A New Heart for the Htin

8/19/2019 A New Heart for the Htin

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A New Heartfor the

Don & Sally Durling


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A New Heart

For The Htin

Don & Sally Durling


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© 2011 by Don Durling

Special thanks to:

Anthony Locicero for use of the photo of walking feet. You can

nd him at his blog, “Anthony Wandered Away” at (http://an-

thonywanderedaway.wordpress.com)

Jean-Marie Hullot for the cover photo of Vang Vieng. See more

photos at http://www.ickr.com/people/jmhullot/

Cessna Wren pictures courtesy of Mission Aviation Fellowship.

You can nd them at http://www.maf.org/

Website and book design by Bill Durling.

Get more info and reorder books at http://aheartforthehtin.com


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ContentsChapter Page

Contents .................................................................. iii

Preface ......................................................................v

Forward ................................................................. vii

From Rural Michigan ...............................................9

To Thailand, Then Laos ..........................................18The Htin Tribe ........................................................24

Meanwhile, Back to Work ......................................31

Missionaries at Last ................................................37

It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s a— Wren? ....................43

Lao Pao ...................................................................48

The Lost Letter .......................................................54

Paw Peng ................................................................60

Feet .........................................................................65Folksinger Gome ....................................................72

Samet ......................................................................77

Three Strikes, but Not Out .....................................86

The First Htin Christian ..........................................91

The Long Gap .........................................................97

Time for TEE ........................................................103

The Htin Come to Na Po ......................................110

Early Christians ....................................................116Ex-Shaman Pun’s Funeral ....................................125

Uncle Teep’s New Birth … and Death .................131

Lunchtime Visitors ...............................................137

Sacraments ............................................................143

Christmas 1993 .....................................................148

The Dispersion .....................................................154

Lyndon ..................................................................160

Afterword .............................................................167


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v

Preface

Hi there reader! We need to get acquainted. I don’t know who you

are, because I can’t see your face. You may be an eleven year-old

who is beginning to consider the fact that the Lord might be calling

you to be a missionary. You may be a 21-year-old, who is in the midstof getting an education, or a 31-year-old who is getting established

in a career. I was once all of those with all of the strains, insecurities,

and complexes that accompany each age. Now though, things have

quieted down a little for me, and I am away from the heat of the

battle. Me? I was a missionary and am ready to relate what it was like

to carry the Gospel to a tribe that had never heard before.

In looking over old letters, notes, and reports for the purpose of

writing this book, it has come to my attention that I had forgotten a lotof the negative side of being a missionary. I can’t help but puzzle just

why it is that ministry to the Htin has always seemed to be a joy, but

other assigned ministries were certainly a mixed bag of positives and

negatives. I concede that there were many hard times as a missionary.

It wasn’t easy to put up with privation, but privation was a supercial

problem. I can remember enduring intense heat (with no electricity

for fans) so that sweat would drip off of my chin onto the book during

language study. I remember climbing the mountains in Laos, or sitting

at a desk in the heat and dust of the refugee camp. Sometimes these

things caused me to long for the comfortable surroundings I might

have had as a teacher of English as a Second Language (ESL) either

at the University of Michigan, or even at an urban setting overseas.

These privations, though, were not really serious.

More difcult to endure was the fact that it wasn’t easy to get

along with some other missionaries or to have to work under arbitrarydecisions imposed from mission authority that didn’t take into

account the reality of the grass roots situation. This kind of problem


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seemed to recur often, causing many wakeful hours as I dealt with

them in the sleepless quiet of the night. Old letters I have referred to

have reminded me of this stressful side of being a missionary.

As I have written this account of reaching the Htin, I havewondered why this one particular ministry seemed to have no dark

side, whereas myriad other ministries, whether in Laos, in Thailand,

or in the U.S. did have a dark and a light side.

I don’t want to be supercially saccharine, but in fact, association

with the Htin was an almost unmitigated joy throughout. Maybe it is

because we were never specically assigned to reach the Htin, except

for the short time we spent in Htin language study. Htin work was

generally a sideline—that is, we were appointed to general missionary

work in the Province of Sayaboury, and within that framework,

we chose to reach out to the Htin, who were as yet unevangelized.

Then we were assigned to the work of developing Lao Theological

Education by Extension in the Na Po refugee camp, and the joyful

ministry to the Htin opened as a sideline.

As I have written this and referred back to various resources, I

am reawakened to the negative side of missionary work, which whilenot completely forgotten, had been pushed back into the obscure

archives of my memory; I think I want to leave those memories there,

undisturbed.

John 16:21 reads: “A woman, when she is in travail hath sorrow,

because her hour is come; but as soon as she is delivered of the child,

she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into

the world.”

Pardon me if I seem to have forgotten the genuine anguishes of being

a missionary for joy that hundreds of Htin have been born into the

Kingdom of God.

~ Don Durling


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Forward

“I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.”

I Corinthians 3:6

We were the rst missionaries to reside in Sayