that these were very real, flesh and blood young people. They had fears and doubts that had to be reined into submission to the will of the Lord. They couldn't put on display their worries and misgivings. They had to step out, putting on display a faith that expects God to be underneath that step. While knowing their future was far beyond their own capabilities to handle, they reminded themselves that their "sufficiency was of Him".

None of them had reached their thirties and Ellen, the youngest, was not yet twenty five.

The atmosphere of farewell meetings places the missionary recruit in a false place of exaltation. They are suddenly elevated to assumed greatness. Even family and friends seemed to take a step back and viewed the Siam four as if they already belonged in the pages of history. It's a good thing there were four of them. They each knew the truth about themselves and each other. Their commission to serve, was just that, a commission to serve and not a commission to assume greatness. They were still the people they had always been. And hidden from onlookers, inside that person each of them was, the struggle went on. Balancing against the determination to go was the pull to stay. Tugging at their will to obey, was the desire to turn back. It would have been easier to leap off of their borrowed pedestals than to take the step of obedience that would propel them up a gang plank and off onto the Pacific Ocean! 

## Chapter 2  
Four Set Sail For Siam

September 5, 1947 the Overgaard family with Ellen Gillman and Fern Berg set sail for Siam from San Francisco.

A very large gift had come into the mission earmarked for the opening of a work in Siam. Ellen says, "It was the answer to the prayers of four financially poor young people who were firmly set in their determination to enter Siam for the Gospel for WEC."

This gift set the timing of their advance to the other side of the Earth. It encouraged them to a level of faith that proclaims support and victory. It lifted their hearts in excitement and wonder.

BUT...  o ne time gifts that help folk get to their fields of service, have a down-side. Such gifts can not be taken as an indication of further regular support. It could speed them on their way, but it did not promise, nor did it provide the support they would need in an alien land.

The WEC policy at that time, was to free any accepted candidate to leave for their field of service, as soon as their passage money was in hand, even if they did not have a penny of promised support! Experience would reveal that, without regular support, a special one-time gift could leave a new missionary stranded far from home.

We do not know how much support had been promised to the family of four or to Fern. But Ellen tells us that she left for the field that first time with no promise of support.

Their continuing story proves that their support was pitifully inadequate by today's standards.

The world would call them foolish to set out on that journey with such insufficient means ; b ut they were not trusting in the promises of friends but in the Lord, who had called them into His service. They took C.T.'s words, "His commands are His enabling," to mean that not only strength, endurance, adaptability and the ability to learn the Siamese language would be theirs, but with all that would come every bit of money they would need to live on, on the level the Lord would choose for them .

* * *

There were two other  Weccer s who hoped to sail on the same ship. Lucy Lapon and Judith Walgren had just been granted visas for India. Their funds were tied up on the East Coast in the WEC treasury and they had no bookings or tickets. A call to the ticket agent advised them to travel to San Francisco, on the chance that they might be able to take advantage of cancellations. (Obviously they were already on the West Coast, probably in the Seattle or the El Monte Headquarters.) The two went to the pier without bookings or money for tickets!

When it was found that there were vacant places for Lucy and Judith on the ship, the Siam team, without a second thought, agreed to lend them the money needed for their fares.

Though it was known that there was money in the girls' account in the East and that money would certainly be transferred to the Siam account, the generosity of the Siam four was quite staggering. They had purchased tickets only as far as Hong Kong, where they would need to find transport on to Bangkok.

They did not know how long their stay in Hong Kong would last. How often did steamships small enough to navigate the river to Bangkok, leave the Hong Kong harbor? What would passage on such a ship cost? How much would it cost to stay in Hong Kong for an indefinite period? Then, of course, there were landing fees and expenses in Bangkok.

Eventually a remittance check would arrive in Bangkok which could be used to open a local bank account. How long would the bank require for clearing before they could withdraw what they needed for living expenses?

This was not the electronic age!

* * *

The  General Meigs , the ship that took the WEC party to Hong Kong, was one of the President Liners that had been used throughout the war as a troop transport ship. Now it was in the midst of being converted back for civilian use. Its conversion was far from finished and it still mostly resembled a transport vehicle for moving fighting men.

Before they sailed, the WEC team had the chance to look over the huge, uncomfortable barracks that would house them for their trip.

Ellen and Fern would be sleeping in a room with bunk beds stacking three high.  There would be approximately thirty women and children who would share that room with them. Evy with the two Overgaard children would be in similar quarters.

Though there were no chairs or accommodations for visiting in the barracks, they appeared luxurious when compared with the sleeping quarters assigned to Wilf! Down in the hold, or bowels of the ship, an uncounted number of men were to be crowded into bunks. If sitting up in ones bunk in the women's quarters left a hank of hair in the springs of the bunk overhead, sitting up in ones bunk in the men's quarters was an impossibility. And forget about springs! Wilf would learn how to roll in and out of his bunk, Navy fashion, on that trip.

Standing on the deck, the pier beneath them and the uninviting accommodations of the ship, behind them, they said  goodbye to the loved and the familiar.

Fern tells us that farewell streamers from the ship to shore gave the appearance that they were leaving on a vacation cruise. "My last minute gift was a watermelon," she adds. "I'm glad the steward was wise enough to stow it away until we had settled stomachs."

Ellen recounts that leaving loved ones was "incredibly" difficult. She remembers standing on the deck waving and smiling and calling out to her parents. Finally all the good-byes had been said. Prayers committing her and her fellow travelers to the Lord had all been offered. Every bit of advice and every word of encouragement and every promise of prayer and love had been reiterated. What more could be said? But it wasn't time yet for the ship to sail and her parents were not about to leave!

Ellen says she gave a last wave and then just turned her back and went inside. She explains that her mother was sixty-five years old and so Ellen had little hope of ever seeing her again in this world! Sixty-five seemed so old and decrepit to the young Ellen! There was a real sense of burying her loved ones as she turned away.

That same surrender and emotional burial of loved ones had surely taken place for each one of them as they parted from family. For some, that experience would have taken place as they drove away from their parents' home, or waved from the back of a bus pulling out from the  hometown station.

Aching with the grief of parting, they found the Lord was still with them to breathe His encouragement into their hearts. Wilf says, "The words of the song, 'I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back' were ringing in their hearts as they passed under the Golden Gate Bridge and out into rough seas and darkness." (And we thought Evy and Danny were the poets of the family!)

* * *

The voyage on the  General Meigs  was something that none of them would ever forget. The large group in each of the sleeping quarters, was so varied and their sleeping habits so different, there seemed never to be a time when some lights were not on full glare, some child crying and some group talking.

Evy became violently seasick as soon as land was left behind. Though both of the children were assigned to be in the cabin with her, Wilf took Paul down into his quarters, hoping that this would relieve Evy a bit and give her a chance for some sleep.

The ship was carrying so many passengers that there were not enough chairs for them all to sit down at the same time.

Ellen says "comfort was the victim" of this overcrowding, and ventures the guess that the ship was so full because it was one of the first big ships to offer space to civilians wanting to go to the Orient after the war. There were some army dependents going out to join their men. There were civilian workers, students and several hundred missionaries in the crowded ship's quarters.

Marta Person was on that ship, going out to China to act as teacher to missionaries' children (with a Swedish mission). Because Wilf was particularly helpful to this group upon landing in Hong Kong, Marta did not forget him. And the Siam team had memories of the particularly pretty young woman who kept the Swedish children occupied. It never entered their thoughts that they would one day be co-workers and comrades in Thailand.

Of course, there were two other WEC missionaries on that ship. Lucy Lapon and Judith Walgren, bound for India, were a part of the WEC fellowship that that encouraged each other on that trip to Hong Kong. They all needed encouragement. There is romance and adventure in moving out in obedience and fellowship with the Lord. But as the days passed and home territory was left further and further behind the path of the ship, the group understood in deeper reality what this leap from the safety and familiarity of their old life meant.

There was a deck at the very top of the ship that few passengers visited. In the evenings the group found a measure of privacy here, to pray and sing together. "I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back", their rather passionate theme song for the entire journey.

"The struggle of such a time of seasickness, homesickness and loss, is a struggle to bring feelings up to the level of one's firm commitment," says Ellen.

Certainly not one of them would have turned back had they been given the opportunity just then. They just wished that they didn't so avidly long to turn back. Their wills were firmly planted. Their desires were another matter!

Wilf reminds us that several years would pass before any of them had sufficient funds to purchase a return ticket!

* * *

If the journey was such a traumatic venture for the adults, what must it have been for the two Overgaard children? Paul had his third birthday in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and Sharon was just five years old.

Ellen remembers how a birthday cake with three candles was brought into the dining room and set before a startled Paul. It was a stormy evening and Paul's chair had not been anchored to the floor. When the ship gave a lurch, the child was not heavy enough to hold his chair down. So his birthday party ended with an overturned chair that rudely deposited him onto the floor.

The trip must have come as a series of shocks to the two Overgaard children. Everything that had been stable and secure in their lives up till then, was now changed! Even the floor beneath their feet became unstable. Their parents were not even together on that crowded ship.  Their mother, who had always nursed them in illness, wras now violently ill herself.

* * *

As the ship neared Hong Kong the passengers were warned  ad nauseum about about the danger of  pickpockets in that infamous city. So as the ship drew into dock, Wilf collected all of the cash from the team and divided it between them to squirrel away between the  inner soles of their shoes, in their socks or bras or wherever else they felt was most secure.

Wilf no sooner stepped ashore than someone stole the fountain pen out of his pocket!

Going ashore in Hong Kong the team had no idea where they would stay. But Wilf, the recognized leader, scurried about and found not only accommodation for his own brood, but was able to aid the Swedish mission, leaving for mainland China and to organize flights on to India for Lucy and Judith.

When Wilf was asked if he was appointed leader of the team by the home staff before they left home, or if the other three elected him to be leader, he says neither of those things took place. In fact he can't remember being officially accepted into the mission at all! And he wasn't so much leading that group as he was serving them.

* * *

For the WEC team, Wilf found perfect accommodations. Ellen speaks of the "Soldiers and Sailors Christian Association" on Henessy Road, as being "a sanctuary".

After weeks of sharing a cabin with more than a score of roommates, the joy of having a room to herself cannot be exaggerated. Though Ellen speaks in glowing terms of her accommodation at the Soldiers and Sailors Christian Association,it becomes quite apparent that this was no luxury hotel, as she describes the room for us. "There was a narrow single bed, one straight chair beside the bed and a hook on the wall, where one could hang a garment or two. Heavy bars on the window gave a sense of security and safety." Just fancy! This seemed like heaven after the  General Miegs !

It's interesting to note Fern's remark about the Soldiers and Sailors Association. "We felt like we were in prison behind iron bars."

Quite quickly, Wilf located a shipping firm that had small coastal steamers bound for Siam and the port of Bangkok. The next ship leaving Hong Kong was the  Sen Kieng . The shipping company was the Butterfield and Swire line. (Ellen always refers to the ship, not by its own name but by a slight perversion of the company's name, "The Butterfield and Swine".) This steamer was much smaller than the  General Miegs . Because the river South of Bangkok had not been dredged clear in those days, and the mouth of the river was so silted up, only small coastal tramp steamers could advance through the straights up the river to the Capitol.

"It was a horrid little boat!" Ellen flatly states.

But the price was right ; a nd the timing was right. The team would be on their way before their funds ran out and they were left stranded on the edge of China. The team would land in Bangkok with enough money, still in hand, that they would not have to be embarrassed by need. Hopefully they would have enough to live on till the girls en-route to India could return the money lent to them.

The cabins were nice enough, on the  Sen Kieng . Fern and Ellen shared a cabin and the Overgaards either had a larger cabin or were allotted two cabins (no one seems to remember for sure). But this was far from a luxury ship.

Ellen and Fern's state room looked out on a strange scene. Guards, with guns at the ready, patrolled back and forth on the deck just beneath their porthole. Beyond the soldiers was a hive of activity. Cordoned off from the rest of the passengers was a community of Chinese emigrants on their way to Bangkok. The area was a city of makeshift tents and wash lines, of woks sizzling on charcoal, cooking pots and  tea kettles steaming day and night. Raucous laughter and guttural calls cheered children at play beneath the lines of flapping wash. Racking coughs erupted from the circles of men at cards or dice games. Separated from the rest of the ship by a heavy mesh net and armed guards, this city seemed the very hub of the ship, teeming with life, sound and color.

This was, in fact, an area of danger. At that time of upheaval in China, emigrants had pirated ships in the South China Sea. These folk, who appeared to be innocent families and communities going about lives of washing, cooking, eating, playing and talking interminably, were potential pirates!

Ellen and Fern were constantly at their porthole watching what sounded to be dangerous arguments that broke out around board games or  tea kettles . From the sound of the voices, they expected at any moment to see the antagonists spring up and battle to the death. Instead, there was usually an outburst of laughter. Ellen says, "If there was not a continual roar of laughter from those who sounded terminally angry, we would have expected a massacre was about to be committed at any moment."

* * *

Memories of that trip are a blur for all four of the Siam team. Ellen says she has no recollection of the officers at all and feels that perhaps they did not eat with the passengers. The only memory she carries is of the Captain who argued with Wilf at every opportunity about the foolishness of being missionaries. No answer would satisfy this man who did not know the Lord.

There is one story from that trip South from Hong Kong down around the French Indo-China and into the  Gulf of Siam, that each of the travelers tells. The story has to do with the toilet facilities of the  Sen Kieng . Within an hour or so of sailing, the travelers began to individually look for toilet facilities. Gathering together, they shared their quandary. Not one of them had located toilets and washrooms!

Wilf was then expected to approach the ship's doctor, a Chinese gentleman, to ask him where the bathrooms were located. Obviously there was a problem in communications, for Wilf had to bring back the startling answer that there were none!

Well!...the voyage stretched ahead of them for several days, days without any toilet facilities!

Ellen recounts that beside beds in each stateroom was a small cabinet and in the bottom of this piece of furniture was a commode (potty). This they accepted as the only provision for their need. Each evening after dark, they would each privately, surreptitiously approach the ship's rail to empty overboard their pots.

I wonder what the ship's crew and officers made of those sneaky young missionaries and their nocturnal trips.

After two, perhaps three days at sea, the entire WEC party was on its way from a meal in the dining room, out to the deck. Passing through a small vestibule, three-year-old Paul leaned his small self against a door that flew open depositing him onto the floor within. The poor child was completely forgotten as the  Weccer s gaped at the scene revealed. There was a huge white tub, a sink and a gleaming toilet! That the door was marked with the letters "W.C." meant nothing to this team of young Americans. But those letters would, ever after, have a clear and welcome meaning for them: "Water Closet".

The trip to Hong Kong to Bangkok took about five days. Fern was seasick the entire time. Ellen feels that Fern took one look at the greasy food dished up for them and lost her appetite, equilibrium and strength right then. Since Fern had majored in home economics in college and was well able to cook food to perfection and present it, a visual delight, it is not  unlikely that the greasy, gray unappetizing offerings did cause part of their physical discomfort.

There was a certain numbness about that last lap of their journey. The past was now so far behind them and the future was all unknown. Though none of them harbored any real affection for the ship that carried them along, they were in a cocoon. They had no responsibilities or duties. They didn't need to make any decisions. The cocoon experience was a safe and sheltered season suspended from the tensions and stresses of real life. In that last week of September, 1947, the cocoon was about to split open and spill the travelers out into the real world.

## Chapter 3  
Welcome to the Kingdom of Siam

On October 2, 1947, the coastal steamer,  Sen Kieng made its way slowly up the Chao Phaya river towards the  capital of Siam. The four adult passengers were mesmerized by the exotic river traffic against the background of steamy, flat, gray-green land with its twisted and tangled roots of mangrove bushes.

There was so much noisy, smelly, colorful boat life surrounding their ship, it seemed impossible that some small craft would not be swamped by the steamer's wake or cut in two by its prow.

There were boats loaded with fruits and vegetables. Others were piled high with bales of bright cloth. There were boats with shiny cooking pots for sale and other boats with pots in use, steaming rice and fragrant curries for sale. This bobbing, weaving mass of river life seemed always on the point of tragedy.

The morning sun had climbed high overhead as the Sen Kieng made its way up the river. Now at last reaching the area of the city of Bangkok the afternoon shadows were growing longer and longer.

Sampans, rice barges, ferries and freighters so crowded the river, the steamer could hardly make headway at all. Temple spires and palm fronds were what formed the Bangkok skyline in that decade of the forties. And from the deck of that tramp steamer the WEC four looked down on a city with not even one skyscraper.

As the ship began to pull into dock, the passengers noticed a couple awaiting their arrival. One was a Westerner, a portly man dressed in white drill trousers and gleaming white shirt. He held over his head a red paper umbrella. This was the first time the WEC party had seen a paper sun-shade in use. They were to find that brilliantly painted sun-shades were common, used as often by men, as by women and girls.

The gentleman under the red sun-shade was Peter Voth, with whom Wilf had been corresponding for many months. Peter and Clara Voth were C&MA missionaries who had worked for twenty years in North East Siam. Now they were on loan to the American Bible Society, and living in Bangkok. To all the help and advice they had given through correspondence, the Voths would now add the kindness of hospitality in their home. They would take the little band of  Weccer s under their wings and introduce them to culture, climate, and language and give them all the help and advice they would to those of their own family or mission.

* * *

Ellen recounts a skirmish of sorts, that took place just as the gangplank was in place and permission to go ashore was about to be given. She and Wilf had been joking about who would be the first ashore and were jockeying for the position nearest the head of the gangplank. Just at the crucial moment, Paul fell over a coil of rope and landed, crying, on the deck. Wilf, turning to help him up and comfort his small son, lost the place of advantage and Ellen nipped in ahead of him. She scurried down the swaying gangplank and so was the first  Weccer to set foot on Thai soil!

Over the years, memory of that first arrival is blurred, but all four mention the unfailing kindness of Mr. Voth and his Siamese companion in the meeting the ship and handling the immigration formalities. Fern adds that Peter then drove them through the dock area and out into the city in his own little car. Here the sights and smells and choking dust of a city ravaged by war met them. It was dark long before the car reached the Bible Society compound. To Fern's amazement, Peter drove through the dark streets with just his parking lights on. Doubtless this was in accord with some wartime law that had not yet been repealed.

* * *

No WEC worker now in Thailand would recognize the city that met the eyes of those who disembarked from the Sen Kieng in 1947. The central boulevard was the Chao Phaya River joining Thonburi on the West bank with Krungthep, the beautiful "City of Archangels" on the right bank. Both cities were  crisscrossed by canals. Paved roadways were few, and those were curiously empty of traffic. Cars, buses, taxis, even trucks were few and far between. Those in use before the war broke out had been carefully tended during the war years when no new vehicles could be imported. But shortage of spare parts, corrosion and no available gasoline for civilian use had sent a good many to a rusty grave. In a few months the imports would begin to trickle in, but this was still the day of water travel in the capitol, and engines for boats were more in demand than spare parts for cars.

* * *

Siam was a kingdom but there was no king on the throne. Just a year before the young king, King Rama VIII of Siam, had been killed in his bed-chamber in the Royal Palace.

When the WEC four arrived, the city was still alive with dark rumors about that tragedy. Some would always claim that the young King Ananda's death was an accidental suicide. Others would call his death "murder" and their suspicions would range from the lowliest palace servants to the very highest officials of the land.

For the royal family, this was a time of crippling grief. Prince Bhoomipol, the eighteen-year-old brother of the murdered king, would not be seen to smile in public for the next ten years! Royal and educated Siamese feared that the entire royal family might be assassinated. The hope of that hour was that the British troops, then in Siam to disarm the Japanese army, would protect the royalty.

King Ananda Mahidol's brother, Prince Bhoomipol, would in 1950 become King Rama IX but in those intervening years, Siam would be governed by a ruthless trio.

Field marshal Pibul, educated at Fontainbleau Artillery School, in France, was Prime Minister. He so admired Hitler and later the Japanese military that he took Siam into the war on the side of the Axis. Pibul had fallen in 1944 when a civilian, Nai Pridi, who had led a freedom movement during the war, became Prime Minister. Most Siamese, who had hated and feared the Japanese, were thankful to have Nai Pridi in office and the Field Marshal out. But Pibul, backed by military leaders, mounted a  coup de'tat in November of 1947 –  just one month after the WEC party arrived in Siam.

The military instigators of the  coup promised to solve the "King's death case". Nai Pridi fled abroad and almost immediately two royal pages and a court official were arrested for King Ananda's assassination. But trials and appeals would last nine long years till 1955, when all three were executed.

Field Marshal Pibul, once again in office as Prime Minister, would be known as "the Butcher of Bangkok". But in the decade following the war, it was Police General Phao who was the most feared figure in the land. Under Phao, the police terrorized, imprisoned, tortured and assassinated those who spoke out against them.

The WEC four had not come to be at all involved with politics or palace life, but the palace and politics did affect the street life of Bangkok, and the Bangkok of 1947 cannot be understood without knowing the political climate of that day. The sound of laughter and the picture of bright smiles might meet the missionaries at every turn, but the truth is that the city through which the four were escorted was a city in grief and shock. Suspicion and anxiety lay beneath that cover of smiles; and a  coup was about to erupt and overthrow the government.

* * *

It was not long before the group arrived at the two story teak structure that housed the Bible Society and above those offices, the living quarters of the Voth household.

Mrs. Clara Voth greeted them at the foot of the shaded front porch and her first remarks would be remembered by the  Weccer s forever! "What would you want first, a cool drink or a nice shower?"

Ellen explains that none of them had ever received such an offer or been faced with such a decision when first arriving, as guests, at a journey's end. But over the years, Ellen was to extend that same offer to countless house guests as they arrived travel-stained and weary.

Incidentally, we are  left to wonder what the travelers requested, a cool drink or a shower!

* * *

For the next month the four  Weccer s would live upstairs where wide verandas had been divided into a warren of small cubicles. The partitions were formed of screening and cotton curtains. The drawback to such cubicles is that every word and whisper was heard in the neighboring rooms. The advantage of such flimsy walls was that there was a free flow of every breath of air and even the tiniest bit of breeze.

This was a pattern that Wilf would copy over and over. For many years, every time a new WEC station was opened and a house rented, the field leader would work with available nationals to put in screening, partitions and bathrooms. Added to the comfort and convenience this provided there was, for the single women, another valuable advantage; it was readily obvious that the young women were under the protection and supervision of this very capable man.

The Voths' home, above the Bible Society offices, provided guest rooms (screened cubicles) for members of their own Mission up-country, who would need a place to stay while in Bangkok. Along with their own C&MA folk they would now adopt WEC missionaries coming and going. A deep level of fellowship and lasting friendship was formed in those first weeks of October, 1947.

The old Bible Society building at 150 Sathorn Rd. looked right out on a busy canal. Sathorn was just a narrow road alongside this wide water highway. Hundreds of houseboats lined the banks, while others, serving as shops and cafes bobbed their way between the stationary boats. Evy, writing of this scene says, "Most of the houseboats have arched woven grass mats as roofing and these are not high enough for anyone to stand upright in them. It is to be supposed that these boats are to be used only for sleeping and storage."

In the cool of the evening it became the pattern for the new arrivals to cross over the canal by a wooden footbridge. On the side that would some day became South Sathorn, there was a shaded footpath. Here the inhabitants of the houseboats had built platforms. Shaded by the trees, they cooked on charcoal fire pots and ate their meals. Their washing was draped to dry over their boats, and over low limbs of trees and shrubs. That washing had been done in the canal ; the same  in which garbage was throw n, and babies were washed, and dishes and cooking pots were scoured. In the evening that canal became the communal bathing place.

Fern saw the filthy, dirty water. She couldn't escape from the smell of sewage and frying garlic, and she realized that much illness could surely be traced back to this unhealthy spot.  A t the same time she reveled in the beauty of the people, their friendly smiles and music of their language. Long before she could speak their language, Fern's friendly teasing had little children responding to her. And she somehow communicated her friendliness and appreciation of their children to proud Siamese parents.

The Canal side path introduced Wilf and Evy to many of the culture shocks of Siam. One they knew they would have to face someday, but weren't expecting to burst upon them so suddenly or so soon: Siamese children, much older than Sharon and Paul were diving and swimming and running all around stark naked. They surrounded the two white children with their golden hair and sky blue eyes.  Chattering away in what was certainly Siamese, they questioned, stroked and patted the small Overgaards. The warm brown bodies of the young Siamese, glistening with water from their swimming, were doubtless beautiful, and the lesson in anatomy they provided for the young Overgaards was certainly innocent. It was just the suddenness of the lessons that caught the parents off guard and presented the two young Overgaards with answers to questions they were not yet asking!

* * *

Fern explains that the Presbyterian language school was filled to capacity, so Mr. Voth engaged the services of  Kru Wan Hock to teach the  Weccer s. " Kru Wan was the first Thai woman to receive a nursing degree from the United States," Wilf informs us. He goes on to add, "She was a delightful person." Fern says, "She was a dear Christian lady." After these two testimonials of praise, it's interesting to listen to Ellen, who says of this same woman whose given name translates as "Sweet", "She wasn't sweet to me!"

Kru Wan was staying  nearby the Bible Society house as she was teaching a Finnish couple, the Rassinas, who had come to Bangkok just nine months before the WEC team.

Though  Kru Wan had experience teaching the Rassinas, she really had neither the training nor understanding of what was needed to teach the Siamese language to foreigners. Ellen says that the books they used were little school books with anywhere from twenty to fifty words on a page.  Kru Wan expected her pupils to recognize, pronounce and understand each page after just one day of repeating the page after her! She doubtless felt that the foreigners should be able to learn just as the Siamese-speaking children did.

Evy wrote of those first days of introduction to the primer, "The vowels are the weirdest collection. We sound as if we have indigestion as we repeat them."

Wilf explains that the primer they used taught them the alphabet, and presented every different combination of vowel and tone for each consonant. It was not designed for foreign students.

He said, "What the course lacked was conversational material. Fortunately, an excellent two volume conversational course, developed for the US Air Force, had been brought from the States. We soon discovered that it was an amazingly accurate and scientific representation of the Thai sounds and usage."

Wilf continues explaining that the course "did not make much sense to  Kru Wan." Peter Voth also dismissed the course with the condemnation that, "You cannot learn Thai properly by using a phonetic system."

Perhaps it was fortunate that  Kru Wan was obliged to return to her home in the South, after teaching the  Weccer s for just three months. The new teacher to take her place had worked with foreigners before and was comfortable using the "Spoken Thai" textbook. Gradually the group began to acquire freedom in expressing themselves in this strange, musical language.

* * *

Peter Voth helped Wilf to look for a place for the WEC team to rent. Bangkok was very much smaller than it is today, and rentals were hard to find. Finally, a new little bungalow was discovered. The house was so new it was not quite finished and the  Weccer s would have to wait a week or more to move in. In all, the WEC team would live with the Voths above the Bible Society offices, a full month.

The rental was located in what is now the very heart of Bangkok, with traffic jams, shopping malls, embassies, government buildings, and warrens of crowded streets with upwards of a million inhabitants. In 1947, all of the area south of Sathorn was open fields. Dirt tracks connected little farming communities. It was in one of these little communities that the new bungalow for rent was found.

Evy, writing to a friend before they were to move into their bungalow, says, "The house was painted a cool green and that is in keeping with the name of the street and the community. The street is called, 'The Street of Cool Air' and the community is called 'The Field of Clouds.'"

It sounds so cool and comfortable. But the newcomers to the tropics would soon find that a tiny bungalow did not have the cool air currents of the older, high-ceilinged house on Sathorn.

The home was tiny! And though the pattern of rooms was strange to Americans, it was a pattern they were to grow used to. Some now on the field still have homes built on the same pattern. The main structure was divided into three rooms. One room would house the Overgaard family, one room would serve as bedroom for Ellen and Fern and the third room would be the dining/sitting room for all of them. Behind this main structure was another unit, under a separate roof. This was the kitchen and laundry area.

There is no doubt that the house could be, and was, adapted to fit the needs of the WEC group. But there was a problem. That converted troopship that brought them the first lap of their journey had been so crowded, each passenger was allowed only suitcases. Their heavy baggage, with household items and books had to be shipped by freighter and had not arrived by the time they were to move into their new home. They had no furniture, no pots and pans \-  not even one dish!

In the month that the team had lived over the Bible Society offices, the Lord had not only caused them to win the love and favor of the Voths but of others working in Bangkok. Evy wrote of how a Mr. Fuller of the Presbyterian mission had asked Wilf to speak at a large Chinese church that he had started. Wilf, of course spoke in English and Mr. Fuller translated for him into Chinese. Wilf spoke on "David and Goliath" and Mr. Fuller was so moved by that message that he concluded the meeting with a sort of dedication service. In prayer, Mr. Fuller commissioned Wilf, "May he take the stone from the sling of faith and overthrow the giant Buddhism in many lives." When this prayer was translated into English for the Overgaards and the two women, they were thrilled and felt it was a prophetic encouragement.

Now upon moving into their bare home, the team were once again encouraged by both Mr. And Mrs. Fuller. Seeing the need, the Fullers offered the loan of hospital beds being stored against the day when the Presbyterian mission would build a hospital in Bangkok (which became the Bangkok Christian Hospital on Silom). Because Mr. Fuller was the acting field leader of the Presbyterian mission and Mrs. Fuller was the secretary, they had the authority to make this loan! With the beds came mosquito nets, pots and pans, cutlery, dishes and even linens.

Clara Voth helped the team to shop for furniture. She could not help but be a bit alarmed as she saw them purchase only a dining room set, a table and six straight wooden chairs.

Ellen tells of how the Voths were "so pained to think of us relaxing and studying in those hard, straight chairs that they gave us a wicker sitting-room set." Those deep slanted chairs were so comfortable that they were used and repaired and repaired again till there was not much left but repairs. Finally they were used as a pattern when ordering chairs made in Tak many years later.

The Voths, the Fullers and others would be valued and loved friends and prayer partners for the team. And they shared in the great excitement that the four felt in moving into their own home.

This was November of 1947. Asia watchers had their eyes on a  coup that overthrew the government of Siam. Nai Pridi was sent, fleeing for his life, to Europe. And Pibul, the "Butcher of Bangkok" was back in control in the Kingdom without a King. But the WEC four were moving on with their eyes on the King of Kings who had led them to this land.

## Chapter 4  
In The Field of Clouds

The WEC team settled into the pale green house in "The Field of Clouds". Stretching out all around the little community were rice fields. The heads of grain were just then full and ready for harvest.  Thung Mahamek would shortly be the sight of harvesters bending to their task. And the young missionaries would have a constant picture of the cooperation and harmony teams of harvesters must have to get the job done before the harvest is lost.

This was to be a time of quiet study. A time when the four adults could get ahead in learning to speak Siamese, or Thai, as the language was now being called. The name, Siam, had been changed to Thailand some time before, but even in Bangkok, English speaking Thai and foreigners were still calling the land Siam. Abroad, it would be years before the explanation, "...you know, the country they used to call 'Siam'..." was no longer necessary.

This was supposed to be a time free from cares and responsibilities when the four adults could get down to language study. At the end of this period of time they would be moving inland to some place yet to be chosen. They would perhaps be two or three days journey away from the nearest English-speaking person who could help them in time of crises; so it was very important to use the gift of this special time for language study.

Evy would doubtless gasp to hear that this was a time free from cares and responsibilities. She was the  Mae Bahn - the  housekeeper , or house mother. It was up to her to work with the servants that the Voths had so helpfully found for them. She was to plan meals and communicate those plans to the cook. Just imagine talking about the marketing and prices and cooking directions with a girl that knew no English, when you just conquered, "Where is the train station?" in her language. It is true that the girls had been trained by Mrs. Voth, but Evy had some ideas of her own about meals. She knew the tastes of her own household. For one thing the Overgaard children did not like spicy food!

Communication with the laundry girl would be a bit easier, for you could act out just what you wanted from her. And there wasn't much variation of what you wanted from a laundry girl in those days. There were no drip-dry articles or clothing, no permanent press. And Evy was only too thankful to leave the ironing to the "girl", for the knack of ironing with a heavy iron filled with sparkling charcoal was more of a mystery than the complicated language.

BUT....."The best laid plans"....

Evy had no sooner begun to work with the two servants, spend her time with the teacher each day and find a few moments to privately review those lessons covered by the teacher, when suddenly Paul came down with tonsillitis. Before his illness was over, his sister followed with a high fever.

When Ellen began to develop aches and pains, fever and nausea, it was assumed that surely she had contracted Sharon's illness. As Sharon got rid of her bug in just a few days, Ellen would certainly do the same.

Ellen did not!

As Ellen continued to run a high fever and was unable to eat, the WEC family felt there was no other course open to them ; they would have to find a doctor.

Once again the Fullers came to the rescue of the new missionaries. They knew of a Danish doctor, Dr. Admonsen, who had a private office in the city. (It is hard, at this time, to imagine a Bangkok without the many hospitals with expert foreign doctors!) Dr. Admonsen was willing to pay a house call and he assured them that Ellen's ailment was dengue.

The doctor, introducing the newcomers to dengue, reassured them that this mosquito-carried disease was not fatal. It would run its course in about ten days. No treatment was available. Bed rest, plenty of fluids and aspirin to alleviate the symptoms was all the doctor could advise.

* * *

How the team must have agonized over the tiny payment due the doctor for his unhelpful house call! Finances were tight. Mr. Voth had introduced Wilf to a very British type bank, The Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank of Bangkok. In due time, a check would arrive from the North American home office. But at this point the team had spent just a month in transit and a month with the Voths and perhaps as much as three weeks in their "Field of Clouds" bungalow.

Ships passage and hotel bills in Hong Kong and their passage on the Sen Kieng, plus ships passage and plane fares for Lucy and Judith, who went on to India, had eaten away at their funds. The guest house prices at the Bible Society were minimal. The Voths and the Society had no thought of making a profit from the guest house, but it was expected to pay for itself through guests' contributions. Furniture had been purchased. The first and last  month's rent for their bungalow had been paid in advance. Soon servants wages, teachers wages and rent would come due.

Evy wrote to a friend telling, "A letter from India has come just at the right time. The girls who sailed on the same boat to Hong Kong have arrived at their destination. They had with them, thirty dollars in American bills. Nowhere along their route of travel could they get those bills changed into the currency in use. So they sent them as a gift to us. This is just enough to see us 'over the hump'. Bills and wages and rent can be paid on time."

* * *

With finances so tight, a doctor bill for being told to stay in bed and drink lots of water was a grief to the four. But, Ellen says, their minds were set at rest with the news that in just a few more days the illness would have run its course.

Fern was the designated nurse as she had had a short course of "missionary medicine". So, in charge of the sick room \-  the half of the room occupied by Ellen's bed \-  Fern dutifully took and registered her roommate's temperature and saw to it that Ellen drank plenty of water. This was no easy matter as they had to boil all drinking water, as well as the water used to rinse dishes and the water used for brushing their teeth. This water had to be kept at the boil for twenty minutes. The boiled water was strained through cloth into clay pots where it cooled to a tepid degree. Then it was poured into  koonto' s, the distinctive Siamese vase-like clay pitcher that was widely used before refrigerators were introduced to the country. A  koonto and cup were always by Ellen's bed. But the tepid water was so hard to get down. Ellen much preferred a steaming cup of tea!

Fern consulted her chart of Ellen's temperature for exactly ten days. The doctor had said ten days. Ten days were up! So..........get up!

Ellen was sure that this was the feelings of all of her co-workers! But she didn't feel any better nor did she feel any stronger! She had no appetite and a pile of boiled greens served up on a tin plate was almost the undoing of her.

* * *

It was a day or so after the ten days allowed for Ellen's illness were up. It was just at dusk. The rest of the household were outside in the enclosed yard of their compound.

Were they discussing the problem of finding someone to cut the tall grass ? Though this enclosed space had seemed such a wonderful place for the children to play, it now was apparent that snakes also found it a wonderful place to visit!

It would take hours away from Wilf's study time to go to Sathorn with the request that Peter Voth help him find a man to cut their grass. That request would take more than just a few minutes out of Mr. Voth's day too. And remember that the Voths were not of our Mission and they had full and busy schedules too. Our mission in Thailand will always owe a debt of gratitude to these folk who gave of themselves and their time with the attitude that they were there to serve us!

Wilf could do nothing to spare Mr. Voth. His help was absolutely necessary. But a way was found to cut down on the time it took Wilf to get to and from Sathorn. They had all come to realize that some sort of transport was necessary. So, out of their support pool, a used bicycle was purchased for Wilf's use. (Again, it is hard to imagine a Bangkok that wouldn't have taxis constantly passing the point where Wilf would come out of the fields into the roadway.)

Would they be deciding, out there, if Wilf should go to the Voths for help in finding a grass cutter? Ellen wondered. No! They were probably talking about what to do with the problem of the hypochondriac lolling there in comfort! She felt certain of this, as she tried to find a dry, cool spot to place her sweating head. Ellen ached in every joint and bone and her very bed had become a torment.

Ellen was so very hot. She felt that she must still be running a temperature. Surely the doctor was wrong about that ten day period being all there was to this disease!

Ellen could hear the murmur of voices outside. So she struggled out from under her mosquito net and aching with every movement, she searched for Fern's thermometer. She found it and quickly thrust it under her hot, dry tongue. What discipline it took to leave the instrument there long enough to record her temperature!

104 degrees! She wasn't a hypochondriac! 104? Yes! 104! What a relief to know that she was just as ill as she felt she was! Ellen could hardly wait for the party outside to break up and she could share this "good news" with them!

"Poor Wilf" says Ellen, "he quickly headed off on his bike for Dr. Admondsen's house, which thankfully, wasn't too far away. Wilf intercepted the Dr. just as he was starting out for a dinner party and trotted him back to our house."

"Hold everything!" was Dr. Admondsen's command. He would have to do some stool tests. When the tests came back, the verdict was  Paratyphoid ! Ellen says she doesn't know if it was type "A" or type "B". But whatever it was, it was the worst type!

As Ellen had already lost a great deal of weight and was not able to eat at all, the doctor felt it was absolutely necessary to put her in Saint Louis Hospital on Sathorn Road.

This French-run Catholic hospital, Ellen says, "was a sanctuary". The doctors and nursing staff spoke French and the nursing aids spoke Thai. It could have been a terrifying time but kindness jumps language barriers.

Cool sponge baths and frequent changes of sheets and pillow cases brought a degree of comfort and communicated concern and charity. Her large room with its high ceiling gave the illusion of coolness. It was as cool as Bangkok could get in those days before air conditioning. There were not even many ceiling fans at that time for electricity was far too uncertain.

Listen to Ellens own words. "I thought I had died and gone to heaven! The first meal they served me was canned fruit and crisp golden toast! I can't remember, if at that first meal the fruit was peaches or pears. Whichever it was, I took one bite  and suddenly I had an appetite. And that wonderful big room all to myself – well there were swinging doors at each end of the room – so I had no privacy, anybody could come in at any time." This measure of solitude and quiet seemed to Ellen to spell Heaven! Just fancy a heaven where  anyone could wake you up at any time to jab you with a needle or give you a sleeping pill. Men and women could question you in a totally incomprehensible language at any time, and you couldn't make your needs or wishes known to anyone!

This experience was far too costly a lesson for Ellen. But for the next forty-five years, Ellen would be  everyone's favorite nurse, even when we had a dozen qualified nurses on the field. They knew how to treat diseases but Ellen could think of tempting meals and ways to make an aching body more comfortable.

Ellen's stay in the hospital was probably about two weeks. She says, "It was a wonderful time, for there the Lord spoke to me about self-pity". Only the Lord could convict a soul about self-pity in such a way that the experience would be called wonderful! And Ellen never tried to undertake the Lord's part and convict her fellow workers of their self-pity.

As time drew near for Ellen to leave the hospital a further financial crisis was imminent. The full hospital bill had to be paid before a patient could be discharged. But still the money expected from the two girls in India had not yet arrived. A remittance check had come from the US home base with no mention of the money lent to Lucy and Judith. Without the return of that money the WEC team simply didn't have enough cash to pay Ellen's bill.

The hospital and doctor arrangements were all set in motion. The next morning, after a final check of her condition and her bill tallied up and paid, Ellen would be free to leave. The Fullers, in their kindness, had offered to send their car and driver to take Ellen and her WEC escort home to "The Field of Clouds".

With the mail of that very last afternoon, came the check from Lucy and Judith. In the confusion of their departure from San Francisco, now almost four months in the past, the two headed for India had failed to inform the home treasure department of their arrangements with the Thai field. So all of the money in their accounts had been sent on to them in India. Had the home end been informed, the money owed to the Thai field would have been sent to Bangkok and would have been in hand long before Ellen entered the hospital.

Certainly, on the human level there was confusion and some anxiety. Was this delay just allowed or was it designed by God to hone the faith of His servants?

* * *

Home again from the hospital, Ellen was still quite weak. She tired easily and was quick to weep. What did she have to cry about??? Well, she was released from hospital on a Friday. Come Monday morning she was seated with Kru Wan and her study books! Enough to make the stoutest soul weep!

Ellen had lost at least a month of study. She felt that she would never catch up! The others sound so fluent. She couldn't begin to even understand what they said to the servants and neighbors. Ellen was, and is, a student. As a student she is competitive , so i t was humiliating for her to be so far behind the others!

* * *

As the months of study progressed, Evy, another who had always been an outstanding student, felt that she had fallen behind the others. The time she had to spend organizing the servants with the running of the household, had dragged her away from book time. Just being a mother had made demands on study time and at the start of the new year, 1948, she began home schooling Sharon. For the next decade of Evy's missionary life, she would be teacher as well as student, mother, wife and missionary.

Evy had a real battle on her hands. It began there in "The Field of Clouds" and it would continue for years. Her home would be a guest-house and often the guests would be unexpected. She would be housemother for language students and some of those students would resent being treated as students. Evy's battle  with her attitude toward this demanding life , would  be an ever ongoing  struggle . Even to this day, in talking of that time, Evy battles to claim the high places of joy over circumstances!

Evy's experience of being pulled in so many directions as she sought to learn Thai would influence field policy for many years. Every arrangement would be made to protect study for mothers in their first year of language study. Some parents would resent this intrusion into their family affairs. But most, who would go on to learn the language and use it as full time missionaries, would be deeply grateful for every help that had been given them in their student days.

* * *

When the team arrived in Bangkok, they had expected to remain there throughout their time as language students. And having no idea of how difficult the Thai language was, they thought one year of study would doubtless send them up country able to verbally handle any situation. They soon began to realize that, even though they might live long in this land, language study would probably never be completed.

This realization did not make them want to stay longer in the capitol. For they were also coming to another realization. Conversation with the Voths about their time in the North East, and with the Fullers who had worked in the North, coupled with talk with servants and neighbors was showing them that the language of this land was far from standardized.

They began to understand that there were areas where Bangkok Thai would not be readily understood. Northern Thai, North Eastern Thai and Central Thai were all quite different. And within those broad areas there were pockets of unique language differences.

These differences, in language, have been standardized, to a great degree, by radio, television and the government policy of rotating government officials. Before the day of transistors, radios were few and far between. Television was nonexistent in Thailand, and even the highest officials spoke, exclusively, the language of their area. Obviously there were exceptions to this and well-traveled individuals could be found speaking the King's Thai in remote areas of the map. But fully ten years later, missionaries in Maesod, would be ordered to  Guang jong by the  Nai Umper (district civic leader) who met them strolling in the market. This sounded so ominous till they were told by another that this meant  Bud roam (open your umbrella). That  Nai Umper, the highest official in the area didn't speak Central Thai.

The team began to realize that a six month introduction to Thai in Bangkok was necessary. Then a move up-country to where ever they would be living and working to continue their studies there, was the best policy.

But where would they be living and working? No thought was given to remaining in Bangkok. Bangkok belonged to the Presbyterians (The Church of Christ in Thailand).

* * *

Language study was not the only priority of that time in Bangkok. Wilf spent hours in consultation with the Fullers and others from the Presbyterian mission, reviewing the situation of provinces open to other mission agencies.

The Voths and others of the C&MA joined discussions, but officially they did not come into the decision process, for the C&MA worked exclusively in the North East at that time. Very early in talking and praying, the WEC team and the Presbyterian mission agreed that Central Thailand was the place for WEC.

Eventually, the choice was narrowed down to two areas. Each area covered three provinces. NakhornSuwan, Chainat and Angthong was one area under consideration. The other included Tak, Sukhothai and Kampaengphet.

Talk and prayer were not enough. Wilf needed to see the land for himself. He needed to "step it off". -- that is an in-house joke. Those who worked with him will immediately have a mental picture of Wilf "stepping off" some house he had found for them to live in. His stepping off measurements were always so much more generous and comfortable than the actual house!

A survey trip was undertaken. Peter Voth of the Bible Society and Boon Mark Gittisarn, a leading Thai evangelist and pastor joined Wilf on this up-country trip.

Tak, Sukhothai and Kampaeng became WEC territory as a result of that trip. Wilf says, "This choice represented considerable hardship because of distance from Bangkok and limits in communication. Travel from Bangkok was by rail to Phitsanuloke, a fourteen hour journey. Then on the following day, a six or seven hour truck ride would bring the traveler to Tak. Mr. Voth would have preferred that WEC choose Paknampo as the starting point of WEC work, because that would give a convenient railway link with Bangkok and a mere five or six hours of travel time. No other roadways connected Tak to the outside world. There was only the Phitsanuloke route. The only other way out of Tak was during several months in the rainy season when boat travel between Tak and Paknampho was possible. "

This was not a choice based on population or easy access. It was a matter  of walking with the Lord forward into His revealed will. Peter Voth and Boon mark had to step back and let Wilf realize the Lord's presence and leading. The women back in "The field of Clouds" were ready, through prayer, to live out an "amen" to this choice. Since they were all strong-minded women, only the Lord could bring such unity.

* * *

Missionary friends in Bangkok would remark for years about the unity of the little group who had lived in "The Field of Clouds". They marveled that the six could live so amicably in such a tiny space.

They lived a good testimony before the watching community of missionar ies in Bangkok.

But we are insiders; we are of the same Mission family. So let's look at that experience from the inside.

Ellen called The Soldiers and Sailors' Christian Association in Hong Kong a sanctuary. Later, she said of St. Louis Hospital that she felt she had died and gone to heaven! Why were these places so wonderful to her? The answer is obvious to all who know Ellen. She had a room to herself. For Ellen, a measure of privacy is necessary for her well being. Ellen wants no distractions when she is studying, or reading for pleasure, or writing letters. And most certainly she wants quiet when she is spending time with the Lord.

Fern welcomed distractions. She loved discussion. She wants to share a phrase she has just met in a book she's reading and wants to know why you ar chuckling over the book you are reading. In fact, Fern likes reading to be a community affair. She likes one to read out loud to the other, stopping now and then to discuss the plot or a point made. She wants to discuss the letter she is writing and hopes you will share your correspondence with her. After a long day of study with her nose in a book, Fern need to talk!

Evy needed time. Working with the servants to keep the household running, to keep meals on time and clothing and bedding clean, maintaining something of their original color, consumed a great deal of her time. To be with her children, teaching, nursing, playing and talking took time. They needed their mother's help in adjusting to this strange land. They needed her supervision when rain or blistering sun kept them inside.

Classes and language study took time she just didn't have. When could she have time to talk to Wilf? When could she spend time on her nails and hair or mend clothes or answer letters?

Both Fern and Ellen helped with the meals and spent time with the children. But there was no way they could really lift Evy's heavy load. They couldn't get between Evy and the servants any more than they could get betwee n her and her children. Responsibility was Evy's, and she was getting worn out! She needed time to rest, time for herself.

Wilf was almost engulfed in a woman's world. Those bicycle trips to Sathorn to talk and plan with Peter Voth and to meet with the Fullers to discuss strategies within comity, must have come as a breath of fresh air. Did Wilf need "male bonding"? If he did, he didn't know it. It hadn't been invented yet!!

There is always a price to be paid for real fellowship. It works out from our position as "all one in Christ Jesus" to the practical level of everyday life. The four adults in the "Field of Clouds" shared a love for the Lord, the joy of salvation and a burden for the lost of Thailand. But there were many areas of, and facets of their personalities where they did not have much in common. They had to honor each other, holding the other's ideas, opinions, convictions and needs as more important than their own. That was, of course, a constant dying to themselves. And they lived through it with affection and respect for each other that has lasted a half a century.

## Chapter 5  
Due North

The black snake-like creature swayed with a mesmerizing grace. It seemed to advance towards the bed where the two women lay prone, hypnotized by its movement. Suddenly it appeared to split in two and become two separate serpents swinging there up in the left-hand corner of the room. The two creatures flattened themselves against the ceiling and advanced, each on its belly, with lightning speed towards the bed. Then they instantly sprang back, to hang two swaying black loops. Were they peering through the murky light of dawn at the two human intruders there on the bed imprisoned by their own fear? Would the snakes' next movement bring the sharp,  swift bite of death?

As the darkness slowly began to fade with the early morning light, Fern and Ellen realized that the swaying, snake-like beings looped there in the corner of the ceiling were not living reptiles, but were long, hanging threads of an ancient spider web. The soot of countless smoky kerosene lamps had coated the strands of web with a sticky blackness till they were thick, furry and inky black.

The sight of looping black spider-webs hanging from ceilings would become a familiar picture,  but that morning in a Phitsanuloke hotel was the first time the two young missionaries had been confronted by such a sight.

Of course, they hadn't seen the soot-coated spider webs the night before when they first entered their room. They had been bone-weary after hours of train travel. All day ash, sparks and soot from the burning logs fueling the engine had blown in the open windows of their coach. Though they were all filthy and tiny holes were burned in their clothing no one was tempted to try to close the windows, for without air-conditioning the coach would soon be unbearable.

Arriving at Phitsanuloke at about four in the morning, it was pitch black. They hammered at the closed and shuttered door of the little hotel till, finally, someone was awakened by their banging and let them in.

Now with the steady growth of light in their temporary resting place, they began to realize how grimy the sheet was that covered their huge double bed. The mosquito net they had tucked in around them the night before was so riddled with rips and holes from cigarette burns that it now buzzed with mosquitoes. The insects had had no trouble getting in but now seemed to be imprisoned with the obviously delicious missionaries.

The girls didn't relish putting their feet outside of the net. But Ellen's watch indicated that the time they had set to meet the Overgaard family was fast approaching.

The bit of bathing they had indulged in the night before hadn't really made them very clean and they now saw by the light of day that they weren't much less grimy than the bed they slept on. They now questioned whether the water in the huge  ong they had ladled out and splashed over themselves the night before had really been clean at all. Perhaps it was a good thing to be introduced to an upcountry hotel and bathroom in the dark!

Certainly, they now saw the bathroom was filthy! Oh well, they would soon be on their way again and this next stage of travel promised to be harder and dirtier than anything they had experienced on the train trip the day before. Any part of them that was clean at the start of this day would be unmentionably dirty long before their destination was reached.

* * *

Meeting the Overgaard family at six o'clock as they had arranged, they compared notes of the night just past. They all looked a bit tired and rumpled and not too clean. Mosquito bites advertised that the two nets in the Overgaard's room had given no more protection than the one in Fern and Ellen's room.

The travelers were thankful that they had the experienced pathfinder in their midst. Wilf had been their leader through every stage of their journey from San Francisco. But now for the first time, he had actually gone before them and the way was not just a map in his hand but experiences in his memory.

He knew how to arrange for hot water for their instant coffee and Ovaltine. It was already so hot, that morning, the children would surely have preferred iced Ovaltine than the steaming drink offered to them but it would be years before that first team to Thailand would trust market ice.

None of those travelers mentions what they ate on that journey. But it is reasonable to guess that they started out from the Voth house with ample provisions. Mrs. Voth would not have trusted them to foods they could have purchased along the way. Ellen tells us that the Voths considered that they were stepping off into the wilds to such an extent that they insisted that each member of the party wear a pith-helmet!

Before they had finished eating, there came a blast of a horn demanding their presence out in front of the hotel. The bus that Wilf had arranged to take them to Rahaeng was there, ready and waiting.

Bus! This was a bus?

Wilf had warned them that the motorized vehicle that would take them on this next lap of their journey was more of a truck than a bus. But somehow hearing his description had not prepared them for this meeting with their conveyance.

It was big but nowhere were there what you might call seats. Two long wooden planks were placed at each side, to run the length of the back of the bus. These could be taken up to allow space for whatever was being hauled. And that day the space was needed. Though they had sold their dining room table and straight chairs, the drums and trunks that had finally arrived by freighter from America were now to travel with the party. The living room furniture that had been added to their outfit was crated and was now moving with them along with the best second-hand bicycles they could purchase in Bangkok. The entire back of the bus/truck was completely filled with the foreigners' possessions. They would ever after borrow the Thai word  kong . It seemed so much more inclusive than "possessions".

In the cab of the truck was another pillowless wooden seat. This plank, too, could and would be lifted again and again to retrieve tools and ropes and strange implements used to persuade a truck to move on a bit further. The entire WEC team now squeezed themselves into this seat/space with the driver. Wilf, with Paul on his lap, sat to the right of the driver (cars in Thailand use right-handed drive). All the rest occupied what we think of as the passenger seat.

With blasting of horn and ferocious grinding of gears, they were off.

Well, not quite.

Round and round the Phitsanuloke market they went. Stopping again and again to pick up passengers and boxes and sacks. There was a constant concert of hilarious voices with accompaniment of quacking, oinking and clucking as more and more passengers with their  kong boarded the bus. The foreigners were now learning that they had never understood the meaning of the word "crowded" before. They had thought that the back of their bus was completely filled with their  kong .

How ridiculous! Their entire store of earthly possessions was but a thin bottom layer of what this bus could accommodate!

Finally the bus was away and off on the trip up the highway to Rahaeng.

No! Wilf had already warned the women not to expect a real highway. Well, not even really what you would call a road. It was more like a pathway worn by the heavy wheels of trucks. In places it wasn't so much a path as it was ruts.

Fern tells us that the truck groaned and strained to move forward. Potholes and tree roots, rocks and stumps caused the truck to so creak and shudder it seemed as if the back part would be ripped off from the cab.

The way led through dense rain forests, across wide rice fields, and up and down deep, steep ravines. Bridges were nothing more than rough boards thrown across deep gorges that promised to become streams when the rainy season arrived. It was not uncommon for the truck's huge wheels to miss a board altogether causing the truck to lurch dangerously, crashing into deep ditches. It then appeared that every passenger in the back of the truck was an expert on how to maneuver a rescue.

The travelers in the cab had to climb out so that their seat could be lifted and strange tools drawn out of that deep hole that the board seat had covered. Rescues were carried out in an amazingly short time. The bus, leaning at a dangerous angle, could be quickly set right and a wheel hanging in air over a ditch would be propped up with boards. The Bus stuck in a swamp demanded strategy. Perhaps the use of many boards, or the winch could be used if there was a tree or rock close enough to become anchor.

The newcomers marveled at the party atmosphere of the travelers in the back of the bus and the jovial manner of the driver whose job was to conquer this amazing course set with hurdles, hindrances, blocks, snags, problems and difficulties. Of course, the foreigners could not get inside the mindset that expected every journey to be an obstacle course.  As for t he local travelers,  they knew no other way . And the driver ran this very course every day.

The stops caused by calamity were not the only stops the bus made. It seemed that every few minutes they passed a small community of houses surrounded by fields. Often there would be a stop and wait while the passengers to leave the bus would search for his  kong . A burst of laughter would leave the occupants of the cab wondering just what was going on back there. It would only be after months more of language study and a trip in the back of such a bus that they would discover that baggage had become seats for passengers who were not anxious to give up their comfort. An entire family seated on a soft-sided suitcase could hide it completely from view. Or a farmer,  soundly asleep, could make the withdrawal of such a case from beneath him almost impossible. At every stop a drama or comedy was enacted.

The newcomers grew used to seeing saffron roofs trimmed with a border of green. Sometimes they were right at hand but more often they were spied off in the distance. The pattern of fields would be broken by a distant skyline of coconut palms, housetops and barns, and in the center, that distinct roof of a Buddhist temple.

They had, of course, realized while still in Bangkok, that this was a land deeply committed to the Buddha. They had marveled at Thonburi's most spectacular landmark, the Temple of the Dawn,  Wat Arun . Encrusted with millions of fragments of broken procelain and glass, it had sparkled in the sunrise and mirrored the splendor of the sky. They had heard the stories of the Emerald Buddha and seen the gigantic Reclining Buddha. They had observed funeral processions and parades of priests with their dancing attendants at merit making. They had grown used to the sight of lines of saffron-robed priests stopping briefly at each house or boat they passed, to receive their morning gift of rice from the faithful. They had listened to the deep, rhythmic chanting of those monks in Pali, the sacred language of Buddhism.

But Bangkok was not their responsibility. They had accepted, before the Lord, the responsibility for Tak, Sukhothai and Kampaengphet. Now their own area was coming closer with every passing kilometer ; a nd they were seeing with new eyes, the stronghold of an ancient religion.

* * *

It is Fern who pictures for us their arrival at the corner where the road from Phitsanuloke met the road that ran  parallel to the Ping River. It was the middle of the afternoon and the steamy April weather had sapped what energy the jolting, disjointed ride had left them. But their anticipation and excitement were mounting as they neared what would become their  hometown . Just as the bus came to the riverside road and they turned North towards Hua Diat, Paul Overgaard, just three and a half, burst out counting, in Thai from one to ten! What a climax to this moment of arrival.

Turning north, away from the market area, they really didn't get to see anything of the town of Rahaeng that day. (In those days, the town was always called Rahaeng and the province, Tak.) Perhaps it is just as well that they didn't see the place that was to be the center of WEC work while they were so tired, for the town was not much more than one long, dirt road beside a river. Only at the market area did it widen out to three or four crooked streets connected by even more crooked lanes. The houses were mostly of unvarnished wood but there were a few dwellings with bamboo walls.

Wilf tells us, "Tak, in 1948, was removed from civilization. Two or three trucks came in each evening from Phitsanuloke and left again the next morning with goods and passengers. No vehicles moved during the day, except that the police department had one jeep, the highway department had one flat-bed truck for hauling dirt and gravel, and a former member of parliament owned a 1926 Chevy. The elite of the city had their status symbol, a bicycle! The hospital had one resident doctor, and a public health nurse could be seen quite frequently, riding her bike to visit her patients."

By turning North at the river road they missed the sight of that wooden metropolis strung out along the side of the Ping River. Instead, they now bounced along what truly was no better than an oxcart trail.

They were headed for Hua Diat, "Boiling Head" in Northern Thai. They would later learn that this area was renown for drunken brawls and street fights that could break out at any time. Thus the name, "Boiling Head",  Hua Diat.  But they were not headed for some little off-the-map spot. No, Wilf had located and agreed to rent a famous spot, the Borneo House.

This was a huge bungalow used by a British company that was licensed to harvest teak from the  rainforest behind Rahaeng and in the blue mountains stretching between the plains of Thailand and Burma.

This barely  recognizable track was a highway for white forest managers. The occupants of the few houses scattered under the shady rain trees were accustomed to seeing lordly white representatives of the  Company ,  Borisat , marching proudly in from the jungle-covered mountains. They led a procession of baggage-laden elephants, each one with its own mahout. There were cooks and coolies in that proud parade. But it was the white man in his pith helmet who drew the neighborhood to watch the majestic arrival. He murdered their language, but he did it with such an air of confidence! He broke every rule of local custom, but he did it with a regal kindness! And his arrival brought fleeting prosperity to the neighborhood. Hua Diat knew little, and cared even less about the kings of Bangkok. It was these long legged, sunburned lords of the teak companies who ruled the jungle for them. It didn't matter which of the many young British managers arrived on any occasion. They all looked alike to the Thai, very tall and very pink. And each one had empowered their cooks and coolies to buy and buy and buy!

The neighbors would come early in the morning with ducks and duck eggs, chickens and hen eggs. There would be baskets of fruit, wild greens and roots gathered from the forest and wrapped in banana leaves or just bound in bunches, a forest vine and string held the bundle together. There would be fish just caught from the river or the stream that ran through the forest behind the Borneo property. And there would be fish or shrimp caught months before and carefully fermented to form the paste so needed in making Thai curries.

In the evening the temporary market that grew up inside the compound of the Borneo house was even larger than the morning one. Women came to set up charcoal fire pots, where they squatted to fry bananas or fish or onion dipped in rice flour. They set up stalls to sell their  homemade Thai sweets and boiled peanuts or boiled sweet potatoes.

If the official cook for the white manager didn't buy a product, then the mahouts and coolies had their turn. Several days' march through the hills and mountains left them hungering for the foods of civilization. Hua Diat welcomed this mass of buyers descending periodically upon their community. There was always an atmosphere of county fair when the Company came to town.

* * *

But the bus that brought the WEC missionaries to Hua Diat was bringing a different breed of foreigner and different atmosphere to the Borneo House. The newcomers wanted to appear friendly to the watchers who stood by the road observing their arrival. But they probably appeared just worn out. Their hired bus, creaking and revving its way up the uneven track was a far cry from the parade of majestic elephants whose footprints had left the way as pitted as a Chinese checkerboard!

The amount of  kong  this family brought with them was pitiful when compared with the jungle manager's baggage. Where were the folding tables and chairs, the tin bath and metal wash basins, the canvas drop cloths and tents, the camp cots and yards of mosquito netting? Where were the tin trunks filled with who knows what and supplies of tinned foods and medicines with their exotic pictures on the wrappers? Where were the coolies and cooks and servants that a white man needs to insure his comfort?

Obviously the company house had fallen into the hands of the poor! The days of prosperity for Hua Diat were over!

* * *

The  Weccer s saw a huge roof covering a strange sort of house. It appeared at first to be just a high, railed platform open to the elements. They soon realized, however, that there were walled rooms on either side of the enormous open veranda that were used by the teak company as bedrooms. Outside the bedrooms were open porches. Because the open veranda stretched across the front of the house and the open porches ran along the two sides of the building, it did give the appearance of being just a high, covered deck. Across a bridge-way at the back there were other rooms suitable for storage, laundry and kitchen.

The place was hardly cozy!

Because of the intense heat, the new arrivals were thankful for the openness of the bungalow. No doubt a member of the Borneo Company would have settled his things in one of those walled bedrooms. But Fern and Ellen chose to use the porch at one side of their bedroom and the Overgaard family chose the porch at the other side. The walled rooms they could use as dressing rooms and closets. But for their own sleeping comfort, they wanted every bit of breeze they could get.

The bus driver, bus boy and Wilf had barely moved the furniture up stairs and piled trunks and boxes, when the tropical sunset brought sudden darkness. By light of kerosene lamp the  Weccer s spread out their bedding and secured their mosquito nets.

They had no beds. Nor did they have mattresses. Ellen tells us that later on, they acquired beds made by local carpenters. These heavy teak platforms were in use by the mission for the next forty years. They were as hard as the floor and almost as impossible to move, but the eight or ten inches they lifted the sleeper from the floor gave a sense of security. Bugs and animals may run under one's bed but surely not all of them would want to climb up those legs.

Mattresses were eventually acquired also. These homemade, kapoc-filled mattresses were probably healthful at first. They were so hard they must have given magnificent support. They certainly didn't give much comfort! But after a few years, parts of the body made deep permanent impressions. To fit oneself on a used WEC mattress was to mold oneself into the hills and valleys created by all previous users.

But that first night, they must have put down some sort of soft surface to sleep on. Ellen had a sleeping bag of war surplus variety. A sheet tucked around that would have served as mattress. No one would need a covering sheet. A mosquito net tucked in around them would have been all the covering needed on any April night in Rahaeng.

A hard floor, two hours of rest the night before, and a full day of shaking, bouncing, and bashing around on the wooden seat of the Phitsanuloke bus had surely given each or these young people a preview of their old age. They ached in joints they never knew they had before. They were almost too tired to sleep. What they experienced that night was almost coma!

How did they feel about their first view of Rahaeng and the Borneo House? How did they react?

Towns and villages which they passed through their journey from Bangkok must have somewhat prepared them for Rahaeng ; a nd they certainly were not expecting a modern metropolis. But Rahaeng was a very large step backwards in time from the Bangkok they had adjusted to. They would now need to make further cultural adjustments if they were to fit up-country Thailand.

The Borneo house was far more rustic than any building they had yet met in Thailand, and the neighborhood of the house presented a picture of Thailand that they had never experienced before. Shaded by great mango and citrus trees were tiny wooden or bamboo houses. Often, they leaned at dangerous angles on their spindly stilts, testifying either to great age or fierce wind storms! The crowing of cocks and the clucking of hens, the squeal of pigs and the dull ring of cow bells added to the all-too-obvious message of the scented air; they were now in farm country!

Did any of the four try to keep a stiff upper lip and project a rather false cheerfulness by looking on the bright side? Or did their aching bones and deep weariness cause them to feel that there was no bright side? They probably needed a night of quiet rest and the coolness of an early April dawn to bring them to thankfulness and praise.

There is something that ought to be stated about that little band, "The Siam Four". Underneath surface reactions there was usually a well of humor. If they were brutally honest, admitting that the trip had been a nightmare, their physical states, each a catastrophic ruin and their destination had turned out to be a tragedy, those four adults would have erupted into fits of laughter. Each one would have been outdoing the others in presenting their memories of the two days just experienced. It would have been a rare treat to see frustration and even disappointment give way to humor.

We can know for sure that whatever reaction they displayed on the surface, beneath that the Lord did touch each one of them with a sense of His presence and the excitement of His will being worked out in their obedience.

* * *

The Borneo House would not be bringing elephant parades to Hua Diat. Nor would empty howdahs be propped against the mighty house posts. There would not be the musical sound of bamboo bells from tethered and hobbled elephants grazing throughout the night in the forest behind the Borneo property. While WEC rented the house there would not be the sight of the young white manager up there on the veranda, reclining in his folding chair and enjoying a smoke in the cool of the evening.

Instead, there would be the coming and going of missionaries. There would be the foreign music of hymns and choruses. Fern would play her concertina and Wilf would strum a vibraharp.

Instead of elephant bells, there would be the sounds of children at play and at lessons. And Hua Diat would find the children just as enchanting as the elephants had been.

The missionaries would, as the teak managers had done before them, murder the language. But only for a time. Nothing could have been more evident than that these newcomers desired to communicate. The teak lords were condescending. The missionaries were friendly. Company managers valued the goodwill of the community only if it served their job of harvesting teak. The missionaries desired the acceptance of the community that the community itself  be harvested for the Lord.

Did Wilf have a sense of accomplishment as he fell asleep that night? He had led his little band halfway around the world and brought them safely to the place of God's appointment. Heaven's embassy was now about to open in Tak.

## Chapter 6  
The Borneo House

"Rahaeng seems to be a strategic point," wrote Evy in a letter to her friend Sylvia. "It is interesting to us that, after we announced our intention to come here, we learned that the Presbyterian missionaries, a few years ago, prayed earnestly that there might be someone to send to Rahaeng. The Evangelicals among their number are thrilled about our having been led here."

It is not surprising that the eyes of Presbyterian missionaries, working far to the North, would be drawn to Rahaeng. Although the very underdeveloped town strung out along the Ping River, seemed to be just nothing in the middle of nowhere, it was a strategic point on the route of travel from Bangkok to Chiengmai. Wilf tells us that, "In the days before the railroad was constructed, the missionaries traveling North from Bangkok, went by boat up the Ping as far as Rahaeng, and then engaged elephants for the remainder of their journey." He goes on to tell us, "One of the missionary women making that journey had become very ill and died while the party was camped in Hua Diat."

Doubtless, there were missionaries who made that arduous journey who would ever after remember that muddy track beside the riverbed with its straggle of rustic houses. Perhaps they would recall some kindness from a local as they were camped there to arrange for elephants and porters. Typical of Thailand, there would most certainly have been some kindly farmer who, with his wife, would offer bananas or mangoes or sugarcane to the obviously weary travelers.

Such a memory triggers a longing in God's people for that spot to hear the words of life. How many times have  Weccer s ridden past a community clustered about a temple to have that picture fasten on their memories and that place become a prayer burden?

It was not only missionaries who had been burdened for Rahaeng. Wilf recounts that, "Thai evangelists based in Phitsanuloke had occasionally traveled by boat to Paknampho and then up the Ping to Kampaengphet.  Ajarn Boon Mark Gittisarn made such a journey with Rahaeng the final objective. But he was obliged to turn back after becoming very ill in Kampaeng."

With the occupying of the Borneo House by the WEC missionaries, the area of interest and target of prayer was penetrated by God's messengers for the first time.

Now at long last missionaries had come to occupy this spot on earth's map and God's heart. It was exciting to be united with Him in answering the prayers of the saints and the desires of His own heart. Well, that was exciting to contemplate. But life left very little time for such contemplation!

* * *

Life was hectic those first days and weeks in the Borneo House. Cleaning, repairing what was there and adding some necessities that were not there took up a great deal of energy. For many years, Wilf would work on every new WEC station that was opened, putting in screening and bathrooms and making the kitchen area a place where western women could work. Evy mentions in a letter written in those first days in residence that, "Wilf has hired two women to carry sand for the project he is working on downstairs." Doubtless he was mixing cement to floor a bathroom or laundry area.

Servants were sought and hired. In an account that Wilf has written, he states that two servants came with their original party from Bangkok. But in all the other letters and accounts given concerning those first weeks in Rahaeng, the search for and training of servants seems to have been a priority. This fits with the experience of years. For at least twenty years, dedicated Christians from Bangkok were willing to visit and help WEC for special meetings only if those meetings lasted just a few nights. It was a common occurrence for an  ajarn to agree to come, then to cancel out when he took time to consider the inconvenience. Others came and had to leave before the meetings were over. In most cases the reason given was that food and water disagreed with them. It was obvious that workers from Bangkok suffered a culture shock when they tried to fit in upcountry. Actually they didn't always try to fit in; instead they tried to change the upcountry scene to fit Bangkok. Before the widespread use of radio and television and easy travel, to force a place like Rahaeng to act like Bangkok was a lost cause!

Doubtless the two trained servants from Bangkok found the adjustments to Rahaeng living was difficult as the  ajarns would. And so the WEC group were cast upon their own ability to judge character and began training servants of their own choosing.

Since many missionaries in Thailand today have never had a servant, it is  necessary to remember a few things about the first two decades of WEC work.

There was no electricity in the WEC area. All cooking and baking were done on top of charcoal fire pots. All ironing was done using heavy charcoal-filled irons. All lighting was by kerosene lanterns, or pressure lanterns (for special meetings or special occasions). All cleaning was done by hand and much of it was on the knees. And without the cooling breeze of fan or air conditioner.

There was no running water in the WEC area. Every drop of water that arrived at our houses was carried from a neighborhood well or from a stream or river. The washing of bedding and clothing and linens was done by hand down at the riverside, or with the neighbors at the communal well, or in the home after several trips had been made to carry the water for home use. To carry water in buckets suspended from the ends of a bamboo pole borne on the shoulders is a feat practiced and developed in childhood. The bouncing walk and the padded calluses on the shoulders develop together to make the task comparatively painless and successful.

Along with no electricity and no running water there was also no convenient market or trustworthy restaurant. A trip to the early morning fresh market was certainly not impossible. It just took a long bicycle ride along a dark cart track to get there. Long before daylight, many from Hua Diat were making that trip on foot. The market was truly a farmers' market. Much of the produce was brought to market by oxcart and most of it was sold by seven or eight o'clock in the morning. Certainly some fruits or eggs could be purchased along the way. But being new to the neighborhood, the  Weccer s didn't know which household had that to sell.

Nor could the household ever make the decision not to cook but rather eat in the market. How exciting it would have been to "eat out" occasionally. Of course, they would have had to light the charcoal fires to boil drinking water and to heat water for bathing. They would have had to ride their bikes into Rahaeng and find fried rice at some roadside stand. But no, this was not an option. Dysentery was a brutal disease, often fatal, and the cures obtainable from Bangkok were dangerous. Of course there was another consideration -- finances were tight. It was always cheaper to cook for six people than it was to buy meals, even at the dinkiest roadside stand.

Certainly a normally healthy Western woman could keep house and do all the chores, cook, wash, iron, garden, shop and even make charcoal if necessary. But she could not do those things and be a missionary. Our WEC policy was that we were not a mission with missionaries and their wives. Every wife was expected to be as called, committed and gifted as her husband.

So, early missionaries had servants. The highest salary, fully ten years after WEC entered Tak was $10, or 200 baht a month. To have servants was hardly an expensive luxury!

Servants, along with accomplishing a great deal of physical labor, were also a tie with the outside world and the immediate neighborhood. The washgirl would arrive early in the morning to light the charcoal fires for breakfast, bringing the latest news of the community. She would know who had the fight that could be heard in the middle of the night. She knew when a baby had been born or an elderly neighbor had passed away, or a local policeman had run off with someone else's wife.

The cook, who would have gone to the early morning market, would arrive in the middle of the morning and she would bring the news that was the talk down in Rahaeng. Since the WEC missionaries did not have a radio, and mail was certainly not regular nor reliable, news of the Communist takeover in China and the flight of the nationalist army into the far North of Thailand and Burma would have come first by way of the Rahaeng market. News that the British had granted independence to Burma would have followed that same grapevine. And the startling news that the US had entered a war in the Orient on the side of the South Koreans would have been told to the Mission family by a servant who had no idea who, what or where South Korea was.

Servants took news from the WEC household and spread it to their families and all who wanted to know what went on behind the walls of the foreigners' house. And, of course, everyone did want to know just what this strange group with their foreign religion were up to. That all three women were not Wilf's wives, could quickly be established by the testimony of the wash-girl or cook. That money was not hoarded and stacked from floor to ceiling, could be guaranteed by the one who wiped the floors. That neighbors were not being cursed in demonic ceremonies would be scoffed at by those who worked for and with those first missionaries to Rahaeng.

* * *

That servants have not been an unmixed  blessing is quite obvious. Listen to an account that Evy wrote to her friend, that first year in Rahaeng.

"We have been camping on the trail of the cook all afternoon because we know that several times she has gone off with the fresh bread (a loaf or a pan of rolls). Twice, at least, she has given them to the priests at the Buddhist  Wat . Only one of these times did we notice it ourselves; the other times we were told by another servant whose word is good and who has proven herself loyal. So we have to find more evidence on our own so as not to involve the other one when we deal with the cook. This land allows revenge to run in any length as we have already seen, so we can not involve anyone else. We also know that the cook has been cheating us on the price of food. But we have not been able to catch her on specific items."

Evy went on to tell her friend that the Thai can be very clever at deception and cheating. Malee, the servant who was loyal and helpful, told Wilf that he was "not clever enough" to catch the cook!

Eventually, the cook was caught as she took a hunk of dough form the place she had hidden it. When faced with her crime, Se Ang, walked off in anger, taking a blanket that had been loaned to her.

But Se Ang was not the only one to leave. Not long after that, Evy wrote again of servant problems and said, "Malee has left us in a huff and I must say that I am glad! She was a terrific strain for me, first to have to try to get her to do the work, then to deal with her when she didn't. Then I would have to listen as the rest of the family sat around suggesting that if only I had said it some other way it would have been better. That's pretty hard to take when you only have so many words to say it with in the first place. I got to a place of desperation. And as far as I was concerned, it was a personal deliverance when she up and departed."

So Evy was left with the joy of starting from scratch to teach a new cook. Since "scratch" started with teaching the necessity of washing hands before food was handled and teaching that boiling the water (for twenty minutes) that was used in food preparation was not open to debate, this was no simple task!

In another letter, Evy speaks of trying to teach a new wash-girl. "She  can't understand me and I can't understand her! I gave her a long speech about where she is to hang the clothes and how. She assured me that she understood and then proceeded to hang the clothes just where I said not to! I followed her around and pointed out that it was very important to wring all the water out of them. I showed her just how to do this, two times. When I came back, all of them dripped like the eaves in spring! She is very sweet, but that doesn't make the clothes clean."

Evy asked her friend to pray seriously for her in this matter of training and working with servants. "It does take a lot of energy to teach someone else to do things that are so absolutely foreign to them." Then she  continued, "Pray, so I can get down to some of the other things that wait for me."

Language study was always there waiting for Evy to have time for it. And both Sharon and Paul needed and deserved her time and attention.

* * *

For all four  Weccer s, language study was a priority. Wilf says of their study time, "From the language learning perspective, Hua Diat may not have been the best location. It was the recognized boundary between Central Thai and Northern Thai." Sitting with the teacher and at their books, they were immersed in Central Thai. As soon as they went out of their front yard, they heard, all around them, the sounds of Northern Thai.

Evy, writing to her friend, bared her heart. "I had often heard of the difficulties of the period of language study and how dry one got spiritually. But I was not quite prepared for what it has been. You are shut up to your studies. You do not have any outlet for many, many months because you have no words with which to speak. I wish I could explain to you how utterly hopeless I have felt at times."

A teacher was hired as soon as one could be found. Of course, no one was available who had ever taught the Thai language to foreigners. But Obah, a young woman who was a good reader with a pleasant voice and accent was found. That was about the best you could ask for in an upcountry language teacher in those days. The drawback was that although the teacher knew when the students were repeating the words incorrectly, she didn't know how to tell them what was wrong.

Each one of the adults spent an hour with the teacher each day, reading to her or repeating after her. Often they tried to spend a good bit of their hour in conversation. How tiring that must have been for Obah! Later they tried to prepare simple Bible lessons or discuss Scripture with Obah. Obah, a good Buddhist, must have found this difficult. The language was foreign for the students but the concepts were foreign for the teacher!

* * *

Health was always a big factor that robbed the missionaries of their study time. Almost every letter written home mentions fever or dysentery among the missionaries and children.

Fern was found to have trachoma. She had to ride her bicycle down the long track to Rahaeng and all the way through the town to the small one-doctor-hospital for treatments. This was no easy trip as the path was far more suited to ox carts or elephants. And Fern had never ridden a "back pedal" bike before. She tells us that on one trip she fell in a mud puddle. Other than a skinned knee she suffered no harm but her pride must have been sorely wounded for she was wearing a white suit!

Fern probably continued her hour with the teacher each week day. But the trip to the doctor's would leave her little time for study on her own. As there was no clearly defined or structured study course, those pupils needed to put in much time in preparation for their time with the teacher. And then that hour needed to be reviewed. With sore eyes, Fern could hardly do that. Nor could she close her eyes and just listen to a tape repeating the teacher's voice. Tape recorders hadn't been invented!

Part of the treatment Fern had to have was a washing with a silver nitrate solution. This was very painful. For three months she took the trip several times a week. Back home, at the Borneo House, she was isolated, for trachoma was contagious. The doctor warned that "the disease is spread through water in which you wash your face. But it is not because somebody else has washed their face in it either." Evy adds to this, "Ha ha! Just try to figure that out!"

Trachoma may be spread through the use of linens; towels, washcloths and sheets. Those items in the laundry were regularly boiled for ten minutes. Not just Evy, but Ellen and Fern and Wilf had to keep tabs on the washgirl to see that that boiling was always done. Trachoma was no laughing matter and they took every precaution.

Fern says she felt she had been put in solitary confinement, keeping herself and all that she touched away from the others. It was this isolation that finally emboldened Fern to go alone to Bangkok to seek for a more qualified doctor's opinion.

While Fern was making her plans to travel to Bangkok, the local doctor diagnosed Ellen and the two children as also having trachoma!

Before many days of treatments for the entire clan were under way, Fern sent word from the capitol that a German doctor had diagnosed her as having acute conjunctivitis! It was quickly treated and cleared up.

With the burden of trachoma removed, Fern was then free to enjoy Bangkok and the little English tearooms with their selection of  tea cakes that she had come to appreciate while living in the "Field of Clouds". Those tearooms must have been in existence while the British forces were still stationed in Thailand. Certainly there have not been any of that sort of restaurant in Bangkok for a long time.

* * *

"A sobering illness became a testimony to God's grace," Wilf wrote when he came down with a high fever and sore throat. "The local doctor gave penicillin injections a couple of times a day but to little avail. Sharon, sensing the seriousness of everyone's demeanor at breakfast table, wanted to know what would be done with Daddy if he died!"

That very afternoon a visitor came. "Dr. In Toom, a Christian doctor from Phitsanuloke was on  a trip with a couple of friends. They had come by jeep to hunt in the mountains west of Sukhothai. Wondering how the missionary team in Rahaeng might be getting along, he decided to seek for their house and find out." His first action was to kneel beside Wilf's bed to pray and thank God for His help. After examination, he left instructions for the local doctor to increase the penicillin treatment to injections every four hours. Within a few days, Wilf was back to normal again. Most likely, the local doctor had little or no experience in using it.

* * *

"Learning the Thai culture and religion was informal and unstructured," Wilf tells us. "But the daily contact with the people and interaction in various settings gave considerable opportunity to observe and learn." Neighbors were friendly and curious about the newcomers. They were more than willing to chat. The children of the neighborhood responded to questions with laughter and a delight in following any missionary on foot. Wilf found even the Buddhist priests wanted to talk with him and compare religions. The Governor and his wife came to visit. "All contacts with the official community were positive," Wilf records for us.

This general friendliness was somewhat misleading. The  Weccer s were encouraged that Rahaeng was open to the Gospel. Did this attitude of welcome and encouragement mean that Rahaeng was a receptive area?

Long before the team dared to launch any kind of public meeting, the Lord gave them a ministry in their own home. The first hint of what was to come was the report that a Christian girl was in town. She had come from Phitsanuloke. Upon the death of her mother she had been sent to Rahaeng to live with an aunt and attend the local school. Doubtless the first information came by way of the servants or the teacher, and the account given was that she refused to worship Buddha with her teacher and class. The fact that the account spread throughout town shows something of the importance of the girl's faith and obedience.

Soon this Christian girl found out about the foreigners North of the town and came to visit. Across the language barrier, they all realized their unity in faith. So the girl began to come every Sunday and she brought girl friends with her each time. They would sit in a circle, rather lost in that vast porch/sitting room. They would read Scripture and add a bit of explanation and then pray together. Evy wrote, "We just have to leave the results to the Lord. It is the reading of His Word that will give the Spirit something to begin to speak to them about."

Eventually the girl, who was never named, returned to Phitsanuloke and we do not know what became of her or of the other girls who came with her on Sundays. But those meetings were the modest beginning. They would be repeated over and over with different ones in attendance. The foreigners' language ability would develop and those house meetings would see many converts. But over and over, converts would move away, or fall away, or die and a little group would disappear. Did some of those early converts go on to follow the Lord as they moved into the areas worked by other missions? Did some fall away for a time and then renew commitment and faith in some other area?

Ministry was a mingle of joy and sorrow, or bitter with sweet as some seemed to come into salvation. Their responses to the Lord and to His Word were exciting -- and then they were gone. Sometimes they just ceased to come to the Borneo House and at other times they were gone from the area.

If the little group in the Borneo House looked only at human results, they would have ridden a cruel roller coaster in those first months. From the great heights of encouragement they would have been dashed down into disappointment over and over again. The discipline of that hour was to keep their eyes upon the One who had promised and who was always faithful. They sang over and over the hymns that reminded them that He had not brought them thus far to put them to shame.

## Chapter 7  
Base Camp Established

According to Wilf's memory, Dorothy Caswell arrived in the Fall of that year, 1948. Dorothy had worked, before the war, for at least one term with the Presbyterian Mission in Chiengmai. Wilf supplies the fact that Dorothy wanted to return to the land she loved and sought to serve with a more evangelical mission than the Presbyterian Mission (in U.S.) was at that time. Certainly there were others among the Presbyterians, like the Fullers, who loved and accepted the Bible as the Word of God and only standard of truth and conduct for Christians. They were burdened for the lost of Thailand. But there were others who accepted parts of the Bible as inspired in the same way that any beautiful poem or musical piece is inspired. For them, Jesus was not uniquely the Son of God. And a Savior from sin had no part in their thinking or message.

Though Dorothy had doubtless had a busy and important ministry as a nurse in Chiengmai, she wanted a spiritual ministry. Hearing about WEC, she resigned from the Presbyterian work (The Church of Christ in Thailand) and applied to our mission.

Dorothy's transfer from one mission to the other was relatively painless. She met WEC's requirements and was passed for the field without much testing. After all, she was already a seasoned worker. The home end must have been impressed that this older woman (certainly in her late thirties or forties) would be a valuable addition to the Thailand team.

For Dorothy, arriving in Bangkok must have been something like a homecoming. She had been a co-worker of the Fullers, and joining them and others of the Presbyterian Mission and catching up on news of mutual friends would surely make her feel at home. But there is no doubt that she would have found Bangkok greatly changed, for there was still much evidence of the war with its ruin and filth.

* * *

Up-country, the original four must have been looking forward to the addition of this one to their team. As an able nurse, Dorothy's fame had gone before her. How it would set their minds at rest to have one with them who would really know if their disorders were serious or not. Dorothy would be able to diagnose the fevers and ailments of the children. She would be able to treat the complaints of the adults. There was another matter that made Dorothy's nursing knowledge important to the household in Hua Diat. Evy was pregnant.

* * *

The four in Hua Diat felt sure that as Dorothy had made all the adjustments to Thai culture and language, she would have all the answers to the questions the language teacher couldn't understand. She would know if they were saying things the wrong way or were doing things that offended the culture. Surely she would also have ideas of how to contact neighbors with the Gospel and how to put the truths of Scripture into every language.

That is what they expected....?

Contact with Dorothy was lost many years before her death. We have no letters or records of her own memories and since memories originate and center in the mind of the one remembering, Dorothy is not at the center in any of the accounts of that one term of her service with WEC.

But there are certain things that ought to be rather obvious. Dorothy was used to a much larger missionary community in Chiengmai. She was used to living on a much higher standard than the occupants of the Borneo House could afford. She was used to the beauty and culture of Chiengmai and the social life where missionaries, business people and diplomats mingled equally.

Dorothy was certainly older than any of the  Weccer s she joined. And Dorothy came as an outsider. The four had known each other for years before they came to Thailand. They had memories and catch phrases and jokes in common. They knew each others' opinions and preferences and prejudices.

Though Dorothy could ride o ut many of the adjustments to land and language and culture, she did have adjustments to make, adjustments to her fellow workers and her new placement and situation.

Dorothy had been enclosed in a foreign community and job. There were facts of Thai community living and culture she had never met. And these were facts the Hua Diat four knew well!

Though the Thai spoken in Hua Diat was Northern Thai, the cultured Thai of Chiengmai would doubtless stumble over the many differences in the language that met Dorothy's ears outside the Borneo House in 1948. But Dorothy was the one who would have to make the changes and adjustments if she really wanted to have a spiritual ministry. How galling it must have been to have younger, less experienced missionaries correcting her spoken Thai!

Dorothy had barely unpacked when she began to make plans for a refresher course in Thai with the local "teacher". And there was no one to help her set up such a course. Her WEC co-workers and the teacher had not the slightest idea of how to set one up !

While Dorothy was settling in and taking her homemade refresher course of study with the teacher, Wilf was more than busy. He not only still needed to spend time in language study but he was the obvious one to make survey trips to discover where and how WEC should begin to spread out to "salt" and "light" the dark, decaying land of Sukhothai, Kampaengphet and Tak.

* * *

Throughout that first dry season, Wilf rode every conveyance available to find the farming communities and hidden hamlets. Soon the figure of the foreigner became familiar to the Thai country folk and the Thai countryside became familiar to the foreigner. Wilf was coming to see that in that day and time, more people and villages could be reached by river travel than by any other way.

To survey the Kampaeng area, Wilf had to find and rent small boats that regularly made that trip. They were "flat-bottomed affairs, about two feet wide and about twenty feet long. Some eight feet of the boats were covered with a curved bamboo roof. Wilf could just barely sit up under this shelter but he could lie down there and be protected from the burning sun of the dry season and later trips when the season changed, he could find shelter from the frequent downpours that came to pound the turbulent river. Two men were required to pole a boat. When they went with the current it took an entire day to reach Kampaeng. But the return trip, against the current, took three full days," Evy wrote to her friend, Sylvia. It is interesting to note that the cost of renting such a boat for that long a time was just 125 baht, or $6!

"Wilf took a cot and mosquito net and tarpaulin with him each trip so that he could camp out on the beach and be protected from the downpours," Evy continued.

Any part of our WEC area that could be reached by the Ping was visited and so thoroughly scrutinized by Wilf that he could take a report back to the women who would be partnering him in prayer to seek the mind of the Lord for advance. Evy wrote to her friend, "When the time comes for us to really be getting out constantly, a motor boat would be the thing, so we could travel up and down the river between here and Paknampo, touching three provinces. And through much of this section, the people are situated along the rivers."

Of course the entire team had seen Sukhothai, as their bus had stopped there for lunch on the way up from Phitsanuloke. But that straggle of weather-beaten wooden houses standing in stagnant water beside the river had hardly attracted them. The giant statue of the Buddha hovering over that crowded, smelly market had left them with a picture of the battle that would need to be waged to win the souls from that ancient control.

Everywhere Wilf traveled and reported on to the Hua Diat team, was a picture of loss; God's creation apart from His blessing and control. Everywhere he visited needed to hear the Gospel.

Wilf always took a number of Gospel tracts and he sought to make every contact an occasion for a Gospel witness. His fractured Thai improved by leaps and bounds and the women back in Hua Diat marveled as he recounted every conversation for them. "How did you say that?" was the constant interruption  upon every recital of his chance meetings.

Of course Hua Diat and the many, little settlements just visible on the other side of the river were the ever present burden on the hearts of the WEC language students.

Wilf reports, "About the end of that first year, an attempt was made to preach the Gospel in a very public way to the immediate community. Peter and Mrs. Voth came to Tak, bringing with them  ajarn Boon Mark Gittisarn. A large platform was constructed in the front yard of the Borneo compound. Song sheets were prepared with the Thai translation of Gospel songs. For music, Fern Berg played the concertina, which she had brought with her from the USA. Since there was no electric lighting, gas lanterns, hung on posts, lit up the area."

Though there was no public address system, Boon mark was able to hold the interest of the gathered crowd. Wilf writes that he was "an entertaining preacher, with a clear salvation message. He was able to speak in terms quite understandable to the Buddhist, but often tended to ridicule Buddhist practices and this may have alienated some. After the meetings each evening, literature was sold and given to interested persons."

"During the morning, the first street preaching was attempted to small, attentive groups," Wilf goes on to tell us. "Thought there were large crowds at each of the evening services, there was no evident positive response to the message."

For many years WEC would bring outstanding Thai and foreign speakers into the area. Later, the meetings planned and operated for such speakers would be much more sophisticated. Electric lighting, loudspeaker systems and even films would draw larger and larger crowds. Perhaps, first contacts with the Gospel at such meetings have later resulted in salvation. Certainly many have come under the sound of the Gospel. But how many truly heard, we cannot know in this life-time.

* * *

Evy wrote to her friend, "We will be leaving for Bangkok about the tenth of the month (April)." Throughout most of that hot season of 1949, Evy had kept on as teacher for Sharon using the Calvert course,  as language student, and housekeeper in charge of servants. That May and April, the temperature in Rahaeng and Hua Diet hovered around 104 to 110 Fahrenheit for weeks on end with no break at all. Evy stopped Sharon's lessons only when Sharon became ill with a fever and chills. Now, just as the heat would reach its highest point and all of Central Thailand would be a furnace, Wilf and Evy would set out for the capitol and the birth of their third child.

This trip they would make by bus and train. Probably the same truck that had brought them from Phitsanuloke a year earlier would take them back to that bug-infested hotel. The second day of travel would be on the dusty train. It is important to remember that there was no air-conditioning at that time so to picture a cool journey where closed windows shut out dust and bugs and heat is to miss the reality by a wide margin.

Earlier, Wilf had taken Evy to Bangkok for a check up. That time, they had made the journey part way by boat. The flat-bottom pole boat Evy pictured for her friend does not present itself as the easiest way for a pregnant woman to travel.  But evidently that was her experience the first day of that previous journey. The couple had spent one night in a Chinese hotel in Kampaengphet and the next day they journeyed on. Wilf says it was "a long boat ride on a double-decker to Paknampo and a second night layover to connect with the train on the following morning."

That ride on a double-decker boat sounds lovely. But since the couple now chose to travel by bus, we must conclude that the river boats of 1949 were no more comfortable than the buses of 1949.

* * *

It must have been something of a relief to arrive once again at the Bible Society house on Sathorn Road. For Evy to be able to just appear at meal time with none of the responsibility of planning that meal or supervising its preparation must have been delightful. To simply put their soiled clothing out to be collected and then receive the washed, starched and ironed garments back before the evening meal must have seemed like a dream. But the greatest relief would be felt in knowing that Evy was now under the care and supervision of an American doctor, Dr. Marshal Wells.

Dr. Wells was with the Presbyterian Mission, and had come out to Bangkok as part of the medical staff that would practice in a mission hospital that was still in the planning stage. Until the Christian Hospital on Silom Road was built and in operation, Dr. Wells would practice at the Catholic Hospital of Bangkok.

It was the Doctor's orders that brought the Overgaards to Bangkok with almost a month to spare before the baby was expected. Evy wrote that he also ordered that they stay on in the capitol for at least two weeks after the baby's birth.

Listen to a remark Evy writes upon her arrival in Bangkok: "Wilf hopes to get a real good teacher and make good use of his time down here ,and I have some dreams like that too."

No further mention is made of finding a teacher or spending their time in language study, but most likely, that is exactly what they did. This was a couple with a single eye to evangelizing the three provinces the Lord had committed to WEC, and they would use every opportunity to sharpen their skills and language towards that end.

* * *

Mark Overgaard rode home to Rahaeng in a basket which h is parents carried on an evening express train . T hey did not insist on going third class, but were persuaded to the luxury of a compartment with berths. This unWEC-like behavior doubtless came about at the sensible urging of the Voths or Dr. Wells! But no sensible urging could clean up or improve the Phitsanuloke hotel that received them at 3:30 in the morning. Nor could any earthly influence change or make comfortable the bus that brought them the rest of the way home.

Evy wrote that they arrived at the Borneo House at about 4:30 in the afternoon, having left the hotel in Phitsanuloke at about 9:00 in the morning. "The children were glad to see us, of course, though they practically ignored us at first and had eyes only for the baby. Six weeks was a long time to have been away from them and they seemed to have grown a lot and looked different. The girls had a big chicken dinner all ready for us and a nice birthday cake for Wilf. We did feast and talk a blue streak! It was so good to be home again. Though we had good fellowship with the folk in Bangkok, it was grand to be back to the family again."

Later, Evy would write that just a week after they got home, she had a spell of fever caused by an infection. "I was in bed for four days, fighting the high temperature. Dorothy gave me a series of penicillin shots. When it was all over, I no longer had enough milk to nurse the baby, so we had to put him on a formula. He cried a lot for the first days. But we finally found out what would satisfy him. So now he is happy, fat and contented!"

Doubtless, in times like this, the team would be grateful that the Lord had led Dorothy to be a part of their family.

* * *

Early in October of 1949, Evy wrote to her friend: "Here I am. It is only 8:15 and I have the children in bed, and my various chores completed, so I have a few minutes to spend with you! So many evenings I don't get finished in time to do anything like this. This week both our pressure lamps are on the blink, and though we have tried to get someone to repair them, we're still in the dark. We each go around with a flashlight or a couple of candle-sized kerosene lamps.

"There has been wonderful moonlight last couple of nights. Ellen and I have sat just quietly and watched. Dorothy and Fern prefer to go to bed and read by means of flashlight. By the way, that's a common custom among us. First of all, in your bed with your net down, you are free of mosquitoes. Secondly, it's one place you can go to be alone! And there aren't many such corners in this house! Imagine living in a house where there isn't one room where you can speak in an ordinary tone without everyone else being able to hear. For some months at first, I found it very difficult especially in disciplining the children. I always knew others were listening without even trying. In fact, they couldn't help hearing.

"Frankly, if the Lord ever sees fit to let us live by ourselves it would be heavenly. But I wouldn't miss lessons that He teaches through this way of life. We know that in these beginning days on the field, it is essential for us to be made a real unit. And the quickest way for that to happen is for us to be shut up to one another.

"We have been especially praying for the Lord for His work in our hearts now that we are about to be separated."

Yes, the time was approaching when two would move to spearhead a work in Kampaengphet. After much prayer, it was decided that Kampaeng was the next place for WEC to establish work and it was decided that Dorothy and Fern be the first ones to live there. This was not to be a long-term arrangement. In a few months or a year or so, Ellen would trade places with Fern. In fact, the move to Kampaengphet would not be made until Rosemary Hanna, a new recruit from the USA, would arrive in Hua Diat. With four unmarried women on the field it was possible to have them trade places and find out with which partner they could work most comfortably.

Perhaps it ought to be mentioned here that there were differing opinions about single women working together. Some, especially at the home end, felt that any two people called to the same area and work ought to be able to work and live together. Arguments can easily be made that any two people in right relationship with the Lord are going to be compatible. The longer single women stayed on the field, the less likely they were to agree to this position!

Evy continued her letter saying, "Last Sunday afternoon Ellen, Fern and I spent two or three hours discussing some points that had been sources of misunderstanding. It was very good to get it aired, and I felt it was very much of the Lord. For Fern and me it meant airing some things from Charlotte HQ days that we had never been free to say before. The Lord gave us real freedom and unity now. Praise His Name! If we lived in separate houses I doubt if we would ever find it necessary to say those things. But because we must soon be separated, and yet be one in His purpose, the Lord must take drastic measures sometimes."

No, communal living was never easy. Nor was it easy for any two women from different backgrounds and with different personalities to live together and work together. But Dorothy and Fern would be the first of many who would be many hours, in some cases, days' journey away from their nearest co-workers. They would manage as long as each was willing to yield her rights to do things her own way and consider the preferences of the other.

Did Fern and Dorothy prepare for that move down river with some misgivings? Certainly there would have been a sense of adventure and an assurance of the Lord's leading. Doubtless, each was aware of His personal promise to them and was expecting that, by faith, they would be adequate to the test before them.

* * *

Evy closed that letter by reporting, "It's now 9:30. I'd better get myself over on my own side of the house, so my light doesn't keep anyone awake... even if it isn't very bright!

"I keep sort of listening for a motor launch on the river and hoping Wilf might be home tonight, but I really have no reason to expect him. He has been in Kampaeng about two and a half weeks and will need to be there till they finish the house."

There was no house found in Kampaeng that would have been suitable for the two women to rent, so Wilf had made an arrangement whereby he supervised the building of a house and supplied the material and plans. Then WEC would have the house rent free for six years. After that we would pay the going price for rent. That very suitable two story teak house was the WEC Kampaeng house for many years.

Evy continued, "When he (Wilf) comes home, the workers quit!" So, for many weeks he was back and forth on the river to get the house completed. The deadline, in their thinking, was to have the house ready to move into before Wilf went down to Bangkok to meet Rosemary Hanna.

Her letter finished, Evy would quietly carry her lamp past the enclosed room on the Overgaard side of the house where they kept their clothes and books and personal effects. Stepping out onto the porch, she would shade the lamp with her hand so the light did not waken the sleeping children. Bending over each one, she would check to make sure no arm or leg was touching against their mosquito net to come in contact with the ever-thirsty enemies that would swarm to the tender skin of the children! Above the baby sounds and the breathing of the children and the night sounds from the garden below, Evy's ear would still be listening for the sound of a motor launch and she would still be hoping for Wilf's return.

## Chapter 8  
Comings And Goings

Wilf was thankful that the Kampaeng house was almost completed and he could be the one to make the trip to Bangkok to meet Rosemary Hanna. Over the months, he had been coming to the conclusion that a boat of some sort was necessary to reach the population of WEC's three provinces, so had been in correspondence with the Voths and Fullers about this. They informed him that a Presbyterian missionary, Earnie Fogg, had a motorboat for sale. A trip to the capital would serve two purposes. Wilf could take care of Rosemary's official business and inspect Earnie's boat for himself. If the craft met with his approval, he could go ahead and buy it and see to its shipment up-country.

The trip was so arduous, time consuming and expensive, when they left their stations to journey South, those early missionaries combined business with more business. No one went anywhere for pleasure!

* * *

Rosemary's ship docked out in the Gulf of Siam in September of 1949. It was 37 years to the month since her mother, as a young single woman, Hazel Brunner, had set sail for Siam. And it was some 12 years since Rosemary had left Siam, the land of her birth. Schooling and the war had kept her on the other side of the globe those years, but although her father, Loren Hanna, of the Presbyterian Mission, was no longer living, and her mother was retired in the USA, Rosemary was, in a real sense, coming home.

Rosemary writes in her memoirs,  Cracked Earth , that the freighter she traveled on from the States, was too large to enter the mouth of the Chao Praya. So with the ship lying at anchor about a half mile from shore, Rosemary watched "as the sun rose over the Eastern horizon, casting a rosy glow on the palm-fringed shore." Stevedores and coolies swarmed over the ship to "open the holds and maneuver the derricks."

Rosemary tells us that she strained her ears to try to follow their conversation and shouted remarks. She could not help but be a bit disappointed, for though Siamese had been the language she spoke first as a child, she could not catch and understand even one word! Of course, it was more than likely that the coolies were Chinese or Malaysian!

As Rosemary and the ship's officers ate breakfast, several small but very important launches arrived where the ship lay at anchor. Rosemary was quietly amused to note that a crowd of officials awaited her. Men in starched uniforms from the Immigration Department with stacks of official looking papers waiting to question her. Men in crisp brown uniforms from the Customs Department waited to check her cabin luggage. Men in dazzling white uniforms with insignias that told the world that they were from the Health Department were there to examine her immunization records.

How Rosemary wished her mother were there to share that moment. Hazel Hanna would have enjoyed all that official presence needed to permit her daughter entrance into the land of her birth. Fancy all that show of authority and all that expense and energy necessary to examine just one young woman! Rosemary was the only passenger disembarking!

* * *

Disembarking was no easy matter, for Rosemary had to maneuver the lurching of the gangplank against the sway of the ship's side as it rode the choppy water at anchor. Her hands were full, for along with her purse, she clutched a paper sack containing lunch the ship's steward had given her at the last moment. A less agile person than Rosemary would doubtless have dropped purse and lunch in the effort to hang on to the rough rope railing to steady herself as the water lifted, then dropped the ship, gangplank and the slippery step beneath her feet.

At the foot of the gangplank, barges and small boats were tossed about. They were crashing against each other, rising and falling and sliding with the waves, no vessel offered a steady footing for the girl who waited, clutching the wet, steady railing.

Finally a group of young women crowded onto a small launch, took pity on the spray-swept girl swaying there against the ship. Several of them worked together to pull a dazed Rosemary into their launch and then helped her to get across other launches and barges to the boat that would take her to the closest pier.

It was later, in talking to Mrs. Voth, that Rosemary understood that her deliverers were prostitutes who had sailed out to meet her ship!

* * *

At the pier a ship's company car awaited the young traveler to speed her up the way to Bangkok. It was a trip of about four hours from the Gulf to the door of the American Bible Society on Sathorn Road.

Wilf, with soon - to - be five year old Paul, was there to greet the new WEC missionary. Wilf would take Rosemary to the different government offices to get her  Bai Tang Dao and "Blue Book". He would go out to the dockyards with her to help take her hold-baggage through customs. Very few officials spoke English in those days -- except for unhelpful phrases like "I love you" and "Happy Birthday!"

Though Wilf was now Rosemary's field leader, it was the Voths, who had known Rosemary's parents, who made Bangkok suddenly feel like home. Later, before she would travel up-country with the "Overgaard men", Rosemary would meet the Fullers and Seigles, more old friends and co-workers of Loren and Hazel Hanna. Conversations around meal tables would bring to life memories of the young Hanna couple with their small children. Rosemary surely heard tales of their own childhood long forgotten by her and Claralice, her twin.

* * *

While Wilf added a motorboat to the baggage that would be loaded onto their bus for the homeward trip, Rosemary acquired an organ. Earnie Fogg, from whom Wilf bought the boat, told Rosemary that the Samray Church had an organ that had belonged to her parents. As the church now possessed a new organ, the congregation would be glad for Rosemary to reclaim this piece of family property.

Rosemary gives us a good picture of the waterways of 1949 Bangkok, as she tells of the trip they made in Wilf's new boat to pick up her organ. "We started off in the rain. Little Paul went along. Mrs. Fogg had given me a toy parasol, about a foot in diameter, to keep my head dry. The others simply got wet. We started off from a pier in front of the Fogg's residence. It was a long trip, down one water-way and up another, under bridges, between grassy banks and busy streets ... After some time, we got to the Chao Praya River, the main water way of Thailand. It is a wide and sometimes rough river, for it rises and ebbs with the tide. House boats were tied up all along the shore. Some were shops and places of business, others were purely residential.

"A heavy shower came on, and we drew up to one of these floating houses for shelter. As soon as we got under the roof, we discovered it was an opium den. Men lay in rows on a low platform with their heads on wooden pillows, smoking opium through long pipes. Here and there were smoky little lamps for lighting their pipes."

One can almost see, as Rosemary writes, the grey river smothered in the blanket of rain and the darker shadows of the opium den looming up as the little motorboat drew in under its roof. The shadowy figures with their sickly sweet-smelling pipes silhouetted there against the flickering light of their smoky lamps must have come as a shock to the new missionary.

Met by prostitutes at her arrival, now sheltered from the rain by the low hanging roof of an opium den, Rosemary certainly met the most seamy side of life in Thailand in her first days back in the land of her birth. It is doubtful that the girl who left Thailand as a student had ever heard of either prostitutes or opium dens. And certainly the Wheaton scholar who went on to Princeton Seminary must have remembered an idyllic existence. Rosemary must have recalled a sun-drenched garden in Lampang. Her childhood would have been full of music and laughter and innocent play there in that enclosed sweet-scented garden. One wonders if now exposed to the dark and ugly side of the land of her birth, Rosemary didn't have some second thoughts about staying on in Thailand.

Thankfully, the rain soon slackened and Rosemary writes, "We went on down the river and entered another  klong . This was a quiet, peaceful canal, with trees meeting overhead. Suddenly we heard firecrackers and native music. Around the bend in the klong came a line of canoes, each with a gaily decorated canopy, and all occupants dressed in colorful silks and satins. Some wore flowers in their hair or around their neck, and many had silver bowls, each with a little tree standing in it, made of flowers and paper-money. In the front sat the musicians with flutes, drums, xylophones, etc.

"'They are on their way to the temple to make merit,' Mr. Fogg explained.

"When we reached the church, the Thai pastor and his wife came out. I sat on a bench and talked as best I could with people who had known my parents. But the mosquitoes swarmed about and stung me so fiercely that I was quite distracted from conversation."

When the organ was safely loaded on the little boat, its weight brought the boat to a dangerously low level in the rough water. Rosemary tells us, "The trip up the river was a terrifying experience for me. A wind had risen which made the water rougher than on our outbound trip, and we were now going against the current. The engine stopped several times and we had to paddle furiously to hold ground until it started again. Then we approached the mouth of our  klong , the traffic had grown so thick it was hard to get through. We found ourselves between two large Chinese rice-boats -- they hold about a ton of rice besides the living quarters for a large family. Their sides towered above our heads and the wind and waves dashed them about so that I was sure our wee craft would soon be crushed or capsize. Paul was crying, and I'm sure we were all praying as we pushed against the sides of the big boats as hard as we could. Finally we squeezed through unharmed, and arrived home wet, but in the end, glad for the adventure."

* * *

When Rosemary's trunks arrived at the customs area, Wilf began what was to become another part of his job as field leader. Along with talking the various items through inspection, explaining every article and answering the many questions about the person and purpose of the newly-arrived missionary, Wilf explained the work of the mission and presented the Gospel. Many would have seen travel to Bangkok and time spent waiting for official red tape as a waste of time and energy. But Wilf used this unique opportunity to reach out to lost officials. He valued the opportunity to witness over drums, battered trunks and tea chests to those lost officials of Bangkok.

Customs finished, the little band was ready to start up-country. Well ...not quite ready!

Soon-to-be-five-year-old Paul was running a fever!

The first lap of travel was a hot trip of many hours on an over-crowded train. Rosemary tells us that Wilf bought a cup of chipped ice at one of the many stops that day to try to cool his fevered son.

It was 10 o'clock that evening before the train finally reached Phitsanuloke and the tiny hotel where the party would be spending the night.

Rosemary adds to our picture of that hotel by explaining that she had been warned to take her own sheets and pillowcases. She was thankful for that advice when she saw the state of the one sheet covering her mattress and the badly stained pillowcase. She says, "Neither the sheet nor the cover for the cube-shaped cushion had been changed after the last occupant." She could have added "or after the last several occupants". Indeed, some pillowcases looked to have been on the pillows since the hotel first opened!

Rosemary, as had the other  Weccer s before her, would now be introduced to a Thai hotel bathroom. The cement floor, sloping to its drain in the corner, was slippery and slimy. The walls did not go all the way up to the ceiling and foreigners fought off the impression that eyes were peering at them over the wall, out of the darkness beyond. A dented tin dipper always floated on top of the oily-looking water in the  ong . And it was certainly not an uncommon occurrence to find a frog frolicking in the  ong . If the water were clear enough to see to any depth at all, bathers would realize that they were splashing mosquito larva over themselves.

Thankful that there was enough water left in her canteen to do the job, Rosemary brushed her teeth. Then she turned her empty canteen over to Wilf to have it filled with boiled water for the next day's drinking. The restaurant that supplied that water was probably beginning to recognize the traveler from Rahaeng.

The next morning started out with breakfast on the veranda. Wilf had bought a papaya from a fruit vendor. Adding that fruit to a dish of rice and condensed milk he could purchase from the hotel, the three breakfasted royally. Rosemary tells us that Wilf had brought from home a tin of instant coffee. "The dampness had turned it hard and tarry, but after much stirring, we had two good cups of coffee."

* * *

Something of Rosemary's humor can be seen when she tells of the highway their bus traveled that day. "It was a two lane highway -- that is, a lane for the left tires and a lane for the right ones with grass and weeds growing between." She further explains that when they met a vehicle going in the opposite direction, their bus had to leave the highway to let the other car pass!

* * *

It is again from the pen of Rosemary that we learn of the lunch-stop that those long ago buses made between Phitsanuloke and Rahaeng.

Many passengers would have squatted outside the shade made by the bus. They would have had a great time buying fresh fruit or roasted ears of corn sold by locals who brought their wares in woven baskets hung on "hop" sticks. There would have been barbecued chicken and boiled peanuts and pickled mangoes, and to quench the thirst of the passengers there would have been soda pop sold in plastic bags. Sukhothai, the town of the usual stop, was already so advanced that it boasted an ice factory. Unless it was a day when the factory was broken down, there would have been brownish chunks of ice floating in the bag of  Coke or  Green Spot . The neck of the plastic bag would be tightened around a straw by a twisted rubber-band. You could hang your drink up anywhere but you couldn't set it down. The bag would collapse, spilling your drink out through the straw. Foreigners,  farangs , accustomed to drinking out of glasses and bottles made the fatal mistake over and over!

But in those early years, the  farangs didn't squat and eat in the shade of the bus. No, Rosemary was introduced to a Chinese restaurant that the missionaries had used before. There was an upstairs veranda built to look out upon the river. It offered a good panoramic view of the city and of river life. Rosemary noted the enormous image of the Buddha towering above the old, ramshackle marketplace and the crowded, crooked lanes that radiated out from its base. Everywhere the ruins of ancient temples dotted the area.

Wilf reminded Rosemary that Sukhothai had once been the capital of the old Kingdom of Siam. "The people of Sukhothai are ardent Buddhists, and very proud of their ancient temples, traditions and history. There are no Christians here, and we haven't had a chance to even visit this place yet." Something of the burden the small WEC band felt for this part of their territory could be heard in Wilf's remarks.

Sukhothai "was a squalid, thickly populated town. All the houses stood on stilts in scummy water. The river was crowded with craft, large Chinese rice-boats, barges from Bangkok all inhabited by families or teams of coolies. The tops were loaded with furniture and other merchandise from the city, to be sold or bartered for rice, coconuts, sticklac and other raw products." This town Rosemary describes for us was later destroyed by fire. The city that arose from the ashes is thankfully very different from that squalid town standing in scummy water.

* * *

It was about four in the afternoon when the bus/truck finally reached Rahaeng and the Borneo house. Rosemary tells us that the entire household rushed out to meet them at the gate. Not just the small Paul, but Rosemary as well, was greeted with hugs. Wilf, of course, enjoyed the embrace of an exuberant Sharon, and his own wife. Later the group would realize that such a show of affection was so foreign to their Thai neighbors that they had become a spectacle! Neighbors never wanted to miss the treat of seeing those strange foreigners arrive home after just a few days absence. Doubtless it was a matter of understanding more and more of the remarks made by neighbors that brought the Mission to the habit of rather restrained, formal greetings when welcoming arrivals out at the street.

What did the Rahaeng group think of the new/used boat that had been added to their possessions? Was Fern, as the musician of the group, excited about the folding organ that had belonged to Rosemary's parents? Certainly both boat and organ were valuable and useful additions.

There was one other item brought from Bangkok that must have absolutely delighted the Borneo household. Someone among the Presbyterian missionaries in Bangkok had in his possession a shortwave radio that had belonged to Loren Hanna. This treasure, they now gave to Loren's daughter. An ancient radio that produced a series of whistles and squeals and clicks that could drown out the strongest stations was indeed a treasure. The transistor was not yet in existence, so radios were both large and expensive. This old shortwave radio would now put the group in touch with the outside world. Well, that was the expectation!

Rosemary tells us that the next day, Wilf worked on the radio. "Now we will know what's going on in the world," someone remarked. "At Christmas time we'll be able to hear some Christmas music," another voiced. But Rosemary adds, "It was several months after Christmas before they got the radio to work."

That day, as Wilf worked on the radio, the rest of the house was a busy hive of confusion. Rosemary was busy unpacking and putting her things away. She uncrated her bicycle and assembled it. Fern and Dorothy were finishing their packing and clearing space for Rosemary's things. Evy unpacked, laundered and repacked for Wilf as he was to head out the very next day on an important trip. He was to accompany Dorothy and Fern in their historic move to Kampaengphet.

Evy wrote her friend Sylvia at that time requesting prayer. Baby Mark was having trouble sleeping at night. "Perhaps he is starting to cut his first teeth," she remarked. In any case his distressing crying made it necessary for someone to get up and comfort him several times in the night. When Wilf was home, he and Evy shared that job. But it is easy to see from his activities at this time, Wilf was seldom home.

* * *

Rosemary's second day in Rahaeng started early as a "small motor launch pulled up to the river bank in front of the house where boxes, trunks and furniture stood waiting. After all the things were loaded on, and the dog, Jip, tied and seated on the front platform, the group of missionaries stood in a circle on the bank, surrounded by a crowd of onlookers, to pray for Fern and Dorothy and for the opening of the new station. Then they and Wilf got in the boat, the engine started, last farewells, instructions, and words of wisdom were shouted across the widening expanse of water, and the boat went puttering down the river and out of sight."

## Chapter 9  
The Walled City

Though Kampaengphet means "Jeweled Wall", a few scattered heaps of disintegrating brick and mortar were all that was left of what once may have been an impressive wall surrounding a temple-filled city. Here and there in the overgrown jungle stood a crumbling structure that once housed priests. The paved courtyards where the faithful once gathered for worship were crowded with the twisted, snaking branches and roots of ancient banyan trees.

In 1949, though some temples had been cleared of the vines that curtained them from view, excavations had not yet discovered the extent of the sacred city, and restoration had not yet revealed the splendor that once was. Most of the ancient buildings, hidden behind their wall of vines and trees and roots, continued to disintegrate in the rain. Monkeys chattered behind those walls and brightly colored birds flashed into view, then suddenly disappeared, darting behind those curtains of green.

Here and there a farmer, enlarging his rice fields would uncover an arm or head of a stone statue. He would struggle to carry it to the edge of his field where it wouldn't t break his plow, never realizing that here was evidence of long ago life and greatness.

Nearing the end of 1949, when WEC entered Kampaeng, there was only a hint of the ornate temples with their array of statues, paved grounds, gilded filigree ornaments and glass mosaics that once towered above the jungle growth. Only the name of the wall that had surrounded the legendary city was left to mark the area where that grandeur once stood.

The modern town bore the name of the wall, but in reality the town was just the center of a rice farming community. The mud track that wound its way beside the river for two or three miles was the center of that wider scattered community of fields and huts. There were a few storefront houses, a rice mill, two schools and a cluster of government buildings and scattered temples that threatened to follow the ancient walled city into crumbling oblivion.

The houses in Kampaeng were mostly wooden with rusty corrugated tin roofs. Rosemary tells us in her memoirs that "They were closely packed together and leaned far out over the river bank on rickety crutches." The temples scattered throughout the town lifted white-washed spires to pierce the vivid tropical sky.

* * *

Fern tells us that the house that she and Dorothy moved into was the very last house at the end of town. Any semblance of roadway had come to an end, and the pathway worn at the side of the river was the result of water buffaloes and oxen being led to and from the town each morning and evening.

Built up on posts a full six feet off the ground, the WEC house was just beyond the mud-holes where water buffaloes wallowed. But the front of the house looked out on the beauty of the river with teak forests climbing its opposite bank and spreading out to cover all over the world as far as the eye could see.

The house itself was built somewhat along the lines of the Borneo House. That is, the center of the building was a wide open expanse extending from the front of the house right through to the back. Only a low railing served as wall to this most-used part of the building. Bedrooms were enclosed at the sides of this breezeway but Fern and the other  Weccer s who would follow Fern and Dorothy to live in Kampaeng would spend most of their time in this open area where they would get every bit of breeze possible.

That Dorothy is not mentioned as spending most of their time in that area is not an oversight. Dorothy soon rented the house next door and established a clinic or dispensary where a constant stream of Thai came with ailments from simple fevers and obvious broken bones and gunshot, knife or animal attack wounds to the shocking disfigurement of yaws and leprosy.

Before moving to Kampaeng, the two women had shared their vision and hopes for the outreach they would have in this new area. Obviously, each was so taken up with her own vision that she couldn't really hear what the other one was saying. Or perhaps the pressure of the present so thrust them into separate paths that they were unable to be the companions they had hoped to be. Fern makes the comment, "We had no real communication."

In any case, Dorothy had little time, energy or inclination for more than the medical work that went on next door. Certainly she shared the Gospel with groups of patients. She had flannel-graph to help picture the truths she wanted to communicate to all age groups. But it was the care of patients that monopolized most of her time, energy and preparation. Often strange symptoms kept her at her medical books late into the night.

That Fern became the  Mae Bahn , and trained and worked with the servants was to be expected. The many times she had lifted those burdens from Evy's shoulders, along with her own talents and training made her more than qualified to run the household. But though she could enjoy the running of the house it was the call to evangelize that challenged Fern. Evangelization was the heartbeat of WEC. They were an evangelistic crusade; every member of the mission was expected to be an evangelist. Fern was willing but she was dismayed and disappointed to find that she would have to get out and do it all on her own.

Fern enjoyed preparing for children's meetings. To print out song-sheets and memory verses and arrange flash cards or flannel-graph for the story was no problem at all. It was going down those stairs and setting off on her own with her concertina to attract a tail of children; that is what always demanded a discipline of self-denial, for Fern could always see a dozen things waiting to be taken care of in the house. And the constant heat and humidity sapped her strength, dulling her zeal to leave the shady breezeway and shelter of her own roof. Fern had to force herself to do what she seldom really felt like doing. This was a spiritual battle that Fern waged constantly.

If Dorothy had had the time to be a prayer partner and companion in evangelizing Kampaeng, Fern would have been strengthened for that second front of spiritual warfare. It was in street meetings and meetings in homes open to her that Fern faced the powers of darkness and she reports that those confrontations left her "utterly exhausted, emotionally and physically."

* * *

When Dorothy went on furlough, left behind among her gear, was the most complete set of visual aids for teaching the Bible that anyone on the Thai field would have for many years. Eventually, when it became obvious that she would not be returning to Thailand, Dorothy was asked what she wanted done with her trunk and barrel of possessions. Finally the answer came that she had no desire that those things be sent home to her and wanted them distributed to the WEC missionaries on the  field . Only then, upon the examination of the teaching aids Dorothy had purchased as she joined WEC, did it became apparent that she had envisioned and prepared for being personally involved in an extensive teaching ministry.

Instead, she had an extensive medical ministry with a few moments snatched each day to try to get the attention of her waiting patients. Lifting her voice above the level of conversation going on in her crowded dispensary, she talked about a picture or poster that depicted a part of the Gospel. But Dorothy was talking to groups that had not only never been exposed to the Gospel, but who were not remotely interested. Many were desperately ill and in pain, or they were distracted with worry for a child they had brought for treatment.

It was a captive audience that Dorothy had each day, but it was only their bodies that were captured. To capture their ears and minds was another matter altogether. A few moments into her lesson, Dorothy would be drawn out by the coughing of an emaciated mother or the fretful crying of a fevered child. Or perhaps there would be a continual muttering of an elderly granny, betel juice oozing from the corner of her mouth as she complained that she couldn't understand how her unmarried granddaughter had gotten herself pregnant! A toothless uncle seated there on the floor would interrupt his own coughing to venture the opinion that he knew exactly how it had happened!

A quiet voice from a fragile-looking woman would begin the most explicit account of her problems and symptoms. The talker would look as if she would never have the nerve to interrupt a foreign teacher, but she would continue on quietly to present her illness to any who would listen and the tragedy of the hour was that everyone in the dispensary would give her their undivided attention -- except poor Dorothy, standing there with her flash card!

* * *

Fern confesses that as she went out with her concertina to attract children, she hoped that no sophisticated or educated adults would be drawn to her meetings; she felt so insecure in the Thai language. The children and elderly grandmothers seemed to laugh with her at her mistakes, but she felt  threatened by adults. Would they repeat and ridicule her mistakes? In spite of her timidity, Fern faithfully taught her neighbors and those in the back alleyways. She taught songs and verses and stories. Homes were open to her and where Fern sat on the floor close to the street and visited with householders, she made friends. She became acquainted. She knew names and family stories. Fern became a neighbor.

There was another side to Fern's contacts with the Thai. It started in a small way in Kampaeng and would grow larger in every place Fern would live in Thailand. The wives of government officials and teachers would seek Fern out. Because Fern was willing to teach them how to make bread and cakes and pies, and she was willing to make special desserts for their official functions, she was always accepted in the highest social circle of whatever town or city where she would live.

Many  Weccer s would seek to follow Fern's example in the hope of establishing contacts with this educated and cultured group. But not everyone could be sure that their cakes and breads, baked in ovens propped up on charcoal fire-pots, would rise evenly. Nor could they guarantee even texture from the rough flour and sugar they had to use. Caramelizing the local brown sugar and perfecting the shaving and toasting of coconut for icing took more time than most felt they could give to such an art. Fern's training paid off. Her cakes, breads, muffins and pies were almost always perfect. Fern's disasters would have more than satisfied most of those who sought to emulate her. This was a bridge-building ministry for which Dorothy had no time or interest at all.

Dorothy, locked into the medical ministry, hadn't the time to explore and develop a discipling and teaching ministry. Fern, busy with housekeeping and the servants, was often too occupied to be out on the streets holding meetings. It is possible that each of them felt distracted from the ministry that would have made them feel fulfilled (though that is not a term anyone used in 1949-1950). But the truth is that both the medical ministry and Fern's many contacts in the town won friends for future WEC workers and sparked the original interest in hearts that would eventually follow on to know the Lord.

* * *

Back in Rahaeng, Rosemary was spending some time with the teacher each day to wean her away from the Northern Thai of her childhood, enlarge her vocabulary and perfect her grammar. Both Rosemary and Dorothy had presented unique challenges to the language study set up. No one was officially "in charge" of the language school. The teacher had never had any experience in teaching her language to a foreigner nor could she understand the language of her students.

Wilf, Evy and Ellen were still spending time with the teacher. Evy wrote her friend, Sylvia, that they had a good teacher and each one of them spent an hour with her each week day. That is a statement that needs to be interpreted by the conditions of life in that day and time. Illness, nursing the ill, interruptions and Wilf's trips all would have made it impossible for any one of them to keep to a rigid schedule. Three or four sessions with the teacher in any given week would have been a prize, gratefully appreciated. And each one had definite ideas of what he or she needed to study with the teacher in order to improve his or her conversational Thai and ability to present the Gospel more clearly. Each one knew how to make the most of that hour spent with what amounted to an "informant".

Rosemary was amused to hear her teacher talking to the cook or wash-girl out behind the house. That very same teacher had repeated over and over a Central Thai phrase, urging Rosemary not to use the Northern Thai equivalent. She spoke of the Northern Thai as if it were so low and uncouth, using it would brand Rosemary as uneducated. Not a half hour later, she was using the Northern Thai herself, never knowing that her student could overhear her.

* * *

Ellen and Evy were also introducing Rosemary to neighbors and friends in Hua Diat and in the market area of Rahaeng. Friendship with town folk who responded to the missionaries, but not to the Gospel, was an important part of life. Such friendships opened the eyes and ears of the missionaries to see what their "testimony" was really saying to the nationals.

There is one conversation that Ellen often mentioned over the years, for it puts a "pause and consider" clause into many a decision-making situation: Ellen had taken Rosemary down into the market area to meet a special friend. This friend was a young woman about their age. She was highly educated for the time and area, for she was the daughter of wealthy Chinese shop-owners. As Rosemary underwent the usual cross-questioning any language student meets from the curious, the girl's mother and a neighbor lady began to chat about the foreign missionaries and how they lived. The status symbol of the time was a kerosene refrigerator. A few of the most wealthy shop-owners of Rahaeng boasted such a possession, and had it prominently displayed in their front room. Guests would always be presented with a glass of chilled (and perfumed) water from the kerosene refrigerator. The neighbor lady ventured to guess that the wealthy foreigners would have a mammoth refrigerator in the Borneo House. Ellen's friend, who had been talking to Rosemary and didn't appear to be even listening to the other conversation, quickly spoke up; "Oh no, they are too stingy to have any refrigerator."

So much for a testimony of sacrifice! Many such conversations later, the missionaries would understand that while Buddhism as a religion applauds sacrifice, Buddhism as it is lived in Thailand despises any sacrifice that lowers a person's living standards or appearance, except in the lives of Buddhist priests.

In truth, the Hua Diat household didn't possess a refrigerator, not because of some conviction but because they simply couldn't afford one!

* * *

There was another important friend whom Rosemary met in those first days in Hua Diat.  Mae Kai (mother Egg) lived a bit to the North of the Borneo House. In that first year the four were in residence, she had come one morning with the request that the missionaries follow her home to see if they could help her son.

This young man, Duan, was desperately ill. Nothing more could be done for him. He had not responded to any treatment and spirit doctors and mediums had finally given up. Duan was dying.

His mother had heard and even seen much of what these foreigners did for the ill. Ellen, without medical training, had become rather renowned as a doctor! Perhaps her medical practice began with putting drops in a neighbor child's red and inflamed eyes, or giving soda mints to a friend of the wash-girl who complained of indigestion. Beginning with some small act of kindness, Ellen's doctoring had grown to many requests each week for aspirin and ointment and quinine.

Now the request had come that all of the missionaries follow Mae Kai home to see if they could help her son, Duan.

Was this the breakthrough they had been praying for? Each of the four wondered about this, as they followed the middle-aged mother along the path. From almost every house they passed,  someone would call out to question the state of Duan's health, or to find out just why the foreigners were following Mae Kai. Obviously everyone knew her and knew of her son's illness.

Arriving at her home, Mae Kai led the guests up a ladder and across the roofless porch into a crowded room. There seemed to be scores of elderly females covering every bit of floor space and they appeared to be having a craft class, forming bouquets and bushes full of paper flowers. However, this wasn't a craft class or a lighthearted gathering. The women were making flowers for Duan's funeral.

In an inner room the missionaries found the heat quite suffocating. Although it was an oppressively hot day, a large fire was burning and at first, appeared to be built right on the floor of the house. Entering the room and approaching the fire, they discovered that what looked like a child's play sandbox had been built right in the room and the burning fire rested in that sand.

The young man they had come to see was lying as close to the fire as was safe. And in spite of that position of unbearable heat, he was covered with a home-woven cotton blanket. No calling from his mother or words from the missionaries could arouse him. Duan was in a deep coma.

There were few men in that room, for most of his friends and male relatives had gone off to look for lumber to make Duan's coffin.

* * *

It was illegal to cut down a teak tree from the dense forest that surrounded Rahaeng, for the British and Danish companies had paid for the right to use all of the teak forests in Thailand. But Rahaeng, like most communities in Thailand, boasted many sawyers. Though it was illegal to saw, buy, and sell or even possess new teak boards, it was perfectly legal to build a new teak house. All that was required was that the boards used were not new; they must have nail holes in them to prove that they had been used before. So Thai acquired teak boards for any building project, a few at a time. The boards were carried in from the forests in the dark of night and immediately nailed up to the house-posts. Most houses had a growing wall of teak out at the edge of their porch or down under the floor of their house. Because boards then had nails and nail holes in them, they were no longer new and their possession was perfectly legal!

It took most families several years to accumulate enough boards to make an addition to their old house or to build a new one. Most houses had several wall or floor boards awaiting a building project.

In 1949-1950 almost all rural houses in Thailand were teak in spite of the fact that, on the books, it was against the law for Thai to cut down the teak trees. The rationale for this was that though the British and Danish had leased all of the teak-fields, they would always have all of teak they could harvest. The teak forests were so vast and so dense there was no way the foreign companies could do more than make just a small dent in those rain forests. And of course, in time, the companies' leases would expire and the forests would revert to the Thai government.

In the meantime, the people of the land would use the wood of the land. But they would do it carefully. After all, they wouldn't want to offend the foreign companies. They weren't stealing. The forests really belonged to them. Stealthy trips were made in the dark to carry boards; they positioned lookouts along the way to warn of impending discovery, and they nailed up the new boards before daylight. All this was out of consideration for the foreign teak companies and the Thai officials required to enforce the law.

* * *

Duan's brothers and friends had not yet returned with the wood for his coffin when the missionaries  arrived at his home. But they would have no trouble persuading friends and relatives to part with a board or two from the boards nailed between their house-posts awaiting the day when they would build, or enlarge or repair their homes. Soon the sounds of sawing and nailing would fill the house as builders worked on Duan's coffin just beneath the floor where he lay.

Sitting on the floor beside the comatose man, the missionaries hardly knew what they should do. Only Mother Egg seemed to have no doubts that they would have the answer that would bring life and healing to her son.

Finally, Wilf spoke up, asking that the spirit strings be taken from the dying man's wrists and neck. If this were done, he would pray to the God of Heaven to heal Duan. That the strings were removed at Wilf's request only proves that there was absolutely no hope for Duan. Had anyone in that room entertained even the slightest expectation of Duan's recovery, they would have violently objected to those strings being removed.

When the strings had been cut away, Wilf began to pray aloud. The other missionaries were most certainly praying silently. It was a tiny corner of human contact with Heaven. All around them was dense darkness, not just of Buddhism but of Buddhism mixed with spirit worship. The spirit strings that had been cut away were an eloquent testimony to the fact that a spirit doctor had performed a ceremony and tied those strings to protect Duan from death. Doubtless, Buddhist priests had also been there and had recited their incantations, and it is most likely that some of them would have worn spirit strings showing that their hope was also in the protection of spirits whose existence Buddhism denies!

Those praying in that house of death that day knew that they were in a crucial situation. They were on-stage before a watching world. Over and over they had taught in the streets of Hua Diat, always proclaiming both God's unlimited power and His unlimited love. How did the crowd in that house interpret what they were seeing, as four missionaries bowed before this god they talked so much about? Did that god even exist? If he existed, would he honor the petitions of these who claimed to be his servants? They didn't look like much! They didn't have shaven heads or pocketless robes to speak of their renunciation of this world. But at the same time, their clothing and the condition of their hands showed clearly that they were poor laborers!

Wilf surely claimed promises from the Word of God as he prayed. He surely proclaimed miracles and professed his faith that God could heal Duan, and He would do so, if that healing was within God's sovereign will and divine knowledge of what was best for Duan.

Since the Buddhist priests chanted in Pali and were never understood by the common people, it must have seemed strange for this foreign "priest" to talk to his god in language that even children in the room could understand. How very unreligious!

When Wilf finished praying, he lifted his head and opened his eyes. The foreign women with him lifted their heads and opened their eyes.

Duan's eyes opened!

Though Duan did not seem to be alert and aware of his surroundings it was obvious to all that a remarkable change in his condition had occurred.

That was just the beginning.

Why didn't God just restore Duan to full health immediately? Why didn't the young man sit right up and request food or drink? Why did God not choose a spontaneous restoration to vigorous strength and health?

Looking back, the answers to those questions are obvious.

Duan's recovery was slow. At times there seemed to be no progress at all. But daily, one or more of the Hua Diat four would visit with medicine and vitamins. They would bathe the invalid and try to make him more comfortable. The ministry of the Borneo household to Duan showed their care and concern for him as nothing else could have done.  Day by day, God continued to touch the life and needs of Duan through the members of His body on earth.

But they didn't just live the Gospel, they proclaimed the Gospel. With each visit, they would tell more and more about the Lord Jesus.

Never was the house empty. Never was Duan alone. There were always several neighbors and members of the family present waiting to hear what the foreigners would teach.

As Duan became stronger, his mind was captured by the words he heard. Duan and others of the household became the first believers in Hua Diat, the first to come to faith and a desire to follow on in obedience to the Lord.

* * *

It was into this atmosphere  of promised harvest that Rosemary Hanna moved. This was a time of excitement at the Borneo House. Table conversation recounted the testimony of Duan and Mae Kai and others of that neighborhood who were growing in faith and were living and speaking a testimony before their friends.

Rahaeng was an exciting place for missionaries to be at the start of 1950. Kampaeng was another matter.

## Chapter 10  
Notice to Move

It was nearing the end of 1949 when the occupants of the Borneo House received notice that the Company wanted to use their house in Rahaeng. The  Weccer s would have to be out by April of 1950. And so the job of house hunting began.

The young missionaries had already come to feel that to be "light and salt" in that long, strung-out community by the river, they ought to divide up. There were two women and the Overgaard family all living in the same town. They could have one household remain in the Hua Diat area and the other move south of the market.

The team had been experiencing that their most effective witness was to immediate neighbors and those close by just to the North of them in the neighborhood of Mae Kai's house. If a neighborhood response was what they could expect, then they must divide and be seed in more than one neighborhood.

This decision to put so much distance between the two households in Tak deserves more than a passing thought. It would have been so convenient and so pleasant if the two houses were within easy walking distance of each other. To be able to drop in on each other for an unscheduled visit over a cup of coffee or to borrow a tin of milk or a cup of sugar would have made life so much easier. Even to cancel a scheduled meeting or share really pressing news meant a long bicycle trip, often in the rain and over muddy paths.

It is obvious that their own convenience and pleasure was far down on the list of priorities those first  Weccer s in Rahaeng considered in moving from the Borneo house. But their decision further complicated the job of house hunting.

* * *

Meanwhile, life in the Borneo House continued. Since the house was in a very large compound, a coolie was needed to keep the grass (anything green that would grow) cut down. There was no such thing as a lawn mower in Rahaeng in those days. So Si, an elderly man, carried water for the bathroom and for the kitchen and cut the grass. Rosemary says, he "squatted on the ground, swinging a long knife about an inch above the ground until a circle of grass was cut. Then he moved over about two feet and made another circle to overlap with the first."

Si had to stop every half-hour or forty-five minutes and roll a pinch of tobacco into a square cut from a banana leaf. Finding a shady spot, he rested and doubtless contemplated deep philosophical questions as he puffed on his homemade cigar. (Many missionaries to Thailand would learn to their embarrassment that often uneducated, illiterate Thai farmers had very deep philosophical questions that demanded considerable thought and study to answer!) In any case, whatever Si was thinking about in those breaks he took from cutting the grass, it took him many days to finish the entire lawn. And by the time he finished the last section, the first section needed cutting again.

At some point in the two years the Mission was in the Borneo House, Wilf got the idea that they could cut back on household expenses if they invested in a goat, to eat the grass. So a goat was installed. Tethered with a long rope so he couldn't wander off but reach plenty of grass to eat, the goat became a part of the Borneo compound. Evy reported that he ate everything, absolutely everything, from the wash-girl's straw hat to the dish-towels drying on the line, from the children's socks to the rope he had been tied with. But he wouldn't eat grass!

By the time Rosemary arrived in Rahaeng, the cook at the Borneo House was a young man named Inn. Listen to how Rosemary describes this tiny, graceful young man: "His features were set off by a high pompadour of beautiful shiny black hair. When neatly combed back, it added a couple of inches to his stature. When not combed, it fell over his ears and covered his cheeks, adding to the impression of daintiness which was part of his personality. Inn was a real prince charming, and his life was already tangled in triangular knots. Nevertheless, he was a good cook."

Actually, Inn was more than a good cook. He was a warning who imprinted the missionaries with lessons that would help them through the years in many situations. The missionaries regularly had household prayers with the servants. Inn responded charmingly. He agreed, confessed, praised and thanked as the lesson indicated. He could talk rings around the missionaries. Whoever was leading the prayer time would come away bemused, wondering just who was in charge of that meeting. And they all realized that if they did not know about Inn's completely amoral life, his pious words would have convinced them that he was truly a devout believer!

Over the years, there would be many Inns, Thai who professed faith and told of experiences with God and encounters with the Lord Jesus in dreams and visions. If they could speak with eloquence, charisma and persuasion, a red warning light flashed for all those who remembered Inn.

Wait!!

Examine fruit!

Look for character!

Look for faithfulness!

Watch friends and relatives for confirmation of his testimony.

Weccer s would meet such characters with the hope that their profession of faith was real. But they were careful. Even in their prayer letters home, they did not want to use testimonies of dramatic conversion until those conversions had stood the test of time.

If a conversion was real, the convert's life was his own pedestal; neighborhood, family, and friends would be watching, listening and remembering.

* * *

From the Borneo House, Rosemary and Ellen would set out several times a week to have street meetings or to visit in homes and to continue the teaching that had begun in the area of Duan's home.

Rosemary paints a vivid picture for us when she tells us that children suffering with red-eye would eagerly wait for Ellen's passing by. When Ellen and Rosemary would come into sight, the scattered children would gather in a straggly line by the side of the road. Children in their ragged play clothing, looking like babies themselves, would be holding a naked baby sister or brother astride their hips. Rosemary reports that, "Ellen went along the line, putting a drop of medicine into their red, watery eyes. Even the tiny ones were remarkably good about opening their eyes."

Rosemary tells us that, "On Saturdays, Ellen and I visited villages along the farther bank of the river. When we first started these weekly trips, it was at the end of the rainy season when the roads were still deep in mud. We were usually spattered and caked with mud after wading ankle-deep and pushing our bicycles. Then we had to carry them down a steep slippery bank at the boat landing and balance them across the sides of the boat. By the time we had thought it out and decided that the bicycles were a waste of time and energy, the roads had become dry and hard, and the bicycling was better. But the ferry boats stopped running then, so we carried the bikes and left them at a home near the ford. The river had receded to waist depth by the time the boats stopped, and toward the end of the dry season, it was almost down to our knees. We arrived on the other shore with dripping skirts, but it did not take the hot sun long to dry them.

"Walking the length of a village, we stopped at homes, or in yards or on the river bank, wherever there were people. Sometimes we chatted with individuals, and sometimes we had a full-fledged meeting with singing and preaching. We almost always sensed a greater response and friendliness on the second or third visit."

Rosemary painted a picture of the part of the day that was relaxed and carefree, lunch time. They always took a lunch with them and found a quiet secluded spot where they could relax. After lunch was eaten, Rosemary says they often "lay on their backs and gazed up into the leafy mosaic of the bamboo."

After a short rest they would head back, stopping at houses and places they had missed in the morning. At the end of he trip there would be the repeat performance of crossing the river to once again arrive with wet, muddy skirts.

Then after they had finally gotten home late in the afternoon, she says, "We sank wearily into our rattan chairs and Evy served us a cup of tea; were were glad to be home again."

It is deeply moving to hear that almost fifty years later, WEC missionaries witnessing in that same area have come across several very elderly Thai who were wanting to register their faith and express commitment to the God Ellen and Rosemary told them about so many years ago!

* * *

Wilf was busy as usual. He had searched all over Rahaeng, looking for suitable housing and it looked as if nothing was available. In January of 1950, Evy wrote her friend, Sylvia, "Wilf left Friday for a trip across the mountains. He walked and took a guide and a carrier. You see, there is no road across and you must walk, or ride horseback, if you do not want to go by plane. (There was a plane flying  there  twice a week in the dry season; in the rainy season too, if the landing field was not deep in mud, or heavy clouds did not make the flight through the mountain passes to dangerous to undertake). He is headed for a town about fifty miles away, close to the Burma border. It is Maesod. It is part of this province of Tak, but is separated from this area by mountains. But in the city there are supposed to be over fifty thousand people." (One wonders where that number came from!)

Evy continues, "We have been having some thoughts that we, our family, should move over there. You see, our contract on this house expires in March and we have not, so far been able to find anything suitable (in Rahaeng). One old house we looked at would have required several hundred dollars in repairs and then, may not have stood up too many years. It was so old and crooked already. Several things have happened to turn our thoughts to Maesod, so we felt Wilf ought to go over there and have a look at the situation. I had quite a battle at first, but the Lord has given me real peace and the desire to do His will."

Though Evy had come to a place of willingness to move across the mountains, she still was able to see the multiplied problems of such a move. She continues, "There are several sorts of inconveniences in connection with such a move. We would have to move our things over by horseback or carried by coolies. And for me, the big problem would be starting all over again to train servants. I would never get a chance to study (the Thai language)! But that is the Lord's business entirely and He knows how I should best learn or if He can use my faltering tongue."

Evy went on to say that the problems she could foresee in moving to Maesod were, "really very minor things in the light of the need of getting the Gospel to that place, if now is the time the Lord sees is best for that place to be reached."

Evy gives us another picture of Rahaeng at that time when she talks of house hunting for a place for Ellen and Rosemary. "If it is decided that we go over there, the girls will stay here and carry on; though as yet we don't have a house for them either. But it is easier to find something that is usable for two girls than for our large family. Most Siamese houses are open with perhaps one room that is enclosed. And that room is usually small and dark so that one would have nowhere to go for such little details as changing one's clothes! Most Siamese whisk off their clothes underneath a skirt or bath-cloth. As far as that goes, plenty of older women, when at home, don't wear anything above the waist anyway."

This might be a good place to mention that the women missionaries had come to realize that it was quite acceptable to wear very low-necked blouses and dresses. Though it's doubtful that any of them had such garments. Most Thai women worked around their homes and yards with just a bath skirt tucked under their arms. And most mothers nursed their babies in public, then often forgot to cover their breasts. To be bare above the waist was not thought of as being seductive or immodest. But it was considered seductive and unacceptable for a woman to show her knees! This is why Ellen and Rosemary, in crossing the river, always got their skirts wet. They could not hitch up their skirts to keep them dry!

In Evy's next letters to her friends, no mention is made of a move to Maesod, so presumably Wilf came back with the information that Maesod was not as big a town as others on the eastern side of the mountains, and doubtless he had been met with the shock that the Thai language they had been studying was not spoken in the Maesod area. He surely found some who understood him, but it is doubtful if he could understand them!

Maesod was a gloriously lovely little town at that time. Unlike Rahaeng and Kampaeng, it was not built on a large river, but rather on several small crossing streams on their way to the Moey River, the border of Burma. There were more coconut palms than there were people in the little town. And what people there were were very picturesque. The few market stores were owned and run by Indians and Burmese in their national dress. The early morning fresh market was crowded with tribal folk, all in their national costume. And there, in that little border town, the ethnic Thai, a minority at that time, all wore the Siamese national dress. The lush valley, between a mountain range in Burma and another in Thailand, was still relatively isolated from the rest of the world and had its own personality made up of all the ethnic groups living there together.

The town itself must have been a surprise as it was little more than a village. Wilf could quickly see that the reported population was a great exaggeration. Perhaps all of the Thai settlements on the Maesod side of the border had been included in that number!

Most  Weccer s who visited Maesod had a longing to move there simply because of its beauty and quiet. But 1950 was not yet the time to open a work in that isolated place and so it was put on a shelf for a time, but became a prayer target, and Wilf kept it before the other workers as the Lord kept Maesod on Wilf's heart.

* * *

In another letter Evy wrote a short time later, "Wilf has been away down in Bangkok for several days. He left here in our new little boat with an outboard motor last Wednesday. He took it as far as Kampaeng and left it there while he went on to Bangkok by bus and train. We had a letter from him and he said when they got about eight or ten miles from here, a pin in the propeller broke and they were unable to get it repaired, so they had to paddle the rest of the way -- about forty five miles. Of course, going South the current is strong so it was not so hard, and they arrived there about nine thirty that evening. Fortunately, Wilf had a couple of young fellows from here with him and I guess he was very glad of it!"

Evy then says that, "one of the boys who went with Wilf was the young fellow who was healed through prayer last spring, and who later gave his heart to the Lord. His name means "month" and you should pray for him. He wants to work for us very much, but so far, it just has not seemed the thing. We do long to see him grow into a strong witnessing Christian. The things that draw to the old life are very many."

Though Evy does not name the things of the "old life", we can guess at some of the things that had a pull on Duan. His large family had all been Buddhist before his healing and they had played a prominent part in Buddhist activities in that community. All of Duan's contemporaries would have been or would be going into the priesthood. Mae Kai and Duan with the other believers in their family had lost their identity and social prominence in the community.

Of course there were temptations that pulled at Duan that had nothing to do with the social structure of a Buddhist community. There would be the drinking and gambling and wild night-life of Duan's old friends. He was certainly invited, perhaps pressured, into joining where he had so fit in, in the past. Foreign missionaries certainly didn't have any social life to offer this young man as an alternative to his old companions!

It is possible that part of Duan's desire to work for the missionaries was an effort to get a bit of distance between himself and his old life. Or perhaps he saw this as a chance to learn more of the Lord. But the Thai thinking, expressed over and over to the missionaries of that day, was that wealthy foreigners ought to pay people to become Christians. For many years, converts would be asked, "What are they paying you?" It was hard to get to the bottom of Duan's thinking. He had certainly been asked what the foreigners paid him to be a Christian. How demeaning to have to answer, "nothing"! For many years  Weccer s battled with this problem. Would he be ruining the cutting edge of a convert's testimony if we hired him to work for us? Would his wages be considered pay for becoming a Christian?

Though Duan was never hired to  be a servant, it is clear from the reports of that time that the missionaries, and especially Wilf, spent a great deal of time with him. In today's terminology they were discipling him. In their thinking, when they were not purposely teaching, they were sharing their own Christian reactions and outlook with this new  believer. They were building into his life and character, Christian thinking and principles.

* * *

About this same time, Evy wrote her friend, "My eyes have been bothering me a lot lately so I may have to go to Bangkok after Wilf gets back. I will take Sharon, too for a checkup, and Ellen may go down for dental work. If it works out that way, Rosemary will go down (to Kampaeng) to be with the girls a few days, as of course, she could not be here with Wilf. We have a girl who is fairly good with the baby now, so it would not be too bad for Wilf to have Paul and Mark." Evy ends this subject by saying this is all "indefinite." We do not know if that trip to Bangkok was ever taken, but Evy's outline of what arrangements would have to be made in order for her and Ellen to be away, gives us some insight into the complications of living in that time.

* * *

Evidently the lease on the Borneo House had almost expired when two houses in Rahaeng were found for the  Weccer s.

Rosemary writes, "A suitable house was found for Ellen and me just a short distance from the Borneo House. It was on the river bank, and at the foot of a hill on which stood a temple, "Wat Doi". Americans would say that it was a two story house. Downstairs was one big room and the entire front of that room was made up of folding doors that opened right out onto the street. Upstairs could be made to serve as bedrooms and sitting room for the two girls and that downstairs room was perfect to use as a meeting room for children and worship services for believers."

The house found for the Overgaard family sounds as if it was the one Evy had mentioned in a letter as being very old and crooked and needing hundreds of dollars of repair. For the "South House" used for many years as the principle dwelling for WEC in Rahaeng was unbelievably old looking, very crooked and the evidence of repairs upon repairs was in plain view.

Moving out and moving in was just the beginning of work. There was screening and partitioning and putting in bathrooms. Converting areas to be used as kitchen and laundry rooms took precious time and even more precious strength, for these moves were made at the height of the hot season! Remember, there were no electric fans or refrigeration. A tepid drink of water and a cool shower (throwing tiny dippers of water over oneself was called a shower) in a very hot room were the best the  Weccer s could do to refresh themselves and cool off. And those showers did cool one off  - until the bather began to dress. Evy could tell you that by the time they had struggled into clean clothing and fastened buttons or zippers, they were dripping wet and not with shower water! In shopping for dresses or blouses for many years, the WEC women would first consider how easy a garment was to get into. It did not matter how lovely or how stylish a garment might be; if it fastened in the back or had many buttons, it was discarded immediately. A woman would be a frustrated sweating mess before she could get such a garment fastened.

Wilf had considerably more building to do at their own house, for a good part of the house was without a railing. And since the house was built about eight or ten feet above the ground and little Mark had just begun to walk by himself, a sturdy railing was a must!

* * *

Life was seldom without complications. The Overgaards had barely moved into the South House when the children began to come down with fever. Evy had no cook or wash-girl as yet, so Ellen and Rosemary took turns. Starting early in the morning, they would ride their bikes down to spend a day meeting the pressing needs of the family. And those needs were multiplied when Wilf came down with the fever.

The rains had started in earnest by this time and the road was a muddy obstacle course. Riding their bikes down through town was a chore in itself. Shopping in the fresh market could have been a delight, but trying to find food that feverish foreigners would want to eat and that could be easily prepared was another matter.

The fever was diagnosed as dengue by a local doctor. So the prescribed treatment was just aspirin, lots of liquid, and bed rest. Wilf began to feel better and Evy came down with the fever! "In fact," says Rosemary, "she was severely ill." Several days into caring for Evy, Ellen began the aches and pains that announced the onset of dengue. Rosemary says, "After doing what I could for her, I left her with Som, the wash-girl. " And off she peddled South, to care for the Overgaard household. It is not surprising that when Wilf and Evy heard that Rosemary had left Ellen ill to come to look after them, they sent her home to nurse her own household.

We get a further window onto the living conditions of that day when Rosemary tells us that Ellen was tossing and turning on a "springless wooden bed". Looking on in sympathy, Rosemary remembers that they possessed an air mattress stored downstairs in an old trunk. The energy it took to unpack the trunk to find the air mattress, lug it upstairs and then try to blow it up told Rosemary what she had been expecting -- she had dengue too!

"I don't know how many days we lay there in silence," she wrote. "Sometimes, one of us would feel a little better for awhile and would get up to fetch things for the other. We ate almost nothing, which was fortunate, as we had no cook." (Their cook had been loaned to the Overgaards to help them over their crisis.) Som was willing to do the cooking, but as she was a completely untrained girl, just barely in her teens, it is not surprising that she did not even know how to open a can of soup. A can of tomato soup had been saved for just such a time of emergency, and manipulating a foreign can opener had used all the culinary skill the child possessed. That she had to go so far as to heat the strange contents of the can came as a distinctly unpleasant shock to her! But carefully following the instructions, she presented the invalids with "two tea saucers filled with partly warmed tomato soup."

Rosemary tells us that when Wilf heard that they were sick, "He sent a telegram to Fern asking her to come and help us. Her arrival three days later was like a ray of sunshine. Cheery conversation, clean sheets, bed baths, and dainty morsels on a neatly set try did wonders in reviving us."

Illness behind them, the two households could begin their ministries afresh in Rahaeng.

## Chapter 11  
Tell of The King

Duan's mother, Mae Kai, was a traveling saleswoman. This was a familiar sight and important part of rural life in Thailand before roads, telephones, radio, and mail delivery systems brought little villages and hamlets into constant touch with the outside world.

Along every jungle path and across the ridge of every rice field, small lines of women could be seen. They walked along, single file, dressed in black or dark blue to protect their skin from the sun. Each carried two woven bamboo baskets suspended from a flat bamboo pole across her shoulders. Their baskets were filled, when they started out, with trinkets, sewing needles and thread, fishhooks and fishing line, candles and matches and kerosene for lamps, flashlights and batteries, cheap perfumed soap and cheaper and more highly perfumed oil for men's hair. There would be cakes of harsh, yellow laundry soap and tiny bottles of laundry bluing. There was always a sameness in the wares, for there was a constant demand for these things. But a distant village could request something different and the women would remember, and on their next visit, there would be the ordered item.

Along with the sales items, the women carried twists of paper and sealed envelopes. These were notes and letters from relatives and friends.

As they started out from their own village early in the morning, a neighbor man would be watching for them as he bent to the task of hitching up his oxen. The fire that had burned all night there by his tethered animals added a tangy fragrance to the damp, cool dawn and comforted the achy bones of his old bowlegged dog, just stretching and growling his greeting to the day dawning. The neighbor had a twist of paper for the women and the instructions that this was a note to be delivered to his eldest son living in "Wild Mango Village".

From a house in the first village they passed that day, a woman would call out to them to wait a moment as she hurried from the breakfast she was cooking, for she had a message to send. Wiping her hands on an old piece of material as she hurried down the stairs and out to the footpath where the saleswomen waited, she would be talking all the way, explaining the message she needed carried to her brother living in "New Field Village". "You know Nai Ai, that was married to Na Bang who died in childbirth last year." The women would confer together there by the fence that kept the village pigs out of this woman's garden. Yes, they knew Nai Ai and just exactly where he lived. "Tell him we need him Tuesday. We're putting a new roof on the rice barn."

On and on the instructions would go. The women seldom progressed on a sales trip without messages to deliver, both written and verbal. The women never refused to act as news couriers, for usually a stop to tell news would result in a sale of some item from their baskets.

If there was an item of gossip, a drunken brawl ending in a murder or a married woman run off with someone else's husband, then the saleswomen would become the center of attention everywhere they stopped to tell the story. These women carried the news of the times. They were the broadcasters and telegraph lines of that day.

Mae Kai supported her family as one of those important women. Her husband was not robust. A heart condition kept him from the rice farming he had done as a younger man. By the time of Duan's illness, he was content to stay home and do the cooking and look after their school-age children. The older children were grown and married, but there were still some of school age. That does not mean they attended school The school in that area only went up to the fourth year, but saying they were "school-age" defines them for us.

Mae Kai often spent nights away from home with the other saleswomen. Rosemary records for us in her memoirs,  Cracked Earth , along with current news of the day, she would now "tell the people all about the Jesus she had come to know, how He saved her son from death, and how he had saved her from her sins and brought light and peace to her heart. And she kept telling them that some day the missionaries would come to their village to tell them more about this Jesus."

Mae Kai took the first announcement of the God who cared enough to listen to man on earth. It was her testimony that planted the first seeds of thought about a God of love and power to many villagers in Tak province. It was her testimony that prepared the way for missionary visits. Mae Kai was a broadcaster of the good news of the Gospel -- news of the King of kings.

* * *

There was news of another king being carried by the saleswomen of 1950.

It was in May, just one month after the  Weccer s moved away from the Borneo House that His Majesty, Bhoomipol Adunyudet crowned himself King Rama IX. Enthroned above the Amarindra Hall in the heart of the Grand Palace, he received the diamond-studed crown and with his own hand, in ritual slowness, lifted it above his head then solemnly set it in place.

* * *

Seven hundred years earlier, the 'Tai tribe migrated across Southern China. Driven by warring Chinese further and further South, at last they fled into the plains controlled by the Khmer. The wiry, graceful 'Tai then spread out to occupy the vast rice-growing plain country. For years the Thai paid tribute for their fertile fields to the Khmer capital at Angkor. But this people of independent spirit eventually overthrew their rulers.

The Thai brought with them a binding belief in invisible spirits. But in conquering the Khmer, they absorbed the religion of the land, Hinduism, for the court of the kings and Buddhism for the people of the land.

* * *

As His Majesty, King Bhoomipul set the crown upon his own brow, he was proclaiming himself to be the living incarnation of the Hindu gods. As a man, no one would ever know him again, he was a god. The Thai would gladly worship him. All the honor and glory and pomp that was his rightful due would meet a deep need in the psyche of the Thai. Deep in the Thai personality was this bedrock layer, the need to worship. The exotic grandeur of the fairy-tale palace and all the ritual honors given the king and royal family satisfied this longing for a king.

This need to worship had drawn scattered Thai together in heart and united them as a people as early as 1238, when the first of the long line of kings of Siam began to  reign from the first capital in Sukhothai. In 1350, the capital moved to  Ayutthaya , just North of present day Bangkok. Thirty-three successive kings reigned there for nearly 400 years. In 1767,  Ayutthaya was destroyed and pillaged by hordes of marauding Burmese warriors who invaded from the West. That army had crossed the river and poured in through mountain passes mounted on elephants. They destroyed and pillaged as they moved across the land toward the capital.

Surrounding the walled city, they camped there for over two years. The golden roofs rising  above the city walls and the music of fountains, the tinkling temple bells and the rhythmic chanting of hundreds of Buddhist priests gave the lie that inside all was peace and plenty. But a city of over a million inhabitants was starving to death!

At the end of that heroic stand, the sacred, the glorious city of palaces and temples connected, not by roads but by canals that wove their way through gardens and ponds and under flower-covered arches and exotic blossoming trees was completely destroyed. The king and his court were slaughtered. The gardeners and servants, builders and merchants of the city who had survived the siege were either killed or taken to Burma as slaves. Only the unwanted were left to hide in the ruins of the once great city, reduced to rubble. The jungle would soon cover and hide, for over a hundred years, the scar that once was the city of the kings of Siam.

Even in defeat, there are soldiers who distinguished themselves. One soldier who came to fame in the wars with Burma was Taksin. He raised an army that was able to recapture the ruined capital and drive what was left of the Burmese army back to the border within a year of the fall of  Ayutthaya .

Taksin proclaimed himself king while leading his army, constantly repelling invasion from Burma. Though most of his fifteen-year reign was spent in wars and battles far from his chosen capital, a palace and royal temple were built not far from the present site of Wat Arun in Thonburi.

Taksin's reign came to an end when his own behavior became so erratic that he was pronounced to be insane. He was subdued and imprisoned within his own palace compound.

* * *

General Chakri, another famous soldier of that era of warfare was away fighting in Cambodia when he heard of the imprisonment of Taksin. He quickly turned his army and hurried home. Chakri, marching at the head of his army, arrived at the capital on April 6, 1782. That very day, he was offered and he accepted the crown.

One of Chakri's first official duties, as monarch, was to order Taksin put to death. Since no "divine" blood could be spilt, the king had to be executed in the ancient Hindu royal custom: he was sewn into a silken sack and beaten to death with a perfumed, sandalwood club! What a gruesome end to a violence-filled life! And it is for this Taksin that the province of Tak is named.

Chakri moved his  capital from Thonburi to a small village of Chinese traders on the banks of the Chao Phraya River. The merchants  agreed to relocate a short distance away in an area called Sampeng. This began what was to become the Chinese center of the modern capital. With the crowning of King Rama the First, the Chakri dynasty began in Bangkok.

A labyrinth of canals was constructed to connect the dazzling palaces and temples and monasteries built in copy of  Ayutthaya's remembered glories. Palaces and temples and gardens would multiply as successive kings sought to make merit by building these sacred structures.

* * *

In 1950, the slender young king, robed in gold, crowned with jewels and enthroned in magnificent splendor, embodied two worlds. He had been born in Boston, Massachusetts, and educated in European schools and universities. His cultural tastes were Western. Now, above his throne, a crimson and gold nine-tiered umbrella proclaimed his Hindu mystical Kingship. A crown shaped as a tapering temple spire of heavy gold and studded with flashing diamonds testified that the grave-faced young man of just twenty-three was Siam's new "Lord of Life".

Brahman priests invoked in rhythmic chanting that their gods attend and bless the ancient ceremony. Ritual music filled the palace grounds and silver trees were presented as offerings to the jade-green emerald Buddha,  Phra Kaeo , and all across the nation in temple courtyards, monks and peasants beat celebration gongs.

* * *

1950 was a year when news of the king and his court was carried throughout the country on a wave of relief and rejoicing. Back in 1946, King Ananda's body had been washed, anointed and bound, then he was dressed in fine coronation robes and crowned. His body was then sealed in a silver casket in an attitude of prayer. Later, that casket was bolted inside an eight-sectioned urn of carved gold, and this was raised on a multi-tiered catafalque in the ornamental Pavilion of Paradise in the heart of the Grand Palace. Monks in saffron robes kept vigil and chanted unceasing before that glittering urn.

But the funeral rites and ceremonies were not completed in 1946. The young King Bhoomipul, unmarried and just barely nineteen years old, had returned to Switzerand to complete his university schooling. And Siam was left to a military junta, to unrest and uncertainty.

In 1950, the long delayed funeral rites were continued and completed. Emotional crowds had flowed into Bangkok for days. Every road and stream and river from the furthermost corners of the Kingdom was alive with traffic headed for the cremation ceremonies. There was a profound current of emotion throughout the land. It was a mixture of the end of grief and the stirring of hope and new joy.

On the appointed evening the great urn was wheeled from the Palace ground on a huge chariot, drawn by a hundred uniformed marines. Inlays of glass mosaics glittered and flashed in the light of the sun as it set over the river. As the urn came to rest in a temple of teak and gold, high above the huge crowd, the King appeared, wearing the uniform of a Marshal of the Royal Guards. He carried a lamp of consecrated oil and as he bowed before the urn three times, a wave of grief rose from the crowd and was heard by radio throughout the land and around the world.

Listeners to radio could not see as the young king lit the pyre, but across the land, from every temple compound, ancient musical instruments toned out the song of death. Tears wet the faces of old and young throughout the land and sobbing was heard from thousands who had never and would never so much as see a king of Siam.

The ornate and mystical rites of the coronation ceremony had held the nation in a mood of euphoria, and then the news that the young king was about to wed a beautiful and aristocratic Thai girl spread from village to village on a wave of joy. The coming wedding was discussed and described by villagers who had never experienced such magnificence and grandeur in all their lives.

The talk of the king was everywhere, in every home and office and store of every city in the country. The name of the king was heard in every coffee-house and roadside cafe of every town across the land. At bus stations and marketplaces and school-grounds, praise for the beauty and the magnificence of the royal ceremonies was extolled. In the country villages and rural communities, details of the king's life and fortune were discussed. King Rama the IX was praised continually from sunrise to sunset. And his country was supremely proud and happy.

The missionaries in Kampaeng and Rahaeng and Hua Diet listened. They were outsiders. Everyone of that original band of missionaries, except for Canadian Ellen, was an American. Not only were the land and language and the culture foreign to them, but so was the frame of mind that owns a king on the throne.

They looked at poverty and sickness. They were grieved at the lack of schools and modern technology a nd they calculated the fortune spent on decorations that were burned at a magnificent funeral. They were staggered by the wealth that was worn and displayed for a short coronation ceremony and by the expense of a royal wedding.  I n some way that they could not understand, the most unfortunate poverty-stricken Thai exulted in what the missionaries considered waste! The king was worthy of all the wealth, all the riches and honor given to him and the Thai heart gladly worshiped him. The foreign missionaries were just bewildered.

* * *

How amazing then that this king, so worshiped and honored in his grand palace really had no authority to rule the land! In 1932, a historic coup ended the absolute rule of kings of Siam. The royal princes were taken hostage and the king was forced to sign an agreement giving up his right to rule. The coup established full constitutional government through a National Assembly. But elections revealed amazing political apathy. The mass of Thai people did not care at all who ruled from Bangkok , a s long as they were free to run their own lives and worship a king from afar. This profound apathy left military leaders the opening to be the real power-holders in Siam.

If this contradiction, a king on his throne without the power to rule, gave the young missionaries some food for thought, they did not write or record their thoughts for us , b ut they were watching something of that same turn of mind as it played out in the lives of the few who had come to praise the Lord of Glory.

Mae Kai could speak to the praise of the creator who had raised up her son from death. She was a runner for the King of kings, taking His fame before Him. But when meetings were set up for Sunday morning at Ellen and Rosemary's house, Mae Kai just did not bother to come! Though Duan attended for some time, he eventually began to fall away. Rosemary says this one who had experienced the power of God in the healing of his own body just "drifted away"! She recounts for us that the entire household became embroiled in the opium trade. They were becoming more and more wealthy and more and more feared in their community.

Other converts of that day who seemed to so gladly worship a distant King, rebelled at any teaching that would require change and obedience in their lives. Si, the gardener and Som, the wash-girl, and many others had that same profile. They bowed before the Lord and praised Him. They spoke to their friends and neighbors of His might, but they would not give up the social life that revolved around the temple. They would not give up ruinous habits of sin.

Praise and worship for the King came naturally to the Thai. Obedience to a ruler was another matter.

## Chapter 12  
Leprosy!

It was always hard to control their expressions when the missionaries suddenly caught sight of a leper. They might turn to see  someone peering out at them from a darkened window. The face would be badly disfigured, with the nose cartilage so eaten away by the disease that all that remained was just two gaping holes into a flat surface. The bronze of the Thai complexion would be marked and scarred by puckered, greyish-white lacerations. Or they might catch sight of a figure limping away from the road with hands and feet twisted and maimed. The fingers of one suffering with advanced, crippling leprosy would be stiffened into almost unusual claws and the toes so indrawn and twisted that the feet appeared to be toeless hooves. Often, lepers had great ulcerated burns or sores, and ragged bandages from old clothing made their pitiful appearance all the more grotesque.

Certainly, the servants of the Lord had pity for these disfigured outcasts , b ut they had little understanding of the disease and knew of no way they could help them physically, emotionally or socially. There was no cure for the disease.  T he medicine available barely alleviated the physical symptoms of the advanced sufferer.

The missionaries did have the answer to every leper's spiritual need, but they so seldom saw the crippled outcasts and even more seldom were the occasions of conversation with those hidden ones of Hua Diat and the market area of Rahaeng. The  Weccer s thought there were just a few, unfortunate victims of the disease in their neighborhood until the visit of Paul Arnold.

* * *

It was in September of 1950 that Paul Arnold, a Presbyterian missionary attached to the McKean Leprosarium in Chiengmai, came to make a survey of leprosy in Thailand.

The lower half of an island, five miles below the city of Chiengmai, in the Mae Ping River, had been given to the British Mission to Lepers. With support from abroad and gifts from Siamese royalty and nobility, a prosperous colony had flourished. A coconut plantation and village streets with every imaginable tropical flower made the colony a beauty spot. But it was the humane care and consideration given to outcasts and their welcome into the community that caused the fame of the colony to spread far to the North in  Yunnan Province of China.

Thai-speaking lepers came to the Chiengmai Asylum from  Yunnan Province in considerable numbers. They came on foot over high mountain trails walking for as many as twenty to twenty-eight days. But in Thailand, there were still provinces where lepers knew nothing about this place of asylum and the help provided for them.

Mr. Arnold came to assess the situation in Tak Province. Was leprosy as endemic here in the South as it was to the North? And he wanted news of the McKean Leprosarium to spread, and the care provided to be made available to the needy in the central and western provinces of Thailand.

The Overgaard home became the headquarters for this visitor throughout his stay in Tak Province. Each day, he and Wilf would set out with some representatives from the local office of the Department of Health to visit as many areas of Rahaeng or neighboring villages as they possibly could. Over and over, as Paul finished examining the healthy-looking unmarked people, he would declare that here was another infected with the incurable, crippling disease. Finally, he declared that never had he found a place with such a high incidence of the disease as was Tak Province!

Evy wrote in a letter to her friend, "After they had finished looking around here, Wilf accompanied him to our other station at Kampaengphet. And they found there even more with the disease in that Province. What they want to do is find some lepers who are willing to go to Chiengmai to the Leper Island and learn how to give injections." The idea was that they would then return to their own neighborhood to treat patients who were their neighbors and friends.

* * *

Paul Arnold's visit opened the eyes of the WEC team to a need all around them that they had not really understood to exist. They had thought there were just a few infected with leprosy in Tak, and those few were hidden away, outcasts and despised. Now, they realized that some of the people they had contact with every day were in the early stages of the disease. Evy wrote with a good bit of misgiving that "children who came regularly to play with Paul and Sharon at the Borneo compound were diagnosed with leprosy!" But there was cause for alarm even closer to home than that!

* * *

As Paul examined well-looking children and adults, the  Weccer s looked on. A blindfold was placed over the eyes of the subjects and a piece of soft cotton was gently rubbed along areas of their back, shoulders, neck, ears and face, then it was moved up and down arms and legs. If the subject could not identify where he was being touched, a more thorough examination was undertaken

"Anesthesia is one of the first symptoms," Paul explained. "That loss of sensation is what causes burns and sores and wounds to go untreated. A leper can step on a burning charcoal spark and not even know his foot is burning until he smells his burned flesh! He can cut and bruise his hands and because he feels no pain, he can go on using his hands till skin and flesh are damaged almost beyond saving!"

It was this anesthesia that was to blame for minor scrapes and cuts becoming the ulcerated sores that fester and eat away till gangrene and blood poisoning set in.

The blindfold and cotton test alerted Paul to areas of anesthesia, and led to the more thorough examination to determine if the one with those areas without sensation was indeed a leper.

Paul Arnold could not know that his words of explanation brought sudden alarm that settled as a blanket of dread for Ellen Gilman. Ellen had been noticing areas of anesthesia about the outside of her ankle bones. She had mentioned this to Rosemary and the two had wondered just what would cause the loss of sensation to those areas. They knew of no skin disease or vitamin deficiency that might cause such a symptom.

With the doctor's pronouncement, "Anesthesia is the first noticeable symptom of leprosy", Ellen and Rosemary had exchanged startled glances. Rosemary could smile with calm assurance, "No way could Ellen have leprosy!" But Ellen was not smiling! She thought of the children that played about the Borneo compound whom Paul said were infected with the disease. Had she treated them for red eye? Had she washed and anointed other sores and scratches for them?

Ellen thought of the many homes where she had sat on the floor, her feet carefully tucked under her, and visited sometimes for hours. She thought of the buses she had ridden  with women and children pressed close to either side of her. There were a hundred places and times when she could have come into contact with the disease. And now, with Paul Arnold's explanation, they understood that no one really knew just how the disease was passed! There had to be some physical contact. But no one was certain why ones who lived with lepers and were in constant contact with them could sometimes escape the disease while others who appeared to have little if any contact with a diseased person could become infected!

And now, they all understood that many, many who appeared perfectly well were infected and the disease was progressing right on course, undetected and unsuspected.

Rosemary writes that as Ellen revealed that she had an area of anesthesia, "Everyone looked at her in startled horror. Just to make sure, she went through the routine blindfold test, and beyond a doubt, she had the first symptom of leprosy."

* * *

No time was to be lost. A letter was quckly composed and sent off to Dr. Buker, who was in charge of the Leprosarium in Chiengmai. Ellen's situation was outlined for him and his advice asked.

Dr. Buker's immediate answer brought the invitation for Ellen to visit the Leprosarium as soon as possible for further tests. This was an invitation they were hoping for but its reception just deepened the horror of the situation. It was obvious that Paul Arnold and Dr. Buker feared the worst and urged all possible speed in diagnosing and treating the disease -- or was it speed in separating her from her co-workers, Ellen had to wonder.

It is perhaps impossible for today's missionaries in Thailand to realize the seriousness of the threat that faced Ellen and the others. As there was no satisfactory treatment for leprosy in those days, the diagnosis that Ellen had leprosy would be a sentence of death. A long, slow and very lonely progress of death.

The loneliness began even before the letter to Dr. Buker was answered. Immediately, Ellen began to be very careful that she had no physical contact with Rosemary. She didn't dare to ask Rosemary to button that hard-to-reach button at the back of her blouse. Nor did she volunteer to help Rosemary to get a splinter out of her finger.

Rosemary certainly bent over backwards to try to make Ellen feel that she was not worried about contacting the disease. She never wanted Ellen to feel like an outcast in her own home! But that very carefree attitude of Rosemary put Ellen under the strain of being careful for both of them.

Should she keep her dishes separate, to be washed in separate water? Should she be touching the dishes at all? Would her handling the dishes and cutlery contaminate them? What about her bedding? Could Rosemary's things be washed in the same water as the sheets she had been using for a week? Paul Arnold had told them that they were "reasonably certain" that the disease could be passed only by actual physical contact. But "reasonably certain" just wasn't good enough for Ellen! She had to make certain that she did not pass the disease on, now that she was so convinced that she was a leper!

There was another problem area that was almost more than Ellen could bear. The Overgaard children had  become very close and precious to her. For the six weeks Wilf and Evy were away in Bangkok at the time of Mark's birth, Ellen had had the responsibility and care of Sharon and Paul. And all the time that they lived in the same house, Ellen had been the one to come to Evy's rescue when she was tired or needed time for study. Taking the children off of Evy's hands had been a great delight for Ellen and for the two children.

Often in the evenings, while living in the Borneo House, Ellen had taken the children out for a walk down by the river bank. She told them the stories of the  Wind in The Willows and they had looked for the hole that was the entrance into the home of "Ratty". And that great house just out of sight beyond the woods, could be "Toad Hall"? They had their favorite spots where they could catch sight of fish in the shallows, or nesting birds in the tree branches that overhung the water.

Ellen was a Canadian. But her parents lived in the United States. If Ellen did indeed have leprosy, there was no way she would be able to get a visa to visit her parents! Would she even be allowed to enter her own home land? Would she have to spend the rest of her life at the leper colony in Chiengmai? Would she never be allowed to see her parents and sister and brother again? Would she never see her homeland again? Remember that Ellen was barely twenty seven years old at this time.

* * *

The date set for Ellen's trip North quickly arrived. But for Ellen, there was nothing quick about it. A lifetime of fearful speculation was crammed into a few days.

The night before she was to travel by bus/truck she spent at the Overgaard home. There was no such thing as a bus station in those days. Very early in the morning the

bus would begin circling around the market area, stopping at the houses of those who had let the owner of the bus know they wished to travel. As the house where Ellen and Rosemary lived was North of the area where the bus made its rounds to pick up passengers, Ellen had to spend that last night in the South House.

How miserably uncomfortable it was for everyone! Ellen had to feel an outcast. She didn't dare touch the children or their books or toys. She must have felt that to use a hand towel was to bring danger to her dearest friends. Evy and Ellen had become as close as sisters, but now they were separated by a barrier of fear and precaution that removed them from each other as if they walked in two different worlds.

It was almost a relief to hear the blaring of the bus's horn and finally climb on board and find a seat. In the dark of the morning, the Overgaards and Rosemary gathered in the doorway to call out their last words of encouragement, but a curtain of rain blurred Ellen's vision of them there, lit only by the glow of an oil lamp Wilf held aloft.

Rosemary lets us know that they all wondered if Ellen would be staying on in Chiengmai! Would she ever again be a part of their team and community?

* * *

For Ellen the nightmare continued. The rain fell in blinding sheets. Though the bus driver drove with one hand continually on the horn, it seemed impossible that any approaching vehicle would either see or hear them. The road was quickly flooded and the swirling waters hid potholes and low spots washed away by the rain. There was the continual danger that the bus would be washed away.

Flooded engines coughed and sputtered and finally stopped. wet passengers huddled in the spots that they felt were most dry. But really, the open sides of the truck/bus assured that no place inside was truly dry.

During the course of the trip the passengers had to change buses several times. Washed out bridges made it necessary for the bedraggled passengers to trudge through the rain, be ferried across swirling currents to board equally wet and uncomfortable buses on the other side. Just keeping track of her luggage was a nightmare for Ellen. The saving feature of the miserable trip was that it left little time for her to dwell on the probable outcome of the journey.

Ellen didn't look like a leper -- not yet! So her fellow travelers weren't afraid to sit next to her or extend a hand to help her over slippery bridges. For the first time in Thailand, she found herself refusing those helping hands and keeping a careful distance between herself and the women and children who would have crowded in around her. Ellen was tasting what it felt like to be an outcast!

Three days after Ellen left Rahaeng, the Overgaards and Rosemary received telegrams that lifted their hearts to praise. Ellen did not have leprosy! The results of further testing showed there was no possibility at all that she had that dreadful disease. Dr. Buker felt certain that the areas of anesthesia on Ellen's ankles were the result of many hours sitting on the floor in Thai homes. Ellen had literally ground her ankle bones into the bamboo matting, destroying nerve endings.

* * *

Why was it necessary for Ellen and the entire team to experience such a traumatic test?

* * *

As missionaries, we see so easily how God is dealing with us and answering our prayers. We don't always get to see how He is working at the other end of circumstances. We don't always know that our presence and message and work are God's answer to the needs and longings of others, perhaps long before they come to know Him.

At the McKean Leprosarium, there was a young girl who had been brought there years before. Because others of her family were badly disfigured, scarred and crippled, this little child had been rescued while only her nose cartilage eaten away indicated that she had the disease. Treatment by injections of Chalmulgra oil had stopped the further disfigurement and in fact, the disease was thought to be so under control that Gaeo Moon could soon go back to her home.

Gaeo Moon, now in her teens, found parting from McKean to be devastating. She had many friends there, friends her own age, friends equally disfigured. But most important of all, she had friends who were Christians. Gaeo Moon had arrived at McKean with spirit strings about he wrists and neck. She wore lucky charms and amulets. But the child's only understanding of her religion was the memory of horribly frightening funerals.  She remembered the chanting by drunken spirit doctors and shaven-headed priests that went on and on into the night.

Religion for the little girl who arrived, frightened and ill at the Leprosarium, was without comfort, hope or joy.

Gaeo Moon found McKean not only to be a place of great beauty and welcome, but she found the love of a Savior with forgiveness and help for daily living. Religion for the young woman who would leave McKean, was now a Person, a Person who had power to save her and keep her all her life long and on into eternity.

Before leaving the Leprosarium, Gaeo Moon was given the same training that Ellen was given. There was a short two-week course of training in diagnosing and treating the disease. There wasn't much choice in treating leprosy in those days. Sores had to be cleaned, of course. Gangrenous flesh had to be cut away and ointments for healing applied. The main treatment that went deeper than just those putrefying sores was the injection of Chalmulgra oil.

Both Ellen and Gaeo Moon were trained to give the needed injections. They practiced for hours injecting oil into pomeloes. The thick, tough skin of that fruit was found to be as difficult to pierce with the needle as was the tough, scarred skin of the leprosy patient.

Gaeo Moon had some training in how to share her faith. She could tell of her own salvation experience and give a good account of what the Lord had done for her. She could tell the Gospel story and recite many  verses , a nd she knew many, many Gospel choruses , songs and hymns.

Perhaps Gaeo Moon left McKean with an excited expectation of seeing salvation come to Mai Ngam (Beautiful Wood), just North of Hua Diet and the Borneo Compound. Perhaps there was excitement at the prospect of seeing her own family and being back in her own home.

But reality for Gaeo Moon was shocking, devastating and soul-destroying! Phi Gaeo was the only living close relative Gaeo Moon had left. This older sister lived alone in a ramshackle hut, dark, damp and steamy in the hot season and bitterly uncomfortable in the cold season. On her first night at home, swarms of mosquitoes attacked Gaeo Moon. Her blood was so much thicker than her sister's. The stench of decaying flesh nauseated her, for the constant care at the Leprosarium kept sores clean and dirty bandages were either washed or burned. Gaeo Moon found that she could hardly swallow the food Phi Gaeo expected her to prepare. Her sister showed no tender compassion or affection at being reunited with her and indeed showed only a bitterness that Gaeo Moon had been so long away from home and so had failed to work and care for her.

Gaeo Moon buried her face in her damp bath towel and cried herself to sleep that first night, and for many nights to come. It was days before the girl, so homesick for McKean, would have any appetite for food or any heart to enjoy anything about Mai Ngam.

* * *

Ellen could understand Gaeo Moon in a way that no one else could have. She could remember the devastation of loneliness at being thought to have leprosy. She could remember the horror of contemplating a future of disfigurement and a lonely death as an outcast.

Ellen also understood that the disease and complications associated with the Chalmulgra oil seemed to unloose emotions to the point that sorrow became hysterical weeping and wailing of grief that could not be contained. Fear became paralyzing horror that froze thought and reason and became senseless flight or insane immobility. Annoyance became hot, uncontrollable anger, a murderous rage, self-destroying to experience and ugly and disgusting to see in another.

Ellen could understand that Gaeo Moon's shock and disappointment in her home and sister would move her to days of uncontrollable weeping.  S he also  underst oo d that Phi Gaeo's jealousy of her sister and her frustration at her own plight caused her to rage and accuse, lash out with outrageous screams of abuse or to withdraw into days of cruel silence.

It took all the understanding and patience Ellen had to approach the situation in the little house in Mai Ngam. The overwhelming proportions of the complicated problems cast Ellen upon the Lord in a new way. Ellen had to have the patience, not of Job, but of the Lord. She needed the wisdom, not of Solomon, but of the Creator, to help those two sisters. Words had to be spoken into that stormy situation and they must be the words that had power to still the waves.

The Lord was the answer to that dreadful little home situation. But before Ellen could even call on the Lord, He had taken her on a journey that led her as close to the black decaying despair of leprosy as she could safely go, and then brought her back so she would understand, sympathize and know how and when to reach out to those two sisters.

* * *

Gaeo Moon eventually settled into life in Mai Ngam. Phi Gaeo began to depend upon her presence and help (though it's doubtful if she ever expressed appreciation or thankfulness!). Gaeo Moon made friends of her neighbors and relatives in the area. And everywhere, with every contact, she gave witness to her faith in the Lord who loved her and washed her from her sins.

Eventually, Gaeo Moon formed a team with Ellen and Rosemary. Often she went along on their planned trips, but even more often she was the one to lead. Gaeo Moon wanted the two missionaries to add their Gospel presentation to the witness she had been giving. So she would lead Ellen and Rosemary up the tiny, crooked path past her home to an equally tiny, hidden house of bamboo or rough wooden boards. Here would be a widow woman or elderly couple that she had been talking to about the Lord.

It would be impossible to write or tell the history of the Church in Tak without mentioning the name of Gaeo Moon over and over. She was the key the Lord used to unlock and open dark hearts and homes. Perhaps it would not be exaggerating to say that Ellen was the one who made it possible for Gaeo Moon to adjust and become content to stay in Mai Ngam.

* * *

We cannot see all of the reasons the Lord had Ellen pass through that dreadful experience of believing she was a leper , b ut we can see that her experience led to WEC being involved with the treatment of leprosy.

And there is one more part of the story that ought to be mentioned. In the woods behind Mai Ngam, there was a small clearing with three tiny huts. A man lived alone in each hut. Nai Bun, Nai Som and Nai Leao were each so crippled and scarred by leprosy that they had been put out of their community. Their disease was so feared that they were not welcome to even visit in their homes. They knew that they would never again hold a child on their lap. They would never sleep beside their wives. They were truly outcasts, driven from society.

Their families provided them with rice, and perhaps a bit of  Gup or  Nam Prick . And over the years the wives of Nai Bun and Nai Som and the mother of Nai Laeo would bring them a blanket or article of clothing, as they couldn't work to feed themselves or to earn money due to their hands being deformed. They had nothing to do all day but dwell on their own miserable state.

How often, over the years, those men have told how, in their misery, they called on God. That high power that they did not know, but were driven in their need to seek and petition. "If there is a God who can help us," they called, "Come to our aid."

In order to answer their cry, God led Ellen into the despair of their situation and brought her back to Rahaeng to start a leprosy program. Ellen was the first one of a long line of missionaries who would serve and love the leper men of Mai Ngam. It all began when she was forced to "sit where they sat." (Ezekiel 3:15)

* * *

There was an important result from the WEC missionaries coming into contact with Dr. Buker. The vocabulary of each missionary was permanently changed. "Never call anyone a leper," the doctor commanded. "There are men and women, boys and girls who have the disease of leprosy. You can speak of a leprous man, but don't ever call him a leper!"

## Chapter 13  
R & R

By the end of 1950, the WEC team was moving at full speed. Officially, they were no longer language students. Though each of them would continue to study and their Thai vocabularies would expand for as long as they lived in Thailand, they were now equipped to minister.

They were pioneers, and the going was hard, but each one was committed to the vision the Lord had given and were using their full strength and gifts to see that vision realized.

* * *

While Ellen was still in Chiengmai at the Leprosarium, Wilf spoke at the weekly evangelistic meeting at Ellen and Rosemary's house. He usually came for that meeting in the motorboat that he had purchased when Rosemary first arrived in Bangkok. When this particular meeting was over, he found that his boat was no longer moored where he had left it. The night was dark with heavy squalls of monsoon rain shutting every familiar landmark. Search as he might, he could neither find his boat nor the ferry man that was usually on duty.

Rosemary tells us that since he could not return to Hua Diat and the girls' house, he set out to walk the distance home. The roadway had become a river with a swift current continually sweeping toward the deep river. In many places, the black water swirling about him was chest deep. The rain and thunder and roar of the water were so loud, no one could possibly have heard, if Wilf had called for help. Rosemary thought he was secure in his boat and Evy waited at the other end for the sound of the motor and of Wilf's call.

It seems almost foolhardy that Wilf would venture out into such danger, but the team understood that they were on a lighted stage; their every action and word were examined. The message they had to give would have been robbed of its power if ever an accusation of immorality could be brought against them. There was no way Wilf could have returned to a house where Rosemary was staying alone. He never entertained that possibility for a moment. The Gospel was too  important to be forfeited for his own personal safety!

The fact that Wilf finally made it home, looking and feeling like a drowned rat, but certainly alive, is sure evidence of the Lord's hand of protection upon him.

* * *

It was in November of 1950 that Rosemary Hanna's mother arrived. Mrs. Hanna had served in Siam under the Presbyterian Mission for 36 years. Now widowed, and her children all grown and independent, Hazel Hanna wanted to join Rosemary and the WEC team. It wasn't just that she wanted to visit her daughter or her many friends still serving with the Presbyterian Mission, or even the desire to visit the land that had become as much "home" for her as the United States could ever be, but Hazel Hanna still had the heart of a pioneer missionary.

Rosemary's letters telling of her treks with Ellen across the river and into tiny, rice-farming communities and villages were as magnets drawing her mind, her imagination and her heart. This was a life she could feel was worth living. Mrs. Hanna did not come to Thailand as a visitor, but as a missionary.

No, Mrs. Hanna did not apply to the mission and take the candidate course as Dorothy Caswell had done. But she did visit the mission headquarters and came away with a sort of unofficial stamp of approval; she was called "Ma Hanna"! And she left behind her a WEC staff completely under the spell of her personality and testimony. For years the stories would be told of the woman who escaped capture as the Japanese army moved in to occupy Siam, that she had sat high upon a deck chair secured to a lurching, tossing ox cart that slowly advanced along the Burma road to freedom, would have a lasting impression.

This was no journey for a white woman, not even a white woman swaying high above a lurching ox cart and seated on a deck chair. If we could have seen her there, holding aloft a black umbrella for shade and for protection from the tropical sun and the spasmodic drenching downpours, doubtless our first reaction would have been laughter. But the truth is, this was a marvelous experience of seeing the Lord undertake in extreme hardship day after day for months!

Steep and dangerous mountain ranges had to be crossed. There was nothing that anyone could call a road for most of that part of the journey. The tracks through dense jungle had to be carefully examined and the right ones chosen. For there were tracks made by elephants on their way to watering places and tracks made by hidden tribesmen traveling on foot between villages. To keep heading in the right direction was no easy matter.

Claralice Wolf, Rosemary's twin sister, supplies us with the following about their mother:

The Siamese officials respected the American missionaries, and kept the Northern border open till the last one had crossed into Burma. Most of them went through Burma to India, riding elephants across the mountains. They reached the United States in a few months.

Ma Hanna and her husband, on the other hand, felt sure that Japan would be defeated in a short time, so they remained in Burma, working with Dr. Seagrave's nurses. Chiang Kai Chek and his army were there, too, having been driven out of China by Mao's forces. A few months later he left for Taiwan, leaving Burma with only a band of 90 British Commandos to defend her. As the Japanese grew closer, their task was to leave Burma by a route over the mountains called The Hump, blasting bridges and roads behind them to slow the advance of the Japanese. Hazel and Loren Hanna joined them. At first they had trucks and equipment, but soon the ruggedness of the terrain destroyed them, or fuel was impossible to obtain. Occasionally they could hire some hill tribesmen to carry Ma Hanna in a chair, but they soon preferred to return to their own hill homes. After months of hiking, they reached Kunming, thin and haggard. One commando had died, one had gone blind, and his companions had had to carry him.

Kunming was the city where the American forces in India were flying over the hump to deliver military material to the Chinese fighters. After a short rest, the Hannas were flown to India, then to Calcutta where they were put on board a military ship that zigzagged across the Atlantic and dropped them off in New York City. They had been out of touch with their children for months.

Mrs. Hanna would quietly tell women and girls, in the days when such things were not spoken of in mixed company, the greatest aid the Lord graciously sent to her was that He delivered her from having her monthly menstrual period for all those months of travel. How good is the God who leads us lovingly along!

It was not just the story of that dramatic escape that would impress WEC leadership, but the many accounts of a long life of faith that saw God work and provide and bless. It was a quiet spirit that shouted the message "God is enough", to the tiny new field in South East Asia, a helper who would bless them to pieces!

* * *

Though it was November of 1950 when Mrs. Hanna arrived in Bangkok, her sensible example began to make its impression long before her arrival. Ma Hanna sent out money to have a desk and bed made and to have a room fully screened; she wanted to be a worker and not a sick patient to be nursed. She would take every precaution to ward off malaria. And with a sensible work desk and chair, she could comfortably work on translation and teaching lessons. It was Ma Hanna who first alerted the WEC team to the value of a comfortable bed and a good night's sleep.

These simple provisions Mrs. Hanna asked Rosemary to have ready for her arrival seem so obviously necessary as to be not worth mentioning. But those first WEC missionaries to Thailand were so dedicated to the principles of sacrifice that they were not considering their health as a front line of attack from the enemy -- a line that needed to be protected, not just with prayer, but also with some sensible down-to-earth provisions. Now it is true that the team had been using screening since that first house in the "Field of Clouds", but it had never been considered a first priority.

Ma Hanna did not arrive preaching health and rest and sensible comfort. She arrived having made provision for those things. But her message was the Gospel, and her burden was for the Thai, who had never heard the Gospel. The message she did not articulate, but taught by her lifestyle, was, do all the necessary things for health and well being that you can. But keep the driving passion of your life, the evangelization of the lost. Had Ma Hanna talked comfortable living, her message would have been immediately rejected by  Weccer s who had committed themselves to a life of sacrifice.

The week before Ma Hanna was to arrive, Ellen and Rosemary set aside a day to rearrange their storeroom to accommodate her trunks. As they moved some of their things, they found them to be "alive with termites. They (the termites) had done such a thorough work that there was no possibility of salvaging anything." Rosemary writes, they "had to carry their trunks out to the river bank and burn, not only the contents, but even the trunks themselves." Rosemary tells us that they did not even dare to leave the bonfire, but had to stand there in the blazing hot sun "prodding the fire till every scrap of cloth, paper, and wood was consumed and every termite dead."

It became a regular part of the agenda of every household to check trunks and boxes in their storerooms for termites. They checked their bookshelves carefully for white ants, and anything of leather that they possessed was regularly wiped free of mildew and set in the sun to toast. The houses had to be built with wide-open spaces to catch every breeze that was blowing, but those same openings in the walls caught rain-filled wind. The wind blew the torrential rains in under the roofs and sometimes even up through the flooring! Floods, in the days before the Yan Hee Dam, was constructed, annually invaded the grounds and often even the houses of those who lived in Rahaeng. Just to keep ahead of the elements was a constant battle.

* * *

When Rosemary went down to Bangkok to meet her mother's boat, her planning was perfect; she arrived in the city the night before Mrs. Hanna's boat was due. What a surprise to get off the train and find her mother there waiting to welcome her! Mrs. Hanna's ship was a full day early so she got herself settled in the Presbyterian guest-house and was ready to surprise Rosemary.

While the two women were still in Bangkok, clearing Mrs. Hanna's things through customs and renewing old friendships, Wilf and Sharon arrived. Wilf always had mission business to take care of in the capital, but this was an unscheduled trip. Wilf and Evy had begun to realise that Sharon was unwell. Her symptoms were confusing, so a trip to a Western doctor was necessary. The doctor consulted was able to prescribe the medicine that would eventually work a complete cure, but along with diagnosis and treatment, the doctor gave grave warning concerning the necessity of knowing thoroughly the life and habits of servants who worked in their homes. Sharon's illness was contracted from their cook.

What a life! Disease invaded the homes of the early  Weccer s through their servants. Mildew sprouted on their shoes so carefully tucked under their beds. Mold grew on their  valuable books, and white ants ate what mold did not destroy. Termites attacked their trunks and boxes and even ate furniture. At night, cockroaches scurried looking for any food to eat. Ants and beetles, snakes and heat stalked them by day, and mosquitoes swarmed buzzing about their ears by night. Fancy! Mrs. Hanna actually wanted to return to all of this! A life of retirement, of comfort, of ease and entertainment could not hold her back! Obviously, Thailand had a lur that no outside could understand!

Ma Hanna settled into the "girls' house" quickly. No, she didn't go out on every trip Ellen and Rosemary took to evangelize the villages across the river and the isolated farm communities North of Rahaeng. But she was ready for their return with tea and something she had just taught the cook to bake, that would make each homecoming a delight. And she would have plenty of hot water ready for them to have a hot shower.

Servants used to bathing in the river could never quite appreciate the foreigners' need to take the chill off the water they would pour over themselves from the bathroom  ong . How often weary, sore missionaries would return to their home after particularly gruelling trips to find that the cook had just poured a kettle of hot water through the straining cloth into the large drinking water  ong in the kitchen! Well, that might not matter so much if one could quickly put a kettle on the charcoal fire to heat for baths. But often that was not possible, for the rice kettle had just been set on the fire pot to cook for the evening meal. The second fire pot, always burning away, would be in use to cook the  gup  (literally,  with \-- the food that goes "with" the rice). No servant would appreciate having her cooking set off of the fire to heat water for bathing! Her rice and its "with" were going to be ready at the same time. "Foreigner, stay out of my kitchen," was written on the face of every firm-minded cook at such a crucial time when the meal preparation was well on its way!

There was no fear that there would not be hot water for bathing once Ma Hanna was installed in the house. For one thing, she had the language that could explain just why that hot water was necessary to these strange foreigners to Thailand.

Another area of tremendous help was the variety of Thai curries and fried dishes Ma Hanna knew just how to make. She knew just what to tell the cook to buy in the fresh market. Then, if the girl had never made that dish before, it was of no matter at all. Ma Hanna could tell her exactly how to cook the dish. Meals became much more varied and exciting and of course, the recipes were shared with the other WEC households.

Ma Hanna did not go on the strenuous all-day journeys for she would say she knew her own strength. She knew her own limits and felt if God put her in a situation where her God-given strength was depleted, He would increase her ability to go on. But if she put herself in such a position, He might well let her suffer the natural consequences. This was an attitude so at variance with the prevailing WEC attitudes of "burning out for Jesus" that it caused the missionaries even years down the line to pause and look for assurance of the Lord's will before leaping into life-threatening situations.

While Rosemary and Ellen were out preaching and doing simple medical work, Wilf and Evy were busy too. Evy had started meetings for children and was visiting neighbors looking for opportunities to share the Gospel. Wilf spoke at a Friday night meeting at the girls' house each week and in their own area, a street chapel was opening in December, following Ma Hanna's arrival. Meetings there were well attended. Evy wrote, "The neighborhood gathers and sits quietly and attentively listens to the message. And they all seem to enjoy singing our Gospel songs and hymns." This was in marked contrast to the Friday night meetings at the girls' house. Rosemary wrote in a prayer letter at that time, "The people being quite unaccustomed to church, chatter between hymns, babies whoop and holler, mothers come to the door and call their children home, young men inside call to their passing friends to come on in, but some pay very good attention."

This was a time of sowing the seed. And the presence and message of the sowers was not always appreciated. The Overgaards' cook reported to them that "One morning as she was at the river having her bath, she heard a group of young fellows say that they did not want any more of the foreigners' singing or preaching. And that if we went to their area again, they would stone us." Evy took this as an encouraging sign!  " At least they have been roused to opposition and that is something. It is a better sign than indifference."

Ma Hanna had her own ministry beyond the back-up help she gave to Ellen and Rosemary. She formed friendship with neighbors and market people who had never been particularly responsive to the younger women. Her age, her life in Lampang and Chiengmai and her knowledge of life in Siam before the Second World War, formed a bond with many and gave her the opportunity to witness for the Lord.

* * *

The Christmas just after Ma Hanna's arrival, she and Rosemary went down to Kampaengphet to help Dorothy and Fern with a Christmas program they planned to carry out. The two from Rahaeng left on the 18 th for a seven hour trip. Rosemary wrote in a prayer letter that they traveled, "half-way by bus and half-way by boat. Dorothy and Fern had a party for the government school teachers with games and refreshments. My mother and I each spoke a few minutes, and then the guests stayed for a long time and chatted. The head-teacher became a Christian."

Rosemary went on to report that, "Two days later, we had a Christmas service in the little chapel. We hoped for about 50 to 70 people, but when we started, there was such a crowd that couldn't all get into the chapel. So we made them go out onto the street, and we stood on the porch. There was a solid sea of faces all the way to the river, and up and down the street. We sang hymns and Fern sang a solo, Dorothy played the saw, my mother played the organ, and I told the Christmas story, illustrating it with flannelgraph pictures. As many as could see the pictures paid good attention. But many were trapped in the chapel behind the pictures because the street was so packed they couldn't get off the porch.

"By seven the next morning, we were all on our way to Rahaeng." Rosemary tells us that that return trip (against the current) took them a full ten hours. Naturally, they were all dead tired when they finally arrived home.

"The next day was Sunday and we held a Christmas celebration in the new South chapel. Each of us spoke on a part of the Christmas story. There was a lot of singing. The following night (Christmas) was our celebration here." That would have been in Rosemary and Ellen's own home. Rosemary wrote that, "The Siamese children help, reciting and reading from the Bible. Both services were well attended and thoroughly enjoyed."

She goes on to tell of a communion service the missionaries held with Wilf officiating, and then of a dinner they all ate together. A turkey had been given to them by an Englishman, and they had had a special Christmas tree. "It was really just a palm branch decorated with red balls and cellophane, but it reached to the ceiling and added the festive note to our gathering."

* * *

That year of 1951 is the first time the Tak fair was mentioned in any of the letters or writings of those missionaries. Perhaps it was the first time the fair was held. In any case, the WEC family had a booth at that fair. Rosemary wrote, "There were people from all over Siam, and we had opportunity to make the Gospel known to several thousand during the course of five days."

Christmas, New Years and the fair coming as they did one right after the other, would have presented a picture of hectic activity. Ma Hanna was watching all of this and perhaps she was thinking that there would be a letup after the fair. "Surely there would be a slower pace and times of refreshment to rest and recoup strength," she must have speculated. But instead, she saw that the two households in Rahaeng and the household n Kampaeng were galvanized into activity.

Evy, in a letter to her friend, Sylvia, gives us a look: "Wilf and I with Fern and Ellen have been doing meetings as a team. On that boat trip, we also took the children, as we could care for them, and carry on their lessons (after some fashion) while we went along in the boat. Beside the seven of us, we had our cook, a girl of about eighteen, and the four men to pole the boat. We lived, cooked, ate, studied, slept and everything else in the space on that boat which was just enough for the eight of us to lay out our bed-rolls each night. We had great fun and the Lord undertook for us, though it was a bit hectic each evening when we stopped at villages for meetings. To get our baths and prepare supper, then eat, and get the children fed and ready for bed, get out our musical instruments and assemble the books we wanted to sell, besides lighting lamps and so on, was sometimes quite a hassle. We were out for almost two weeks. In some places there was at least curious interest and we sold a lot of literature."

The trip left Evy with the picture of crowds of adults who had never heard the Gospel stories before. And she asked her friend to, "Picture rows and rows of naked little boys and girls, or if the night was cold, wrapped in towels and blankets. Lots of them, both small and large, smoke cigarettes."

* * *

Beside the work and the primitive living and traveling conditions, Ma Hanna was seeing something else. Everyone of the foreigners had experienced severe illness during their first term. Before they could fully recover, they would be down with malaria or dysentery or some undiagnosed and unrecognizable fever. Every one of them had experienced dengue with its many days of fever and then its long tail of depression. The Overgaard family was subject to boils. And most of the missionaries had heat rash, infections and strange skin eruptions.

Ma Hanna told Sharon and Paul how they must be careful to keep their hands away from their mouths. Because they unconsciously scratched infected mosquito bites and healing sores, it was of utmost importance that their hands stayed away from their mouths. Well! That was fine, except that their mother was carefully teaching them to cover their mouths when they coughed or sneezed! How could they cover their mouths with their hands and at the same time keep their hands away from their mouths?

Ma Hanna began to talk of the need to consider the care of the temple, the physical body that the Lord had entrusted to each one of them. She started them thinking of the need of a short vacation. But how could they get away from the demands of their stations since they couldn't afford the travel and expense of the beaches far to the South or the cool hill resorts to the North?

Rosemary writes in her memoirs, "For a long time, we had been going through difficult times financially, buying only the very cheapest of native food." She explains that they often did not even  have money for postage stamps. "How could we possibly think of going away for a vacation?"

But they all saw the wisdom of Ma Hanna's urging, a nd began to feel that this very thing they could not possibly afford was the Lord's will for them.

One day, when Ellen and Rosemary were out on their usual evangelistic trip to the other side of the river, they heard of a place called Lan Sang. They were told that high on that hill (the speaker pointed with his expended lips at a nearby hill that seemed to lean right over him), there was a cluster of beautiful waterfalls.

Yes, they were told, they should be able to reach the site on their bikes, for the falls were close to the road. They knew that a road was to be built all the way to Maesod. At that time, the Maesod road was still far in the future. But there, on the Rahaeng side of the mountains, there were still the remains of an old road the Japanese used prisoners of war to construct during their occupation of the country. That road was washed out in places. Up in the mountains, there were spots where landslides had covered the roadway and there were other spots so overgrown by tropical jungle that it was impossible to guess just where the roadbed lay. But from the river up to Lan Sang, the road was still usable.

One Saturday, shortly after hearing about the waterfalls, Rosemary stayed with the Overgaard children, and Wilf, Evy and Ellen set out on their bikes to explore the possibility of vacationing at the Lan Sang falls.

Leaving their bicycles at the village of Lan Sang, the party climbed a steep trail that wound up into the hills and finally to the breathtaking sight of a high waterfall. Wilf went  exploring farther up the stream, but Evy and Ellen sat down to soak their feet in the cool water.

Rosemary records for us Ellen's remarks to her upon their return home. "We almost wept for joy to see such beautiful scenery and to feel the fresh, cool air."

Asking questions in the village of Lan Sang, they found that a man there would agree to construct three bamboo shelters for them. There was plenty of bamboo right at the site and, after all, that was just the sort of structure he replaced every few years so he could live out in the middle of his rice field and protect the new rice from grazing wild animals. The fee he would ask was minimal. So plans began and a date was agreed upon.

Ma Hanna would not join this trip. The climb was probably more than she felt she ought to undertake. And then, she had so many friends in Chiengmai, she could easily plan a visit to see them later on,  which would be restful and refreshing.

Rosemary felt that as she was not as worn-out as the others who had been on the field longer, she would plan to join them for just their last two weeks at the falls.

Dorothy also chose not to join the team at Lan Sang. She had invitations from friends with the Presbyterian Mission to join them at a mountain resort in the North. So she left Fern to join the group that set out from Rahaeng.

Rosemary describes the scene at the falls for us. "The Overgaards' little house stood beside a large pool, into which the water fell from a series of falls between two rock cliffs. The dining room consisted of a bower of bamboo with a long table and two benches, all of bamboo. Just out of sight, above the first fall, was another house for Fern, Ellen and me. It was reached by a steep ascent through a narrow crevice between two cliffs, and was built on poles over the stream, close to another high series of falls. It was so beautiful and wonderful, I felt for the first days as if it were all a dream."

Listen to a letter Evy wrote while at the falls. "This is our fourth hot season in Siam, and is it ever hot. We felt it a must to get away for awhile. This place is delightful beyond all our expectations. It's quite hot in the middle of the day, true, but there is beautiful scenery, solitude, and water to cool you off, either by swimming, or by sitting on a rock in a shady spot and letting your feet dangle in the stream. The stream comes tumbling down through a canyon of solid rock. There are several falls. It is magnificent! God was good to lead us here."

Supplies were carried in by ox cart and carriers. They did need to take a lot of things with them; charcoal and charcoal fire pots, cooking pots and pans, dishes, bed rolls and mosquito nets, oil lamps and medical supplies, any kind of games or books that would entertain them and the children, and then there was the food to  be cooked. Evy wrote, "The closest village is about an hour and a half away on foot. And about all you can buy there are coconuts and bananas! A couple of times someone from there has made the climb here to sell us bananas and eggs. We brought eggplant, onions, pumpkins and cucumbers with us from Rahaeng, so we have done well on vegetables."

Of course, each one had packed a suitcase of clothing but Rosemary relates that, "I had forgotten the key to my suitcase and so was limited to the few garments I had contributed for packing around the jars of food. My Thai books, vocabulary lists, etc. were in the suitcase. The others laughed with glee and hoped i would not get the key for a while."

Rosemary continues for us, "We all helped to dam up the stream, making the pool deep enough for a good swim, and about twenty feet in diameter. A huge vine hanging from a tree at the top of the cliff nearly reached the water, making a gigantic swing by which we could glide from one end of the pool and land on the rock at the other end."

It was a primitive sort of vacation and would not be everyone's idea of the perfect getaway, but it was just exactly what that group needed.

Rosemary makes one more remark about that vacation. "Near the end of April, Wilf had to leave for Bangkok to meet another new missionary, Bill Charters, from Northern Ireland. Bill joined us for the last few days at Lan Sang."

## Chapter 14  
Romance

Not long after vacation, the dreadful heat was broken as the rains began to fall. Bill Charters watched the rains set in and they did not stop. Rain poured down as a rush of silver bullets flattening fields and flooding roads for an hour at a time, then it came as a steady drumming on the roof for days on end. Part of his military duty Bill had spent in India, and monsoon rain was an old acquaintance.

With the coming of Bill to the Thai field, a pattern was begun; full-time language students would live with the field leader and his family or they would be placed in the household of other senior workers. This would mean that the language student was protected from the interruptions that the running of a household brings. This arrangement also meant that the new arrival would spend meal time, coffee break or afternoon tea time and the evenings with the senior workers. The sort of conversation at such times would thoroughly acquaint the language student with the work going on. He would be in on decisions in the making. He would meet problems and know individuals. He could understand what had gone on before his arrival on the field and feel a part of the ongoing work. Unofficially, he had a voice in policy making!

There was no time set aside to teach new arrivals on the field about the Thai culture and the adjustments they must make if they were to fit in. But such a course was not needed. New missionaries learned from the conversation at meals and in the sitting-room.

Perhaps it should be noted that until Bill's arrival, those who came to Thailand after the original party were those who already spoke the Thai language. Though both Rosemary and Dorothy needed to have the opportunity for refresher courses in the language, they were already able to converse and minister to some degree.  T he importance of adjustment to Thai culture was already understood and experienced by each of them.

Before Bill's arrival in Thailand, the Overgaards had their house prepared for him. Evy wrote to her friend some months before Bill's arrival, "We don't know just how we will provide space for anyone else, unless some major changes are made. The property has changed hands and the new landlord is willing to make changes, but we are afraid that he will want to raise the rent unreasonably high. So we are trusting the Lord to work it out."

Obviously, the Lord did work it all out, for many missionaries started their field experience as language students in that house. A full five years after Bill's arrival in Rahaeng, the rent was still ten dollars a month (200 Baht)!

But the South House was not the most convenient or comfortable house. Evy continued in her letter, "Lately, when it rains all the time, we have to remind ourselves that this house is just a bit of crusading we have the privilege of doing. You see, the house is in three separate parts, so that if you want to go to the kitchen or to the dining-room, or the bathroom, and it is raining, you have no choice but to go out in the rain. When it is raining hard, you get quite wet -- to say nothing of how the dirt and water get tracked all over the house. Markie just wanders right out into the rain and someone needs to keep an eye, or better yet, a hold on him at all times! It would be luxurious to have a house all under one roof."

Bill, fresh from WEC headquarters in London, would have been prepared for crusading and sacrifice. He was doubtless thankful for the preparations made for him and ready to take advantage of the study time given him. He spent "six hours a day with the teacher, a young man who had just come out of the priesthood," Rosemary writes.

If the climate of Thailand and the living standard of his fellow-workers came as no surprise to Bill, there was still an area where he must have been surprised. Leaving home with all his connections to family and friends, church and school, Bill had put an area of life onto the altar. He was willing to remain single and was moving ahead into that life. If from his own background and social setting, his own Bible school and church and doctrinal fold he had not become attracted to any young woman, it hardly seemed likely that on the other side of the world with a tiny group of people from totally different backgrounds, he would find a life partner.

Bill could not help but notice Rosemary. The young Rosemary Hanna was not pretty. No, she was absolutely beautiful! She stood out in any setting. The Thai delighted to call her  K rueng Chat , the half-cast, not just because she could speak Northern Thai and could always act as a carefully reared Thai girl would act, but because they approved of her black hair, healthy fair complexion and her beautiful dark brown eyes. They felt that she was too beautiful not to have some Thai blood in her!

Just imagine the young Bill Charters coming halfway around the world by steamer. Then, traveling up-country on one of those bus/truck affairs to be  dumped off in a town that looked like back-of-beyond. And that wasn't all; he and Wilf would have crossed the river in a boat poled by a half-naked Thai, then been trucked to Lan Sang, where they shouldered their backpacks and climbed straight up into wilderness mountains, and there at journey's end, was Rosemary!! It didn't take Bill long to fall in love.

* * *

Not many months after the vacation at the waterfalls, Ellen's sister and brother-in-law, Dave and Betty Woodward, came to visit. They had been serving on the Tibetan border, but with the Communist takeover in China, had been forced to leave. In Hong Kong, they made the decision to backtrack and visit Ellen. Betty was, at that time, still a Canadian, and couldn't get a visa to enter the USA because she had just come out of Red China. The family with two small children did not have money to stay on in Hong Kong if the visa continued to be delayed. A visit to Thailand and Ellen was the Lord's plan and love gift to the sisters. And the Woodwards' visit proved to be important for the Thai field then and for many years to come, as Dave was instrumental in helping form field policy.

Until 1951, the WEC missionaries in Thailand had never had an official field conference. They did not need to! For the first years, they all lived in the same house and all had equal voice in decisions made and all knew every part of the work and outreach. With the opening of the station in Kampaeng and then a second house in Rahaeng, that situation changed only slightly. Letters and visits kept all informed and every one of them felt free to express advice or even disapproval of the work carried out by the others.

But Dave brought another perspective to the thinking in Rahaeng. He was the catalyst that brought Wilf to call for the first Thailand field conference, with the Woodwards as guests and in at least one area, advisors.

Evy wrote that it was a time of real blessing with reports of the work and needs from each station and a time of intercession following each report. Dave and Wilf led in devotional meetings and without previously conferring, they each stressed present obedience.

The business and decision that would change field policy had to do with finance. Dave and Betty, coming from the outside, saw something that the Thailand  Weccer s were overlooking. The Woodwards realized that the Overgaard family was at a great financial disadvantage. Only adult missionaries were drawing a food allowance from the general fund. This meant the Overgaards were trying to feed a family of five on the share of two adults. (Actually, there was only a short period of time when the Overgaard family lived alone. For the first two and a half years, there were two other adults living with them and sharing in the kitchen pool. With Bill's arrival, there was again another adult in the household.)

Certainly, all of the Overgaard's  coworkers would have been more than ready for the children to be given a fair allowance, but it took an outsider and a man of Dave's stature to force the issue. And Dave, doubtless, had a real fight on his hands to convince the Overgaards that they should be drawing some portion of an adult food allowance for each of their children. It was the vote of that first Thailand field conference that established the scale of food allowance that the general fund would pay for missionaries' children.

* * *

There was an area where the visit of Dave and Betty was of great help to Bill Charters. Rosemary lets us in on their very private lives. She is the one to let us know that Dave became Rosemary and Bill's private mail carrier and that he was Bill's confidant and advisor. What a shame that we don't have some of those notes and letters to examine as we study 1951!

At the end of the field conference, Bill and Rosemary became engaged.

We ought to stop and look at the engagement of Bill Charters to Rosemary Hanna. Bill, from Ireland, had left school at fourteen. Then, after his conversion and military duty, he attended Emanuel Bible School in Birkenhead, near Liverpool. This school, where the famous Stanley Banks taught, was a school that many WEC candidates came through before the Missionary Training College in Glasgow was opened.

Rosemary had been sent as a child to a private school in India. Then, after graduating from a high school in the USA, she went on to study at Wheaton, one of the most prestigious private colleges in the United States. Graduating from Wheaton with honors, she went on to study at Princeton Seminary.

One can almost hear Rosemary's relatives lamenting that Rosemary, so educated, so polished and so beautiful, was throwing herself away on a "nobody"! Was this one of those famous missionary mismatches? Was this a case of propinquity? Was it just that there was no one else for Rosemary to marry?

But...Rosemary's mother, Ma Hanna, was on hand, and she realized as did the rest of the field, that Bill was not a "diamond in the rough". No, he was a diamond, cut and polished. Though he hadn't the formal schooling of Rosemary, he had been a keen mind and was a reader. He would continue to learn as he continued to read everything he could put his hands on. Bill's good manners were based on consideration for others. He was a gentleman.

* * *

The announcement of Bill and Rosemary's engagement necessitated change. Since the mission policy was that engaged couple should not be living in the same town, Rosemary was sent to kampaeng to work with Fern, and Dorothy moved into the house at Wat Doi with Ellen and Ma Hanna.

Wilf accompanied Rosemary on the boat that took her and her trunks to Kampaengphet. Rosemary writes that, as the boat neared the river bank, waiting children set up a shout announcing its arrival. More and more neighbors gathered to welcome the new foreigner as the boat was being moored to a sturdy tree. Of course, they had met Rosemary at Christmas time when she visited with Mrs. Hanna, and Wilf was, by this time, a familiar face and voice.

Some of those welcoming neighbors helped Wilf to carry Rosemary's heavy trunks upstairs. The next morning the same helpful ones moved Dorothy's things to be loaded on the returning boat. There must have been many in the crowd that saw Dorothy and Wilf off that day, who owed their lives and health to the nurse who was now moving away from them.

For several months, Rosemary and Fern worked together, continuing the evangelistic work that Fern had been doing on her own. Dorothy's thriving dispensary had to close, as neither Fern nor Rosemary was qualified to carry on that work. The dispensary building was then used twice a week for meetings. Rosemary says these meetings were sometimes crowded and interest was very good.

It was February of 1952 that Rosemary's mother joined her in Kampaeng and Fern moved to Rahaeng. Towards the end of that month, another exchange took place as Rosemary and her mother went to Rahaeng to make the last arrangements for the wedding, and just for a few weeks, Bill manned the Kampaeng station alone.

* * *

There is an acceleration of  cultural adjustments when a first term missionary becomes engaged on the field. Many  Weccer s, over the years, would be in such a culture shock that they would not be able to accept gracefully the Thai standards for their courtships. Some would see imposed restrictions as the unfair demands of senior workers. Others would judge the Thai customs to be just foolish and heathen. Strained at the leash of Thai customs they marred their own testimony before the watching Thai, marred their own memories of their courtship, and as straining at the leash is never comfortable, they vexed and provoked themselves.

Bill and Rosemary accepted the Thai rules for courtship with grace and humor. Let Rosemary tell us what their experience was like. "Among the conservative high classes, young people were never allowed to be alone together, but were closely chaperoned. Obviously WEC could not have a lower standard that would cause us to appear promiscuous. So, whenever Bill and I met, even after months of separation, we greeted each other with a brief handshake, and sat down on our properly spaced chairs for a friendly chat in full view of the spectators standing down the street and looking up through the railing."

* * *

In February, the Overgaards, Ellen and Fern set off for a trek over the mountains to the Maesod area. Fern kept a careful diary of that trip, so we can enter into something of the adventure and excitement of that time. Fern writes:

Tuesday, February 19, 1952: We had prayer, Ma Hanna took our picture and then we started off at 4  o'clock in the afternoon. With canteens slung over our shoulders, kerchiefs on our heads and dressed in our oldest clothes, we walked down the street to a place where a pole boat waited to take us across  the river. On the other side we waited for a logging truck to be greased and oiled for the next leg of our trip into the forest. Eventually, Ellen and I climbed up onto No. 8 and Wilf and Evy onto No. 9. Then started a roller-coaster ride up and down mountains. In places there were steep drops at the edge of the narrow road, but we learned to keep our eyes on the beauty of the forest with its flowering trees of pink and lavender. We rode for a good hour before we finally came upon our pack ponies and the spot chosen for our camp that night. It was getting dusk and the dampness of the forest was already creeping in upon us so the burning campfire the pony driver had started was a welcome sight.

That fire looked even more welcome after a cold bath in the stream close by! Old bamboo shacks that road workers had used gave us a sense of comfort and protection as we had strung up our mosquito nets inside them. So after a hot supper, we wearily climbed inside our nets. But in spite of the fact that the pony drivers kept the fire burning all night to keep us warm, we didn't sleep well. We heard trucks passing all night as they shifted gears just at the incline where we were camped!

February 20 started at daybreak with the moving about of the pony drivers, so we got up, washed dressed, ate our breakfast and were off by 7:30. Most of that day, we followed the old highway to Burma that was built by prisoners of war. In spots, torrential rains had washed out all signs of the road. In other places, there were piles of rock and trees and we guessed that the roadbed lay beneath. The bells of our ponies tinkled a merry tune as they led the way. The sound of that tune was lost, time and again at a curve in the road or shoulder of the mountain. We were only too glad to hear it again after a lapse of time. It reassured us that our trip's necessities were still with us. Just before stopping for the night, our path led down and down into a ravine far below. Beside the path for horses and oxen, I found the stair-steps made by elephant  footprints . This staircase was less tiring for my weary feet.

The next day, Fern records:

As we walked, overhanging vines and stately tall trees surrounded us on all sides. There was much deep shade, coolness and lovely springs. We heard chattering parrots, and gibbons call from one end of the ravine to the other. Everything about us was beautiful, but our own bodies became more and more sore and tired. Finally, we were barely able to lift one foot after the other. And to sit down became a slow calculation. We didn't stop to rest at noon. We didn't dare. We knew if we stopped we would never get started again.

Thursday, February 21: Thankfully, we came to some flat land!...

It was that night that the travelers arrived at Maw Dta's village. Wilf had met the Christian headman on a trip the year before and brought his present troupe to meet and fellowship with this isolated testimony hidden so far from civilization. Fern says that after baths and a hot meal, they had a meeting in Maw Dta's house.

...Wilf gave a message in Siamese and Maw Dta translated it into Karen. It was a thrill to sing with them songs as  There is Power in the Blood and  At the Cross . They sang in Karen and we sang in Siamese. But we were so tired from our traveling we were glad when the meeting ended at 9:00 and we could plop into bed.

Thursday, February 22: We woke up heavy as logs! ...

How did they keep on going? Part of the answer is that Wilf had a gift for persuading you that you could do what you were absolutely certain that you could not! Part of the answer was the anticipation that that very night, they would hold a meeting in Maeramad. They had heard of the second largest town on the West side of the mountains and knew that they were the first Siamese speaking group who had ever come this far with the Gospel message. That evening Fern says, "Ellen and I maneuvered our decrepit frames down the village streets and advertised the evening meetings." She goes on to report that "about 300 people came."

Saturday they stayed on in Maeramad, and Fern reports that a Karen lady came to them bringing a gift of sweet potatoes and greens. Fern understood that the woman professed to be a Christian, but her Thai was so strange, Fern wasn't sure if the woman was a believer herself or just knew believers?

That night they had a second meeting that was even better attended than the one the night before. Ellen and Evy gave flannelgraph lessons. Fern led the singing with her concertina. There, as with every place where Thai was spoken, they sold literature. At 9 PM, they climbed into the ox-cart to travel through the cool of the night to their next destination.

They stopped at every sizable town along the border area. In several places they held meetings with more than 500 in attendance. In Maesod itself, they had over 1000 who gathered for meetings in the local cinema.

Fern writes about that trip, "Blisters? Yes, I had them And I limped along with swollen knees. I couldn't bend them or feel really comfortable for a long time after that trip! But the lights of lanterns and flashlights of people crossing the rice fields to attend meetings made it all worthwhile."

* * *

While the team was away on the Burma border, Rosemary stayed with the Overgaard children and taught Sharon and Paul, who were then in the third and second grades. Mrs. Hanna was busy at Hua Diat making Rosemary two wedding dresses, a long one for the real wedding, and a short one for the civil ceremony at the British Embassy in Bangkok.

"The houses had to be made ready for the six wedding guests who would come from a distance," Rosemary writes:

Chairs were sanded and painted, curtains made, tables varnished, etc. When the weary travelers returned from their trek, they too plunged into the work of preparation.

The day before the wedding, all our old friends arrived: the Seigles and the Voths from Bangkok, Dr. and Mrs. Ed McDaniel from Chiengmai; never before had Rahaeng seen so many white people. It was a wonderful treat for us.

The wedding took place on the evening of March 25 th , at the Overgaard home. The end of March is usually unbearably hot, but an unseasonable rain the day before the wedding had made the atmosphere pleasant. Fern and Mrs. Voth made a wedding cake, Charlotte McDaniel and Mrs. Seigle made the corsage and bouquets, and Mr. Seigle the punch.

Ellen was the maid of honor and Sharon sprinkled flower petals from a silver bowl. Wilf was best man, and Evy, the hostess. Mr. Seigle and Mr. Voth performed the ceremony. Ed McDaniel took pictures. There were about fifteen Thai guests. I was rather in a trance and unconscious of many of the details, but I do recall how handsome Bill looked in his white suit, with his deep blue eyes and dark wavy hair.

All our guests brought gifts. Gaeo Moon brought four glass tumblers. Others brought silver bowls, lamps, cooking pots, etc. Bill's teacher brought a talking myna bird and a parrot. The parrot had no cage, so the teacher handed the bird to Mother. She was receiving guests so was obliged to have the parrot perched on her finger while she welcomed the rest of the guests.

Early the next morning, we started on our journey to Bangkok by bus. The older couples, Seigles and Voths, sat in the front seats, the McDaniels and Bill and I sat in the back part. The floor was loaded with lumber nearly to the level of the seat... (Remember, the back seats did not face forward but were just two long boards running the length of the truck body) ... Thus we bumped and jolted along. We ate a Chinese dinner on the balcony of the restaurant at Sukhotai, and after stops and waits here and there to mend tires and fix the engine, etc. we reached Phitsanuloke in the evening. Here the McDaniels took a North-bound train and the rest of us went to Bangkok the next morning.

After the civil ceremony at the embassy, Bill and I stayed in Bangkok for several days as guests of the Voths, enjoying the refinements and luxuries of civilization. On our return to Rahaeng, we joined the rest at Lan Sang where they had gone again for vacation, at the same site as the year before."

* * *

Certainly, some clever  Weccer on the field today will look at this account and say, "Wait a minute! Bill and Rosemary met at Lan Sang waterfalls at the 1951 field vacation. By the 1952 field vacation at the waterfalls, they were married and home from their honeymoon!" There was nothing slow or indecisive about those early  Weccer s! And yes, the mission did have the rule that engaged couples were not to be married until the second one to arrive on the field had been there for two years. It is understandable that the Thailand field was considered a rebel field for many years, but there was a reason for letting the Charters get married early. Conference had decided that Fern and Ellen would go on furlough in the autumn of 1952, and the Overgaards would go a year later. By marrying early in 1952, the Charters would be established as a family and equipped to man one of the stations before Fern and Ellen left the field.

* * *

In April of 1952, about the time of the second field vacation at the waterfalls, Alma Lyons arrived on the field. Alma was an American from New York state. Though her experience growing up included Sunday School and church, she did not come to know the Lord till she was in her twenties. Alma then attended a very tiny Bible School where teaching was doubtless excellent, but the school existed mainly because of the outstanding gifts of just one woman teacher. There was only a handful of students in Alma's class and with the aging and death of her teacher, the school came to an end. There were hundreds of such tiny Bible schools in America in those days, and many, like Alma's school, wonderfully trained their students in the knowledge and use of the Word of God. Though Alma had walked with the Lord for only seven years when she arrived in Thailand, she was thoroughly equipped to serve Him and prepared to walk in obedience through all of the adjustments that faced her.

Though Alma is still in contact with the Overgaards, she and her husband, Hans Sierhuis, have chosen not to contribute to this history, so there will be many gaps in their stories.

No account has been given of just exactly when Alma arrived or of who went to meet her in Bangkok. Nor is it recorded where she lived and started her language study. Presumably, Alma started Thai study in Rahaeng in the Overgaards' home.

* * *

It was in that dry season of 1952 that Wilf and Evy and others began regular visits to Sukhothai. That city, which appeared such an unattractive slum to the  Weccer s upon their first journey to Rahaeng, was now becoming a target of interest and prayer and activity. At first, meetings were held in rented  hong taew  storefronts . There must have been some interest that encouraged the team to go ahead, for a house was rented and prepared for Dorothy Caswell and a companion. The suggestion is given that Ellen w ent as her first companion, but we do know that  she was on the verge of furlough; her time in Sukhothai could hardly have been more than a matter of a few weeks.

Fern and Ellen planned to travel together as they started home for furlough. Their sailing date from Bangkok was set for the 19 th of September. But Fern's booking had to be canceled as she did not have the funds to pay her passage. It was not until the beginning of October that five hundred dollars arrived for her. She was then able to fly to Yokohama and join Ellen's freighter there. Why would the Lord engineer such a delay? Evy gives us the answer to that question. As Fern had that extra time in Thailand, she was able to teach the Overgaard children. Thus Evy was able to go with Wilf to Sukhothai, where the new WEC station was established.

In October, just after Fern had left the field on her flight to Japan, Wilf went down to Bangkok to welcome two new arrivals: Marta Person from Sweden with WEC, and Elly Hansen from Denmark with the Danish Covenant Mission.

In China, the Danish Covenant Mission had operated under the umbrella of the China Inland Mission. During those last months that China was open to mission work, Elly took the necessary candidate course of the CIM in England. But by the time she was finished and ready to sail for China under the CIM and the Danish Mission, China had closed. The leaders of the Danish Mission looked for other fields in Southeast Asia and finally settled on Thailand. Though the CIM, now under the name of the Overseas Missionary Fellowship (OMF), was getting started in Thailand, they were not initiating a policy of sponsoring associate workers.

The leaders of the Danish Mission carried out extensive correspondence with WEC leaders in Britain and then with Wilf on the  field, and it was finally decided that WEC would sponsor and work with the Danish Mission in Thailand. Elly was free to join the fellowship and the work in our three provinces.

Marta Person, from Sweden came not as an associate but as a  Weccer . Back in 1947, Marta sailed for China with a Swedish mission to act as teacher for the children of their Swedish missionaries. The group she served with was located far inland in Southwest China. With the sweeping victories of Mao's army and the fall of the government, the group of Swedish families fled China through Burma and India, settling for a time in Ceylon. There, Marta was able to finish the semester's teaching she had begun back in China.

Marta's family at home were, by this time, more than anxious about her and the unclear situation in Asia, and were urging her to come home. So, in 1950 she boarded a ship on its way from Australia to London. On board the ship was a young Australian on his way to the mission field. He was headed for West Africa, but would be stopping for a time at his Mission's headquarters in London. He was a candidate with the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade.

This young missionary candidate on his way to the field for the first time, and the Swedish girl on her way home from the Communist takeover in China, became friends. That friendship quickly grew, and before the voyage was over, the two had become to an "understanding". This may be a term that is no longer used in mission circles. It means they were agreeing to marry if the Lord continued to lead and open doors that would bring them together.

Marta applied to the Mission, and in 1951, entered the candidate course in London HQ. At the best of times, a WEC candidate course is difficult; for Marta it became a traumatic ordeal. Through correspondence, she and her friend, then in Africa, broke off their engagement. Something of Marta's spiritual maturity can be seen in the fact that the Lord was able to bring her into a commitment to the Mission and a willingness to serve with WEC wherever the Lord would lead. A letter from the Thai field stressing the need for workers was the instrument the Lord used to speak to Marta and guide her direction towards Thailand.

Marta boarded the ship for Thailand in Rotterdam. Just days later, Elly boarded the same ship in Hamburg. The voyage took more than five weeks, for the freighters stopped many times along the route to unload and take on new cargo. Elly and Marta had all the time in the world to get acquainted. Though Marta and Elly were exact opposites in temperament and personality, they could have real fellowship in the Lord and fuel each other's faith as their ship drew near to Bangkok.

* * *

Marta says that as their ship came in to dock, "There stood Wilf at the landing, in front of the East Asiatic offices not far from the Oriental Hotel. He stood, waiting there to greet us and welcome us to Thailand. As he shook my hand, he said, 'We have met before, haven't we?'" And of course they had. They had met five years before on the  General Meigs troop transport ship.

Ellen has already told us that Wilf was helpful to this party of travelers. Marta now adds this information: "The women and children were waiting on the docks in Hong Kong for all the luggage and heavy baggage to be off-loaded. It was hot, and we were all exhausted. Wilf led us to a place he had found close by where we could sit under a roof and eat ice cream!" Marta adds with a laugh, "How typical of Wilf!"

* * *

Marta and Elly then experienced what the other arrival before them had endured: the heat, the dirt, the mosquitoes and the confusion of Bangkok, the up-country by train, then truck. Marta tells us that they stopped in Sukhothai for a short visit with Dorothy Caswell, "who was living alone there at the time." Marta suggests that Ellen had been Dorothy's companion there, but was just then on her way home.

* * *

That year began with wedding preparations and a honeymoon. It began with the adventure of an historic trek across the mountains to Maesod. The year ended with the opening of a new station in Sukhothai, the start of furloughs for Ellen and Fern and with new arrivals to the field.

To examine each missionary and the way God led them to Thailand is to understand how personal and private is God's dealings with each one. No two followed exactly the same path to Thailand. No two experienced exactly the same impressions and feelings as they adjusted to their adopted land. But all, in their deepest, personal longings, found the Lord, who never left them, to be all they needed. And each one could give voice to truths, "I, being in the way, the Lord led me." And, "As for God, His way is perfect."

# **Part Two**  
 _Yours Crusading_

## Chapter 15  
Broken To Grow

Fellowship has been pictured as a group seated on the ground in a circle. Facing inward they are holding hands as they chat and laugh together. Along comes a new person seeking to join the party. Of course any point they approach the group is from the outside and because each member of the circle is facing inward,  everyone outside the group is not only outside but also is greeted only by backs.

The newcomer taps one of the group on the shoulder and seeks to join the ring. In order for anyone else to sit in the circle the group must drop hands they must break their circle and all move back a bit to make room for the newcomer.

That is all quite obvious, isn't it?

But in real life we are not seated in a circle, so it is not nearly so obvious that to let new people join our fellowship we must break our ring of tight-knit friends. We have to break off our own enjoyable, comfortable private conversations to include the newcomer.

The first term of WEC in Thailand, the ring of fellowship had to break and open up five times for newcomers to be included. It took decision and effort each time to make the new missionary feel welcomed and truly a part of the family.

Now once again, in 1952 the circle had to be broken, enlarged and radically changed. That closed ring had to break apart to welcome new arrivals. Households had to break up and co-workers separate and join with new partners.

With the departure of Fern Berg and Ellen Gillman for their first furloughs and the arrival of Elly Hansen and Marta Person for their first terms, there began a moving and widening of the circle of fellowship that would  affect every station.

Perhaps the station least  affected by these changes was the one that was undergoing the deepest and most lasting changes of all. A boy from Ireland married an American girl, and in Kampaeng began to form a new partnership and family.

Rosemary writes in her memoirs that they took "Wealth" with them. "The previous cook, who could serve delicious meals, had to be dismissed for he was seldom completely sober and often roaring drunk!"

(Ah! Now we know "Wealth" was a servant to take the place of the drunken cook and not money or possessions!)

Though Wealth was eager to learn and always willing to try, Rosemary found she wasn't always so eager to spend the necessary time to figure out if it was her directions or his mistakes that caused so many dishes to taste, as she put it, "strange".

Newlywed Bill didn't complain. In fact he and Rosemary laughed together at the concoctions that were served at their dinner table.

Before Wealth could become a master chef, he fell ill. Was it his own cooking?

The illness of the servant turned the Kampaeng household upside down and inside out. Officially Bill was still a full-time language student. But unofficially he spent most, of his time helping Rosemary. He carried water from a neighbor's well for household use. He kept the kitchen stocked with charcoal from a wooden bin behind the house. He even dusted/polished the teak floors, as the Thai did, with old cloths. It is easy to see that Bill did all these things with the zeal of new love. None of this tiring work or the interruption to his study was a sacrifice. It was a joy.

When Rosemary fell ill, the shopping and cooking fell to Bill, too. Early in the morning, while it was still dark, Bill would set out for the fresh market. Threading his way through the crowds he would stop at each temporary stall to search for the fruits and vegetables and the cut of meat he had on his list to buy for that day. In the dim light of kerosene lamps and candle,  lamuts  looked like eggs and pale eggplant looked like green tomatoes. Rosemary tells us he once bought a lump of congealed pig's blood thinking it was a piece of liver. The poor lighting and Bill's lack of language made the fresh market shopping a sore trial. But even those trials became fun as Bill and Rosemary laughed at his mistakes over breakfast.

"After some months, the old cook came back and begged us to take him back, promising not to drink any more," Rosemary writes for us. It is not surprising that the Charters quickly agreed to give him another chance. The surprising thing is that the cook would so value that job for a wage of no more than $7.50 a month (150 Baht)

* * *

The changes in the Rahaeng household were just as drastic and without romance. The adjustments were demanding and sometimes traumatic. With the expectation of the arrival of Marta Person and Elly Hansen to began language study, long range plans were set in motion and a pattern for the advancing work was beginning to take shape (at least in Wilf's mind).

Marta and Elly could not appreciate the fact but a great deal of thought and conversation had resulted in much planning and preparation for their arrival and accommodation. Wilf's trip to Bangkok to meet and take them through customs and immigration, then to accompany them upcountry was just the beginning of help that had been planned for them. They would arrive in Rahaeng to find Evy and the field-leader's home/language study house ready and waiting for them.

Well, almost ready!

Marta tells us that the telegram Wilf sent from Bangkok to announce their general time of arrival in Rahaeng, did not reach Evy until the day after they landed on her doorstep! Marta reminds us that for a letter or telegram to be delayed for several days was very common at that time. Still, it was the practice of everyone on the field to send telegrams ahead, announcing their expected arrival at journey's end. Perhaps part of their persistence in sending telegrams, that often arrived after they did, was because those telegrams usually got so garbled in the sending that they provided the fellowship with many laughs.

Remember that no  Weccer owned a telephone, or phonograph or tape recorder or car and the only radio was the shortwave number owned by Rosemary's parents before the war. There was no daily paper or even weekly magazine delivered up-country. Life did not offer much in the way of entertainment. A garbled telegram brought a great deal of amusement to Rahaeng!

The postal workers whose year or so of English study in childhood schooling, must have also been amused that these strange foreigners sent word of their arrivals to be received after they had arrived! Often the one who sent the telegram would be the one to answer the bicycle bell of the postman delivering the telegram. The sender would sign as the receiver!

* * *

It is interesting to note that Marta's impressions of her trip upcountry are somewhat different from those of the others who arrived before and after her. She remarks on the ragged boys who waited for the train at every station. Running from open window to open window they tried to sell to the passengers what Wilf described as iced coffee, very strong and bitter.

Women and men, whom Marta thought of as coolies, had pickled fruits and sweets on large bamboo trays. These they carried onto the trains and displayed as they rushed down the aisles singing out what the newcomers took to be the names of their wares. That no other  Weccer mentioned these vendors is no surprise. No  Weccer bought from such vendors in those days. Even eating at proper restaurants in Bangkok had been known to send missionaries home with dysentery!

This reticence to eat food prepared in local markets or sold at bus and train stops came as a bit of a shock to Marta. Remember, she had escaped from Red China, fleeing the Communists through India just a few years before. With the workers of her Swedish mission, it had been necessary to eat what nationals could provide for them. After India it is doubtful if those ragged boys looked all that dirty to her and she must have been searching the bamboo trays for familiar things she had eaten before.

It comes as an eye-opener to hear Marta say that the hotel where they spent the night in Phitsanuloke was "quite clean"! This is all the more surprising when one considers that Marta was a very good housekeeper. Obviously she had become accustomed to roughing it on her flight from China and by comparison Phitsanuloke looked pretty good!

* * *

Though Wilf's arrival with the two new workers  arrived before their telegram, Evy was expecting the m, s o she was prepared with drinks (tea bags and instant coffee and a thermos of boiling water) and hot water for their showers. That is, there was a large teakettle just off the boil and carrying it to the bathroom she instructed the girls just how one needed to mix a bit of that hot water with the cold water from the huge  ong in the corner of a sloping block of cement , and just how to use the small tin dipper in splashing the water over themselves. This may seem an unnecessary lesson to some but a day would come when a new arrival to the field, not instructed in the art of dipper bathing, had to yell for help. She had climbed into the ong as a  bathtub and then found it absolutely impossible to get herself out of the huge earthen jar!

While the girls and Wilf were getting rid of their thick coating of dust acquired from the day's open bus ride Evy and the cook were hastily preparing the evening meal.

Because Evy knew that arrival was imminent she would have had the fixings for the meal on hand. Completely unexpected arrivals put the household into panic. Remember there was no refrigeration. If rice or a bit of curry were left uneaten at noon, this was given to the cook or wash-girl to eat or take home. Such food would spoil before the next day. The  mae bahn needed to be able to plan just exactly how much her household would eat. There was no such thing as leftovers!

* * *

While still in Bangkok the original four had learned of screened food cupboards. That piece of furniture was an absolute must. No WEC house or station was ever opened without a food cupboard. The four legs of the cupboard stood inside ceramic bowls kept filled with water to stop ants or other crawling bugs from climbing up the cupboard legs. About six inches off the floor the cupboard had space for dishes and pots and pans. For an average Thai country household this space about one foot deep and three feet wide, was large enough to hold all the family's cooking and eating utensils. Above this storage space was the screened box.  Weccer s kept their bread, their jars of jam, tins of butter and cheese, jars of instant coffee and tins containing tea bags, tins containing sugar and salt and even their opened bottles of "nam pla" in this space secure from ants, roaches,  r ats and even the family cat.

Knowing that Wilf and the girls could be arriving soon, Evy would have had some duck eggs and a tin of cheese. Perhaps she would have had some tomatoes or eggplant to concoct some sort of omelet. She would certainly have had the cook make an extra loaf of bread and she would be keeping these things in the top part of the food cupboard for the arrival of the travelers.

If it sounds strange that Evy would be saving duck eggs for a special meal, it needs to be mentioned that hen eggs were often impossible to find. Duck eggs were rather plentiful and very cheap. The  Weccer s used them continually. But duck eggs did have a strong flavor that could be tasted even in a cake. The flavor was partly the result of the ducks' eating habits. Most ducks raised in Rahaeng were never fed grain of any sort. They roamed free and fed on bugs and the tiny fish that filled the streams and flooded rice fields. A white cake made with duck eggs had the decidedly strong flavor of fish!

* * *

The first meal that the Scandinavian girls had in the Rahaeng house brings us to a situation. We ought to look at this scene and see something of the demands and cost of fellowship. For the next few months this group would form a household, a family. The new arrivals would be adjusting to food they had never even heard of before. They would be sitting at a table where forks and knives and even spoons were used in a way that would never have been allowed in their own homes. For Elly there would be much strain to try to understand a good bit of the conversation. Though she had some formal study of the English language she would have had a difficult time understanding conversation even when spoken with the cultured British accent she had studied. To listen to an American family chattering away (with lots of Thai words stuck in) was a nightmare.

When it became obvious that Elly was cut right out of a table conversation because of language, Marta could translate into Swedish for her and if that didn't work, either Wilf or Evy could supply Norwegian words from their childhood. But the Overgaards did not just drop English and use their Norwegian for table conversation. The children did not understand Norwegian at all. And Evy saw that with their approaching furlough just a few months away, every mealtime was a classroom situation for Sharon, Paul and Mark. They needed to be comfortable with good American table manners before they began the nomad experience of eating in different homes across the North American continent. Evy reasoned that not only would habitual good manners be needed but the children needed to be at ease with adult conversation.

Elly could not help but feel that American children were given too much attention at mealtimes and were brought into adult conversation where they did not belong!

That the children were being taught to use their forks in a way that Europeans considered to be as shovels was a bit shocking. But just imagine the shock when the first Thai rice meal was eaten and the newcomers were instructed that they must learn to use their forks to pile rice into a large spoon and shovel that into their mouths!

This unlikely group would eat their meals together. In the evening when the day's work was done, they would share the same sitting-room. There was just one bathroom for the four adults and three children to share. The walls between their bedrooms were thin and the doors were screen doors hung with material across their mid sections. This gave an illusion of privacy but the truth was, every word spoken in a normal conversational tone could be heard all over the living area.

The Overgaards could hear the language students repeating every word after their teacher. And the newcomers could hear Sharon and Paul reciting or reading their school lessons with their mother.

That every word of correction and rebuke and even punishment given to the children was overheard would eventually become a bone of contention. That does not yet enter the story but it should be noted in passing that Elly did not approve of the leniency given the children and did not consider the punishment given to be harsh enough. Without this coming out into the open for several years, it is most unlikely that Evy did not feel the weight of disapproval. Evy had always felt that disciplining the children when others could hear her was difficult. Now what must it have cost her to see the looks of censure and the silence of displeasure when the children needed reproof?

Ellen and Fern had been loved Aunties. They not only stepped in to teach the children when Evy needed them but they had played with Sharon and Paul and had become a close-knit family. If they ever disagreed with the way Evy handled her children, those times had been few and of little importance.

Each of the newcomers during that first five years had quickly become friends with the Overgaard children. In fact the children had come to feel that each new missionary was arriving for their benefit and friendship. Though Evy always felt she would rather have privacy for correcting and teaching her children, she was seldom criticized for the way she did those things.

Now with the difference in language and cultural backgrounds, it seemed impossible that the degree of fellowship once enjoyed could ever be experienced again. Evy, in particular, dearly missed Fern and Ellen. The day would come when Swedish Marta was just as dearly loved but that day was still far in the future.

* * *

Language study was always the first priority of the Scandinavian girls. Both girls started  o ut with the same teacher and lessons and the same number of hours with that teacher. But they were using a language bo o k that taught spoken Thai through American-English instruction. For Elly this was a catastrophe. It looked as if Marta w as much more intelligent, as she immediately understood the English instructions and explanations.

Though there was much about the language that came easy to Marta and much that she could enjoy, the experience of being a language student was mostly a trying one. And as with every other  Weccer of that time, she labored with the feeling that she would never learn this strange Siamese speech.

Marta lets us in on a memory of those early days of language study. In her memory picture, Marta is in her room there in Rahaeng. It was a teak house so the floor and walls were dark. The only light came from the small window whose wooden shutters had been folded and fastened back. Marta is seated on her large steamer trunk, holding her study book on her lap. An army mosquito net she has brought from home is tucked around her to protect her from the annoying attack dives of a swarm of buzzing mosquitoes. Perspiration rolls from her forehead and her hands are so damp with perspiration that she must keep wiping them on a small towel to keep from getting her book soggy and limp!

There is not much of comfort or convenience in that picture! But there is something more important than the lack of modern convenience shown here. It is a lonely picture. Marta was uniquely lonely. Because she and Elly came together and were able to understand each others language they would for years be considered a team. But the truth was that their personalities and outlooks, their reactions and actions were so different, it is doubtful if they had met under any other circumstances they would have become friends. They would simply have been acquaintances without much interest in knowing each other better!

But in Thailand they were thrown together as close as sisters and expected to function as a team. With strong-minded Elly often at odds with other personalities and field practices on one side and one after another of the other missionaries at odds with Elly , Marta was already trapped in that uncomfortable position, caught in the middle.

* * *

Wilf determined to start a language experiment using Marta as his guinea pig. Of course it had always been a question whether or not using Romanized Thai was better than using the Thai script to start language study. Would using the Thai script be quicker in the long run? Would it be more effective? Now was his chance to find out. Marta was put onto a language course using the Thai script while Elly plodded on with "Spoken Thai".

* * *

In December of 1952 another official business conference was held in Rahaeng. Down in Kampaeng, Bill and Rosemary decided that they would travel to this conference by bicycle. They planned to travel along by the river and stop to visit every village along the way. They carried books and tracts, song charts and picture rolls on the backs of their bicycles. Of course there w ere also a few groceries and a cooking pot , a nd to make life comfortable they each carried a mosquito net, a blanket, a bath towel and a change of clothing.

The trip started off just as they had planned. Again and again they had to cross the river to visit villages on each side of the waterway. Everywhere they held street meetings, sold books and gave out tracts. They talked with small family groups and good sized crowds.

Bill and Rosemary were feeling that this was the way to go. This was the way to reach the country people. Boats and buses sped past the tiny hamlets without a stop but cycling and crisscrossing the river brought the evangelists to every door-step.

Then came the first calamity. At one crossing the only boat available was a very small canoe. Rosemary tells us that the owner "took our bicycles and bed rolls across first while we stood on some floating logs with our box of literature and other gear. When he came back for us, we both stepped into the canoe together." Of course the canoe, rocked violently and shipped water till it sank out of sight beneath the muddy water. That Bill was agile enough to hold the dripping box of literature over his head and quickly hand it to some men on the logs saved the day for them. Bill and Rosemary would dry out and their clothing would dry on their backs before an hour was past, but the books would have been a total loss.

Bill and Rosemary were thankful that their cycling soon brought them to a deserted stretch of land where high weeds hid them from the river. Here they could bathe and change into their dry clothing. Their wet things could be washed and draped over low bushes to dry in the hot sun. And there was need to sun something else. In a brief case they carried two thousand Baht. This was the price they were given for Ernie Fogg's motorboat that Wilf had bought in Bangkok. Just at the moment they were not feeling too sure that bicycles were the best way to evangelize the riverside villages. Maybe the mission should have hung onto that troublesome boat a while longer!

The Charters travel the next day was to further erode their confidence in cycling the riverside. For they were to discover that paths disappeared into swamps and dense jungle growth led them away from the river until only one word fit their situation; lost! They were exhausted, bruised and sore. Rosemary tells us that at one point she burst into tears and lay on the ground sobbing with her head pillowed on her blanket roll.

That evening they finally reached the junction at Wang Chow. A bridge was just then being constructed to cross the river. Before another year had passed road travel between Rahaeng and Kampaeng would open up because of this bridge. It is doubtful if any  Weccer ever again took a bicycle trip along the route that Bill and Rosemary took in 1952.

The conference in Rahaeng was to begin in just two days. So after a night at the bridge site the two started out early in the morning, and sticking to road they were able to the arrive at the South House by noon.

* * *

Of course there were many smaller unofficial meetings and important decisions had been made all along the five years WEC had operated in Thailand. But this was a necessary all-field conference, for a very important decision had to be discussed: The Overgaards planned to go on furlough, perhaps mid-way through 1953. Really everyone was in agreement, but the situation needed to be looked at and discussed. Bill Charters would act as field leader while the Overgaards were away. Actually in Bill's mind he only agreed to do the bookkeeping and handle the field finances. Since the field functioned as a fellowship no one really needed to be designated as leader! But the WEC headquarters at home, both in the U.S. and in England, would consider Bill as the leader of the Thailand field. At that time in history, this was a forgone conclusion. No one considered that his wife was much more fluent in Thai and much more able to understand and handle official business. (In fact Bill was still a full time language student!)

At the time of this meeting both Fern and Ellen were expected to return to the field not long after the Overgaards left for furlough. In today's world perhaps the Overgaards would be asked to delay their furlough until the other two were back. Then perhaps Ellen would be ask e d to act as deputy field leader while Wilf was away to permit Bill to  finish language study and spend some time in the work before assuming such a responsibility. In 1952 this was not even considered. The "Women's Liberation" movement had not started and there was no way any woman on the Thai field would have considered acting as leader as long as Bill was there to do the job.

Deciding that Bill would step in as leader when the Overgaards left brought the conference to make other decisions.

Bill needed to be able to spend some time working with Wilf. He needed to get acquainted with what Wilf did, and with the WEC area and vision for expansion that Wilf carried.

So..........

The decision was made that Rosemary and Bill would move to Rahaeng. This necessitated another decision. Mrs. Hanna along with Marta and Elly would move to Kampaeng.

A ceiling was needed under the roof of the Kampaeng house so for the three weeks following conference the future field leader spent his days putting up a ceiling of bamboo matting above three bedrooms and taking down a wall between two small store rooms. What an absolutely perfect experience for one who would follow Wilf Overgaard as field leader!

* * *

In February the moves were made. That dry season a wooden bus was able to make it all the way from Rahaeng to Kampaeng. Marta tell us that Wilf and the bus driver carried Mrs. Hanna's furniture up into the Kampaeng house. How simple that sounds! But remember that Mrs Hanna had a bed a desk and chair made in Rahaeng, and Marta adds that her piano made the move with them. This presents a picture reminiscent of Laurel and Hardy! Hopefully the bus driver was big enough and willing to carry his part of the load!

* * *

There was another important move not long after the Charters were established in Rahaeng. A brochure came to the missionaries, telling of a C&MA Bible School in East Thailand. The brochure told of a branch of the school that was just for students with leprosy. When Gaew Moon heard of this school, she was certain that this was a door that God had especially opened for her.

As Gaew Moon had traveled with Ellen and Rosemary on their village outreach trips the desire had grown in her heart to serve the Lord all her life. But she didn't have the knowledge of the Bible to answer any but the simplest of questions. With Rosemary married and Ellen home on furlough, Gaew Moon felt that she couldn't have much ministry on her own. Now here was the answer to her need. Attending this Bible school would equip her to serve the Lord as an evangelist.

The missionaries could not help but agree with Gaew Moon as they had seen her zeal and faithfulness. The Rahaeng team entered into the necessary transactions, encouraging Gaew Moon to fill in application papers and acting as character references. Preparations and travel plans were set in motion and Gaew Moon left Rahaeng for Khonkaen in May of 1953.

With every move and every change and every addition the circle had to be broken to receive and welcome and enlarge.

## Chapter 16  
The Sowers Went Out to Sow

It was February of 1953 when the Charters moved into the "Wat Doi" house north of the Rahaeng market area and Mrs. Hanna with Marta and Elly moved to Kampaeng. It appears that Alma Lyons may have been living with Mrs. Hanna in the Wat Doi house and would, with the changes in the town, now be moving into the South House to live with the Overgaard family.

Just at the end of 1952, Evy wrote to her friend Sylvia, "Alma Lyons who came to us in April has consented to take on Sharon and Paul's lessons for a few months so that I will be able to do country work with Wilf during the cool season. Do pray for her. She will need much patience, strength and wisdom from the Lord. And it is a sacrifice for her, as it means almost giving up language study for those months."

One wonders about that word, "almost"!

"We expect to start going out next month," continues Evy, "So do join us in prayer for the Lord's work in the hearts of those to whom we preach the Gospel. Do pray that nothing may hinder our going to the places that the Lord has on His heart. The good trekking weather is from November until March."

* * *

It will be quickly realized that these evangelistic trips with Alma teaching the Overgaard children back in the South House overlap with the arrival of Marta and Elly, the Christmas season and the New Years fair. This was followed by the moving out of Rahaeng by Mrs. Hanna and the Scandinavian girls and the return to Wat Doi of Rosemary with her new co worker Bill. We are presuming that Alma lived with Mrs. Hanna until her move to Kampaeng and must then have moved into the South house with the Overgaards as she was already spending much of her time there with the children.

Surely most of the evangelistic trips Wilf and Evy took at the start of that cool season would have been day trips. Perhaps Evy was still able to hold the reins of housekeeping. Perhaps she was still able to give directions to the cook and wash-girl. But that final trip to Maesod meant that Alma was not only teacher but nurse for Markie and housekeeper, too. Alma was the only foreign adult in Rahaeng for the duration of that outreach trip and she had not completed a year of language study.

* * *

Moving from station to station was not quite as huge an undertaking in those long ago days as it can be today, as most on the field, did not own much furniture. The dining room set of table and chairs would belong to the station as would the food cupboard,  ongs and fire pots in the kitchen. In each bedroom there were bedsteads and probably a table and straight chair to be used as study desk.

Prisoners in the Rahaeng jail were being taught carpentry and their learning efforts were put on sale and could be ordered. So the mission was slowly acquiring heavy wooden pieces of furniture. The jailhouse furniture was cumbersome, made of solid teak. It was not much to look at and not usually very comfortable , b ut it would outlast the missionaries who first used it, and it was inexpensive. This convict furniture was the only furniture available in Rahaeng that time.

Marta's memory of sitting on her steamer trunk in her room studying Thai in those first days in Rahaeng, makes one think that at that time the bedrooms, for language students starting their study in the Overgaard house did not yet boast of study tables or chairs. But within the next three years such items would be in place for each new missionary recruit arriving on the field.

There was no such thing as a wardrobe or chest of drawers in the bedrooms but a length of material would hide one corner of the bedroom where a wire had been stretched and clothing could be hung. In time, most missionaries acquired a chest of drawers. Preventing their clothing from being devoured by bugs and mice presented a real problem. Boxes and suitcases did not give the protection needed.

A set of furniture for the living room area was not considered a priority at first. After all, the wealthiest Thai of the area sat on their floors to entertain guests. A life sized carving of a teak elephant with real ivory tusks would have been considered a more necessary item in a living room than a coffee table and set of chairs. (Obviously no  Weccer had such a carving but several wealthy Thai did!) The Voths' gift of a set of rattan living room furniture to the first four  Weccer s started a practice. Gradually such comfortable furniture would be acquired as each new station opened. Usually this set would be placed upstairs for the use of missionaries and visiting foreigners.

It would be many years before a field conference would draw up a list of essential furniture to be provided by the mission for each station. But by 1953 the bare minimum had already been acquired for two households in Rahaeng, one in Sukhothai and one in Kampaeng. Missionaries moving about needed only to pack up and move their own personal items in use. Remember, no one had any electronic equipment. This was no hardship ; t here was no electricity!

Extra clothing and supplies not yet needed were stored in the metal drums that had been shipped from home. These usually just stayed in Rahaeng. This meant it was possible for missionaries on their first term to move several times while their stuff stayed in the "Wat Doi" house or· the South house.

* * *

The Charters barely had time to unpack and put away their own things in the "Wat Doi" house when they needed to quickly pack what they would need for a lengthy trek across the mountains to Maesod. This was the same trip that Wilf and Evy had taken just a year before with Fern and Ellen. Now the Overgaards would introduce Bill and Rosemary to the vision that had so captured all their hearts on that previous journey.

This second set of four started their journey with hired pack ponies carrying their gear. No mention is made of logging trucks on this journey.  I n those days, roads weren't  permanent. T rucks would use  a road for just one year. Throughout a dry season th ese temporary roads would be busy twenty-four hours a day as the huge logging trucks would haul the great logs to a spot on the Ping river or one of its smaller tributaries were they would be tied into rafts and floated down river to sawmills.

With the first rains the road and its many small bridges would be washed out. The next dry season would see such a road opened in another area, perhaps many miles away. The disused roads would not be repaired and opened for another season until five or six years had passed. Roads would lie dormant and be allowed to wash or crumble away while the next harvest of teak in their area stood gradually dying where it had grown.

Company managers led a "girdling" visit to an area of forest and picked the next trees to be taken. Three or four feet above the ground a deep strip (or girdle) of the outer sap-wood was cut away exposing the red-brown heart of the tree. Over the next three or four years the wood would become dry and buoyant. Then many teams of elephants and their mahouts would come to fell the trees and stack them in clearings deep in the forest. The next year the road would be repaired that would connect that waiting wood to be hauled to the river·.

Fortunate indeed was the traveler who found that his travels led him on a route being used just then by the logging companies. Anyone was welcome to hitch a ride with the mammoth logs and those rides were as safe as any bus ride in that Kingdom of Siam.

* * *

Without the logging trucks this second set of trekkers moved slowly over the mountains by foot. Rosemary tells us that they camped out each night in the jungle. Their only protection from the flying, crawling and creeping night life was a tarpaulin they fastened by ropes to tree limbs overhead. Rosemary gives us no details but there must have been sounds that alarmed them. Beyond the swarms of mosquitoes that buzzed just outside their nets would have been the constant chirping of cicadas. There would certainly have been the cry of night-birds and monkeys. And it is more than likely that the explosive trumpet of a hobbled elephant would disrupt the dead of the night and the crowing of roosters would echo up the mountainside, for hidden within the great forests of those mountains were tiny hamlets. Bamboo houses built up on stilts would surround a small clearing on a steep mountainside. Pigs and ducks and chickens, and an elephant or two hobbled outside the clearing would announce that here was a Karen village.

* * *

Once over the mountains the travelers hired two ox-carts to carry them and their belongings. To see their pack ponies now free from their loads led away to start a journey home gave them a slight twinge. The constant music of the pony bells had kept them company for many miles and many days. And the sight of the bonfire the pony drivers lit at dusk had always brought a sense of comfort and protection. To see the m head back to the Rahaeng side of the mountains gave them a quickly passing emotion. They felt abandoned!

Now they were on flat land that was covered with teak forests and vast stretches of feathery bamboo. As they neared villages there was evidence of those forests being gradually cleared to enlarge  rice fields . In 1953 it looked as if those fields would hardly make a dent in the vast  rainforests . The forests looked to be here forever and the fields just a temporary scar soon to wash away.

The villages were few and far between but the reception of the four at each village made the trip worthwhile. Rosemary tells us that the team spent a full week in Maesod and two or three days in each of the other larger villages. She says that their meetings weren't just well attended but in several places every living soul in the village was in attendance.

* * *

Rosemary says that they often slept in schoolhouses and the open  salas connected with a village  wat . But there were several places where they were invited to spend the night in a home. In those days there was no hotel west of the mountains. It was a very common thing for the hospitable Thai to invite travelers to eat and spend the night in their homes. There may have been nothing more to offer than a moldy pillow and part of the bamboo floor as bed and rice with  Nam Prick and a few boiled vegetables gathered from the forest served at both supper and breakfast but these were offered with respect and humble hospitality.

They all got plenty of practice bathing in public in the streams and rivers used by all. The  pa-kama and the  pa-sin became familiar bathing costumes and they learned to change into dry clothing with speed and modesty. (But you can bet they were a show to be watched in every place! Were their evening meetings more heavily attended than their afternoon bathing sessions? Were they more on stage as evangelists or as bathers?)

Rosemary may have found that the Northern Thai spoken on the border side of the mountains was easier for her to understand than the dialect she was hearing in Hua Diet. The Thai towns and villages along the Burma border were settled by farmers who moved across the mountains from Thoen and Lampang. There were several years of drought in the early twenties. Rice-field dependent on rain and rain-fed rivers and streams in those central plain areas were dry and cracked. Only fields close to large rivers could be irrigated. Scores of families, knowing that the rain patterns were different just across the mountains, uprooted, and carrying everything they possessed they attempted the hard journey of crossing those roadless mountains.

The Northern Thai speech they brought with them would evolve and take on its own peculiarities in each community founded by the emigrants. But the same basic speech of Thoen and Lampang could still be detected. Remember, the language of Lampang was Rosemary's baby language. She must have picked up idioms and words and pronunciations not heard since her early childhood.

But it was not familiar speech that thrilled Rosemary and the others on that trip. Maeramahd, Maejarao, Ban Palai, Maegasa, Maegudluang, Maegudsamta, Maesod and Maedtowklang became memories of interested listeners and enthusiastic buyers of book sets. Bill and Rosemary began to catch the vision that had so captured Wilf and Evy, Fern and Ellen the year before.

The selling of sets of books had become by 1953 an important part of evangelistic trips and meetings. There were sets, put together by the WEC team from literature available in Bangkok. Some of the literature came from the Bible society and some from the Church of Christ in Thailand (the Presbyterian Mission) and some was printed by the C&MA. There really wasn't all that much available in those days but what there was, was very good. In every set there would be one or two of the Gospels, another book or two of approximately the same size. One book that came from the Bible Society was called  Whither Bound? Bai Nai in Thai sounded much more up-to-date! That was a book that led many to consider carefully the state of their souls and several have come to the Lord over the years as a result of that book.

Another book that has been greatly used is the  Heart of Man Book. The pictures depicting the sins hidden in the heart of every lost person has brought many to fear, to dread and finally to repentance. Books by Boon Mark Gittisarn were great favorites in those early days and they, too, were the means the Lord used to speak to hearts.

Each set to be sold was made up of at least three books. And the cry would ring out, " Chut la Baht, Chut la Baht ". Many who arrived on the field just at the time of meetings in Tak would learn the phrase, " Chute la Baht " One baht for a set. It would greatly entertain the young-bloods to question new missionaries as they tried to sell books. "What is your name?" would be answered by, "A set for a Baht". "Where do you come from?" would have the same answer. Older missionaries would usually come to the rescue of new workers before the questions could get too out-of-hand. It was innocent fun and the new workers hadn't any idea what was so funny.

A set of four books sold for one baht or five cents. Of course the sets were worth much more but most country Thai had little money to spend and books were not a part of their budget. Nor were books a part of their priorities. Most, who had any schooling at all, had just four years. Reading was hard going. So to tempt them to buy books, the sets had to be sold at a ridiculously low price.

Why not just freely give away a Gospel and one or two gospel tracts? The feeling was unanimous among evangelical missions in Thailand that people would not value what they received for nothing. Pages would be torn out and used to roll homemade cigarettes or to bundle up tiny parcels. So " Chute la Baht " was the hawkers' cry of the day.

Everywhere the Maesod team went, books were sold and the team returned home without their bulkiest baggage. The prayer of their hearts was that in many homes people would want to practice or brush up on their reading skills. As any reading was done aloud and with total disregard for those within hearing distance, it was hoped that in many places either reader or listeners would be captured by the message that could bring life. Years later the team was to find that they had prayed in tandem with the plans of God.

* * *

That no conversions were recorded from either that trip or the one the year before, was deeply disturbing to the evangelists. The full picture could only begin to be appreciated as time passed and the early street preaching and team meetings could be under-stood against the background of Buddhist/Animist thinking of the typical Thai. The first Gospel messages heard would fall on totally unprepared soil. The Christian idea of sin was not understood. The idea of holiness or the goodness of God could not be even faintly seen. The idea of eternal life as a personality with memory and identity was too foreign to entertain.

For Thailand there had to be a pre-evangelism message that started the hearers to contemplate the unthinkable! The treks to the Maesod side of the mountains were just that. Does this mean that the people who had just been introduced to Christian concepts would now be left to adjust their thinking and conceive of the Eternal without any safety guidelines? Were they now set free to evolve their own concepts and religions? No. The literature left behind in every community and most houses laid out the steps, the boundaries of God's own good news for man.

Before we leave the story of this trip, we need to look at something in Rosemary's memoirs,  Cracked Earth : "On the fourth of March, we were sitting on the roots of a big shady tree in Maedtowklang, eating our noonday meal of rice and fish. Evy asked, 'What would you like for your birthday, Rosemary?'..."

Rosemary answered without hesitation, "Some strawberries." She had not tasted a strawberry since she left the United States.

"...Just then a woman came along the dusty road with a pole balanced on her shoulder," Rosemary goes on to tell us. "On each end of the pole were several pumaloes, tied together."

The woman was persuaded to sell two of her fruits to the team. Listen to Rosemary: "We all agreed upon eating them that they tasted like strawberries. That was my birthday party."

The truly valuable point for us is the date! March 4, 1953. Since none of the early missionaries kept a journal it is hard for them to pinpoint or agree upon dates. But we can trust Rosemary to know her own birth date!

* * *

It is obvious that Dorothy was on her own down in Sukhothai. But with the return of Wilf and Evy from the Maesod trek, Alma was freed to join Dorothy in Sukhothai. Later on when Dorothy went on furlough, Elly Hansen joined Alma for a short time.

We do know that Dorothy Caswell established a clinic/dispensary from her home in Sukhothai. Years after Dorothy had gone home, people from outlying villages would turn up on the doorstep with disgusting ailments wanting to see the  Mo (doctor). There were times when  Weccer s who knew Dorothy only as an early day statistic, would be interrupted in the middle of a street meeting, with the question, "When is the Maw coming back?" Then the Thai gathered to hear the foreign preacher would begin to compare stories. It is documented that Dorothy not only treated fevers and dysentery but she set broken bones and removed bullets. She sewed up knife wounds and the gashes and tears made by wild animals. And there was at least. one occasion when she removed a diseased appendix.

A good bit of Dorothy's time in Sukhothai, she had to be on her own while Alma was in Rahaeng teaching the Overgaard children. When one considers that Dorothy's previous missionary experience was in Chiengmai as a part of a group of missionaries and she was also a part of a good sized foreign community, it is quite apparent that her time with WEC was a radical change. Perhaps it was deeply disappointing.

There is another consideration when one thinks of Dorothy Caswell. The cost of an extensive medical work could not fit into the field budget! Anyone could afford a few aspirins or soda mints or quinine to share with neighbors. An extra tube of ointment and an extra bottle of eye-drops for neighbor children were necessities. (Presumably that came out of food money or money earmarked for birthday or Christmas gifts). It is possible that medicines and medical supplies were given to Dorothy by Presbyterian missionaries in Chiengmai or Bangkok. Certainly it has been true over the years that doctors in both Bangkok and Chiengmai have been impressed with a WEC nurse and her medical work. Large supplies of expensive medicine have been given freely over and over again. This has been one way God has used to supply for His work and we are grateful. Perhaps this is part of the way He financed His work in Dorothy's hands.

Of one thing we can be sure, Dorothy gave of herself, her time and her energy, her medical knowledge and skill, and her finances. Everything she was and possessed was at the disposal of her medical work and her patients.

She chose not to return to Thailand after her furlough.4

* * *

Wilf and Evy were not only involved in evangelistic treks, a ministry in Rahaeng and the schooling of Sharon and Paul. But they were in the midst of making plans to leave for furlough in April of 1953. Letters to supporting churches and friends were making appointments and planning meetings. In one letter- home Evy wrote, "If the Lord would be gracious and get us out of here before we have a chance to get dengue fever again, we would be so glad! Dengue makes us into such a depressed sort of creature to say nothing of the fact that it takes months to get one's strength back. Many times I have been fainting in my spirit. I have been discouraged and feeling rebellious at the things that have seemed to hem me in. I just praise the Lord from the bottom of my heart that He has worked and delivered me from these feelings and got my eyes upon Himself. I have no doubt that one of my difficulties last year was the fact that I was rundown physically. I had colds and boils one right after the other. Then too, our family started having dengue before the middle of May."

It is quite obvious that the dread of dengue was a very real part of Evy's thinking in those weeks before furlough. But there was another dread that was much heavier on the hearts of both Wilf and Evy. They felt that they had to be open to the possibility of leaving Paul and Sharon at home when the time came to return to the field. They were not looking for relatives or friends to take in the children. Nor were they thinking that they should challenge the mission to start some sort of missionary children's home. But they felt that if God should open doors and indicate that here was His choice for the children then they would have to be willing. Even to think in that direction was upsetting. But time and again they had realized that the children were paying a price for their parents' commitment to the evangelization of Thailand. Perhaps an even greater price would be laid on the bodies and lives of the children if they returned with their parents from furlough, for among their friends there were those who had leprosy.

Perhaps here is the place to reveal that over the years three of our mission family have contracted the disease. One child and two adults have been diagnosed and treated for many years. Advances in medicine and changes in the attitude of the medical profession have made it possible for their infectious states to be treated in secret and it is not our place to reveal who they are. But this ever present infection helps us to understand the burden the Overgaard family faced as their first furlough drew near. The Overgaards were looking not just at time of physical and Spiritual refreshment, not just at the prospect of meeting loved ones and friends but they were facing the possibility of parting with their own children. This was a voluntary sacrifice that would continue for years. We cannot even begin to imagine their pain!

## Chapter 17  
The Rugged Life

Marta tells us that it was just two months after she had settled into language study in Kampaeng when it was time for the annual field vacation at the waterfalls. Since she and Elly had been on the field for only half a year that April, they did not consider that they qualified for or needed the full time at Lan Sang. But they did go for a shorter time.

Marta remembers how Wilf took them up to the campsite to join the others already enjoying their vacation. Since the Overgaard family were within days of leaving for furlough they could not afford the time to be away from home, so Wilf took the three children f o r a day's outing to the falls as he escorted Marta and Elly.

It was so dry that April that they were able to walk across the dry sands of the riverbed. The hard part was pushing their bikes through that dry, shifting sand. But, the river behind them, they could now mount those bikes that had been so unwieldy and sail over beaten trails to the village of Lan Sang. There they left their bikes and climbed the steep path higher and higher till the sound of waterfalls filled their ears and the air they breathed was suddenly sharp and clean and much cooler. Then, around a turn in the path, the camp site was before them.

The Charters and Alma were there to greet the new arrivals. It was obvious that the rather primitive huts, the absence of any modern conveniences and the presence of bugs and snakes had not dimmed the glorious time of rest and refreshment for those campers. They were having a great time.

For Marta too the camp was an interlude of quiet and renewal. Away from the heat of the plains and the tension of language study she found the refreshment she needed to start her off on the next months of study and cultural adjustments.

* * *

Marta spent a year and a half in Kampaeng with Mrs. Hanna. Elly spent a few months of that time down in Sukhothai with Alma. Wilf had found and engaged a language teacher to teach seven hours a day, Monday through Friday. And even after Wilf had left the field, the teacher continued faithfully to stick to the agreement. (This makes the teacher a rare find; even government teachers  were known to cut back on their working hours, and even days, when the boss was not there to check on them.)

"He was a good teacher," Marta adds. But three and a half hours with the teacher was often more than Elly could face. Fevers and flu like symptoms often caused her to want out of her class time. So Marta would need to take as much of the teacher's time as she possibly could. The teacher would get that salary agreed to with Wilf, whether the students took his time or not.

There was another complication. Often the Kampaeng house was without servants. This is a bit hard for us to understand at this date. The wages paid were nil from our point of view but in that day and place they were substantial. And there was much poverty and plenty of unemployed in Kampaeng.

BUT...

For rural Siam a servant was thought to be little better than a slave. The wealthy employed impoverished, often orphaned relatives and they were commonly treated without respect or consideration. Of course, this was not always true and sometimes the poor relative was loved and respected but more often than not the servant led a pitiful life. WEC had not been long enough in Kampaeng to establish the truth that our servants became our friends and the experience of working for us often paved the way for them to get much more lucrative jobs, as restaurants and hotels opened up in our areas.

Ma Hanna certainly had enjoyed the reputation of being loved by her servants. When she fled from Lampang at the start of the second world war, she had to leave behind many things. One much-loved possession was a fine set of china. That set of china was brought to her years later when she returned to Siam. It had been safely kept hidden all that time by a servant who obviously loved her!

But now in Kampaeng the young women who could have been trained as cooks or laundry girls were afraid of the stigma attached to being a servant. A woman would agree to work and would just get started in the learning process when she would send word that she was ill or needed at home or getting married or in some cases the worker just did not turn up... and never came to work again!

Marta's dry comment is, "It wasn't very satisfactory."

The absence of servants meant that the two language students often had to help Mrs. Hanna with cooking and laundry and polishing the floors. As far as doing the shopping in the early morning market, Mrs Hanna could turn that into a learning project. Marta and Elly did not realize it, but they were being given a thorough course in language needed for shopping and bargaining that would put them at ease in any market in Thailand.

Marta tells us "Mrs. Hanna wanted us to get out on the river." She adds for us that "roads were not yet good." It is hard for us to imagine at this date that river travel was still the way to reach most villages in 1953-54. That Wilf sold the motorboat was really evidence that he saw the coming changes and realized that shortly roads would cover that area that was, at that time, still so remote.

Marta says that many small villages could be reached along the river. "A big double-decker boat came up from Nakhon Suwan as far as Kampaeng. The boat would come up in the afternoon, arriving in the evening. Early the next morning the boat would return to Nakhon Suwan. This boat seems to have been the real contact Kampaeng had with the outside world.  That, of course, was not what the  Weccer s were seeking but rather contact with the hidden people of the province.

Marta goes on to relate how they would prepare a lunch the evening before so that they could be ready and down at the landing where the boat was preparing to leave at daybreak. They had sets of books to sell and picture rolls and charts to use in telling the Gospel story. And Mrs. Hanna had a small folding chair so that she could sit comfortably on the deck. There would be other human travelers on their way to points South and some going as far as Nakhon Suwan. But pigs and chickens and ducks seemed, at times to outnumber the human passengers. Often Mrs. Hanna seated on her folding deck chair, was surrounded by bamboo baskets of all sizes from which came the sounds of quacking, clucking and oinking.

As they would near a village that they had decided to visit Mrs. Hanna would advise the ship's pilot. And the boat would slow to a stop so the travelers could get off. But there was always a problem. There were no proper landing places at these small villages. Often the women had to wade through rather deep water to get to shore. On boarding a boat to go home they had to balance themselves on bobbing logs and, jumping from one to another, make their way out to the waiting boat. Marta says, "It was not very safe or nice! But we always managed to get off and on the boat."

"Then in each village Mrs. Hanna  would go to the school and ask if we could have a lesson with the children and give them some tracts. She always told the teachers what the lesson was about." That a teacher might be hesitant or flatly refuse might be expected. But Marta continues, "Because of her age they couldn't say no!"

That Marta had great respect for Mrs. Hanna is evident. In listening to Marta's account of her time in Kampaengphet, one never hears Mrs. Hanna called "Ma Hanna"! It is quite obvious that Marta was not comfortable with the North American headquarters' practice of Congo-izing names. And the title "Ma" sounded disrespectful to her.

When the lessons had been given they would make their way back to where they would wait for the returning boat. As housewives and shopkeepers would call out greetings to the strangers often they were invited up into homes to visit. But if there was no invitation, Mrs. Hanna would stop and ask one of these friendly ones if it would be all right for the travelers to stop and rest on their porch. In rural Thailand at that time travelers were welcome everywhere. Often Mrs. Hanna would have an opportunity to explain, not only who they were, why they were there, but also the heart and substance of the Gospel.

Marta lets us see her heart when she laments, "I found it so discouraging that we always met, 'It's just the same. Buddhism and Christianity are just the same'." How amazingly deaf the ears of those villagers were! There is no forgiveness in Buddhism, no cleansing from sin, and no help ever offered in the teachings of the Buddha. Villagers appeared to listen as Mrs. Hanna talked about the Creator God who loved and provided forgiveness and a new life cleansed from sin. They listened; then they babbled the remark, "Buddhism and Christianity are just the same!" In so many places this was a day of preparing the ground for future sowing. And that preparation was a hard and thankless job!

Often it was just Marta and Mrs. Hanna who went on these day trips. Elly was often ill and remained at home when the other two took to the river. When Dorothy Caswell left for furlough Elly joined Alma in Sukhothai to wait for Fern's return from furlough. (We do not know just when Dorothy went on furlough but it is believed that Elly had the better part of a year in Kampaeng.)

Marta remembers that as she got further into the language, Mrs. Hanna asked her to prepare a short Bible lesson using lots of pictures and few words. The same lesson was used over and over as they visited along the river at different schools and different villages. Marta's comment, "It was very good practice," speaks volumes for Mrs. Hanna's language school.

On one trip the boat got stranded on a sandbar. They were much too far from Kampaeng to try to finish the journey on foot. The only thing they could do was wait for the boat to be dug out or pulled free from the sand's firm grip.

They were well into the cold season and the afternoon was overcast and chilly. As evening drew on, it became colder and colder. As it was obvious that the boat could not be freed that evening, Mrs. Hanna suggested that they should wade ashore and go back to a village they had just passed. There they could look for a blanket to buy.

They had a raincoat with them that they could spread on the deck as a mat, then spread their new blanket over the two of them and try to sleep. A raincoat is a far cry from a mattress and the blanket was just barely wide enough to cover two if they lay very close and perfectly still. Of course they spent the night very cold and very uncomfortable, longing for morning to come.

With the morning light many men gathered to help push and pull and dig till finally the boat floated free and they were soon on their way home. Never did the Kampaeng house look so good. Never did a fire feel so good. A warm bath, a hot cup of coffee, and a change into dry clothing made Kampaeng feel like heaven!

Marta reminds us that, as no bridge crossed the River between Kampaeng and the Rahaeng area, even a trip to Rahaeng meant they had to get across the river by, what she calls a "long boat". Then they would have to wait by the roadside for a bus to take them into the city. Buses did not run to any schedule in those days and often they would wait into the late afternoon when it would become apparent; no bus was coming that day. So once again they would board a boat to take them back across the river and make plans to start all over again the next day.

An amazing amount of time was spent in waiting by the riverbank for boats and by the roadside for buses in those days. Perhaps it slowed down the rush of the Western mind always wanting to get somewhere else and caused the missionary to live in, and value the present moment. Perhaps waiting slowly propelled the workers towards more patient and contented spirits. Or, maybe all that waiting just ruined their dispositions!

* * *

Bill and Rosemary were having some heaven on earth experiences.  In their traveling, scouting out the Sukhothai area, in September of 1953 they made Suwankalok a WEC target. The town named "Heaven on Earth" attracted the Charters by its size and not its celestial beauty!

Bill was following in Wilf's steps. He and Rosemary had been scouting the three provinces of WEC territory. The Charters were able to do things that the Overgaards could not. Because Evy was seldom free to go with Wilf, he traveled light and could never stay long in any place.

The Charters were able to rent rooms or houses in many different towns and stay for two weeks or a month at a time. They usually got a narrow house right in the middle of a market area. The front room walls were nothing more than two huge accordion-folding doors. The homes on either side would have opened up in just the same way. Perhaps on one side of them the front room would be used as a general store selling everything from  ka-pi (fermented shrimp) paste, to tin plates, rice pots, and school supplies. Overhead would hang bright rows of children's clothing and ropes of dried sausage. Along the walls would be stacked home-woven blankets and hand stuffed folding mattresses. Perhaps to the other side of the Charters' rental would be a  kuey teow (noodle) shop.

In such a busy spot the Charters would set up their front room as a place to hold meetings. Their living quarters would be behind or above the meeting room depending on the shape of house they could find.

They would spend a good bit of their time in any town going from door to door visiting and witnessing. But they always set aside time for children's meetings in the day and in the evening would hold meetings for adults. This was a rugged way of life and they kept to a heavy schedule but it was a ministry that suited both Bill and Rosemary.

For any new acquaintance it was always an eye-opener to see Bill and Rosemary conducting a meeting. This mild mannered couple would suddenly transform into charismatic speakers. They must have conferred before each meeting as to who would teach a song, who would teach a verse of Scripture, or which one would explain what the books they had to sell were all about and which one would tell the story or preach the Gospel message. But for those watching, the meetings just flowed with the two taking turns stepping in and out of action. They won some fascinated fans and others who were truly interested in their message; they also made some bitter enemies, for they presented a message that revealed the ugliness of sin and its fearful end in eternal judgment. These are two pictures never unveiled by Buddhist circles of teaching.

* * *

When they finally reached  Suwankalok, to their surprise they found that here was a town that appeared to be as large as any of the three provincial centers. It could not be left without a witness. So in September, five months after the Overgaards left for furlough, Bill and Rosemary rented a house in the market area of Suwankalok for two months.

The old stained teak house they rented was really just a  hong taew in a row of one-room shop-houses. The downstairs rooms had no wall fronting on the street , only two accordion doors that folded back, completely opening up the entire room to the public. By night the doors were closed and locked by dropping a huge teak board into slots that secured the backs of all the folding sections. Floor and ceiling bolts locked each individual section. Then the windowless room became a safe for its contents. With every corner on view to the street by day and an airless vault by night, the room was never a room that fit our foreign idea of living quarters.

But at the back of this storefront room was an almost vertical ladder that led to a loft which would become the Charters' temporary home. The downstairs room, unlike the other four front rooms of this building, would become a Gospel hall.

Rosemary says, "Using packing boxes for tables and seats, we made one corner of the upstairs room our kitchen and dining room. On the other side of the room, beside the one window, we strung up our mosquito net and laid our mattresses." Since their one-fifth was just that, one thin slice of a building that presented five storefront rooms to the populace of Suwankalok, the walls that separated them from the rentals beside them were thin wallboard. Rosemary adds that they were full of cracks and knot holes." So the couple were on stage upstairs as well as down!

Let's note here that few of our WEC number could live so simply. Few could survive on market food. Few could be so on display and live with so few comforts. And should you be thinking, oh well, although they didn't have even one chair to sit on they could always lie on their mattresses to read or think or nap. Remember this was an upstairs room with no electricity! They not only had no air-conditioning, they had no fan. The heat of day would make the room almost unbearable! But this way of ministry presented a challenge that captured both Bill and Rosemary and they flourished in that life.

Rosemary opens for us a door into that time when she tells; us, "On the last night of our first week in Suwankalok, a policeman walked in during our meeting and asked in a loud voice, 'Where is your permit  for starting a school?'

"We have no permit. This isn't a school," they answered.

"You're teaching, aren't you? It's a school, and you must have a permit."

"All right, we'll go to the sheriff tomorrow and get a permit."

"But you haven't one now, so the meeting must be closed immediately."

Rosemary says they sent the folks away and closed the door at that policeman's bidding. But when they went to the sheriff the next day, he proclaimed, "Of course you may hold meetings. You do not need a permit."

Since there had never been evangelistic meetings in our three provinces before WEC arrived, there were no rules to govern what we could or could not do. Every government official was free to stop us or allow us to preach till a superior overrode their decisions. That God continually gave us favor with the highest officials was truly a blessing.

Mrs. Hanna visited her daughter and son-in-law while they were in Suwankalok. No, they didn't have a guest room and there wasn't room in their hot, little, upstairs quarters for Mrs. Hanna to spread her mattress. After the evenings meetings were over, Bill and Rosemary helped her hang a mosquito net and spread a mattress right there in the room they used for meetings.

Rosemary tells us that at meal times, her elderly mother climbed up the long, steep ladder to the upper room. She would have eaten at that packing crate table while seated on a smaller wooden crate. The three didn't just eat at that table; it was the place they could talk and plan strategy together. It was the place they could discuss problems and the dream of faith each carried. And it was the place they could pray together.

For that one week Mrs. Hanna shared the preaching and teaching sessions with her daughter and son-in-law. What a rich experience it must have been for this family to minister the Word of God together in this area that had never been evangelized.

* * *

Weekends the Charters would return to Rahaeng to take care of their own and the Mission's business. Finances had become a bit more complicated. There was by then remittance checks coming from the USA, from Britain, from Sweden and from Denmark. Bill balanced these separate accounts as he distributed the allowances. Money for food, for rent, for teachers, for travel, and personal gifts was given every two months. In those days It was possible to send money orders through the mail but more often than not someone of the mission would be traveling between Rahaeng and Sukhothai or Rahaeng and Kampaengphet and could carry the money on their person.

The different checks were deposited at a Bangkok bank as there was no such institution in our area. But a Chinese store in the Rahaeng market also banked in Bangkok. The shop owners needed cash to buy their inventory in the capital and were not wanting to carry stacks of one baht bills on the Rahaeng-to-Bangkok bus. So they were more than glad to accept checks from Bill in exchange for the money we needed. This was a system that worked wonderfully for us in those days but figuring in five different currencies made the treasurer's job a bit tedious.

The correspondence Bill inherited as field leader, though nothing compared with today's mail, was always time-and thought-consuming. Three new candidates for Thailand were already under consideration at the home ends. Alice Williams and Bob Peters from North America and Hans Sierhuis from Holland were the topics of many letters exchanged between Bill and the home-end leaders.

No, the long weekends the Charters spent in Rahaeng were not particularly restful. There was a little group of professing believers to meet each Lord's Day morning in the Charters' home and the group of men marred by leprosy, were up in Mai Ngam hungry for fellowship and teaching.

There was cleaning and laundry and always unexpected problems with which to deal. And amazingly, both Bill and Rosemary seemed to flourish physically.

* * *

In January of 1954 Elly and Alma went to Khonkaen to take a short study course in the diagnosis and treatment of leprosy. They were both nurses and were well-versed in almost all the cases brought to the dispensary that Dorothy Caswell had started in Sukhothai. But leprosy was a disease never touched on in the nurses training schools of the West.

They often suspected that many illnesses they were treating might be complicated by undiagnosed leprosy, this strange tropical ailment about which they knew nothing. To have a crash course in the detecting and understanding of leprosy seemed a must. Dr. Buker of the Leprosy mission was in charge of the course that the two nurses took. His burden for those whose disease would end in poverty and isolation moved our two nurses to care. But they were evangelists first, nurses second. The care and treatment of those suffering with leprosy was to be a side issue and not the central thrust of their mission... for a while yet.

* * *

While the Overgaards were on furlough, and even longer, the Charters continued to visit cities and towns scattered throughout our three provinces. And there is one contact outside our area that should be mentioned.

Rosemary writes in her memoirs. "At Suwankalok there was a railroad leading to the main line running between Bangkok and Chiengmai. Along this branch, as well as along the highway, (note that Rosemary refers to a rough surfaced two lane road as a highway) there were many small towns we could visit. Throughout all this area people were eager to buy Scripture portions and Christian literature. One day we went to the junction and took a main line train to Uttradit. This city was outside our province, but we had learned there were no missionaries there."

As Bill and Rosemary visited and sold literature, stopping at every shop in the main market area of the town, they kept hearing o a Chinese dentist who was said to be a Christian. The Thai Buddhists of Uttradit were impressed that this dentist closed his shop on Sundays to play his organ and sing Christian songs with his family!

Listen as Rosemary tells of finally coming to a shop, "with a display of false teeth in a showcase. Along the top of the wall all around the room were large pictures illustrating Bible stories. At the back of the room were the chair and dental equipment. A little, old man came out of the back room and greeted us warmly. He invited us to sit down, poured us a cup of tea, and called his wife and sons out to meet us. Soon we were all good friends. Hai Kieng and his wife spoke broken Thai, and we often had trouble  understanding them, but they were eager to have us come back again and stay for many days.

"The next morning, in the hotel restaurant, when we started to pay for our breakfast, we were told it was already paid for. And when we went to settle for our night's lodgings, they told us the Chinese dentist had paid for it. His son came in just then, picked up our suitcase, and walked with us to the railroad station. When we arrived there, he handed us our train tickets back to Suwankalok."

Was it further visits with this Christian dentist and his family or was it the response of friendly interest from the people of Uttradit that gave the Charters a deep and lasting burden for the city beyond our territory? We do know that three years later when the Charters went on furlough, they so presented Uttradit to faithful prayer partners that an embarrassing situation arose.

A nineteen-point program was instigated by the British home end and was quickly adopted by the North American headquarters. Nineteen countries without any missionary presence became targets of prayer. Eighteen of the countries were certainly truly countries. But the nineteenth country was "Uttradit" a medium sized city in the province of Uttradit in Thailand.

Bill and Rosemary doubtless presented Uttradit as outside our territory and without any mission agency in residence. And Uttradit does sound like a good name for a country in the Subcontinent.

For years articles in WEC periodicals would urge prayer for nineteen countries, and pamphlets among them Uttradit. The Thai field kept writing home to plead that Uttradit be taken from the list of countries, and the field hoped that none of the articles would fall into the hands of anyone who had a current globe or map of the world. The Thailand field was beginning to learn that speaking on furlough presented hidden dangers. They thought they knew what they were saying but they could never be sure what their listeners were hearing!

## Chapter 18  
Gaew Moon

Rosemary says that one day they received a special letter from Gaew Moon. She was soon to finish her schooling in Khonkaen at the C&MA short-term Bible-school for those suffering with leprosy. Gaew Moon told in her letter, that she was in love with a fellow student and was planning to be married.

Not long afterward another letter arrived from the director of the Bible School. He, too, told of the marriage plans and went on to write of the sterling character of Nai Paw, the young man that Gaew Moon intended to marry.

Nai Pow was so valued by his home church there in East Thailand that they had requested that he return to act as pastor for their small group when he completed his studies. So the plan was that Pow and Gaew Moon would marry at the close of the school semester and she would follow him to his home.

Though Rosemary says, of the WEC missionary community, that they were "thrilled", it doesn't take much imagination to realize that there must have been some disappointment in all of this. The Charters had encouraged Gaew Moon to apply to the Bible School and along with others had doubtless helped her financially. (For though the group was adamant that they did not support national workers, they were each one always free to help any national as the Lord led.) Certainly the hope had been that Gaew Moon would return to help in our own area.

From the very beginning the desire to have the help of national co-workers was expressed again and again. Wilf took Duan and Inn along on evangelistic and scouting treks to disciple and build into their lives principles of Christian character and vision to serve the Lord. Ellen and Rosemary took Gaew Moon with them for the same purpose. By 1953 Bill and Rosemary were working with others with this same end in view. The desire was to help them to Christian maturity that they be able to lead others to the Lord and go on to disciple them. The Thai field wanted national co-workers, not statistics but substance.

On one level it was a relief to hear that Gaew Moon was to marry a Christian man with a heart to serve the Lord. Though there was an unmarried youth among the men of Mai Ngam, and Nai Leo may have even shown some interest in Gaew Moon, she had never shown any interest in him at all. Nai Leo was not as keen for the Lord nor as quick to understand spiritual truth as was Gaew Moon. But to see Gaew Moon joined to Nai Leo would be better than to see her marry an unsaved man! That is always the concern for unmarried Christian girls, that they will marry unsaved fellows and lose out spiritually. This has been the scenario over and over again in our three provinces.

As the correspondence between the Charters and the young couple went on, Nai Pow came to feel that he and Gaew Moon should come to Mai Ngam to work with the leprosy group there. So instead of losing Gaew Moon, WEC gained a young man ready and wanting to serve the Lord.

* * *

When the couple arrived early in January the group of believers up in Mai Ngam were truly pleased with the Pastor and his wife! The Charters, too, were deeply thankful for the national brother and co-worker the Lord had led to join them. Expectation rose that the little group in the woods would grow and that as Gaew Moon introduced Nai Pow to the places she had visited with Ellen and Rosemary, there would be response and multiplying groups of believers.

Listen to Rosemary as she writes of Nai Pow. "He was a lovable person, and earnest in serving the Lord. Living with Moon and Pi Gaew would be hard for any one, but Nai Pow had such a cheerful, meek and unselfish disposition that the atmosphere of the home became bright and happy."

This change in the atmosphere of the dark, rickety house must have astonished unsaved neighbors. Gaew had never shown any appreciation for Gaew Moon and often ranted and raved, accusing and abusing her younger sister. Gaew Moon would dissolve in tears, then pushed to her limit, she would retaliate in sullen silence or with words as angry and violent as her sister's. Throughout their neighborhood their fights had become a byword!

Here was a wonderful change. Nai Pow had stepped into this situation as a peace maker.

* * *

Not many days after Gaew Moon and Nai Pow began their married life together in the community just north of Hua Diet, they were asked to stay for two weeks in the Charters house down in Rahaeng.

This was January of 1954.

Elly and Alma were to attend the course to study leprosy being offered in Khonkaen. Since their home in Sukhothai was also a clinic there would surely be many people coming for treatments, and some would be making long, difficult journeys for help. So Bill and Rosemary had offered to go stay in the girls' place.

What a marvelous opportunity this gave to the Charters, now on the look-out for- a way to help financially the young couple so recently graduated from Bible school. They would ask Gaew Moon and Nai Pow to sleep in their- house and act as watchmen while they were away. The little group of believers in Mai Ngam would be giving a few Baht each month to help their new pastor and he would be farming and fishing to augment these love gifts, but the pay for watching the Charters' house would come as a wonderful help.

* * *

Though Bill and Rosemary would be stepping into a clinic situation, neither one had ever studied medicine but they were always ready to volunteer and try to fit in wherever there was a need on the field. (Over their long years of service in Thailand they must have served on every station, even Karen stations where they did not understand the language, and CLC and Voice of Peace, where they did not understand the business!) But they were sure that they would be able to treat the more obvious ailments and could direct those whose problems were more serious and obscure to the closest government hospital or reliable clinic. Those two weeks were doubtless a wild adventure for the Charters as they diagnosed, together, the fevers, coughs, aches and pains of the trail of patients who presented themselves at their door.

For Gaew Moon and Nai Pow the time could have been a lovely period, free from the abuse of Pi Gaew. The first of the two weeks must have been more like a honeymoon for the young couple than an experience of guarding a house.

The Charters came home to Rahaeng to conduct the Sunday services after that first week and Gaew Moon and Nai Pow assured them that they had had no problems and had thoroughly enjoyed the time in their home.

For that weekend mid-way through the two-week period Gaew Moon and Nai Pow returned to Mai Ngam and the service of the little group of believers. Bill and Rosemary had given them a key to the house and so they would return on Monday to resume their watchmen assignment after the Charters had left for Sukhothai.

That never happened.

Nai Pow fell ill on the Sunday night before he and Gaew Moon were to return to the Charters' house. He never recovered from that illness!

When the Charters returned home a week later the news was brought that Pow was desperately ill. They went to the hospital and arranged for the doctor to visit Pow as he lay on the open porch of Pi Gaew's house. The Charters did not warn the doctor that Pow and every one in that house had leprosy. For in that day people marked by leprosy were not welcome in clinics or hospitals and doctors were not willing to enter homes were they might contract the disease.

Listen as Rosemary tells us what happened. "When it was time for the doctor to arrive, Gaew hid in the bedroom, and we covered Pow's feet, as they bore the only visible signs he had leprosy. Actually Pow and Gaew Moon were not infectious at that time. But we would have had a hard time explaining that to the doctor who knew very little about leprosy."

The doctor's diagnosis was that Pow had "Infectious  haemolitic jaundice". He directed that Pow be taken to the hospital as soon as possible.

Bill rushed off immediately to find a  sam law (bicycle rickshaw). Rosemary tells that., "In those days  sam law divers were reluctant to go to Mai Ngam because of the dust and sand that made it hard to peddle their tricycle taxis.

We're told that Gaew came out of hiding to help gather up the things Pow would need in hospital. Tears were streaming from her eyes that she could hardly see to help.

Pow pleaded with Gaew Moon to stay by him. Doubtless he was not only weak and in great discomfort but dreadful fear overwhelmed him. After all he was still a stranger among strange people and far from his own... Except for Gaew Moon.

Finally Bill arrived with a  sam law . Rosemary goes on to tell us that every movement was so painful for Nai Pow that it was impossible for him to navigate the frail rickety ladder, so Bill gathered him up in his arms and carried him. As they came down the ladder, she prayed desperately that nothing would happen. If the ladder broke, or Bill lost his balance, that would surely be the end of Nai Pow.

Pow did not have strength to sit up in the  sam law so Gaew Moon rode with him holding him in her arms. Trying to cushion him against the bumps of the long ride and keep his limp body from slipping down off of the seat took all of Gaew Moon's strength.

At last they reached the compound of the present hospital. It was a very much smaller plant in those days with just two or three buildings completed. Pow was carried to the one ward in existence at that time. The ward was just one long room with about ten beds placed down each side. Each bed was provided with a very thin mattress and one much-used and presumably much-washed muslin sheet. Most certainly the dingy color of the sheet was from old stains and not unwashed marks of present use!

Along one side of the ward was a veranda where the relatives and friends of the patients could stay. Rosemary tells us that patients had to have someone along to take care of them: to bring them water, wash their clothes, help them to the toilet or bring them a bedpan. Most of these helpers brought their charcoal stoves and cooking pots with them. And setting up their own kitchens on the veranda, they tried to cook the foods that would tempt their loved ones to eat.

But--- there was a vicious cycle. The first years the hospital was open only the very ill and dying were brought in for treatment. Those in the early stages of any illness were treated at home with the remedies used for generations. The familiar neighborhood practitioners were called on and the temple priests had their turn at chanting for the ill before the hospital was even considered. When it became apparent that nothing was helping the ill, then they were brought to the hospital. Often it was too late for the doctors and medicine to help. So the hospital was thought of as a place to die. All too often it was just that!

Rosemary and Bill with Gaew Moon bowed their heads over the bed of Nai Pow and committed him into the hands of the Great Physician. Gaew Moon stayed beside Pow but Bill and Rosemary took turn-about in visiting several times that day.

The next day Pow was moved to a private room. Along the opposite side from the veranda several cubicles were screened off from the open ward. Here Pow lay in a deep coma that continued into the evening hours. Bill stayed beside the bed for hours in prayer continually. Rosemary came in the early evening to take her turn at the bedside sending Bill home to eat.

Rosemary details for us in her memoirs that as she stayed beside him, Pow's breathing took on an ominous rattling sound. Rosemary searched everywhere for a nurse and finally found one in another building. "I'll come soon," was her reply to Rosemary's request for help.

But no help came. No nurse appeared. Finally Pow's loud tortured breathing stopped and it was obvious his spirit had gone. Pow was dead. Gaew Moon threw herself on the floor and began to wail. This was the sound the nursing staff had been waiting for. Now they could come and take over.

Bill, on his way back to the hospital, suddenly experienced release from the burden of care and intercession that he had carried all day as his mind was filled with the song:, "Hallelujah! 'Tis done." He arrived at the hospital to find, as he had expected, that Nai Pow was with the Lord.

* * *

There was much work the next days, as a carpenter had to be located to make a coffin, and a formal request had to be presented at the  Theseban (municipal office) asking for ground that we could use as a Christian cemetery. Funeral plans were set in motion and seemed to be moving forward until the bus owner who was to transport the coffin and body to the burial ground decided that his bus would become seriously haunted if it were to transport a dead body. A cleansing ceremony would have to take place to deliver the bus from this bad luck. The price for this ceremony was 700 Baht!

Rosemary says "Of course, we could not think of paying money for such a thing,  even if we had that much."

It seemed that every step of the way through the time of grief was complicated by official red tape and religious taboos as the Charters tried to help and lead the Christians through the first Christian funeral and burial.

Bill returned to the market to try to find a bus whose owner would be willing to carry a dead body to be buried. No one expected that this would be an easy job. But in about an hour Bill was back with a bus. And sitting in the bus were all the Christians from Mai Ngam and some of their unsaved neighbors as well.

How and where did Bill find a bus whose owner would be willing to help them? The bus belonged to the Borneo Company (the owners of the first WEC house in Rahaeng). And they gave them the use of the bus free!

After the body was picked up at the hospital the bus took the funeral party out to the spot of land the government had given the mission to use to bury our dead.

The hill just two kilometers along the Lampang road has been the scene of many Christian burials over the years. But this first burial must be remembered for Nai Pow came to the WEC area and work as one who answered the call of the Lord. He came to give the rest of his life in service to the Lord. The fact that he only lived a matter of days after his arrival does not detract from the fact that he was, and is, a part of what God has planned and is still doing in our three provinces.

It has always been hard to bow the knee and give up our own plans for the work in Tak and Sukhothai and Kampaengphet and to acknowledge that He is Lord of the harvest and He just does not work to our time schedule or patterns. If the WEC field had had a voice and choice, Nai Pow would still be alive and the profile of the Church in Tak would be very different.

## Chapter 19  
Furlough – Oh Joy Oh Delight! (?)

Furlough the very word could conjure up visions of home, of loved ones not seen for years, of friends not thought of in years. It could draw pictures of places dearly loved and scenes of remembered pleasure.

But each of the Siam four was to  realize, on their first furlough, that not only had places and people changed but they had changed. Thailand, Rahaeng, Tak Kampaeng and Sukhothai and the WEC fellowship had left indelible marks on their thinking, reacting and their very dreams and desires. They didn't quite fit into the scenes of home any more!

Each went home with the longing to be with loved ones. Each needed rest and physical refreshment, for every one of them had experienced debilitating illness and the heat of Thailand had sapped their strength and sent them home pale and thin.

At first it was comforting for mothers and sisters to rave about fattening them up. It was delightful to have friends take them out to eat at restaurants far beyond their own budgets to afford. But when every meal began to be a sumptuous feast an uneasiness set in.... And thoughts of loved ones on the other side of the globe began to intrude. They could remember meals offered to them by Thai Christians that meant great sacrifice for their hosts and hostesses. And they could picture Bill and Rosemary and Mrs. Hanna and the girls with her, cutting corners to make ends meet.

Fellowship with home churches and the WEC family were great but as they read books listened to radio and attended meetings there would intrude the thought that Thai converts never had opportunity for such encouragement to grow spiritually. Spiritually they were feasting while converts out in Thailand were existing on a few leftovers.

* * *

There was another area of furlough that was increasingly uncomfortable. Before Ellen and Fern left the field, they had had a long talk with the Overgaards. Each felt that they must present a truly honest picture of the work and response in Thailand. They knew they would be speaking on the same platform with speakers from Africa and South America who could report thousands turning to the Lord. How difficult it would be to follow such a speaker to talk about the tiny handful of believers in Mai Ngam and Kampaeng. But each felt they must be painfully honest. They must not present a false picture or glamorize the work in Thailand.

Ellen has shared that another WEC missionary confronted her after listening to her speak. "Can't you give us any ray of light? Is there no room for hope?" was his plea.

In an effort to be absolutely honest and present the picture of hard unresponsive Thailand, were those pioneers not only failing to minister faith to their listeners, but painting layer after layer of discouragement upon themselves every time they spoke?

Each came to something approaching that conclusion as their furloughs wore on. They came to feel that deputation was a time to be God's instruments ministering faith to His people for Thailand and our three provinces.

All found it to be true that their own faith was sharpened and their awareness of His purposes became more and more clear as they reaffirmed His promises. They did not exaggerate the results of their term in Thailand but they did not limit God to their past experience.

Certainly the Lord's call and commission did not diminish for the Siam Four as they experienced their first furlough. But each one was tested with problems and pleasures of home that could not be present on the field.

* * *

For Ellen her call and commission to Thailand seemed to have been completely cancelled. Her father had been experiencing heart problems that brought him to the place that he had to leave the WEC fellowship. His damaged heart made it impossible for him to continue his strenuous speaking and traveling ministry.

Ellen's mother was not in robust health either and they did not carry the insurance or have the savings accounts that would provide for the help and care they needed. At that time North American WEC had no facilities for retirees. We were still a relatively young mission, with most missionaries younger than forty. Every headquarters was crowded with candidates and new missionary recruits and those coming and going on furlough. There simply wasn't room for an elderly couple in poor health.

Ellen did not have to be asked. The need was there for her to see and to Ellen, she was the obvious one to meet her parents' need. She would settle her parents in a lovely home in Glendale, California, and work part-time, with a European Mission headquartered there. She would shop and cook, clean house and do laundry with a willing spirit. She would do the bookkeeping for the European Mission but all the while Thailand would tug at her heart.

Ellen could not forget how often she had ridden her bicycle north of the Borneo House with a few tracts to distribute. Along the way she would find a secluded spot by the riverbank to spend a few moments alone with the Lord who made and loved that beautiful territory and the captive souls held in darkness there. Ellen had felt over and over on those trips that the Lord witnessed to her heart that He had given that area to her. It was hers to claim and she encouraged herself in the Lord to claim it by faith. Later, that claim had been sorely tested when she was thought to have leprosy. It looked for that agonizing time as if she would have to leave missionary work. Now again, with Thailand so far away, it seemed as if Rahaeng and the riverside towns and villages were lost to her.

Ellen had to keep reminding herself that it was God who had called her and was still in charge of her life. He would open the door to Thailand again in His own time. She would not fret herself by pushing on a closed door.

But how difficult it was to get through that day when Fern sailed from San Francisco to return to Thailand and Ellen could not be with her on that Maersk ship. It is just such days when we are tempted to discouragement and feel that our lamp of faith has grown dim. Ellen had not only to remain faithful in the task God had given her for that present time but she had to maintain faith in the commission He had given her back by the riverside in Tak.

* * *

For Fern the sailing brought a new challenge. For instead of returning with Ellen as a companion, she was traveling with a new recruit for Thailand. Remember that Fern and Ellen had lived together for years; they knew each other inside out. If there was anything in the other's personality that jarred or rubbed them the wrong way they had already dealt with this and come to acceptance and truce. But Fern and Alice Williams, relative strangers, would be getting to know each other on that trip to Thailand. Alice had finished her time of probation as a candidate and had enough support and passage money to be able to sail with Fern.

* * *

Alice Williams brought into WEC a home background radically different than any of the workers she would be joining. Her mother died when she was still a tiny child so Alice was sent to live with her mother's brother and his wife. Alice's brothers and sisters were farmed out to other relatives and never lived together again as a family.

Alice's childhood sounds like "Cinderella" without the "Fairy Godmother"! She was not allowed to start school till she was seven as her stepmother needed her help at home. Even after she was allowed to go to school, she was often kept home to do the family washing. Alice remembers the sting of the harsh soap on the open places were the skin was worn away from her knuckles as she scrubbed the sheets and heavy clothing against the old washboard. A huge black iron caldron was their washing-machine and scrubbing and boiling was the only way to get things clean in the mountain "holler" of West Virginia were Alice grew up. The coal mines the men worked ground black coal dust into their clothes and skin and eventually into their lungs.

The work given to the small girl was a heavy enough load for any child to carry but added to that were constant examples and reminders that Alice's aunt had little regard for her. All her love and attention were poured out on her own children. Nor was it just in her own house that Alice experienced rejection. Over and over from the lips of the mountain folk, Alice would hear, "Motherless girls all turn out bad."

Those early years might have broken the spirit of Alice altogether. Instead they stiffened her resolve with a fighting spirit of "I'll show them!"

Alice was fifteen when a relative of the famous L. E. Maxwell (founder of the Prairie Bible Institute) came teaching the book of Romans in the "holler". Alice, having attended Sunday school all her life, was no stranger to hymns and religious language and Bible stories. But now she was taken deeper than that surface acquaintance to face the sinfulness of her own bitter heart. She saw the sweet, unconditional love of the Savior and received Him with all the longing of one who could never remember being loved before.

It is not surprising that Alice would one day leave the hills of West Virginia for the Three Hills of Alberta Canada, and Prairie Bible Institute.

Alice at no time even hints that she enjoyed study and books and school. But she must have been a delight to her teachers for, released from the bondage of the heavy work she was required to do at home, she quickly proved that she was a quick and thorough learner.

Throughout her years at PBI (Prairie Bible Institute), Alice was waiting and looking for the Lord to lead her into the life and path He had chosen for her. But though missions and missionaries and unreached parts of the world were constantly brought before the students, Alice never felt that inward response that indicated that God was motivating her. She had been taught that God would surely lead and probably He would bring together three avenues to pinpoint His path:

***** First, there is a body of teaching - that is, the heart and mind of God revealed in His Word. Second, there is the experience of the instant - that is, some specific, pressing need in this world. The third indicator of His will that Alice was looking for was the confirmation of Christian friends. Alice would value the "amen" from teachers and advisers, when she could reveal what she recognized to be the call of God for her. *****

Of course added to these three Alice expected response, a rise of faith within herself that would be the answering, "Here am I, send me.. "

But the years passed, and Alice did not feel that the Lord was indicating any specific area of service for her. After graduating from PBI she went to Minnesota to work for one year. This was not a lifetime commitment but perhaps a testing of the waters for Alice. She would be doing mission work in a small logging community with her heart open to that longed-for calling from the Lord.

In the Spring of that year, Alice returned to PBI attend the Annual Conference. In her heart she was considering the need of the Philippines, Brazil and lastly Thailand.

Norman Grubb was the main speaker and of course he mentioned Thailand as he gave a picture of each of the countries where WEC was working. Alice listened ready to respond. But there was something missing from the picture of Thailand from the speaker's presentation. Alice had been reading Isabel Kuhn's books and it was the picture of the unreached tribal people of the hills that was stirring her heart. Norman Grubb was presenting the cities and villages of the plains. He was talking about ethnic Thai.

When the question was put to Norman Grubb "Will WEC be involved in tribal work?" Norman answered "Yes, as soon as we get the workers." He hardly had the words out of his mouth before Alice spoke up. "Here's the first one."

Norman Grubb would doubtless have shipped her off to headquarters right then to speed his vision for Thailand. But the formalities of application forms and references and physical examination with its accompanying forms all had to be attended to. So Alice, on her path to Thailand took a detour through SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics) and proved again that she was an outstanding student. There was one student there who might have proven a distraction, a fellow named Bob Peters. But Alice had been so taught at PBI, that she truly did not let herself be distracted!

It was only in WEC headquarters that Alice really let herself notice the candidate who came in a few weeks after her arrival. Though the other women candidates might tease her about Bob, Alice was carefully assessing this man who was also on the way to Thailand. Mrs. Ruscoe took note that Alice helped Bob dry pots and pans and it was just such occasions that gave Alice the opportunity to get to know what sort of person Bob really was. Alice tells us that she noticed that he was the only male candidate who really carefully mopped up all the puddles on the kitchen and snack-room floor. (And here was Bob thinking that it was the staff that observed his every move and had him on trial!)

It was at the very end of Alice's time in head quarters when she was just about to leave and get ready to sail with Fern to Thailand that she found Bob waiting for her at the foot of the back stairs. Alice had come up from the laundry room and was on her way to "the girl's dorm". She greeted Bob with the encouraging remark, "What are you waiting for?"

"I've been wondering if the Lord wants us to serve Him together," was Bob's proposal. Alice tells the story as if she answered, "It's about time!" But she really only thought that! Instead she answered in her forthright manner, "I've been wondering the same thing."

Of course that did not mean that they were officially engaged to be married. No 1 In those days a couple had an "understanding". And so when Alice left headquarters she did so with an "understanding".

Free to get ready to sail for Thailand Alice now took stock of her position. The members of her home church were behind her. They were ready to uphold her in prayer. A shower was given her and everything she had em her "outfit list" was provided even down to money with which to buy a bicycle when she got to Bangkok. But not one penny of support money had been promised!

Many WEC candidates faced the same unsure future in those days. (Now one can almost hear the giants of faith of that day answering· "Their future was as sure as the promises of God!". And of course that is true. But it is also true that earnest young humans can mistake their own zeal for the leading of the Lord and can mistake their own desire for a promise from the Lord.) Many  Weccer s of that day will testify that they felt very shaky as they stepped out on what they were persuaded was that path of faith. Alice could not help but be concerned as she saw the Lord leading her closer to a sailing date but without promised support from her church.

Eventually that promise of full support was given by Alice's pastor and with that assurance came the promise of the money she would need to go by train to California.

Alice tells us that Russico remarked "Alice's boat has come in."

* * *

Fern's testing was very different than Ellen's or the Overgaards'.

Of tile original "Four", Fern was the one from the most comfortable background. She had never known any deprivation. As a child and young woman she was always well-dressed, well-fed and had every advantage available to the children growing up around her. As a University student she had been not only style conscious but she could afford to be stylish. Almost six years in Thailand sent her home to a very different experience.

That Fern was not earning an adequate salary was very obvious. After years on the mission field every piece of clothing she owned was outdated and worn. Gifts were given to her and without these she would have felt like a refugee from the missionary barrel! For Fern's church, that had so adequately supported her on the field, had the policy of dropping support for missionaries on furlough! Help!

That seems a cruel and senseless policy for a church to hold but at that time many churches with large missionary budgets had the policy of supporting only those presently serving abroad. Perhaps part of the thinking was that missionaries on furlough would be speaking often in different churches and receiving large offerings and honorariums.

There is a flaw in this thinking. Some missionaries do not have extensive church contacts. Others are not very exciting speakers. They simply are not able to raise enough money to live comfortably at home and at the same time save for their return to their field.

For Fern, a woman from a rather conservative church background, the problem was compounded. She could have spoken several times a week (and perhaps did) but her meetings were children's or women's meetings. And while we do not want to diminish the importance of such meetings, the offerings and honorariums are small or nonexistent! Churches in Fern's background would have felt a woman was out of place in the pulpit. And so except for a brief call to the front to be welcomed home, a part in a dress parade of missionaries in a missionary conference and finally a dedication service just before her return to the field, a woman would not have opportunity to occupy the platform at a regularly scheduled church service.

That Fern was able to raise the money for her return to Thailand was a minor miracle. And one cannot help but feel that her church who immediately took up her support once again, when she was safely installed halfway around the world, missed a great opportunity to be drawn into Fern's call and work by not allowing her to share with the entire church body as often as they would a man on furlough from the field. They could have become much more knowledgeable prayer partners and been greatly enlarged in their understanding of missions and the lost world.

Fern's large family could not lay any legitimate claim of needing Fern to stay home but several of her closest loved ones made it abundantly clear that they felt she was throwing her life away. She had had a good education and was capable of earning a good salary and here she was willing to just waste her life and talents burying herself in the jungle far from home. Several family gatherings were ruined for Fern as her brothers tried to persuade her to be sensible, stay home, get a good job and get married.

Fern practiced a simplicity, almost poverty, before her critical friends and family, for her desire to return to Thailand forced her to save for the ship's fare. How easy it would have been for her to simply take a teaching job and so step up to comfort and ease. But for Fern, that was not an option. God had called her to Thailand. His call was her very heartbeat and Thailand was in her blood.

It was midnight on the 4th of January, 1954, when the ship carrying Fern and Alice sailed from San Francisco for Thailand. This was not to be a trip without storms. Alice tells us that a fierce storm sent the bags stored under their bunks to sliding back and  forth . It is most likely that the cabin the two women shared was not always peaceful, either. Fern was going home. Alice was leaving home. Their backgrounds were as dissimilar as it was possible for two American Christian women to have. Their dispositions and likes were not similar. But they would begin to share a future and a concern for Thailand and Alice would become a part of the circle of fellowship that was the Thai field. It was necessary that these two very dissimilar women grow to understand and appreciate each other.

* * *

Before Fern could return to the field, the Overgaards left to begin their furlough.

Wilf and Evy started it with a tremendous trial before them. They had discussed, endlessly the reasons why they ought to leave the children at home. Maybe they did not verbalize to each other any reasons why they should take the children back to Thailand. It is certain that Wilf did not explore his emotions and tell Evy how he felt about this coming separation.

In those days American men were not encouraged to talk about feelings. Every admonition to growing boys was to "be a man". "Men do not cry." "Men do not war their hearts on their sleeves." "Don't be a cry-baby."

Wilf could tell you why it was best to leave the children at home. He could not have told you how he felt about it. (Perhaps it is this manly stoicism that enabled men to return from the first and second world wars without the obvious display of pain that was experienced after the Vietnam war.)

Only Wilf's actions observed over the years following this furlough would show the deep scars of pain and hurt that this separation from his children caused.

Evy was far ahead of her day in being able to explore and verbalize her feelings and she let the listening world know that leaving her two children, Sharon and Paul, was a deeper more horrifying loss and grief than she could ever have imagined.

On one level, the parents had to acknowledge the Lord's leading and help, for the perfect situation opened up for the Overgaard children. When Wilf and Evy first began to talk of leaving the children at home, WEC had no home for missionary children or plan of opening such a home in North America. To take the children to Britain and leave them in a foreign atmosphere with a school curriculum foreign to their previous schooling seemed to have many drawbacks. Neither Wilf nor Evy had close relatives who they felt could nurture and care for Sharon, who would be twelve, and Paul, who would be ten years old. (Perhaps none of them even offered to take the children.)

But--- God did have a plan. Herb and Marion Congo, who had served with WEC in Liberia, were forced to stay home to take care of their tiny daughter who was born with severe disabling physical problems.

This couple came forward to offer to start a children's home in Three Hills, Alberta, Canada, in the shadow of Prairie Bible Institute. That meant that the children would grow up under the very best of Christian teaching and influence. Three Hills as a Canadian town was worlds removed from the sophistication and sinful attractions of most North American cities. Marion as a housemother could give the children all the loving discipline and sweet encouragement that Evy would want her children to have. Herb was a man of Christian character and would naturally assume the position of head of his household, under the control of the Lord. Wilf and Evy could not have asked for a more perfect place or a more suitable couple with whom to  leave their children.

Did this make leaving the children an easy matter? Never!

* * *

Ellen was fitting in with her job and her church and community. But the day of Wilf and Evy's leaving the East Coast to return to Thailand by way of Norway and Britain again brought her to that edge where she just had to hang on to what God showed her in the past. She had to believe that God had not put her on a shelf where He had forgotten her. At the center of her family with its needs that kept her at home, she was still one chosen to serve Him in Rahaeng. Her time to sail again to Thailand would yet come.

* * *

Writing between stations and to those on furlough, the missionaries signed their letters, "Yours Crusading". This was a practice picked up in the North American  Headquarters long before the first four sailed for Thailand. Now at home, Ellen and the Overgaards answered letters from the field, signing off, "yours Crusading". In a very real sense they continued the life of faith and sacrifice they had lived on the field. All that they had and were was made available to God and for Thailand. 

## Chapter 20  
Oh For A ... Tongue To Speak

It was February 15,1954, when the ship bringing Fern and Alice docked in the Chow Phaya River not far from the Oriental Hotel. Fern had felt she was going home just over a year earlier when she set out for America. But now standing on the deck seeing the familiar skyline of Bangkok, hearing Thai spoken by coolies and longshoremen and getting the faint aroma of spicy Thai cooking and heavy perfume of jasmine and frangipani mixed with the pungent smell of the river, she could not deny the recognition that it was here and now that she had come home!

Their ship was met by helpful friends anxious to welcome Fern back to Bangkok, but, in truth, Fern didn't need any help in seeing their things through customs and answering the questions of the immigration authorities. She knew her way around Bangkok and had made reservations and plans before arriving. She knew how and where she could get money changed and was very conscious of just what the strange coins and bills were worth.

Fern knew how to contact the Row Saw Paw company to have their heavy drums and boxes transported up country. She knew where to take Alice to apply for an immigrants visa book and she knew just what to say.

Neither Fern nor Alice tell much about their stay in Bangkok. For Fern everything was so familiar she doubtless did not see the city as exotic or mysteriously Eastern any longer. Alice was perhaps too bemused by all the unfamiliar sights she had seen on her way to Thailand. Perhaps she just couldn't take in any more.

After a few days the two set out for the WEC area by bus. Alice tells us that Alma was expecting them in Sukhothai and had a rice meal prepared for them. This surely means that Fern sent a telegram ahead from the central post office in Bangkok on New Road.

Alice goes on to state that Fern remained in Sukhothai while she went on to Rahaeng. Presumably Alice spent the night there in Sukhothai and the next day Fern would have given the bus driver instructions concerning at which house in Rahaeng he was to deliver Alice.

* * *

For Fern this was to start one of the most pleasant times of all her years in Thailand. Alma had inherited Dorothy's medical work, and her trip to Khonkaen with Elly just the month before Fern's arrival had acquainted her with the recognition and treatment of leprosy. Alma was a nurse, and being of a tender and sympathetic nature, she made friends and won respect from those who needed her nursing skill. But nursing was not the main priority in Alma's thinking. Alma was not only glad to welcome Fern as her senior worker but she was ready to fit in to all of Fern's ideas for children's and adult meetings.

When Fern reminisces and says,"Nostalgia overwhelms me at the thought of coasting on my bike down the hill through the market to the meeting room we rented next to the Chinese restaurant," she is revisiting in her mind that familiar scene and that wonderful time.

Everywhere Fern and her co-workers would go the cry would follow them: " Mem, Mem, Mem ." They were not being taunted or in any way insulted. It was a call to the  Mem to "notice me," "remember me," from every child they passed. And almost every one was known by name, for Fern's children's meetings were loved and well attended.

Listening individually to the children recite verses for the prizes she would give out, questioning them about Bible stories and keeping records of attendance at her meetings brought Fern to recognize and know most of

the children of the area. The ones who responded with attention and growing understanding and those who were naughty fastened on to Fern's attention and she would remember them faithfully in prayer.

"The other room that we rented was nearer the rice mill and this side of that lovely breeze-cooling hill." She goes on. Obviously, in memory Fern is always descending and not ascending that hill! There was nothing cool about pumping her bicycle up that hill. But one can quickly see how much Fern loved that place and time.

There were meetings held in those rented rooms and under the house where Fern would live with several  coworkers one after another. This house was a huge barn of a house, high and open to the elements. And the elements were not always kind, for the house was next door to a rice mill. Burned rice chaff blew in from the mill constantly coating every piece of furniture. Later on in Fern's stay there a car repair business opened in front of the house. The nighttime hours throbbed with the rhythmic pounding and hammering out of dents and straightening out of bent wreckage. The last addition to the neighborhood, a family of pigs just under the bedroom windows perfumed every breeze. But it was true the huge, old teak structure had a charm, and happiness colors our memories of a dwelling. Fern was very happy in that old house.

* * *

Before Fern's return from furlough contact had been made with three outlying villages where many leprous persons lived. It may have been Elly and Alma who first started visiting Hat Siaw, Tune Lyang and Denote to first conduct leprosy clinics, but it was Fern who took that up and continued faithfully for years to develop both clinics and friendships in those remote areas.

Fern tells us that they traveled by "rickety buses over deep-rutted clay roads and even rice fields with their high ridges, during the dry season." It was a bone-jarring ride that left them sore and covered with fine red dust. But rainy season travel was even more difficult and dangerous. They rode small, poled boats or rafts as the floods rose higher. They were usually wet and muddy before they could even get into their boats. Swamped boats and nonexistent piers where they needed to alight meant that they were even wetter and muddier when they got off their boats. As the area became more prosperous and travel opened up, the poled boats gave way to motor boats. And at last the temporary roads (made for ox cart travel and the moving of rice in from the fields to each village) gave way to permanent roads and at last to highways.

In 1954 and for several years to come the area was remote and undeveloped. But hundreds of people - men, women and children - were marked by leprosy and were suffering without hope or treatment. That is, until the WEC nurses and Fern came along. They opened their clinics where they cut away old flesh bathed and anointed sores that were about to putrefy and poison the patient. They gave the chalmulgra shots when they first set up their clinics, but that medicine was about to be replaced and their treatments to become easier for them to give and much more beneficial for the patients to receive.

There was another side to the travel to leprosy clinics that ought to be mentioned. Riding on buses and boats Fern developed a personal witness that was always received with warm interest. Other passengers would usually ask why a  farang was visiting such a remote and unimportant place. Or what was she doing in Thailand, so far from her own country and family. (Remember foreigners were a rarity in up-country Thailand in that era). Fern would take off from that point to present Christ and the way of salvation. She would end her visit by giving out tracts and inviting the interested to visit her and to accept the Lord Jesus as their Savior too. There were many occasions when another passenger was ready to get off as the bus had reached his home, but he had not heard the end of the story or presentation that Fern was giving. The passenger and the bus driver would wait till Fern was finished and the tracts given to each listener on the bus. There was one occasion when the bus driver left his seat behind the wheel and came back into the rear section, seated himself to listen and ask questions that let Fern know that he was carefully considering all he had heard.

There was not much reaping but even the sowing was exciting in those days.

In every village the girls visited they were allowed, even requested, to examine the school children to see if any had leprosy. The sad part was that so many were already infected with the disease. The marvelous part was that the girls were allowed to hold meetings right in the schools and present the Gospel and give out tracts.

Because the places visited were so remote and took so much time to reach, the girls had to spend the night away from home and start back the next day. In each of the larger clinic towns they made contact with homes where everyone was well and it was safe for them to stay. There, too, in the homes of "Village Headmen" or teachers they were royally received and neighbors gathered until late at night to listen to Gospel stories.

* * *

Fern had a system whereby she could put her hands on just the right tract for each person she witnessed to. She had first carefully read any tract she would give away and sorted them into groups. There were tracts she felt were suitable for educated government officials and teachers. Then there were others she felt were just right for students. Another group were kept for Sam Law drivers and shopkeepers. Yet another group were for farmers.

In that day before plastic bags invaded the markets of the world Fern sewed bags for her tracts from oilcloth bought in the local market. Somehow she marked her bags so that she could readily put her hand on just the right tract at the right moment.

Fern was always very systematic; her flannel-graph materials and flashcards were kept ready for use with appropriate memory verses printed out on poster boards or sheets of cloth to go with each presentation.

There were some to whom Fern's preparations for her trips and meetings seemed a waste of time and energy. But Alma could, with her whole heart, follow Fern's example. In fact, the two worked so well together that Fern became comfortable and felt that surely this was the co-worker that God had always intended for her.

* * *

Meanwhile Alice started the study of Thai in Rahaeng at the home of the Charters. Rosemary acted as official language supervisor for the first time in her experience. True, she had had some part in supervising Bill's study after they were married and moved to Kampaengphet. But Bill had already had almost a year of Thai and his study habits were developed and his study course was already charted out. Doubtless Rosemary listened in on some of Bill's classes with the teacher and perhaps came to his or the teacher's, rescue a time or two. But Rosemary was not designated as her husband's language supervisor.

In fact when Alice says that Rosemary was her language supervisor, that may be the first time that anyone on the field was expected to really supervise student and teacher and actively intercept and plan a course of study. Wilf had advised and provided books and hired the teacher for Elly and Marta. But it is quite obvious from the remarks made that he had no sure commitment to any one course. He had tried Elly with just the Romanized Spoken Thai books until he left for furlough and had exposed Marta to the Thai script. But that was more of an experiment than a studied, supervised course.

Mrs. Hanna, in inheriting two language students to work with her in Kampaeng, had doubtless given them time to try to absorb what they had covered in the time they spent with the teacher. But she then took them under her wing to experience door-to-door visitation and trips along the river to other villages, with meetings in schools, under shady rain trees or by the river banks.

Now presumably with the arrival of Alice, the field had matured enough to consider that a more formalized time of study was necessary and therefore a supervisor was necessary. So to Rosemary that job fell. But Alice was not long under the Charters' roof.

A young man arrived on the field some time that year. Hans Sierhuis, our first Dutch worker, would need a teacher and language supervisor. Although Alice was promised to Bob Peters it was not considered proper for her to live under the same roof as Hans. Even with the Charters there the neighbors would assume that this young couple were living together.

Protecting the testimony of the field was never convenient!

To move Alice down to Kampaeng was not convenient. To have Mrs. Hanna mother three women and each so different from the others was not ideal, but the inconvenient was obviously the course of wisdom.

* * *

Hans has elected not to contribute his own story to this history, so the account given depends on the memory and impressions others had of Hans.

Hans arrived on the field on fire with vision and expectation. One almost wants to write that Hans blew in like a tornado, sweeping all before him. It has not been said that he was unduly critical of the existing field workers. Nor does anyone report that he judged the field to be spiritually dead. But that is the impression that carries over the years.

Hans had lived through the time of Nazi occupation of Holland and had become a member of the Hitler Youth Organization. But his conversion after the war had turned his life upside down and he was from his conversion on a dynamic, outspoken Christian.

His church affiliation was with the Pentecostal movement and he was certainly charismatic in personality and speech. From his first introduction to WEC's upcountry stations he took over every devotional or fellowship meeting the missionaries held, whether it was an annual conference with all present or just an evening station meeting with only Bill, Rosemary and himself present. It was not that Hans meant to invade and sabotage a meeting another was supposed to be conducting, it was just the spontaneous outflow of a man full of ideas and zeal and praise.

But there was  another side to this flaming witness. Hans valued, perhaps gloried in the use of an unknown tongue. Prayer was the hallmark of this man. He spent hours on his knees often in a loud voice calling on the L o rd till he was hoarse and obviously exhausted. Since he was the first Thai worker to come from Holland no one was prepared to guess - was he praying in Dutch or an unknown tongue? Of course, that would not usually matter at all. For he was not speaking to fellow-workers but to the Lard who understood every thought of Hans' heart.

But Hans was a unique man and he presented an uncommon frame of mind and a one-of-a-kind problem to the field.

Hans, in his own room could be heard praying, pleading, almost crying before the Lord. Rosemary as language supervisor was faced with a dilemma. The field asked that language students spend full-time those first months in language study. Time with the teacher would, on its own, not give a working and usable knowledge of the language in just the one or two years the field would give for full-time language study. After time with the teacher the students were expected to spend the rest of the daylight hours in studying on their own.

From any point in the South House it could be heard that Hans was not spending much time in language study. It took a few weeks, but finally Rosemary's urging and exhorting and challenging was met by a proclamation of faith. God was going to give Hans the Thai language. As He had given the tongue of praise, He would now give the tongue of witness.

Rosemary and Bill felt that they were not being very spiritual to try to argue with Hans on this point. Yet they doubted very much that the Lord was going to just give the language to Hans without his having to study.

Perhaps a vision of the pressing need all gave force to Hans' idea that the Lord would give him the Thai language. He felt so certain that his message and leadership were what was needed, and they were needed right now!

* * *

Gaew Moon came to the Charters' home one stormy afternoon, not long after Hans arrived on the field. Her heart was obviously in as much turmoil as the windswept palm fronds tossing in  the monsoon rain. Tears chased the rain drops down her cheeks as she poured out her pitiful story. Pi Gaew was out of her mind. She had gone so raving mad that neighbors had come and helped Gaew Moon to chain her sister with the dog chain to the wall of their tiny house!

The mad woman cursed and raved, snarling as a dog and lunging at the end of her chain in her effort to attack. She was pitifully thin and had refused for days, to have her hair combed or her face and body washed. Surely this was a filthy, vile, evil spirit that had taken possession of Gaew Moon's sister and had invaded that home, once so quiet and peaceful. The days when Nai Paw lived in that house must then have seemed like an unreal dream!

Dinner was set aside for the missionaries that evening. Instead of sitting down to satisfy their own appetites, they spent that hour in prayer for the sisters and the situation in the miserable house just north of Hua Diat.

That hour brought no change in the raging elements. The sky was low and dark with heavy clouds. The rain beat down in a steady rhythm, interrupted only by exploding thunder from time to time. But the three felt they needed to get to the sisters home. Hans brought to the moment a spirit of urgency. The need and the threats were urgent. Immediate action was called for and without language Hans was ready to take on the situation.

If the bike ride through the blinding rain and muddy potholes of the path diluted Han's urgency and zeal, it did not sow.

The dark house leaning on its stilts and the figure crouching against the wall in an even denser darkness posed no threat to the authority Hans believed the Lord had given him.

"The demons would understand English?"  Hans half-asked, half-challenged. Bill and Rosemary had never given any thought to that question. But, said they supposed it to be true....

"He stood up, and with a loud voice that sounded above the roar of the storm, commanded the evil spirit, in the name of Jesus, to come out of her.

"She rose up with such violence that the chain broke away from the wall. She had not been able to walk for many months, but now she ran dragging the chain, to the edge of the porch and would have thrown herself over the low railing had not Hans caught her and forced her to sit down again. It seemed as if the powers from the underworld were trying to snatch her life away."

Rosemary goes on to tell us of how they prayed the Lord to quiet Pi Gaew till they could give her an injection of streptomycin. Though the darkness and the erratic movements of the woman made the giving of an injection almost impossible, "With the help of timely lightning flashes, I filled the syringe." Rosemary continues. Pi Gaew "sat perfectly still until the injection was completed, and then resumed her raving and thrashing."

Pi Gaew slept through that night and awoke the next morning in her right mind! Steady improvement in both her physical and mental states was so apparent that once again that household was the first topic of conversation on every tongue in that area.

Pi Gaew testified to the saving power of the Lord from that date on. Her testimony was to be tried over and over as demonic(?) or mental (?)or chemical imbalance (?) brought her again and again to madness. But it could not be denied that God did something wonderful for her that stormy night. And Hans played such an important part in her deliverance that he must have been encouraged to press on in faith to claim the tongue that would have given him immediate and widespread authority as he proclaimed the Gospel.

* * *

Bill and Rosemary felt they must challenge Hans that his commitment to Thailand meant a commitment to buckle down and study, study, study this language that he would need to use. This did not mean that previous WEC missionaries felt that their study had given them fluency and power in witness. No, each had been cast upon the Lord for discipline and concentration, for a tuned ear to discern the tones and timing, for memory and finally fluency. All along the line every student was dependent upon the Lord. And when it came to the final step, the actual preaching of the Word, only God could turn words into seed that would germinate and spring up in hearts to a harvest of life.

But still, somehow, that proclamation that God was going to give him the language made Hans seem so much more spiritual!

As the months passed it became noticeable that this very clever young man who spoke English and German as well as his own language was not getting the Thai tongue!

* * *

It was in the autumn of 1954 that Norman Grubb on a world tour stopped off in Bangkok. He visited the very new language/candidate house of the OMF and the guesthouse of the C&MA. Then he traveled upcountry to visit each WEC station and to be the guest speaker at the annual conference.

Norman Grubb's messages were doubtless a blessing. But it was a suggestion about how the field was being run just then that was to have lasting effect. (Remember that in a sense, the WEC Thai field was Norman Grubb's baby.)

He saw the three girls studying Thai in Kampaeng. Often without a servant, they spent most of their time in household duties. Their trips out on the river with Mrs. Hanna were doubtless very profitable and were strengthening their vision and love for the lost of the province. But they simply did not have the study time necessary to get the fluency they would need for a lifetime of ministry.

Alma down in Sukhothai with Fern was doing valiantly, but she had never had as much as a year of concentrated Thai study! It was certainly the aim of the field that every worker have two years of full-time language study. But the truth is that the shortage of workers and servants made it impossible for any to have more than just a few months of truly full-time study. Then they were wiping floors and cooking over charcoal stoves, accompanying senior workers on clinics and to meetings and at least for Alma there had been time spent as teacher and housemother for the Overgaard children. These were not just necessary jobs to be done but were valuable life-teaching experiences and they baptized independent personalities into one close-knit family.

But---Norman Grubb got the field to stop and consider and realize that all of these women would limp along with a poor grasp and usage of the Thai language if they did not stop right then and get some concentrated study. His suggestion was that the girls in Kampaeng, along with Alma and Fern., move back to Rahaeng for a few months. Fern would act as language supervisor and  mae bahn for this girls' dorm situation. There were teachers available along with enough trained servants to insure that all the students would have not only time with a teacher but would have the luxury of uninterrupted hours to give to study.

This move would bring another perspective to the field thinking. It is necessary to open new stations, to reach out and spread thin to reach the lost , b ut their efforts would be greatly hampered if the workers were not truly fluent in Thai. From this time on, more importance would be placed on giving time to each new arrival for uninterrupted, concentrated study. A year was easily seen to be inadequate.

Probably all new missionaries to the field, have wished the Lord would just give them the language. But – He never has – not yet! Doubtless there is something in the character and thinking of each  farang that needs to change if they are to get inside the thinking and feeling of this land that expresses itself in Thai. While the missionary works away at the study of Thai, the Lord works away at the mind of the missionary. The change in tongue is necessary if the Thai are to understand the message. The change in the missionary is necessary if the Thai are to see the message, come in flesh.

## Chapter 21  
Quiet Study and Urgent Need

It was in July of 1954 that Alma and Marta went together to Chiengmai to the Presbyterian Hospital for physical check ups. Marta had not been well since her return from the  waterfalls at Lan Sang in April of '53.

Mrs. Hanna watched as Marta lost her appetite, lost weight and strength and finally even her ability to study. The girl's fatigue, with dizziness and nausea, caused Mrs. Hanna to remember from a lifetime ago, how, as a language student in 1916, she had suffered with dysentery. Her illness had come to a crisis while she was vacationing at a mountain retreat just outside of Chiengmai (Khuntan?) .  But she remembered, too, that the cure had been worse than the disease. Injections of emetine had given such blinding headaches she had not been able to lift her head from her pillow. Finally, carriers were sent for and she was carried down the mountain to stay in the city at the comfortable home of missionary co workers. It had taken days before she was well enough to resume normal life.

Early cures for dysentery were truly fearful. Stroke and heart attack were possible side effects of the poison strong enough to kill the amoeba germs. A patient stayed flat on his back throughout the cure guarding against any stress or strain on his heart. And the course of treatment could be as long as ten days.

Mrs. Hanna wanted Marta and Alma, who had developed the same symptoms, to go to the best medical care available in those days. Both tested positive for amoebic dysentery and were given a course of medicine to take as soon as they got home.

The strong poison so upset Marta that she was never able to complete the entire course. But she say she "got better and was eventually strong enough to study again."

Both women were well over the disease and its debilitating cure when the Women's language school was set up in Tak and they were able to give themselves to full-time concentration and study. But it's important to consider that while Alice Williams entered that study time just a few months from her arrival on the field, alert and healthy, the other three were tired. They had each battled disease and fevers. Their adjustment to their fellow workers and to Thailand had begun to sap their strength and corrode their initial zeal and vision.

* * *

Marta tells us that during that study time in Tak, Fern and Gaew Moon went to Sukhothai on weekends. These long, tiring trips were taken for several reasons. First, the clinic had to be opened that leprosy patients be able to receive the medicine for their ongoing treatment of the disease. The patient's wounds needed to be examined and treated and medicine distributed. The files on the patients needed to be kept up-to-date and carefully reviewed. The hope was that no patient would go without help. But the truth was that many patients, used to having the missionary nurses visit their distant villages, were unable to make the trip into Sukhothai. Though some were able to send relatives to collect their medicine for their wounds, this wasn't really a very satisfactory way to help for many of the patients needed the chalmulgra injections. But this was all that could be done if the language school was to be continued.

The experience of those days just emphasized a fact that was already apparent in the leprosy work. The missionaries had to go regularly and all the way to care for those needing treatment. The patients most needing medical care were never going to be able to come any distance to a clinic.

The second reason for the weekend trips was to keep a regular Christian witness before the people of Sukhothai. Evangelistic services were a part of every clinic and on Sundays, if there was anyone who wanted to attend, there would be a worship service. Often a family from Phitsanuloke would make the trip to worship with Fern. This was Prakop and Anna with their children. Prakop, the manager of the only bank in the area, was a prominent figure in Phitsanuloke in those days.

As a boy, Prakop had attended the Bangkok Christian Boys school. Though most of the graduates of that Presbyterian school went on to become staunch Buddhists, Prakop had a real life-governing relationship with the Lord. Anna, too, had an exciting testimony of the Lord's dealing in her life.

When this family got together with Fern and any missionary companion working with her, it was a foretaste of heaven for all of them. From the darkness of their surrounding neighbors they met in the light of the presence of the Lord. Singing, praying and sharing the Word all became acts of praise.

The third reason perhaps not ever counted by anyone other than Fern, was the opportunity to be beside Gaew Moon. Gaew Moon was still a grieving widow. She was still a young Christian, her formal Bible training had been of just a few month's duration. Then she had been plunged into a great loss at her husband's death. The ongoing picture of her life was of a grimness that can hardly be imagined by any who has never lived with mental instability in the home.

Traveling together, eating, sleeping and working side by side, Fern had countless opportunities to encourage and counsel Gaew Moon. Fern could always present Gaew Moon's desperate sufferings as "the way of the cross". She could always bring a heavenly viewpoint to earthly circumstances, and lift Gaew Moon from under her crushing situation to a position on top, presenting her circumstances to God for His pleasure and glory.

* * *

Gaew Moon was not the only one from the Mai Ngam leprosy group wanting to serve the Lord at that time. Nai Some left to attend the Bible school at Khonkaen at the same time that the WEC language school was in operation in Tak. Nai Some felt the Lord was leading him into a life of service and he appreciated how much the schooling had sharpened Gaew Moon as a minister of the Word.

Nai Bun, the oldest of the leprosy men of Mai Ngam, had struggled valiantly to overcome a nicotine addiction. From the early days of his conversion he had purposed to give up smoking. But try as he would, he could never get through many hours without a cigarette. Rosemary tells us that from the hour of his baptism, he was delivered from that habit that he could not break in his own strength. The Lord had set him free. So in those months while Nai Some was away at Bible school and Gaew Moon was away each Sunday with Fern in Sukhothai, Nai Bun could lend to the meetings in the woods his testimony of miraculous deliverance.

Pi Gaew was relatively quiet from the day that Hans had  com manded that the demons leave her. She was attending clinics and meetings and, though she was far from normal mentally and emotionally, she appeared to understand the Gospel and to be quietly in control and at relative peace in her spirit. This was a dramatic change from the murderous rages and suicidal hysteria of the old Pi Gaew. And so Mai Ngam was a place of quiet.

* * *

Rahaeng was quiet, except for the hum of four women reading a tonal language. Each in her own cubicle (bedroom) reviewed the lessons the teacher had covered with her and though each one tried to read quietly to herself the breeze through their screened rooms carried the music of their soft voices.

This was a time of new experiences for Fern. As language supervisor, she had to keep an ear on each student and try to anticipate what each one needed to change or practice in order to sharpen her ability to understand and express herself in Thai. As  mae bahn (house mother) she had to supervise the servants and plan meals that would please two Americans, one from the South and the other from New York state, a Swede and a Dane. Elly is remembered to have said that American soup tastes as if you have stuck your tongue out the window into the rain.

The fresh produce used to prepare those meals had to be purchased from a very small farmers' market and had to stay within the limits of the money available for housekeeping. Of course the South House had no refrigerator at that time, so little could be prepared ahead of time and kept for many hours. That there was never any complaint shows that Fern succeeded in a situation that would have defeated most young missionaries. But it can't have been easy for Fern to find menus that would satisfy all of her household.

* * *

Down in Kampaeng Hans struggled not so much with language study, but with how to get out of study and out into the work! Rosemary tells of groups of villages that were neither on the road nor the river. To reach them would take days of walking and climbing muddy footpaths. "They were connected by a path which, starting from the mouth of a stream near Kampaengphet, led up into the hills, and in a semicircle back to the Wang Chow bridge where the highway crosses the Ping River.

"Bill, upon learning of these villages, determined to visit them as soon as the rainy season was over. But Hans, who had just arrived in Thailand a few months before, was eager to get out on trek. "Let's go now!" he urged. That urgency of Hans shows a good picture of the spirit of the man. He could not have given an understandable presentation of the Gospel at that time, yet he could not rest at home with a study book before him. He had to get out to the unreached villages.

At Hans' urging the two men loaded their bicycles and set out. Rosemary tells us that they took some food, mosquito nets, a bottle of drinking water and Scripture tracts. But they took just one change of clothing as they headed off up a path they did not know. They had no idea how long they would be gone or even where they were going.

The path was in good condition at first, but it soon became rutted and pocked and muddy. In time it became impossible for the two men to ride their bicycles. Fortunately, they did not have to carry them very far for they soon came to a small house. The farmer who lived there was not only willing to let them store their bicycles under his house but he agreed to act as their guide for the remainder of their trip and carry their gear for them. What a mercy this was, for the two missionaries had already begun to have stiff muscles and sore backs from the carrying they had already done.

They set out afresh behind their new guide with quickened pace and encouraged hearts. "After about two hours of plowing through swamps and climbing small hills, they came to a village on the bank of the stream. The guide advised them to spend the night there, but as it was not yet noon, they elected to go on. After giving out some tracts and speaking to a few people, they resumed their walk. Their way became more difficult as they crossed precarious little bridges over deep streams. The mud increased until it seemed almost impossible to go on, and yet they were reluctant to turn back, having come so far."

With sundown and the quick fall of darkness in the tropics, "the carrier put down his load and confessed that he was lost!" No wonder he had wanted to spend tile night in that tiny village now so far behind them. He would have been able to visit the villagers that evening and get directions of how to go on the next day.

"They looked around for a place to camp for the night, and chose a small mound of solid earth that rose from the swamp. Here they ate what food they had left, and put up their mosquito nets. The guide went to sleep immediately, but Bill and Hans were soon on their feet again after being bitten by hordes of fierce ants. Their nice, dry mound was an anthill."

Rosemary goes on to recount for us how the two men "decided to make a cup of coffee." Hans built a fire and Bill searched for water. This he quickly found as a puddle had gathered in the footprint left by a passing elephant.

This is a picture to send shivers through anyone who has ever seen the liquid standing in an elephant's footprint and though that drink of coffee was made over forty years ago one reads the account hoping they let the water boil and boil and boil!

Rosemary goes on to state that that drink "relieved the misery of the situation." Doubtless Bill was already beginning to be amused by the account of the anthill that he would give to Rosemary when he got home.

But the relief of the moment was soon to be ended. "As they sat by the fire, they heard a noise that sounded like an express train moving over the  treetops . Soon they were wet to the skin in a deluge of rain, and their fire died with a hiss. After that the mosquitoes took over biting them from head to foot. Hans wrapped himself in a plastic coat and tried to sleep sitting on a stump. Bill, not liking to be steamed, simply walked to and fro, swatting the mosquitoes hour after hour. At dawn, they hastily broke camp and found the village of Pong Nam Ron about a mile farther on."

The strangers were welcomed with the usual country Thai hospitality as they were escorted to the Buddhist temple in the center of the village. There were no priests in residence so Bill and Hans were given the honor of religious teachers ( ajarns ). Throughout the day they received guests and gifts of rice. They answered questions and gave away tracts and scripture portions till they felt that "surely every one in Pong Nam Ron had heard the Gospel."

In the Lord's mercy to His servants He allowed a ride in a dugout canoe to be offered to them. So instead of the long walk through swamps, they swiftly sailed down the river to the point where they had left their bikes.

One wonders if that experience helped Hans to be more contented to stay home and tackle hi s language books.

* * *

At the end of the rains in that year of 1954 Mrs. Hanna made plans to return to the United States. She had been in Thailand, on that visit, for four years moving about back, and forth, from Tak to Kampaeng in order to fill in where she was needed. She had written four booklets in Thai that were used for many years in many parts of Thailand. She had been a resource person for every WEC worker on the field and had encouraged and guided individual missionaries and field decisions.

Though never joining WEC, Mrs. Hanna was among our group, an example of the discipline of obedience. Within obedience she embraced the necessary sacrifices with such joy that observers lost sight of the hardships and saw only the enjoyment.

All the missionaries came to Kampaengphet to say goodbye to Mrs. Hanna before she left for Bangkok. Those final words of appreciation and good wishes must have brought back the sound of voices, Thai and American, from fifty years in Hazel's past. For she was now leaving forever the land and people she had adopted and served.

Mrs Hanna went to the U.S. to live in a gardener's cottage on the grounds of the WEC headquarters in Pennsylvania. She would there be able to keep the Thai field ever before the missionaries and home staff. The needs of Thailand would be brought to every prayer meeting as long as Rosemary and Evy and Fern and Marta were faithful to write to Hazel Hanna.

* * *

In November of 1954, Bob Peters and Mrs. Hanna met in Hong Kong. Bob was on his way out to the field and Mrs. Hanna on her way home. Bob was just starting his missionary career. It was all ahead him and he hardly knew what to anticipate. For Mrs. Hanna it was all over, all in the past. Doubtless Mrs. Hanna gave Bob advice and encouragement, for that was her way, and she would be doing that for every candidate looking toward service in Thailand for as long as she possibly could.

In just a few weeks Mrs. Hanna would be in California and meeting with Ellen Gillman. Ellen, to all outward appearances, was perfectly content and settled to stay home forever. Her dress and manner of life and conversation would be so well blended with the Christian society she moved among, no one could guess that here was a displaced person. With Mrs. Hanna, Ellen could talk freely. And she did. The two talked for hours in the El Monte headquarters where Mrs. Hanna was staying. Once again Mrs. Hanna was able to give needed encouragement.

Ellen was strengthened to exercise the discipline it took to put Thailand and her sure call to that land, on a shelf and get on with the demands of her life but with renewed faith; God would take her back to Thailand in His time.

* * *

While Mrs. Hanna was saying goodbye to Thailand the Overgaard parents were saying  goodbye to their two oldest children and setting their faces towards Thailand. Plans had been made for Wilf and Evy and Mark (at that stage of life called Markie) to travel to the East. Leaving the US on the East Coast they traveled first to the Scandinavian countries.

At that time there were already two Scandinavian girls on the field, Marta and Elly. Elly, officially with the Danish Covenant Mission, was in a sense seconded to WEC, until such time as her own mission had sufficient personnel in Thailand to act as a separate mission. Wilf needed to meet with the home-end leaders of this mission to clarify just how Elly was to relate to the WEC leadership on the field.

Marta was a  Weccer and there was a WEC headquarters and sending base being established in Stockholm. Wilf and Evy had fellowship with these  Weccer s and with Marta's family and the churches supporting her.

A family were in the process of applying to WEC. Lorang Peterson was Norwegian and his wife, Nina, was Irish. The two had met and married in China under the China Inland Mission. Wilf and Evy, as planned, met with these folk and with the WEC representatives and churches connected with them and with their own relatives in Norway.

Wilf able to speak Norwegian, had opportunity to minister to church groups and present the terrible spiritual need of Thailand. (Though Norwegian was Wilf's mother tongue, he had not really used it in a great many years. Evy delighted to recount how in preaching he would pause every once in a while and unconsciously insert the Thai, (Le Kow) to the confusion of his listeners.)

From the Scandinavian countries the family traveled to England. Evy wrote to her friend Sylvia from the London WEC headquarters on November 26, 1954. "Wilf has been out of town taking meetings for several days, and is today at our WEC Bible School in Glasgow. He will be back here by Friday, then we have a week before we sail. We were to have sailed Nov. 12, but Markie broke out with measles just before that, so we could not go, and our sailing is now scheduled for November tenth. We will have three weeks on the water so you can be thinking of us on the high seas when you are celebrating Christmas. We will reach Rahaeng about January the sixth, so do be praying for us.

"As we face the field this time, it is with quite different feelings than before. We know now what we face. All the romance and natural interest is gone, and we go forth in obedience."

* * *

It is not strange that Evy should say that the romance of missions was gone. While they were moving ahead and making plans for arrival in Thailand their hearts were back in Three Hills, Canada, with Paul and Sharon.

Evy wrote of their thankfulness to the Lord for raising up the Congoes to act as parents to the missionary children left with them. "It has been a blessing without parallel to see how the Lord has chosen and prepared the Congoes and their co-workers to take up this task of the home for missionaries' children."

But Evy, ever honest, wrote, "This summer, as we were moving day by day, inevitably, toward the days when we must leave Sharon and Paul, was unbelievably hard. How sweet were the words of the song: 'It will be worth it all when we see Christ.' It is not in our own 2strength that we have taken this step, believe me!"

Only their obedience to the Lord and the urgency of the task He had laid upon them could enable them to leave their dearest treasures, Sharon and Paul, behind them and go forward to Thailand.

## Chapter 22  
A Jewel By The River

About a year and a half after WEC entered Thailand the OMF did so. Their first missionaries to scout out the land were older experienced workers who had fled China and the advance of  Mao Tse-tung. They were tribal workers and knew that there were pockets of the tribal folk among whom they had worked, hidden in the mountains of Thailand. But Thailand had never been thoroughly mapped and its population counted and identified. Only by word of mouth did they have any news of tribal settlements.

The Overgaards had not been long in the south house when Orville Carlson came. He arrived late one evening on the bus/truck from Paknampo. Travel-stained and weary he was a bit dismayed to find that he had arrived before the telegram telling of his coming. But Evy was able to scratch up a decent meal using bread just made that day and a tin of cheese and another tin of tomato paste. Wilf helped build up the charcoal fire and Sharon set a place at the table, while Orville enjoyed a warm bath using the thermos of hot water Evy had filled for their morning coffee.

Orville found that these folk who were not expecting him, were not only anxious to make him welcome but they were more than interested in what he was doing. Orville and Wilf talked into the night about the prospect of finding tribal villages in Tak and Sukhothai provinces. After the children were put to bed on the screened porch, and a bed made up for Orville, Evy was able to join them. She was as thrilled as was Wilf to have Orville's fellowship and ideas about the job of evangelizing WEC's provinces. Orville went to bed with the promise that Evy would have food prepared for an indefinite trek and Wilf would not only find a Thai who knew the area, and help negotiate in hiring him to act as guide, but he would accompany Orville himself.

Orville had word of a Lisu village in the mountains bordering Burma. The Thai guide and helpful folk met along the paths were able to steer the foreigners, after a few wrong turns and many hours climb, to the village they sought. And Orville found ears that could understand his language from China.

It all sounds rather hit or miss. But it was an important trek, for Wilf agreed and committed WEC to an agreement with OMF that WEC would work with them. As WEC had no plans at that time to expand our work to the tribal folk with very different languages and difficult to reach villages, WEC would welcome the OMF into our three provinces to evangelize and disciple the tribes that they had worked among in China. At that point in history Orville and Wilf believed that the only tribes OMF would want to work with in western Thailand were the Lisu and the Meow.

* * *

The OMF came then, a thin and widely spaced line of tribal workers. Some spoke Thai with strange tribal accents and some spoke Thai not at all. Wilf and Evy, Bill and Rosemary, and the following generations of WEC workers would welcome, serve and love these "old China hands". They were a. displaced people driven from the land of their adoption. They never quite adjusted to the way things were in Thailand. "We didn't do it this way in China," was often on their lips. That remark could be quite annoying if one did not realize that the comment revealed the longing of a heart far from home.

At some date, perhaps as early as 1950 or '51, an OMF family rented a house north of Rahaeng in Ban Tak. These were the Charles Petersons, an American family. The plan was that Charles would travel up to the tribal area immediately behind Ban Tak, and his wife would be able to stay home with the small children. But Charles became unwell almost immediately, and the family were forced to return home never to come back to Thailand.

* * *

The Petersons were watched by a neighbor in Ban Tak. When missionaries are speaking English to each other, they often feel that they are shut off from their surroundings. Since their words are not understood, they feel a sense of privacy. This is a mistake!

Raywadee watched the expressions on the mother's face as she taught, played with, encouraged and scolded her children. She noted the tone of voice and calculated the type of laughter. (Laughter can be cruel. It can ridicule or it can just express a happy heart.)

Raywadee listened as Charles set out on trek and said good-by to each member of his family. She watched the welcome home and then, as Charles became ill she observed the concern, and carefully weighed the note of loving kindness in each voice that addressed this father.

Raywadee came from a background of wealth and education. Her marriage was a social success with financial security and public honor. But all the while there was a deep, private need carefully hidden. When her husband became unfaithful (and what husband was faithful in the Thailand of multiple wives?) Raywadee became so depressed that she attempted suicide. Her chest was crisscrossed with the scars of stab wounds till the end of her life. As she grew older a broken hip caused her to walk with an ungainly limp. And lines of pain erased what had been a lovely face.

Raywadee had memories of every type of abuse. She knew well the sound of verbal cruelty. Sarcasm and ridicule and even the silence that destroys the soul had recorded itself on her memory.

This OMF family amazed Raywadee. They seemed to be built around a deep well of sweetness, contentment and goodness. No, she couldn't understand their language. And in truth the Petersons had very little Thai. The tribal language they had learned in China was the language they planned to use in their work in Thailand. They had studied just enough Thai to be able to manage in the market and in travel.

But Raywadee, watching and listening, created conversations and situations that she felt matched tone and expression. (Years later, missionaries would note how Raywadee would quote Danny Overgaard in long sentences when he was still a baby barely able to talk. Raywadee could have been quite a script writer!)

In Raywadee's heart a work of the Holy Spirit was being done . N o, she hadn't yet heard the Gospel , s he didn't understand her spiritual need , s he could not have conceived of God's plan and work of salvation ; b ut on the level of human relations and the deep needs of her soul to be loved and considered by significant others, Raywadee saw that the members of this family had what she had never experienced.

Raywadee understood that Charles, with heavy knapsack and sturdy boots, set off regularly to teach religion to mountain tribesmen. As she noted his return from these trips, each time dusty and sweaty and obviously weary, she began to realize that these missions he set out on were of such importance to him that he did not regard the physical cost to himself.

So Raywadee set herself to learn about this religion that so supported this family.

Much of their family living had to be done on the front porch or in the tin side yard for without air-conditioning their home was a furnace in the daytime. And always there was this neighbor woman peering through the slats of their bamboo fence or just standing in the road watching.

The family noted that their watcher often mimicked them imitating each one of them to passersby. What was she doing? What Thai words was she putting in their mouths? They were told by their landlord that she was a crazy drunkard and to be careful of her. They distrusted this woman who watched their every move.

Looking at the situation from the outside we can conclude that it was not yet time for Raywadee to come into salvation. The Petersons were not really able to share the Gospel in the Thai language , a nd they certainly had no desire to get closer to this strange woman.

When the family had to leave Thailand, Raywadee was left with just the deep impression that they had the personal, loving relationship that her heart longed for. Every once in a while the thought would intrude, "Perhaps their religion had something to do with their kind consideration of each other."

* * *

It was not until the middle of 1953 that Bill and Rosemary's path crossed with Raywadee's.

The Charters decided that they should rent a house in the little riverside village of Ban Tak just after the rains let up.

Rosemary says Ban Tak had "... the alarming appearance of being about to topple over." As the Charters approached the town by pole boat they marveled that there were any houses standing, as every house in the little riverside town seemed to lean at such a dangerous angle.

They had rented one of these leaning houses for a month. As usual the Charters took just the bare necessities for their comfort and convenience and planned to spend as little time as possible on cooking, laundry and house cleaning. They were going to be in the town to reach the town. Time and energy would be focused onto that effort.

When the owner of the pole boat docked by their own leaning rental and helped the to unload  their gear, they marveled afresh how just by crossing a river they had moved back a decade in time. There was not one car not one truck, not one motorcycle. Not even a "sam low" or a bicycle in Ban Tak in 1953! There was no bridge across the river and the road through the town was crisscrossed by wooden boards or bamboo slats, for the roadway was marked by streams and creeks and deep puddles. This would all dry out before harvest time and ox carts could bring the newly harvested rice into town by this road.

Rosemary writes "As we arrived, our new neighbors crowded about to get acquainted. The front door was barred from the inside, and there was no ladder to the back porch. So the neighbor's showed us how to get in by going through their house and climbing from their porch to ours. If our neighbors house should be locked, they said it was possible to climb up a pole onto their porch and then from there onto our own."

So much for closing your house securely when you want to leave it for a short while!

When the Charters were finally able to get their back door open and get inside their temporary home, all the neighbors followed them. They came , "...carrying our boxes, bedding rolls, stoves, buckets, etc. Some opened the two windows and the front folding door. Another helper began filling the water urn. A tall, thin, middle-aged woman who walked with a decided limp, was sweeping the dusty, littered floor. She ordered a young girl to bring a bottle of rain water from her house.

"Later we learned her name was Raywadee. She had a dressmaking shop and beauty parlor next door, and two young girls for her apprentices."

Rosemary goes on to tell that each day Raywadee brought "...some offering of food: a fried duck egg, dried fish on rice, or a bowl of curry." It is easy to see that Raywadee was not just making friends but she was making merit!

Raywadee told the Charters that she was a Roman Catholic and called Rosemary by the Enqlish title "Sister". Much later she confessed that she had never been a Catholic and really knew nothing about the religion. But she had heard of Catholics and Catholic sisters and Rosemary says "...she pretended to be Catholic in order that we might accept her as one of us.. " Raywadee was determined that she was going to really get to know this couple. She was going to get to understand them and what made them the people they were.

Every moment that Raywadee could get away from her business she would go next door to visit with Bill and Rosemary. It began to seem to the Charters that Raywadee was free to leave the sewing and beauty business about 24 hours every day.

The next door neighbor was always present for the evening meetings. And the missionaries were encouraged that she seemed to listen intently. She often asked questions or took it upon herself to help explain what Bill or Rosemary had been saying. There were times when she seemed too animated and talkative, and the Charters began to suspect that Raywadee was intoxicated.

Rosemary writes of one meeting in the second week of their stay in Ban Tak when,"...Raywadee stood up during the meeting and with dramatic gestures amounting almost to a dance, she began reciting many of the things we had been teaching, interspersed with snatches of the Gospel songs which were printed on a chart on the wall." Rosemary goes on to say that, looking around at the audience reception, she noted that Raywadee's presentation was listened to as seriously as was their preaching.

Before the end of that month the Charters spent in Ban Tak, Raywadee prayed and accepted Christ as her own savior. From that point on she prayed daily with them and though they believed her profession of faith was genuine, Rosemary says, "Our rejoicing was in moderation. Many more promising conversions had ended in dismal failure. But we prayed with her and for her and taught her all we could."

* * *

It was in the beginning of 1955 just before the Overgaards were to return from furlough, that Bill and Rosemary again rented a house in Ban Tak. This time they stayed on the east side of the river in a newer part of the village that could be reached by road.

"Almost as soon as we arrived, Raywadee came limping joyfully in to see us. She told us she had moved across the river since our last visit, and was now living in the house directly across the street from us. Again she came in nearly every morning for a time of prayer and Bible study."

Bill and Rosemary were no doubt thankful that here was a convert who had stood the test of time and still remained faithful in her testimony before her watching village. She was the only person in Ban Tak who was a Christian. And neighbors tried to persuade her to turn back.

Though the Charters must have been thankful for Raywadee, they must also have found that her visits were often an unwanted interruption. They must surely have felt that more pressing involvements and matters had to be put aside so they could give themselves to this persistent friend.

* * *

There was another person who must be mentioned in connection with the Charters' second stay in Ban Tak. Boon was a young man who arrived on the Charters' doorstep in Tak just before they were to start this missionary outreach. He told them that he was a Christian from East Thailand. He had been a believer from his youth. He had attended Bible school and had worked as a pastor to a small congregation.

It was this congregation, hearing that there were so few Christians among the millions in western Thailand, that had sent him as a missionary to Tak province. He asked if Bill and Rosemary would accept him to live and work with them.

Well--- is this young man the answer to prayers for national co-workers? Is he one who will be able to proclaim the Gospel as Thai need to hear it?

Bill and Rosemary were the most trusting and positive of people. They expected anyone who said he was a Christian to behave as the Bible instructs. Boon's vocabulary proclaimed him to be one who conversed with missionaries. His conversation proved that he knew the Bible. When the Charters invited him to give his testimony publicly in street meetings, he exhibited the fact that he was a gifted speaker.

That Bill wrote to C&MA missionaries mentioned by Boon was not that Bill distrusted the man, but simply as a courtesy to fellow missionaries. And it was only right that Boon's associates in the East be informed of his present whereabouts and involvement with evangelism. Yes, in a sense Bill was checking out Boon's story, but Bill and Rosemary were expecting to have Boon's story corroborated on every point.

And the Charters were happy to include Boon in their household as they moved to Ban Tak for a few weeks. He would share their meals and enjoy the comfort of the same hard floor that they would sleep on. It is certain that they made no fast commitment that they would pay him a salary, for the Charters, like all the others on the field at that time, had no personal funds to mention.

It is a most amazing thing that Thai, who lived on a much higher scale than did  Weccer s, often thought that missionaries had unlimited funds. Perhaps they felt that missionaries, like Buddhist monks, were making merit by living simply, uncomfortably and frugally. Many young men offered to work with the missionaries in those days. Unlike Boon, their very way of offering themselves, and the vocabulary they used, announced that they had no idea of what Christianity or missions was all about. The usual approach was, "How much will you pay me to be a Christian?" Or they might start by the ingratiating announcement that since the missionary approached spoke pitiful Thai it was no wonder that there were so few Christians. But as they were exciting, mesmerizing speakers, everyone would embrace this religion if they were to be paid as preachers."Paid" was the operative word.

Evidently Boon did not come right out and ask for a salary. But one wonders what he made of the Charters' living standard as he lived in the home with them in Ban Tak. Doubtless, the curries with the most expensive ingredients were gifts from Raywadee. They had no fancy furniture (or any furniture at all)! They did not have a generator that could have lighted and cooled their home. They used the same kerosene lamps to light their hot, dark house at night as did everyone else in the town.

Rosemary says of Boon, "He was a handsome young man with a fine physique and a charming personality." With all this he was single.

Let Rosemary tell us the unfolding story of Boon. "On Saturday Bill and I returned to Rahaeng for Sunday meeting and to attend to mission accounts. Bill was treasurer at that time and had to spend many hours each week on the ledgers. As we were leaving, Boon handed us a sealed letter, asking us to deliver it to our cook, Boon Nak.

"Boon Nak had been a Christian for only a few months. She was an attractive, modest, and quiet. young woman. A mutual admiration was developing between the two young people. But the romance was doomed. Upon our arrival at Rahaeng, we found a letter awaiting us from the missionary in east Thailand to whom Bill had written. He was glad to learn the whereabouts of Boon, who was pastor of one of the small village churches. He had suddenly left his wife and children and the church without letting anyone know where he was going. His family was without money and no one knew whether he would ever come back."

Though this is the first time this particular story came into the circle of WEC work in Thailand, it was perhaps the most common and tragic cancer in the body of evangelical Christianity in Thailand, at that time. A pastor held in respect and seemingly content, just suddenly disappeared to turn up elsewhere. They did not seem to want to leave the Lord or the Lord's work they just wanted to leave their family and the problems of their local body of believers. In the days when the Thai did not have to register or carry any identification, it was easy for the stressed or dissatisfied to simply get up and leave. Maybe WEC hadn't experienced this sorrow as yet because WEC fellowships were too new and too small to have appointed, paid pastors. And the groups of believers had no church buildings or property proclaiming that they had budgets that could tempt a wandering pastor.

Rosemary continues, "We destroyed the letter to Boon Nak, and when we returned to Ban Tak on Monday, we had a long talk with Boon. He seemed hardly perturbed at what the missionary had said about him, and gave an excuse for everything he had done. But finally he confessed that, like Jonah, he had been trying to run away from God and had found that he could not. We told him that we had destroyed his letter. We gave him money to get home, and the next morning he left by bus. Some time later we heard that Boon was reunited with his family."

Boon was winsome, of a handsome appearance and manner. He was already educated in the Bible. How easy it was to accept and work with him. Raywadee was a middle-aged woman. If her husband was still alive, he had several younger wives and was not interested in the whereabouts of Raywadee. Unfortunately she had a pushy sort of personality. To explain spiritual truth and reality to Raywadee was slow, hard going. To be frank she looked like a dead end. Time and energy poured into discipling her did not appear to have much chance to flow out from her in blessing to others. But Boon would surely develop into a preacher that God could use mightily.

With the wisdom of hindsight, we understand that reality and appearance did not match at all. If Boon was ever accepted to pastor a church in east Thailand, it would only be after a long time of proving himself able to live above his previous temptation. But Raywadee grew steadily. She had already stood the test of standing alone in her community. Without encouragement or even fellowship she remained faithful for over a year. When a bus service to Rahaeng opened up, Raywadee was as faithful as the changing seasons. She never missed a Sunday unless she was very ill.

In the first prayer letter the Overgaards wrote when they got back to the field, they mentioned the crippled, middle-aged woman who traveled fifteen miles by bus and  sam law (bicycle rickshaw) to attend every Sunday service.

If any WEC missionary were the true builder, he would not choose to start a church with a crippled middle-aged woman who was slow to understand and learn, and a bit overbearing in manner. But it is certainly true that Raywadee became not only the first believer from Ban Tak but she was one of the first to faithfully attend the Tak church meetings. Many came before her, many were quicker to understand and more cleaver at arguing with the unsaved. There were some who had exciting testimonies of deliverance and healing but they fell by the wayside. Raywadee never looked back.

Though Raywadee never went to a formal Bible school and never applied to the mission, she became a faithful co-worker and partner with the  Weccer s in Tak province.

She saved resident missionaries hours of fruitless conversation for she intercepted and interviewed those who came seeking the  mem or  ajarn . She could tell them they needed no excuse to take up the missionaries time. They didn't have to pretend to want to compare British law with the Thai system , o r want information on how to get a scholarship to Ohio State University (that one was prominent in the world news because of a riot when students were killed by police.)

Reywadee could urge guests to just be honest. "Tell them you are seeking the true God. Tell them you carry a load of guilt and are seeking forgiveness" She advised ; o r, "tell them you have read this tract and you want to know more."

No, maybe none of us would have chosen Raywadee to be a leader in the Tak church but we all became thankful that the Lord chose her and equipped her to be just what the mission and the church needed.

## Chapter 23  
Two For Rabbit Hunter

1955 was off to a very busy start. While Wilf and Evy were arriving back in hot, sticky Bangkok and moving up to Tak, Marta, Elly and Alma were off to chilly Chiengmai for a three-week course in leprosy. Dr. Buker of the Leprosy Mission was teaching this course to bring Thailand leprosy workers up-to-date on the new treatment available.

No longer would chalmulgra injections be given. At last new sulfa drugs were available and they could be taken orally. This was going to change the nature of village clinics. No longer would a patient have to be present to be treated. Those who were ill with fevers or were unable to walk could send a trusty family member or neighbor to collect their supply of pills. But this meant that the leprosy worker had to keep very careful records mapping each patient's progress and condition and they had to know how to ask the right questions and give the right, careful instructions. It was not unheard of, in those days, for instructions to get so garbled in transit that pills to be taken orally were pulverized and dusted on the skin. Or at times a child taking just a tiny segment of a pill as a preventative would be given their father's pills, a full treatment for the disease.

The course trained the workers how to judge and prescribe how much a patient should take of the medicine. And they needed to know how to advise the well members of a patient's family to take the medicine as a prophylactic. This was not always an easy matter as the dosage for children was based on their age. Children out in small villages where there were no schools had no idea of their age. When parents were asked when a child was born a very common answer would be, "... in the rainy season"! Or perhaps parents could confer and come up with the helpful reply, "... it was during the mango rains." Then the questioner was left to guess which year of the mango rains or which rainy season. Was it seven or eight years ago or maybe ten or even eleven years ago?

Once again the course went into the possible side effects and the dangers of the strong drugs. And then the students were instructed in how to cut away gangrenous skin and clean and dress the sores of leprosy patients.

For Alma and Elly this was largely review of what they had studied in Khonkaen a year earlier and what they had experienced as they held clinics in Sukhothai province. They told Marta how lucky she was that she had missed the day and time when the only treatment of the disease was the difficult chalmulgra injections. The two became quite dramatic as they explained h o w tough a patient's skin could be and how almost impossible it was to pierce that skin with the hypodermic needle. They let Marta know that had the course been the same as 1954 she would have had to practice by giving injections to thick-skinned pomaloes instead of counting out pills.

To Alma and Elly the leprosy course was not just helpful, it was comfortable and there were aspects that were delightful. Dr. Buker's sense of humor was great fun and his vision and commitment to the treatment of leprosy was inspiring. To meet with the other leprosy workers from the C&MA,the OMF and the Leprosy Mission was refreshing.

* * *

But for Marta there was an inner struggle. Marta was not a nurse. A medical ministry was not in her thinking when she stepped out to follow the Lord into missions. She envisioned a pioneer life of evangelism, of teaching new converts and forming them into groups. A tight schedule of leprosy clinics was a far cry from the idea of missionary life that she had carried for years.

The field considered Marta and Elly as a team, a unit. Marta could see no future apart from Elly. She knew that she and Elly would most probably be moved to Kampaeng as soon as the field conference in February was ended. There had already been talk of this posting and of the fact that Kampaeng was just a  stepping stone to reaching Prankratai.

Prankratai district in Kampaengphet province was a hard to reach area of poor farming settlements. Was it the soil or the lack of rainfall that kept the area so poor, or was it the phenomenally high percentage of crippling leprosy that so ravaged and impoverished the area?

Marta and Elly had already seen a small part of the leprous district. A bone-jarring truck trip across dry fields and strips of stunted forest had introduced them to straggly settlements of small huts, part bamboo and part rough wood. The running water was usually a half-dry creek or uncooperative well. There was no plumbing or electricity. And in spite of the fact that they had arrived by truck there was usually no road to speak of. Prankratai was the back of beyond.

If any sort of crowd gathered to witness the arrival of the truck, there would always be several whose faces were marred by leprosy. Even small children were crippled and deformed by the destroyer. This district of Prankratai (Rabbit Hunter) was the obvious area of outreach for a mission that would open clinics.

Marta could see before her a long life of physical hardship. She could see a ministry that was frankly gruesome. And she was well aware that the partner she would always be working and living with was domineering and moved over every opposing opinion like a tank moving over an enemy in warfare.

Marta was not deceived! The Leprosarium in Chiengmai was gorgeous, with great, blossoming trees shading every path. Dr. Buker had a delightful personality and a winsome sense of humor. Chiengmai was an experience of good fellowship and even good food. The experience of Prankratai was going to be the exact opposite!

1955 began with an experience of death, as Marta laid down her own hopes and yielded to what she believed the Lord had chosen for her. And she did not anticipate a quick resurrection! She knew that day after day, year after year, she would experience aching muscles and a tired back. Perspiration would glue her blouses to her as a stamp is glued to a letter. Her mind would slow down and her head feel heavy with the pressure of the Prankratai heat. She would handle putrid sores while always in constant demand.

Marta had to make a surrender of her youth, her health, her comforts and desires. She chose what had no natural appeal for her.

As Marta expected she writes, "At our conference Elly and I were placed in Kampaeng and asked to start work in Prankratai district." Isn't it amazing how much a flat statement like that can conceal!

* * *

No longer full-time language students, Elly and Marta began this new phase of their missionary careers in the house that the mission had built in Kampaeng. By today's standard of mission houses it was barely adequate but in that day it was lovely. Built up on high posts with its open verandas , the house caught every breeze. And huge trees shaded the house and screened it from the developing road.

The furniture the mission provided was sturdy. Of course it was sturdy. It was solid teak! Built by prisoners in the Tak jail it was far from graceful in design. And you couldn't speak of the finish... it didn't really look finished at all. A great deal of sanding and then a bit of polishing would have improved the furniture no end! But it was furniture. The girls would eat at a real table while sitting in real chairs. They would study at something that resembled a desk and would again be sitting on one of those straight dining room chairs. The heavy beds were nothing more than platforms that raised their mattresses a foot from the floor and the dressers had drawers that didn't quite fit, but they were solid teak.

Servants were still something of a problem in Kampaeng. As the girls started off their life in that town by leaving it almost every day to take survey trips, they had little time and not much inclination to spend time in housekeeping, cooking and laundry. But it was far easier to do those things themselves than to try to teach a new girl to whom much of the work was unfamiliar and thought to be totally unnecessary.

The first trips to survey Prankratai were taken using public transport. That is, Elly and Marta rode the trucks, considered to be buses, usually owned by private individuals. Often these enterprising folk had a great idea of how to make money but as their own experience had been driving an ox-cart or pole boat they had little idea of how to take care of the piece of machinery they had purchased with which to realize their dream of wealth. It is quite amazing that a few of these early truck owners actually made a success of their venture and are now owners of bus companies.

Marta tells us that those early "buses carried chickens, ducks and pigs that were crowded in with huge sacks of rice, large tins of kerosene and bamboo baskets of vegetables." She adds as an afterthought, "Oh yes, there were people, too." As many passengers as could crowd about the sacks of rice or charcoal or baskets of pigs were welcome to ride.

The truck owners had absolutely no notion of a bus schedule. If there was a load of goods to be transported the truck would go. If there were just a few passengers they would need to wait till there was a busload, even if that meant a delay of several hours or even a day or two!

There was a theory, at that time that a heavy, sturdy truck could go anywhere. So, the average trip included at least one breakdown. And the average traveler expected to arrive at his destination covered in red dust with bruises and scrapes beginning to appear. Deeper aches would show up as he tried to get comfortable on his hard bed at night.

Remember that a war with Japan had left that country in such ruin that the light-weight Japanese trucks would not be manufactured nor be available throughout the East for another eight years or so.

* * *

Marta tells us that, "Wilf and Elly went to get permission to do leprosy work from the Health Officer and the  Nai Ampoe  (head district officer). Elly had to be registered as the one in charge of the clinics since she was a nurse. Dr. Buker in Chiengmai was listed as the doctor responsible few the work." At last the leprosy clinics could be set up in Prankratai. That was April of 1955.

To introduce the area to their leprosy treatment, Elly and Marta started with a leprosy clinic in Prankratai every two weeks. "The news that we had good medicine spread through the villages by the patients," Marta says. Doubtless many quacks had come with glorious promises and expensive concoctions that did nothing to help the ravaged bodies of those suffering the advancing disease. That patients being treated said they had found help was a new experience for Prankratai.

"Somebody must have told us of the mam who had the worst case. While visiting him, we were invited to use their big porch for our clinic. Patients came in ox-carts. But many were not able to make the trip. So someone in the family was sent to beg us to visit their homes. By the time the clinics were finished in the late afternoon, we had no strength left to walk across fields. So we rented a small house close to the  Ampoe office to stay over one night after each clinic so we could do visiting the following day.

"The clinics were very primitive, of course, and they were hot and smelly. I took care of the register of patients, writing down names and ages and how many children each patient had. All children received halves or quarters of the tablets, depending on their age and size. This was to prevent them from catching the disease from their parents. I had to explain how the medicine was to be taken by the patients and how it was to be given to their children."

Patients who had all of the worst symptoms with nodules all over their faces and bodies, with swollen ears and claw like hands and deformed feet began to respond to the medicine and after just one year, Marta says, "They looked so different."

Marta goes on to say that response to the Gospel was not always so apparent. "We explained the Gospel in simple words. But most of the patients seemed to want only the medicine we had to dispense and not our teaching. Only a few of the most badly diseased seemed interested in our message. Their families would have liked for us to take care of them altogether, as their disease brought shame to the family." So it is possible that the interest of even those so very marked by leprosy was an endeavor to get the two foreign women to take them in, as a Buddhist temple shelters the elderly and maimed.

But by the time the two women rented a house and moved out to live in Prankratai, "there was a small group of believers, among them the man who let us use his porch for a clinic."

* * *

Marta tells us that "Elly often went up to Chiengmai." There were several patients that were in need of surgery or other treatments that Elly was not equipped to perform. So she escorted them on the bus, introducing them to their own country and the world of travel beyond their own farmland.

Elly was a dynamic personality and could present the stories of Prankratai, winning support and prayer and friends for their work. She so impressed Dr. Buker and others of the Leprosy Mission that they gave a Land Rover to the Danish mission for Elly and Marta's use.

Wilf spent days helping the two to learn to handle "the big four-wheel thing" as Marta called it. They needed lots of encouragement and practice in driving onto and off of the ferry that crossed the Ping. Marta says Wilf told them to "go gracefully through the deep ruts and holes in the roads." (Having seen him attack the ridges of rice-fields as if they were the hurdles on a racecourse, one wonders at this teaching he gave to Marta and Elly!)

It is important to understand that while Elly was often difficult to live with as a co-worker, she was never difficult to listen to as a missionary speaker or Bible teacher. She was dynamic. She knew how to emphasize the dramatic and, to be honest, mare dramatic things seemed to happen to Elly than to the rest of the field put together!

Wilt tells a story of one time when Elly was returning from Chiengmai with two of their Prankratai leprosy patients. Late in the afternoon the sound of the Land Rover was heard at the Overgaard home, "The South House". Whatever Evy and Wilf were doing was quickly dropped and coffee was prepared and served to the weary traveler. (Evy usually had cookies on hand for these unexpected occasions.) The two patients would remain downstairs and out by the kitchen area were they were doubtless served something other than foreign tea.

Far the next hour or so Elly would bring the Tak station up-to-date on what was happening in Chiengmai and the other bits of news she had heard while there. Then the travelers were off in a hurry to get home before it was dark. With a screech of gears and a cloud of smoke the Land Rover raced away.

The evening meal was cleared away and the household was settling down to a quiet evening when Elly's voice could be heard calling outside the closed and barred gate.

Somewhere on the other side of the river the Land Rover had blown a tire. Elly could wrestle the vehicle to a safe stop without overturning and tumbling them all into danger, but she had no idea of  how to change the tire. So when another vehicle appeared traveling back to Tak, she left the two patients to sleep in and guard the Land Rover and she returned to get Wilf.

At four in the morning there was a bus appropriately called the " Rot Tee Cee" (4 a.m. bus) . Just as the town night watchman was making his rounds banging a gong four times at prescribed stations, the bus would be circling through the town to pick up passengers who had made arrangements with the owner the night before. So that night of Elly's arrival Wilf had rushed off on his bike to track dawn the bus owner and make arrangements that he and Elly be picked up by the  rot tee cee , transported and dropped at the wounded Land Rover.

Elly would be able to write home, and then tell on furlough, of the perils of the road. She would describe the deeply rutted cart track that led the last lap of her journey home and how the Land Rover pitched from side to side as it bounced over that uneven track. She would describe how heavy and unwieldy the Land Rover was and how it leaned at a dangerous angle with its useless blown tire.

But...

That was not the end of the adventure. Life with Elly was always dramatic.

The early-morning bus had just passed the last straggle of Tak houses when robbers hiding by the side of the road fired guns to stop the bus. The passengers were ordered by the gun-carrying robbers to get off the bus and lie face down by the side of the road. Others of the robbers could be heard throwing down the luggage and sacks and boxes stored on the top of the bus.

Wilf says that he had just a bit of change in his pocket and immediately dug that out to hand over as he was getting off of the bus. It was still dark and a robber standing at the foot of the steps shone his flashlight on each passenger as he descended. Wilf's outstretched hand was quickly relieved of his change. But the light shining on his hand had picked up the gleam of Wilf's watch so he was relieved of that, too.

Wilf does not know if Elly tried to hide what money she carried or it may have been that the robbers could not believe that a foreign woman would not be wearing expensive jewelry. In any case "they handled her roughly," Wilf says. "The robbers prodded her with a stick as she lay helpless on the road."

One man, in getting off the bus got a look at one of the robbers as a flashlight shone on his face. "Oh, it's you!" the foolish fellow spoke in startled recognition. He was told to lie on the ground and without. any further remark was shot dead on the spot.

All jewelry and money was taken from the passengers among whom, Wilf tells us, was the district nurse, Khun Nai Payoon.

The sound of a motor starting up back in Tak caused the robbers to hurriedly toss inside, the baggage they had taken from the roof of the bus. The passengers, shoved by the robbers, stumbled and fumbled over this barrier of boxes and sacks to fall shocked and trembling onto the two seats extending the length of the bus. The driver was commanded to "get going and don't come back!"

The bus sped off for several kilometers then just stopped by the side of the road until daylight. What a wait that must have been! The driver and passengers were all in shock, trembling and fearful of every sound that might mean an approach of the robbers. There would certainly be some soft crying, some mumbled cursing and eventually loud anger as the day began to dawn. "As soon as it was light the bus returned to Tak and the police station," Wilf tells us.

If Elly were alive today she would have so many more details to tell us. And if, in that day, the Danish mission had not yet been given a vehicle to drive, Elly would probably have been given money from Denmark to buy a car to rescue her from the danger of further bus rides.

* * *

At the same time that Wilf was teaching the two from Prankratai to handle their Land Rover, he was making trips to Maesod and scouting out the possibility of opening a station in that border town. This was the vision that had long occupied his thinking and now with the beginning of a road, that possibility was within grasp. (the words "beginning" and "road" need to be considered within the context of that time) A paved highway was promised but something approaching a rutted cart track, steep and dangerous in places and nonexistent in others, was just beginning to be cut. Trucks would be able to cross the mountains just a few weeks out of the year. At first traffic would go one direction on even days and the other direction on the odd days. This was obviously necessary as in no place was passing possible.

But the absence of a road would not completely cut off the Maesod side of the mountains from the rest of the world, for a plane landed at the primitive airstrip out near the river (border) twice a week. That is, if clouds did not obscure the unlighted field from the pilots vision, and heavy rains had not so flooded the field that a heavy plane would sink into mud and be unable to take off.

No, these obstacles were not impossibilities. Wilf's vision was at last about to be realized. Maesod would be opened as a WEC station.

Wilf found a very suitable teak house for rent at the suitable price of 200 baht per month. $10! Fronting the main road out of town toward the airstrip and Burma border, it was situated with a large banana grove at the back. Of course, it needed screening and partitions but this was to be expected, and the landlady, an elderly widow, was delighted that Wilf should upgrade her property in this way.

Evy was doubtless ready for the move across the mountains, for it seemed the only way that she would ever have her husband at home! He hardly had time to help to get things ready for the move; he was always needed down in Kampaeng. At times Wilf was needed for something to do with the Land Rover. At other times there would be some matter  ruang to do with officials and the clinics developing down in Prankratai. At other times Wilf and even Evy would be called on to settle problems to do with neighbors or new believers. There was always something happening in Kampaeng and Elly didn't hesitate to call for Wilf.

In Sukhothai Fern and Alma got on with the opening of clinics and the running of a station. They wrote a prayer letter each month telling Tak and Kampaeng what was going on, but month after month they got on with the job without needing to call for Wilf's help.

To the north in Hua Diet Bob and Hans got on with language study. Though Rosemary was in charge of that language school, she and Bill were often away for days at a time involved in an itinerant preaching and evangelistic ministry. They, too, wrote a station prayer letter each  month and doubtless filled in a more detailed account of their trips as the What Doi house met with the South house for prayer and fellowship. But seldom, if ever, did they need to send an SOS for Wilf to come settle a dispute, repair a machine or advise them in how they should go on with their work.

No, it was Kampaeng that demanded Wilf's time. A bicycle bell sounding out at the closed front gate after dark would usually be a man from the post office with a telegram from Elly. Or the sound of a heavy car stopping just outside that gate would be Elly and her Land Rover coming or going to Chiengmai and there would be some pressing issue to deal with.

To do her justice, we need to understand that Elly was a born leader. Because she had so many ideas and visions, she needed people to implement those plans. She needed not just one Wilf to help but two or three Wilfs, and certainly one Marta was not enough. And so Marta bowed to the job of running a very busy station and clinics while Elly rushed to Prankratai, to Tak, to Chiengmai and even Bangkok.

## Chapter 24  
New Station, New Recruits, Newlyweds & A New Baby

The huge truck was so top-heavy with its piles of baggage and cargo it seemed at every turn of the mountain road that it would slowly topple and begin a fall to the ravines and valleys far below. The grinding of gears and the loud labor of its engine echoed back at each turn of the steep path cut from the mountainside. Slowly it crawled up and up winding across the face of the mountains that separated Tak and the central plains of Thailand from the border with Burma.

The road was still several years from completion. And in fact, the approaching rains would wash out completely much of the work that had been begun on the road. But the track was mapped out and the cutting away of hillsides begun, and for a few months trucks and cars with four-wheel drive could make the trip through the mountain passes.

Back in February the annual conference had made the decision that the Overgaard family would open a mission station in Maesod. Now, in May the arrangements were complete and the first Christian missionaries to occupy the border town were on their way.

Arrangements had not been easy. Because the road was not yet officially open to the general public written permission for any vehicle to use the road had to be obtained from Bangkok. Usually only government transport and trucks moving goods for the few stores in Maesod could obtain this permit. A friendly truck owner from Tak told Wilf that if Wilf could get the permission for him, he would gladly move the family and their furnishings over the mountains for free! He knew that on his return trip he would be able to load his truck with cargo and people and could easily make a substantial profit.

Rosemary tells us that "Wilf promptly wrote the letter to Bangkok." She goes on to paint the picture of those days telling us that the weather was oppressively hot, as day after day passed with no reply from Bangkok. The days of May were running out and the start of the rainy season was overdue. Heavy, dark clouds thickened above the mountains and the rumble of thunder, off in the distance, could be heard. Would the heavens suddenly open and a downpour close the road for the next five or six months?

The truck owner came every day or so to ask if the permit from Bangkok had  arrived . He was not the only one anxiously awaiting the permit. The Overgaards were packed and ready to move at a moment's notice. Every passing day the waiting became harder. Again and again those packed cases and boxes had to be opened and a needed article retrieved, used and then repacked.

Finally the permit arrived. The last minute packing was a scramble, for the truck would leave early the next morning. Every daylight hour was needed for the long trip over the unknown road. There would be no gas stations or garages where repairs could be made to the truck. Every type of accident and mechanical  break -down had to be anticipated by the driver, and every mechanical tool and spare part that might be needed taken along.

* * *

The dawn was breaking as the heavy truck rolled up to the South House to collect the passengers. Rosemary tells us in he memoirs that the back part of the truck was already half full of people and boxes. This all had to be unloaded so the heavy teak furniture, steamer trunks, tea chests and drums and cardboard boxes could be loaded on. When the boxes of the other passengers were loaded back on top of the Overgaards' things the load was higher than the driver's cab. This picture of a truck so overloaded it appeared grotesquely top-heavy would become a familiar sight over the next few years as the Maesod road would crawl toward completion.

In the front cab with the driver, places had been reserved for Evy and for Alice Williams. Alice was moving with the Overgaards. Her year of Thai study behind her, she would be moving on to begin the study of the Karen tribal language.

Alice must have had mixed feelings that early morning as the truck pulled away from Tak, for she was leaving Bob there just six months into his Thai study. Alice and Bob had not lived in the same town during those months since Bob had arrived on the field. But there was much coming and going, a field conference and an all-field vacation at the Lan Sang Falls had surely brought them together. They had at least seen each other and had chances to talk together (always under senior worker observation). But now until their wedding in November a rain drenched, uncrossable mountain range would separate them.

Wilf and six-year-old Mark climbed up over the side of the truck and found places to sit among the  khong with the Thai passengers. High above the cab on boxes and trunks, they would have an uncomfortable seat but a marvelous view of the winding mountain road that fell steeply behind them.

* * *

For many years that trip across the Maesod road took at least eight hours. No record was made of that first trip but we can be sure it was from dawn to dusk, at the very least. When a weary group would be discharged at their new home there would be no kettle on the boil, no beds made up and no meal ready for them. Maesod was beautiful and the big teak house the WEC rented was rather gracious, but it must have looked like a big, dark barn when they arrived there to the rumble of thunder and heavens that threatened rain. This was the end of May, 1955.

* * *

Evy had her hands full from the very start of those days in Maesod. The lessons she had taught to Sharon and Paul before their furlough were lessons she would now teach to Mark. But along with being mother and teacher, Evy would also be in charge of the running of the household. She would be getting used to a new market and training a new wash-girl.

It could be argued that Tong See was a great help to Evy. She had already been trained as cook while the Overgaards lived in Rahaeng. Now having moved to Maesod she would again be working for Evy. Yes, Evy was used to Tong See and the cook was used to Evy but it was already realized that Tong See was difficult to work with. Easily offended, she had fights and quarrels with wash-girls one after another. Evy handled her by walking carefully and talking softly! Perhaps Evy would have dismissed the woman, who appeared to be several years older than Evy, if it were not for the fact that Tong See had professed faith and went through Bible studies and correspondence courses as thoroughly and as fast as she went through wash-girls!

* * *

Alice would be starting the study of Karen and every effort would be made to give her an absolutely uninterrupted period of time to study. She was to be a truly full-time student. Evy realized that the varied demands made upon her as a wife and mother had hampered her own efforts at language study and she was determined that Alice get a good start at Karen before her marriage.

But it may be that Alice did not find it so easy to settle to Karen study. Wilf had already lined up a Karen refugee from Burma to act as her teacher. Over the months that Alice and then Bob would study Karen in Maesod they would have several teachers. One was an elderly man with no front teeth. That was just fine if you wanted to learn to speak Karen with a lisp! One teacher lasted only a short time as his son came from Burma threatening to tie him with rope and lead him home as you would lead a pig to market! Another suffered so from shell shock that any loud noise would send him fleeing into the banana grove behind the house.

But it was not the fascinating characters who acted as her teachers that drew Alice's concentration from her Karen lessons. Alice was planning a wedding. Permission had been given that she and Bob be married in Tak in November, just six months away. By that time Bob would have had about a year of Thai study. (Remember the WEC rule was that an engaged couple must wait to be married two full years from the arrival of the second one on the field) The rule was not being ignored to please Bob and Alice but because the field didn't have the personnel or stations to accommodate two separate Karen language setups and all those who had trekked the Maesod mountains and seen the Karen villages were anxious to see that mountain world evangelized.

Alice chose the material and arranged for her wedding dress to be made by a seamstress in the Maesod market. She and Evy chose the recipe for a wedding cake that Evy would bake in the kitchen oven propped up over a charcoal fire. To form the layers of the cake they would use varying sizes of rice pots in which to bake the different sized layers. The plan was that they would leave the icing and decorating to Fern. Of course this meant that Alice had to write to Fern asking if she would do it and giving instructions about what was wanted. The agreement was made that Fern would act as hostess at the wedding reception and Marta agreed to act as bridesmaid. With such thoughts in her mind how could Alice settle down to Karen study?

As the months passed more and more thought and conversation at table and in the communal sitting room in the evenings were given to wedding plans. A romance and "understanding" developing on the other side of the mountains brought Wilf to suggest to Alice that perhaps she and Bob would want to put off their wedding a few months in order to have a double wedding ceremony with Hans and Alma! The memory of this suggestion still makes Alice quite indignant! What must her reaction have been at the time? Alice is certain that Wilf was dead serious, but it needs to be mentioned that even Wilf's own wife isn't always certain when he is kidding! And the temptation to ignite Alice to such an explosion must have sorely tempted Wilf to make that obviously unacceptable suggestion.

* * *

We do not know just when the attraction between Hans Sierhuis and Alma Lions began to develop. Perhaps it was at field vacation. Certainly the waterfall sounds to have been a perfect setting for romance. Or it could be that at the February field conference, Hans first began to feel that Alma was "the one".

We do know that letters were written and conversations took place. And Alma was brought to the point where she must decide and answer. In her days in Thailand it appeared that Alma was a person who had a hard time making decisions. Perhaps she had no more difficulty in this area than anyone else but she did her doubting and vacillating out loud! A woman with a different personality would perhaps have shared the situation with others only when she was certain of her own mind and certain of the Lord's will.

Alma sought Fern's help in seeking the mind of the Lord from the very beginning. And had  Evy been to hand she would doubtless have sought her advice and council also.

Fern found herself in a difficult position.

Alma was often in tears as she thought of the vast differences in background, culture and outlook on life. Hans carried the scars of his association with the Hitler Youth organization and the memories of war. Alma's background had formed her to be gentle and naive. Though Hans had a powerful attraction for Alma he also shocked and confused her.

Fern could clearly see this stark contrast in temperament and personality. The wisest of marriage counselors would have advised caution and counseling classes. But no such counselors or classes were available in the Thailand of 1955.

For Hans and Alma there was another area of contrast. Hans was a Pentecostal. At that time the mainline denominations and Bible Schools and missions labeled the Pentecostal faith as a cult! In Alma's mind Hans was theologically wrong!

Fern certainly cautioned Alma to make sure of the Lord's leading and to carefully examine her own mind. At the start of the developing friendship, Fern pointed out some of the most glaring differences that formed the gap between the two. But as she saw Alma's resolution to marry Hans grow stronger, Fern stopped her warnings and stepped back from interference. But she was very uneasy. For the first time Fern and Alma were uncomfortable with each other.

Alma Remained committed to Hans  even through irreconcilable theological differences . The fact that she had the highest regard for his spirituality, admired his prayer life and was blessed by his messages did not move her from her bedrock conviction that his doctrine was dead wrong!

In retrospect, it appears that Alma's ability to commit herself to Hans while believing him to be wrong may have been the Lord's most gracious gift to Hans. It always remained Alma's character to be totally behind the man while not always persuaded to his opinions .

* * *

Lorang and Nina Petterson with their three children had just arrived in Thailand and would be beginning Thai study in Tak.

The first thing that could be noticed about this family was that the mother, quick and witty in speech, was Irish. Her husband was a Norwegian, who spoke careful English. He was by nature quiet and thoughtful.

Nina told rather dramatic stories about meeting Lorang and falling in love as new missionaries in China. She was a language student with the CIM and Lorang, with a Scandinavian Pentecostal mission, was studying at the same language center. The stories told of the students' romancing made the missions' accommodations for language students sound more like the segregated dormitories of secular schools of that day than any Christian setup. Nina told of men and women climbing out of their windows to meet at night and of clever ways they thought up to detour their respective mission rules. In such a spirit of rebellion and atmosphere of reckless romance, Nina, from a very proper British upbringing and Anglican background, fell in love with Lorang, a Norwegian Pentecostal.

With China closed, the couple had found how little they had in common. Nina came to the conclusion that she did not want to live in Norway and did not intend to study the language. Lorang could not find a position in England that suited him nor did he fit in with Nina's friends and family. He wished to live in Norway.

Missionary life in Thailand, where they could have a life and ministry together, must have appeared the ideal compromise.

The CIM did not present an open door to them. At that time Pentecostal doctrine was completely unacceptable to them. And Lorang, though quiet, kind and thoroughly a gentleman, was absolutely unmovable. He would always be a Pentecostal.

WEC's policy at that time was to accept candidates from a Pentecostal background only if they could freely sign the WEC statement that they did not believe that "speaking in tongues was the initial evidence of the baptism of the Spirit." This signing was felt to insure that candidates were able to accept missionaries who had never spoken in tongues as their equals in blessing, and therefore would not bring division by trying to persuade fellow missionaries and national converts to seek the experience of speaking in tongues.

As a Mission, WEC was asking that such candidates deny a pivotal point of their theological training and accept the WEC position that the Holy Spirit indwells every believer. The candidate would then be able to accept the leadership and fellowship of those who had neither the experience nor the belief that tongues was necessary for spiritual life and service. Fellowship and a working union could be maintained.

Lorang had no trouble in signing the WEC statement of faith. He did truly accept that all true believers possessed the Holy Spirit. Nor did the family have any problem in passing the candidate training time in the London HQ. They arrived on the field with a second chance to live and work together

* * *

Wilf expected that by the middle of October the rains would be ending; trucks would again be able to make the trip across the mountains. It would be easy for Alice and the others of the Maesod household to get to Tak. Actually it would be years before there could be any certainty about when the road could reopen after the rains. Monsoon downpours would wash out the road in many places and landslides would cover other portions of the road with tons of red mud. Repairs were slow as the mountains waited for men and machines to battle the damage made by the rain.

As the date for Alice and Bob's wedding approached, it became obvious that the Maesod road would not be open in time! Wilf naturally came up with the helpful suggestion that the date could be postponed! He had already seen Alice's response when he suggested that she and Bob wait to have a double ceremony with Hans and Alma. He must have now been tempted to see those fireworks a second time. His next, more acceptable suggestion, was that the mail plane be used to fly Alice to Tak. Bob cast the deciding vote and Wilf accompanied Alice on that flight over the mountains.

It was November 27, 1955, when Alice Williams became Mrs. Robert Peters. Wilf performed the ceremony. And Bob chose Lorang to serve as his best man.

Though palm fronds decorated the room giving a tropical look to the proceedings, it was evidently unseasonably cold, for Marta tells how she shivered in her bridesmaids dress made of thin material.

Fern acting as hostess caused the reception to flow without a hitch. The rice and curry were perfect and the cake she had decorated was all that Alice could have wished for.

* * *

Evy was missed at the Peters' wedding. The next few months the weather would be cool in Maesod. Study would not be interrupted by the torment of mosquitoes and the discomfort of sweat. The dull throb of heat-caused headaches would not make the pages of books to swim before their eyes. This was the season for Mark to forge ahead in his lessons

There was another reason that Evy wanted to get on with Mark's lessons. She was quite certain that she was again pregnant.

* * *

The wedding festivities completed, Bob and Alice took off for Chiengmai for their honeymoon. They traveled first by bus/truck to Lampang where they could catch the train. Alice tells us that they were met at the Chiengmai train station by Ilean O'Roark of the OMF for they planned part of their honeymoon to stay in that mission's guest house. To anyone who knows the Peters, this plan was to be expected. The OMF was experienced in tribal work. There were several tribes already being reached by missionaries who had previously served in China. Bob, anxious to learn from them and to examine their methods and approach to unreached villages, would use even his honeymoon to advance the evangelization of the Karen. For part of their honeymoon the Peters planned to travel north to Chieng Rai and on to Fang to visit OMF tribal workers there.

But first there was official business to be completed in Chiengmai. Alice tells us that when they visited the U.S. Consulate to register their marriage Bob introduced himself and Alice by saying, "I'm Bob Peters and this is my wife, Alice Williams." Alice tells us that she quickly corrected him, and laughing, she adds, "Correcting him is one of my great gifts."

* * *

An important move was made as soon as trucks could begin the slow crawl over the steep mountain road to Maesod. Sheila Petterson seated high on top of baggage in the back of a truck, left her parents and brothers to join Mark Overgaard in his studies. Perhaps she was on the bus/truck that brought the Peters on their return from their honeymoon. No one seems to know for sure just when she made the move.

Consider that.

A six-year-old child left her family to travel with virtual strangers to live with people she had never met. The Thai language was still a strange noise and the culture of the land was still foreign and uncomfortable. For Sheila that day of travel was a day of trauma.

The day had to be a day of trauma for Nina and Lorang as well. Certainly they understood that they needed to give maximum time to Thai language study and so agreed that their eldest child should live in Maesod to attend school with Mark. But this was the first time their small daughter would leave them and they could not be sure how many weeks or months would pass before they would see her again.

For the Pettersons that day was a day never to be forgotten. But no one else on the field seems to have noted or remembered just when Sheila climbed up on that heavily loaded truck to leave her parents and two younger brothers.

(There is a sense in which no one can tell your story except you!)

* * *

Arrival in Maesod was no easy matter for the little girl, either. Even the English language she heard was strange. And table manners were not at all as her mother had taught her. Wilf quickly became a close friend and Evy was always gentle and loving. But Mark was a different matter.

In a letter to her friend Sylvia Evy asked for prayer. It seems that Mark was jealous of the time and attention that his mother gave to Sheila. How natural! Mark must have missed his older brother and sister. And to have this stranger take their place in his home, taking up his mother's time and demanding all of her attention was the last straw! An unhappy Mark was for the first time and perhaps the last time in his life moody and uncooperative.

Sheila seemed unable to concentrate. She appeared to be a lazy day-dreamer. This was a state that was no more natural for Sheila than was the moody temperament that Mark was showing. They were doubtless suffering from loss and change and culture shoc k \- not an easy class to teach.

It should be noted that this was the first time that WEC Thailand had school children from more than just one family of missionaries. Evy's home was dorm and school room and she was housemother and teacher. And though there were just two students, they were from different continents and cultures and backgrounds. Sheila had to do her first year of study with American school books and American curriculum. That probably didn't harm her permanently , b ut this willingness to have their child schooled using a foreign curriculum was no small concession for Nina and Lorang to make. The unwillingness of later missionaries to subject their children to schooling that was not the accepted curriculum of their native country highlighted the tremendous lengths the family was willing to go to in order to fit in and succeed as missionaries under WEC to Thailand.

* * *

As December of 1955 started Rosemary was in Chiengmai for the birth of her baby. Throughout the months of the hot season Rosemary had kept to the itinerant ministry that challenged and satisfied her and Bill. She didn't really complain, but she did state in her memoirs, "That was the hottest year I remember ever having experienced." She lets us know that those hot days were days of joy for she says, "A prayer had been answered. For years we had prayed and longed for a baby. Often living conditions were less than favorable. But through it all, the joy of what was in store for us made everything seem all right."

It was cool and comfortable in the home of Dr. Ed McDaniel and his wife Charlotte. Staying there for the last few days before the baby arrived were a deeply appreciated gift from the Lord through long-time friends. (Dr. Ed attended the same school in India that Rosemary attended as a girl) How safe and cushioned was Rosemary's life those last days. And then suddenly Robby Charters made his arrival.

Bill answered the summons, quickly rushing from home so that he forgot his dentures! He would announce that he found them all right when he got home - marking the place where he had been reading in the Saturday Evening Post!

## Chapter 25  
The Eye Of The Storm

While WEC missionaries in Siam were intent on their own circumstances and their involvement in the immediate area the Lord had commissioned them to reach, the situation in Bangkok deserved attention and careful consideration.

Nine years had passed since King Rama VIII had died in his bedchamber of a bullet wound to the head. Seven years had passed since Field Marshal Pibul used the unsolved case of the King's death to bring down the government of civilian Prime Minister Pridi and bring himself to power. The murdered King's private secretary and two adult pages of the royal bedchamber were arrested. They were accused of plotting with, and assisting "unnamed accomplices" in the King's assassination. The "unnamed accomplices" were believed to be Nai Pridi, and several of his aides.

Nai Pridi had studied law at the Sorbonne and had led an underground "Free Thai" movement during World War Two when the Japanese occupied the land. With the close of the war and the fall of Japan, Prime Minister Field Marshal led the country into war on the side of the Axis, lost his hold on power and was ousted by Civilian Nai Pridi.

Pridi presided over Siam's first experience of free elections and that elected National Assembly pushed military leaders to the sidelines.

But the coup d'etat of November 1947, just one month after WEC entered Siam, brought the military back into control. Field Marshal Pibul was back as the Prime Minister and Civilian Nai Pridi fled the country, his reputation ruined by accusations of regicide.

For five years after that coup, the military government carried out extensive investigations and hearings in the "King's Death Case". It was September of 1951 that one of the arrested pages was pronounced to be innocent and the other was found to be guilty. The former private secretary to the murdered king was released along with the innocent page. Only one page remained incarcerated in Bang-Kwang prison a few miles north of Bangkok.

Appeals were immediately lodged and investigations were reopened. After two more years the released page and the private secretary were again arrested. Final appeals took yet another year.

All three men were judged to be guilty. The condemned appealed for mercy to the military government of Field Marshal Pibul. They were compelled to wait month after month in their condemned cells till their final refusal was announced on February 16, 1955.

The very next morning the former secretary a middle aged man who had always been well-groomed and distinguished looking, was led out, blindfolded and stumbling in ankle and wrist chains, into the walled execution yard of the prison.

The prison population of 5,000 convicted criminals listened from their dark cells to the sound of gunfire that ended the life of a king's servant.

The listening prisoners heard again the sound of chains against stone twenty minutes later, as the first of the pages was dragged out, chained hand and foot. There were a few moments of silence, then another burst of gunfire.

After another twenty-minute interval the same sequence of sound was repeated. The tortured minds of the condemned could picture the execution scene as they listened from their dark cells. By five AM on February 17, 1955, all three convicted of the "King's Death Case" were dead.

Police General Phao, dressed in a white lounge suit and red beret, watched closely as the prison doctor certified the death of each prisoner. As commander of the nation's police force it was General Phao's job to stifle any opposition to the Prime Minister, Field Marshall P ib ul , a nd he did this with a vengeance, earning for himself the title of "The Butcher of Bangkok".

With the execution of the King's secretary and the two pages was  it  justice that was served or politics?

* * *

The two men who led coups to oust each other from the office of Prime Minister, Pibul and Pridi, had both gone abroad to France during the twenties to study. While Pridi studied law at the Sorbonne, Pibul studied at Fontainebleu Artillery School. They both returned to be among the leaders of the bloodless coup of 1932.

They could co-operate in the coup that took absolute authority and power away from the Kings of Siam. They were equal in wanting to break the political stronghold of the many royal princes , b ut they had separate agendas. Civilian Pridi wanted a democratic state governed by freely elected members of a National Assembly. Field Martial Pibul admired Hitler. He was aiming at a country controlled by military strongmen, and of course himself, the strongman at the top.

Now, in 1955, with the death of the ex-secretary and the pages, and with Nai Pridi in exile his reputation successfully ruined, Pibul had brilliantly closed to his rivals the door to power.

* * *

The plots and  counterplots , the coups and toppled governments did not seem to have any effect whatsoever on missions in Siam. But the talk and speculation in mission circles was that the door to missions in Siam would not be open for much longer. The government was felt to be so unstable that no official policy could be trusted to last beyond the next coup!

While the political situation in Bangkok threatened to boil over into a coup that could change the scene of missions throughout Siam, there was unrest on every Thai border.

Kuomintang, (KMT) the remnants of Chiang Kai Shek's defeated army, were swept out of mainland China by the Communist forces in late 1940s. Armed by the US government, as anti-Communist mercenaries they were regrouped in North Siam and Burma. The fear of the US was that the Chinese war would not end until all of  Southeast Asia was under the control of the Communists.

But the territory occupied by these mercenaries, instead of being a buffer to protect Siam and Burma, eventually came to be known as "The Golden Triangle". By the mid '50s the soldiers were established as rulers of the area that controlled much of the world's heroin market.

The Kuomintang were wealthy and powerful but no longer any kind of protection against the Communist forces, should China begin an invasion of Siam. And it was all too obvious that China wanted to gain Siam for Communism. Radio broadcasts from China bombarded Siam with Communist propaganda in the Siamese language. In fact, one of the female voices from Radio Peking was recognized in Tak as that of a woman who grew up in the Tak market area.

That was the picture of the northern border of Siam in 1955.

Burma, to the west of Siam had gained independence from British rule in 1948 and since then had been mired in a civil war. It was reported that two thirds of the population of the country was Burmese , b ut it needs to be noted that no accurate census has ever been taken. And several of the larger tribes (people groups) in North Burma claim to outnumber the Burmese. It was these tribes, fighting for independence, that posed a threat to Siam's borders.

One of the largest tribal groups in Burma is called the "Shan". But they  call themselves the  Thai Yai , the "great Thai", as opposed to the little Thai of the plains of Siam. The languages of the Shan and the Siamese are so close that it is obvious that the two are related.

There are several tribal groups, as the Karen, the Lahu and the Lisu who are scattered across Burma, North Siam, Laos and South China who cross and recross the borders as if they didn't exist.

As these tribes fought against the Burmese they naturally drew their relatives in the mountains of Siam into their conflict. Many tribesmen from Siam had joined the "freedom" fighters in Burma and scores of refugees had fled into Siam by the early 1950s. Since both Burmese and tribal fighters were being backed by Red China any involvement in the Burmese war threatened a larger danger from the North.

To the East the Territory once known as French Indo China had been partitioned into three separate countries by the 1954 Geneva Accord. The defeat of the French by the Communist Viet Minh at Dien Bien Pheu in April of that year had brought to a close the long colonization of that area by the French. The Geneva Accord provided for a cease-fire and temporary partitioning of the newly recognized country of Vietnam at the 17th parallel. The accord called for a free election in two years time to determine the future of the country.

The Catholic doctor, Tom Dooley, horrified the western world with his eyewitness accounts of what the Communists forces were doing to Catholics they captured as they advanced throughout North Vietnam. Entire villages that had embraced the Catholic faith fled across the border into South Vietnam but October 11, 1955, Ho Chi Minh turned over Hanoi to the Viet Minh forces. With their full control of the north, they closed the border. Only by sea could refugees escape.

Ngo Dinh Diem, Premier of South Vietnam, requested help from the United States. And "Operation Passage to Freedom" was begun as the US sent the Seventh Fleet, an amphibious task force, for evacuation. That was the beginning of the long, complicated and costly involvement the US would have with Vietnam.

Between Vietnam and Siam were wedged the kingdoms of Laos and Cambodia, once a part of French Indochina. It must be noted that much of the territory of both countries was once claimed by Siam and though that is ancient history it is history that has had a lasting effect and influence, especially in Laos.

The Laos of 1955 was still sparsely populated. And that situation goes back to the eighteenth century when Siamese forces razed a Laotian of  capital of Wieng Chan and the cities Luang Prabang and Champusak. A large segment of the population of these cities and the residents of the surrounding countryside were resettled in Siam. Until this present day, there are more Lao in Thailand than in Laos.

In 1955 Prince Souvanna Phouma was recognized as monarch. The kingdom of Laos was governed by a constitutional monarchy along European lines. This government was run by o French-educated elite but Lao resistance was rapidly gaining throughout the countryside. The US government, seeing that the Viet Minh and the Pathet Lao were gaining control of the northeastern provinces, began pouring aid into Laos to ensure the stability of the "democratic Cause".

Even as early as 1955 it could be seen that the US was backing a regime that was not popular with the majority of the Laotian people. Several groups were organized in the '50s to "fight French colonial influences" in Laos. The thinking of Laotians in Laos was mirrored by the thinking of Laotians in northeastern Siam.

Cambodia, like Laos, had an ancient history of war with the Siamese. Only with French control did the border between the two countries become stable. During the second world war as Siam cooperated with the Japanese army's drive into Indochina, control of both Cambodia and Laos was promised to Siam. With the defeat of Japan and the return of the French to govern their colonies, those Japanese promises were quickly forgotten!

It was 1953 when Cambodia was granted independence from France and a constitutional monarchy was set up. Very quickly King Norodom Sihanouk saw that real power was in the hands of the elected government and not in the hand of the monarchy. In 1944 he gave up the throne, took the title of "Prince" and became the Prime Minister.

Throughout the '50s Cambodia claimed to be neutral in the fighting of Communist forces and anti-Communist forces. Though the Communist movements that eventually took over the country were already forming and growing, the face Cambodia put to the world was the face of neutrality. Not many trusted that face!

Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, these fermenting countries threatened trouble to the east of Siam.

To the south was Malaya. After a century and a half of British colonial rule (except for the short time the country fell to the Japanese during World War Two), Malaya was pressing Britain for independence.

Throughout the war the Communists were busy forming trade unions and planning for future control. As soon as the war ended, Communist guerrillas were attacking Malaya's rubber plantations and tin mines, and the "Pan-Malayan Federation of Labor", by calling for strikes, had crippled the Malayan economy.

The British were left with no alternative but to declare an emergency. British  soldiers policed the country enforcing a curfew that controlled all nighttime movement within the cities and towns. Even the country villagers had to be within their own communities before dark. This state of emergency lasted nearly a decade until the insurgents were finally brought under control.

It was not until 1957 that Britain would finally hand over the governing of the country to the Malayans. But bitter racial hatred between the Malay majority and immigrant Chinese and migratory Indians kept the country in continual turmoil.

This was the situation to the South of Siam in the mid'50s.

* * *

In retrospect It is easy to see that when the powers that colonized  Southeast Asia released their colonies to independence, the drawing of boundaries united separate people groups and nations that have never been able to integrate successfully. Without strong rule from the outside, the emerging countries were left with ancient and bitter rivalries within. Communism quickly stepped in to exacerbate situation.

* * *

Siam alone, in South East Asia, had never been a colony of a Western power. From the time of King Mongkhut who was Rama IV, missionaries and teachers had been officially welcomed, in keeping with Buddhist tolerance. Doctors and Western medicine were received with the same surface cordiality. Trade was sought and treaties and agreements were entered into with the powerful nations of the West.

While the Dutch took the Dutch East Indies (Indonesian Islands), Britain took over Burma, Singapore and Malaya and the French took over Indochina, Siam met these countries with cleaver diplomacy. By welcoming and even inviting British, French, Dutch and later Japanese then American, and Australian trade and business, Siam was able to give no Western power an excuse to invade its territory.

Each Western power felt that they profited by their trade with Siam. But the rulers of Siam gained too as their country was somewhat modernized and their army, government and legal system reformed. But most important of all to Siam and its kings, no Western power needed to declare war on Siam. Benefits of European progress were gained without bowing to foreign colonial domination. The integrity of their own exclusive traditions and the monarchy were successfully protected.

It was this open-door policy that secured for WEC and all the other missions the freedom to enter and proclaim the Gospel in Siam. As long as the monarchy stood above the changing governments of Siam the official policy would be "Welcome"! The Thai temperament, almost always friendly, made it possible for missionaries to travel about and settle within the country in safety and acceptance.

But could the monarchy endure above unstable governments? Could the monarchy stand if a prime minister and his party welcomed Communism? Communism had a very effective and final way of dealing with monarchs and with missions.

The expectation of the time was that WEC and all and evangelical missions in Siam had a very short time to work. The driving passion was to seize every opportunity and every day to speed the sowing of the Gospel message, for the storm of war seemed an imminent threat. It did appear in 1955 that Siam was the calm at the center of stormy countries. And it appeared that the Monarchy was the calm at the center of stormy political parties.

## Chapter 26  
Joy and Disappointment

Since Robby Charters was born just two weeks before Christmas in 1955, it was impossible for Rosemary to return in time to help with preparations in Rahaeng. Bill went on ahead leaving his family in the care of Dr. Ed and Charlotte. He knew that these friends would not let Rosemary undertake the rough bus trip until she and Robby were fully able to endure the two days of uncushioned, unscreened, uncomfortable travel.

But Rosemary tells us that Dr. Ed was never persuaded that they were able for that trip and instead insisted that they go by plane. By the time the decision had been made and tickets could be purchased it was the day before Christmas. Rosemary and Robby would fly on Christmas day.

In those days a World War two vintage DC 3 carried the mail and a few passengers. The flight started in Bangkok; from Rahaeng it continued over the mountains to Maesod where mail was delivered and picked up. After returning to Rahaeng the plane flew on to Chiengmai then back over the same route home to Bangkok. This circle was made twice a week unless weather or some mechanical failure on the plane caused a flight to be canceled.

That Christmas morning there was no cancellation when Rosemary brought Robby home. Rosemary tells us, "It was eleven, and the worship service was in session when we arrived. Hearing the airport car stop in front of the house, the entire congregation jumped up and ran out to see the new baby." That Bill was in the middle of his sermon was ignored by all.

Rosemary had been in Chiengmai for six weeks and the Christian friends were overjoyed to greet her and to meet the baby. Finally greetings and questions and answers, and expressions of delight at Robby were all finished and the group quieted down. Bill could finish his sermon.

Rosemary tells us that Nai Some from Mai Ngam was home from Bible School and had walked on his crippled feet all the way to their house meeting in Tak to be with the Christians that morning. And looking around at the beloved ones gathered to welcome her and baby Robby she says it was her happiest Christmas up to that time in her life. But then she began to take note of ones that were missing.

Boon Nak was one faithful attendant that Rosemary mentions in her memoirs as missing that morning. Boon Nak was their lovely servant girl who had attracted the attention of Boon, the renegade pastor from East Thailand. She had been so faithful not only as cook in their house and participant in their household (that is, servant) prayers, but beyond the privacy of their house she was willing to take a stand as a believer. She had spoken out, giving her testimony at street meetings and had given flannel-graph lessons in children's meetings. Even in her own village across the river, Boon Nak had spoken out with boldness as their gospel team held meetings where Boon Nak's family and close friends gathered to hear and often mock.

But her family had urged and doubtless her own heart had drawn her to marry a young post office official. He was one who would always treat the missionaries with respect and even kindness and apparently never forbid his wife from embracing the foreigners' religion. After all she was bringing home a handsome pay check of 200 baht each month. But with the passage of time the importance of her home situation and the responsibilities and cares of her married life had begun to move in and choke out her interest in spiritual things.

This was a scenario that the missionaries in each province would meet over and over.

We do not know the names and stories of most of those who were an important part of the Christian worship services in Tak in those days. Evidently there were several who showed great promise. There were some who had a bold witness for the Lord. Others had testimonies of the Lord's deliverance from sin, ill health and danger. They were in and out of the missionaries' homes and their names and needs were constantly in the minds and prayers of the WEC family. But over the years they have moved away or worse they have fallen away from their walk with the Lord. Over forty years ago they declared faith and then they turned back. Now they are nameless faces in the crowded streets of Tak. Not one of the WEC missionaries now in Tak would recognize them.

* * *

In Maesod the large, wooden structure the mission rented was put to good use. On one side of the house the Peters began their married life and Bob settled to his second language. On the other side of the house the Overgaards and Sheila settled to school.

Evy was the  mae bahn working with the cook and wash-girl so that Alice would have uninterrupted time for Karen study. Wilf continued as field leader handling the problems of the eastern side of the mountains by letter or, when necessary by visits using the slow mountain bus/trucks. He became a familiar figure and friend to many of the Maesod shop owners who were also forced to travel the mountain road, only opened one way at a time.

Sunday services in the front room of the Overgaard house in Maesod were made up of an interesting mixture of people.

There was Winnea a middle-aged widow with adult children. She grew up in Fang, where Presbyterian missionaries had led her to the Lord and had given her a solid Bible education. But marriage to an important government official who had no time for her foreign religion had brought her to stunted growth and crippled faith. She wept her way through every sermon and leaned on Wilf and Evy for spiritual help. At some time early in WEC's presence in Maesod, Winnea's son, who was famed as a Thai boxer, suffered a stroke and died in the boxing ring. Winnea was in need of support and encouragement but most of all she needed to put her own roots of faith deep into the Word and Person of God. All her married lifetime she had rooted herself in the things of Buddhist society. Seeking to please her husband she had never any thought of pleasing the Lord. Her thought patterns had become Buddhist while underneath there was knowledge of the teaching of our Lord. Winnea's situation was complicated; it was not easy to minister to her. One could not tell her anything she did not already know mentally. One had to bring her from knowledge into obedience.

There was Massey who had come to work as wash-girl for the Overgaard household. Though Massey spoke Thai, she was part Karen. Her parents had been sent as evangelists to the Karen in Thailand by the Baptist denomination in Burma. Massey's early years, like Winnea's,  had been spent in the shelter of the Christian faith. Massey had for a time even studied at a Christian school in Burma. But returning from that schooling she had turned from faith marrying a Thai Buddhist, who like Winnea's husband, had no time or interest in the Christian message. At the time Massey came to work at the mission house, her husband was hiding from the law. He had committed several crimes and was caught, tried, convicted and jailed. But he had escaped from the Maesod jail. Massey, under the preaching teaching of Wilf and Evy, was convicted of her own sin and waywardness and longed for a life of blessing. Yet she was secretly meeting and helping her husband. Sitting in the meetings and listening to Wilf's sermons were emotionally exhausting as a spiritual battle raged in her heart. Massey was a far more complicated person than her ready responses gave the Overgaards to think. A great deal was hidden behind her innocent expression.

There was Massey's mother who was obviously a very needy church member. The whole town of Maesod thought she was the widow of a Christian evangelist , b ut her family believed her husband was still living and she had simply been abandoned to raise them on her own. She was well acquainted with the Gospel and had raised her children to know the Bible stories and songs and had taught and led them in prayer since they were old enough to talk ; b ut her  h usband had been unfaithful in his commitment to the Baptist denomination who had hired him to evangelize Karen in Thailand. Early in his experience in Maesod he had hired himself to the teak industry and served as a manager of elephants and mahouts. He was well known throughout the Karen hills but as a logger and not as an evangelist.

During the second world war he had disappeared into Burma leaving many debts behind for his wife to shoulder. Occasionally word of him would filter back to his family in Thailand and it became known that he had taken another wife. Massey's mother had been conditioned to doubt preaching and preachers. She observed Wilf as if he were under a magnifying glass. "Did his life match his message?" was the lens through which she studied his every sermon.

Then there was Gideon, an older brother of Massey. He perhaps had even more reason than his mother to doubt the honesty and commitment of the missionaries, for he was old enough to see and to some measure take part in his father's double life before his father abandoned their family. Gideon had been married and had lost his young Thai wife in childbirth; now married for the second time, to a Thai Yai or Shan, he was completely engulfed in Buddhist society and commitment. But there was evidently a deep emptiness and longing for truth in Gideon's life. He sought Wilf out again and again with  questions and the desire to talk. But he kept aloof from any challenge to faith.

Tong See, who worked as cook in the Maesod house, was also a professing Christian. Evy wrote of her that she "is very much interested in Bible study and has completed a correspondence course in John. Wilf is now working out a series of lessons on the book of Acts for her." But Evy goes on to say that, "We know of some definite ways in which she has deceived us about her personal life .  A though she talks of being baptized, we would like to see her face up to this untruthfulness first."

* * *

Evy wrote of a trip that she and Wilf took to Chiengmai for medical checkups after Christmas. Wilf had driven Elly's Land Rover and several of the missionaries had gone along. Evy was pregnant and there were already some questions about this pregnancy. But the tests and reports had all appeared normal and the date of April 21 was set for the arrival of the new Overgaard.

Evy wrote that while they were away, "Tong See had almost quit and left her job in a huff. There was a quarrel with the other girl (Massey?) and some misunderstanding between her and Alice."

Alice had stepped into a complicated situation. Tong See was not just easily offended, it was almost impossible not to offend her. She had gone through life leaving ruined relationships behind her  \-  most certainly this included at least one husband and family .  Alice  had inherited the  impossible job of working with her as she shopped for and cooked the meals that Alice requested.  W hat might have been a relaxed time on their own as a married couple had become a very stressful situation for Bob and Alice.

There were several Karen families living in Maesod as refugees from the civil war in Burma. These had their own Sunday services in the Karen language but came regularly for prayer meetings with the Overgaards and the Peters'.

If there were other Thai who professed faith meeting with the Sunday morning group, their names have long been forgotten. And we do not know what temptation caused them to abandon the way of the Lord But all of those who named the name of the Lord were needy and complicated. They were not easy sheep to feed or to lead!

* * *

Down in Sukhothai Fern was handling a strange situation. Servants had moved down from Hua Diet to serve her in Sukhothai. Inn and Boontee were a married couple who had served as cook and wash-girl since early in the first term of workers in Tak. At some point they had professed faith. Inn had even gone on treks with Wilf and expressed the desire to become a preacher. But there was another woman involved. Ta, who had also worked for those early missionaries and had professed faith and showed understanding and enthusiasm for the things of the Lord, had also quite an enthusiasm for Inn. There was an affair and a child was born. Ta and Inn and Boontee brought the most complicated of problems into the church and into the missionaries' homes and conversations and prayer times.

The married couple moved down to Sukhothai for a time. The thought was that Inn was fleeing the temptation of Ta, and with Fern he and his wife could not only have employment but further leading and grounding in the things of the Lord. Evidently Inn found other women who presented a temptation and eventually he his wife and even Ta all passed out of the life of the beginning church in Tak and Sukhothai province. But while they were still attending and showing signs of life from time to time they showed the missionaries something of the instability of even the boldest of human testimonies.

* * *

Nina and Lorang with two of their children had moved down to live in the WEC riverside house with Marta and Elly. Marta and Elly spent a good deal of their time with the believers and the leprosy patients down in Prankratai while Nina and Lorang continued their Thai study.

Elly and Marta had been planning to move out to Prankratai but it was a very difficult move to make. Though Kampaeng was a very backward village in 1956, it was a metropolis when compared to Prankratai. The fresh market, the road, the post office with its mail delivery and telephone that could be used by appointment by anyone moved Kampaeng decades beyond Prankratai in modern advancement.

The house by the  Ampoe in Prankratai that Marta and Elly rented to use at the time of the clinics had showed them just how unsuitable and uncomfortable life in that isolated settlement could be. Looking for another house to rent in Prankratai that would be more comfortable brought the girls to see that there was no house in that undeveloped rice-field settlement that would really meet their needs. A house for rent was eventually settled for, but only as plans were set in motion for a proper house to be built. Once again WEC would rent land, design a house and pay nationals to do the building. In the meantime Marta and Elly moved out to what Marta calls, a barn of a house with a tin roof and no ceiling; it was a hot oven! And of course  with them moved a baby girl who needed constant care.

It had long been one of Elly's plans to run an orphanage for the well children of leprous parents. Elly was truly moved with the vision of saving children from contracting the disease from their parents. She had at times mentioned this to Marta who was only too glad that they had neither resources or time for such an undertaking. Well, that is what she thought; that was evidently not what Elly was thinking.

When Elly spoke of her plans to Dr. Buker, he was thrilled and at that very moment there was a new baby in the colony. The parents had already spoken of their  desire that their baby be taken and raised by an uninfected family. And here was Elly, the very answer to that need. And so to a very busy household with no facilities for caring for a baby, Elly brought Tong Bai.

Elly was a hard worker. And there is no doubt that she got right down to the basic care of Tong Bai. She just could not possibly undertake that care every day. Elly was the nurse with patients to see to. She was the driver and there were trips to Chiengmai and Konkaen and Bangkok. The day-in and-day-out responsibility of caring for Tong Bai fell to Marta.

Marta makes the statement over forty years later that they eventually came to understand that "those patients who regularly took medicine were not infectious. Their children could not contract the disease from them. Elly could have spared herself the trouble." Of course at the time this was a fact that was not known. The widespread and constant use of the medicine was only just beginning.

* * *

There is a very interesting paragraph in a letter that Evy wrote to her friend Sylvia that January of 1956. She says that the Charters were to go home on furlough in the spring, "so we will again be short of workers for the stations that we have." But in spite of this shortage of workers, Evy goes on to state, "We have some thought of beginning, in a small way, a training center for Thai Christian young people. There is a question of whether we should do this now or move back to Rahaeng when the Charters leave. If we open such a center here in Maesod, it could also, in due time, serve the Karen work."

It is obvious that Wilf and Evy were far ahead of their time in seeing the need of Bible schooling for the Thai and Karen Church and were, way back then, exploring the possibilities of when and where and how such a school should be started.

There were so many young men who came along wanting to become preachers. Some seemed to be true converts and were willing to be discipled by Wilf and Bill and Rosemary. But others didn't even make a pretense of believing the Gospel. Yet they wanted to preach! Was it the attraction of a salary they expected the foreigners to pay? Certainly that must have been part of the attraction. Or was it the importance of standing before a crowd as the speaker, that drew them to offer their services as "Christian" preachers?

A training school that taught the Bible, not only as a text book, not only as the rule and judge of life but as the very core and claim of salvation and union with Christ was absolutely necessary. That it was necessary to be disciplined by the Word before any attempt to preach the Word could be allowed, needed to be incorporated into WEC's own training program.

As Wilf and Evy contemplated this need of a training program, there was always in their thinking the fact that Ellen Gillman would be returning to join the missionary force on the field. At each annual field conference the placement of Ellen was always discussed and with the thought of a short-term Bible school the hope that Ellen would be back in time to be one of the instructors was uppermost in the Overgaards" thinking and planning.

Ellen had so successfully settled her parents that, indeed, 1955 had seen her making plans and arrangements to return to the field. But as time went on, Ellen's longed for return was not yet to be.

Circumstances put any plans for starting a training school on hold. But those plans would develop and grow in Wilf's heart.

## Chapter 27  
Down Into The Valley

1956 started with the Overgaards' return to Maesod.   
January can be cold in that border town. The fragrance of burning charcoal and bonfires infiltrates every shop and home. Of course any fragrance or smell can easily enter homes that are designed to be open for every breeze of the hot season.

The market area was crowded with an amazing mixture of tribal shoppers in their distinctive dress and Thai and in woolen sweaters, scarves and even Burmese wrapped up in woolen sweaters, scarves and even woolen balaclava helmets! Knitting had found a fanatical following in Burma and was already invading Maesod. Behind their stalls of fruits and vegetables, young women invented intricate designs with their wool and knitting needles.

Evy wrote to her friend Sylvia of how good it was to be home after several weeks on the other side of the mountains. Of course Christmas celebrated with others of the mission had been wonderful. And a trip in Elly's Land Rover to Chiengmai had been profitable. Several of the missionaries had taken advantage of Wilf's driving the vehicle, to travel north for medical checkups.

For Evy the news had been good. The doctor had given her every reason to expect a normal pregnancy and the problem-free birth was anticipated to be about April the 21st.

This would give Evy almost three months of uninterrupted time to school Mark and Sheila. Evy was rejoicing that her two pupils seemed to be settling to their studies. Mark was no longer Jealous of his mother's time or attention given to Sheila and was now treating Sheila as a sister  \- t hat is, he either ignored her or teased her. And Sheila at least was showing promise as a very bright scholar.

Wilf continued to work with the handful of Maesod believers and act as field leader. The concern of the day had to do with the placement of personnel. The Charters were to go on furlough the end of March or beginning of April and the hope had been that Ellen Gillman would be back on the field before that time or at least soon afterward.

Hans and  Alma were to be married in March. Wilf had hoped that they could begin their married life in Rahaeng with Ellen in the same area. Hans would need to continue with part-time language study for some time. Perhaps the Sierhuises would occupy the South House and Ellen could manage a language study house for new workers in the home that Bill and Rosemary would leave at What Doi. She would also be able to work with Alma in the leprosy clinics that were set up in the Hua Diat and Mai Ngam area \- a nd contribute to a short-term Bible when that came into being.

But word from Ellen was that her return to the would have to be indefinitely delayed. Ellen's mother had suffered a massive stroke and died suddenly while the family were at Three Hills for a Prairie Bible Institute missions conference. There was no way that Ellen could now leave her father to try to manage on his own.

Ellen's news was not the only upsetting word from across the seas. For over a year the field had anticipated the announcement of a date that a young nurse from North America would be arriving by ship in Bangkok. The girl had passed her time of candidate training at Fort Washington and been released to go home and begin he preparations for travel to Thailand. She never communicated again with either base or the field. At last the conclusion was drawn. She had passed WEC's requirements but evidently WEC did not pass hers!

After Hans and Alma's wedding in March it had been thought that this new nurse from the USA would join Fern in Sukhothai. Now this turn of affairs left Fern without promise of a co-worker.

There were other candidates in the pipeline from both the USA and Britain but it could be many months before any of them would arrive on the field and as each of them would need the required year of language study, Fern was looking at years of living alone in Sukhothai. There were then, and have been since, some  Weccer s who would not mind living alone in a heathen town but Fern was a person who was so stimulated and challenged by the fellowship and companionship of a co-worker that this picture was enough to make Fern heartsick.

While Wilf sought the plan and mind of the Lord for Sukhothai and Rahaeng, there was always Kampaeng and Prankratai!

In Kampaeng the Pettersons were getting on with the study of Thai. Out in Prankratai Elly was forging ahead with plans to lease land. This had to be a large enough plot that a house could be built plus a home for the well children of leprous parents and also some sort of modest hospital or clinic that could be used to receive those who came for the treatment of the disease. Those were Elly's plans. And of course her plans were based on the certainty that Wilf would, at the very least, supervise the building project.

Wilf's plans for Prankratai were somewhat different. That a more suitable house for the two workers and Tong Bai needed to be built was a foregone conclusion. And Wilf was more than willing to supervise or work alongside Thai carpenters to see that the work would be acceptable to foreign needs. But Wilf's mind, so occupied with the need to sow the Gospel throughout our three provinces, was not to be detoured to the planning and building for extensive institutional work. An orphanage for well children and a small hospital were not in his thinking at all.

As Elly emerged from being a language student to being full-time in missionary work it should have become obvious that Elly and the Danish Covenant Mission had envisioned work that was quite different from WEC's emphasis. They had plans for buildings and institutional emphasis on a much larger scale than WEC desired to be tied to. And the evangelization of unreached peoples and the planting of churches was not really their emphasis. But this was not understood in those days when Elly was beginning the work in Prankratai. This difference in emphasis was not clearly understood but the difference was already causing tension.

Elly gave in to Wilf's smaller plans for land and building for that period of time knowing full well that she could push forward her larger vision in the future. In the meantime she broached another of her dreams, a leprosy village. Land could be acquired from the wilderness forest area. Houses could be built by and for families suffering with leprosy. Animals and farming implements could be acquired, for there were several organizations that could be appealed to for funds to implement such a project. Wilf seemed to respond to this vision. But again he was doubtless seeing something of a much smaller, simpler vision than that which was occupying Elly's mind.

Elly was content to wait for the Prankratai orphanage compound ; b ut she was determined that, in time,  her vision would come  into completion: t he orphanage, the hospital and leprosy village. And she did not doubt that she would be able to communicate that vision to Wilf.

Because of the mountain range and difficult travel, Elly could not call for Wilf's help every few weeks. It took almost a week to visit Prankratai from Maesod e ven if the visit were just for a few hours. It was the Kampaeng house and the Pettersons who most often saw Elly as she drove from Prankratai to Rahaeng for supplies, to Chiengmai for consultation and help in treating difficult cases, and to Bangkok for business and shopping.

Because the Prankratai station officially used the Kampaeng fresh market for the day-to-day kitchen needs there were very few days when the Pettersons did not hear the Land Rover stopping just outside their yard. That so many of those stops signaled longer trips will not say much to today's missionaries. But at that time most  Weccer s did not leave their station and work area except for the field conference once a year, a joint mission vacation at the Lan Sang waterfalls once a year, and a trip to Chiengmai for physical checkups or dental work. The most that Nina and Lorang could expect was perhaps a move of the family back to Rahaeng or perhaps to Sukhothai.

Elly's constant coming and going always with engine and beep of horn was a  challenge to their tranquility . Her travels pictured to the Petterson family an exciting life of journeys to exotic places, that they might never have opportunity to visit, and of meetings with the leaders of other missions that they might never meet.

* * *

Wilf battled with how the field personnel should be placed after the Sierhuis wedding and the Charters left for furlough. He might just as well have shelved such concerns till the time had arrived, for circumstances would change human plans.

Though the birth of the Overgaard baby was not expected until around the 21st of April, long before that time it became obvious that there were problems with Evy's pregnancy. A trip to Chiengmai and the doctor changed all plans.

The Overgaards moved across the mountains back to Rahaeng and Evy prepared to spend her last few weeks of pregnancy in Chiengmai staying with the McDaniels. Rosemary took on the schooling of Mark and Sheila, "Since I had to stay home with three-month-old Robby anyway," she remarks for us! Just consider that picture.

* * *

Hans and Alma were married from the South House in Rahaeng as had been Bill and Rosemary, and Bob and Alice. Pictures show it to have been a lovely wedding and fears that the couple were not very well matched had been put to rest. The months of their engagement revealed Alma's maturity and deep commitment to Hans. Back in those days the word "obey" was still very much a part of the marriage ceremony and it is a word that expressed Alma's attitude of heart. She was prepared to make every adjustment and change and would wrap her life around the aim of being "an helpmeet" for Hans. That Han s' love for Alma could not be doubted and that his concern for her would take precedence over concern for his own life sealed the package. This was a marriage of the Lord's planning.

Rosemary tells us in her memoirs that Wilf performed the ceremony and left on the early bus the next morning for Chiengmai to be with Evy. "A few hours after Wilf left we received a telegram addressed to him. According to our usual agreement, we opened and read it. It was from Dr. Ed McDaniel, announcing the birth of a son."

Only later would the full story be told. In the middle of the night, Evy was carried on a stretcher to the hospital. "Had she been staying any farther than the McDaniels' home across the street from the hospital, she would never have reached it alive." Rosemary tells us, and continues, "Dr. Ed operated on her immediately, and gave her several pints of his own blood to save her life."

Danny Overgaard was born March 18, 1956. Rosemary tells us, "Evy and wee Daniel were brought back to Rahaeng the night before we went on Furlough." She does not tell us this date but it is presumed to have been in mid-or late April.

Though Danny was several weeks premature and very tiny, the only thing stronger and more perfectly developed than his tiny body was his appetite. As he grew stronger and bigger, Evy seemed to waste away. She had little or no appetite  and no strength to speak of. Of course the thought was that she would begin to pick up soon.

* * *

Over at the Sukhothai station, the Lord had done something quite wonderful for Fern. Instead of looking at months and even years of being alone, she found that the Lord had just the right co-workers for her.

At that time, the OMF had just the beginnings of  a team assigned to work with the Thai in North Thailand. These new missionaries were just finishing their formal language study and would be moving out into the work. The problem was that all of the scattered OMF stations in that day were

assigned  to the tribes. All of those first tribal workers with the OMF had served in China and they came into Thailand with the single view of contacting the tribes they had worked with in China. Their study of Thai was nothing more than an introduction, and they quickly moved out to the tribal work they were used to. A new missionary with just formal language study could move to live with senior workers who absolutely slaughtered the little bit of Thai they knew. (Since all of those missionaries who came from working in China have long since left Thailand, you would need to find a Chinese shopkeeper who has come from China in recent years, to hear how Thai spoken by these missionaries sounded)

Leaders of the OMF were quick to see that this was a deadly situation. Knowing of Fern and her good Thai language and schedule of work, OMF asked WEC if OMF single women could come and join the work in Sukhothai as they finished language study. This was to be just a short time of a few months for any one girl and would give each one the chance to use her Thai, working with a senior worker who could be of real help to her.

The first girl to join Fern was Kathy Kuhn, the daughter of Isobel Kuhn.

Fern was overwhelmed with the thought of the responsibility that was to be hers. She would be senior and advisor to the daughter of this famous missionary writer. Fern reminds us that, "Isabel Khun wrote such outstanding books as 'In The Arena', 'Stones of Fire' and 'Green Leaf in Drought'."

It is d oubtful that present-day missionaries can have any idea of the influence of Isabel Kuhn on the mission field of 1956. Most evangelical missionaries in Asia had read least one of Mrs. Kuhn's books. Many had read every one of her books and waited expectantly for the next one to be published. Many, even some in WEC, would testify that the Lord used Mrs. Kuhn's books to speak to them about Thailand.

Having Kathy Kuhn move to live with her caused Fern to examine the situation through the eyes of a new worker. Fern tells us that the first rather disturbing thing to greet the new arrival would be that the WEC house, in Sukhothai, was by a rice mill. Fern felt she had to apologize for the burned rice chaff ( glap ) that blew in constantly from that mill next door. So she wrote a little poem, part welcome, part apology, for Kathy. Fern shares the poem with us and it's printed in full for it gives us a marvelously accurate picture of Fern's personality and whimsical sense of humor.

Glap py as the house may be,

I'm glad to have your company.

'Tis true that as you wander 'bout,

the  glap will follow you about,

As from the ceiling, walls and trees,

it drops to greet you - if you please.

But be frustration as it may,

you'll have' much else to "save the day".

For children, rabbits, cats and fleas

will do their best "just you" to please.

And I? What else is there for me,

but smile and chat  and wish fore thee –

God's Best –

His rest."

Looking at Fern's lines June of 1956 one wonders if she felt that the OMF girls were sent to her for fellowship and rest? The OMF were thinking of Fern jump starting them into Thai work. From her the girls would get a pattern of reaching Thai, of setting up clinics and meeting points, and they would be hearing really good Thai spoken by their senior worker.

At that time the mission rented a row-house in the market next to a Chinese restaurant to use as a meeting room. Here Fern says that Kathy, and then the others who followed her, helped with leading singing, taking turns at flannel-graph lessons, listening to children recite their Bible verses and helping award prizes, usually books of the lives of David, Daniel and other Bible characters.

Fern also tells us that they went with her "to villages to the north, south, east and west. We traveled by rickety buses over deep rutted clay roads cut through the dry rice fields and when the rainy season started we traveled by pole boats. We held leprosy clinics at the appointed times and visited in the schools, not only to examine the students for leprosy but to tell Bible stories and give out tracts."

Fern remembers the time with the OMF workers as especially precious. The Lord was looking not only at the work but at the workers, and He was giving a gift to Fern that was beyond price for He was giving her a friendship that grow and last for the rest of her life. Fern and Kathy would become the best of friends.

* * *

Over in Maesod, friendship was being tried and strained. With the Overgaards staying on in Tak, the Sierhuises were moved to Maesod to be with the Peters s o the Peters could remain in full-time language study . Alma would be the  mae bahn and take care of all the running of the household. Hans would have some time in Thai study each day and with Alma's help take on the ministry to the little group of Christians.

Here were two newlywed couples. Had they each had their own separate homes, separate allowances, separate kitchens and each been in charge of their own laundry they might have enjoyed  each other's company ; o r had they been four unmarried young people with a married couple in charge of running their household they might have formed fast friendships.  As it was, Alma had a full-time job adjusting to her Dutch husband's ideas of how his home should be run.  T hen, the way Bob wanted Alice to handle money spent on food, and time spent in the kitchen and laundry were completely the opposite to Hans' ideas.

Reading this you may think, "Well that's fin e . Alice wasn't supposed to be in the kitchen or have anything to do with the housekeeping and laundry. She was a language student and Alma was in charge of the house and servants."

T he problem was that Alice had had to step in and run the house  on at least two separate  occasions since her marriage to Bob. Bob had had things to his liking and of course that was all-important to Alice. Then to have Hans and Alma come along and change things completely was almost impossible to accept.

The n there were financial considerations. Bob was committed to a life of sacrifice and simplicity. He did not approve of spending money for imported western foods. Nor did he want his table or his house to be decorated as a western house would be. He was willing for two simple rice meals each day with bread  for breakfast only. (Bread was something of an expensive luxury at that time. The flour, yeast, lard and powdered milk all had to be ordered from Bangkok.)

Hans just wanted good food. He enjoyed having a variety of good spreads to  lend a savory  or a sweet taste to an  open-face sandwich for evening meals. Bob would almost choke to count up the price of the homemade liver paste or cold slices of roast beef, the tin of American cheese ordered from Bangkok and the British jam that came over the border from Burma. If Alma had spent the afternoon in baking a cake or pie, this was the most expensive kind of meal that it was possible to have in Maesod. The last but most unacceptable item would be the coffee served with the dessert. Alice had deep convictions against tea and coffee , a nd instant coffee was one of the most expensive items to be ordered from Bangkok.

For the two young couples this was a time of  serious  adjustment when it should have been a sweet time of honeymoon. But there were circumstances that made the situation bearable. The Peters were planning to move to a Karen village as soon as possible. This made them tackle their Karen study with wholehearted zeal. As they were both good students their studies were rewarding. Another saving factor for all of them was that the community of Karen refugees spoke English very well. They could have a social life and fellowship outside their home. For the Peters this was particularly profitable, but Hans and Alma enjoyed this wider circle of friends as much as did Bob and Alice.

T he months these two couples lived under the same roof with pooled funds  were trying for all of them. A yielding up of personal choice and opinion was constantly called for. There is a sense in which none of them had the freedom to be truly themselves.

* * *

Back in Tak, Evy continued to lose weight, strength and energy. She just barely had what it took to care for her new son. Evy knew well what it was to rely upon the Lord for strength but now the demands of teaching Sheila and Mark, the household and encouraging Raywadee and the other regular attenders at Sunday service demanded a reliance on the Lord that amounted to a total collapse upon Him. Elly's constantly calling for Wilf to come to Prankratai for consultation and help, only  highlighted the fact that Evy could not carry on without her husband's help at home.

Evy's continual bleeding finally sent the Overgaards to Dr. Wells in Bangkok. A biopsy was taken to be sent to San Francisco for testing. At that time there was no closer place where that laboratory procedure could be performed. This meant that the Overgaards had days to wait for the results.

Waiting is never easy. But in this case it was agony. Every verse of promise was reviewed ad every past encouragement remembered. Finally the word was received: Evy had cancer and a return to Bangkok immediately for a complete hysterectomy was necessary.

This account does not leave Thailand  Weccer s hanging on a cliff wondering if Evy survived. For our field story is known, and it is recognized that Evy came through that operation and there was never a return of her cancer. But it is those weeks leading up to her receipt of the news that she had cancer, and then the reading of the ominous telegram that we need to think about.

This was a real time of journey down into the "valley of the shadow of death". Both Wilf and Evy had to face the fact that it might well be the Lord's will for Evy to die, leaving a new baby, a seven- year -old son and two children, barely in their teens, far away from them.

It is arresting to consider the tone of prayers. Certainly they asked for healing and sought to know the mind and will of the Lord. But they did not stop with those requests; they moved further on from their need of God's help to enter into God's need of them. It was the habit of every station to sing at the evening prayer time. And out of that time Evy would emerge with a song that the "valley of the shadow of death" had made very precious to her. For years Evy would request at every conference that the fellowship would sing the song, number 235 from The Keswick Hymn book. What her song reveals is that beyond asking for healing and wisdom to know the Lord's will and see His plan, Evy and Wilf had worshiped and had come to ask only for more of Him.

#235 - It Passeth Knowledge

It passeth knowledge, that dear love of Thine,

My Saviour, Jesus; yet this soul of mine

Would of Thy love, in all its breadth and length,

Its height and depths, its everlasting strength,

Know more and more.

It passeth telling, that dear love of Thine,

My Saviour, Jesus; yet these lips of mine

Would fain proclaim to sinners, far and near,

A love whexich can remove all guilty fear,

And love beget.

It passeth praises, that dear love of Thine,

My Saviour, Jesus; yet this heart of mine

Would sing that love, so full so rich, so free,

Which brings a rebel sinner such as me,

Nigh unto God.

But though I cannot sing, or tell, or know

The fulness of Thy love, while here below,

My empty vessel I may freely bfing;

O Thou, who art of love the living spring,

My vessel fill.

I am an empty vessel--not one thought

Or look of love, I ever to Thee brought;

Yet I may come, and come again to Thee,

With this, the empty sinner's only plea!

Thou lovest me.

Oh, fill me Jesus, Saviour, with Thy love!

Lead, lead me to the living fount above;

Thither may I, in simple faith draw nigh,

And never to another fountain fly,

But unto Thee.
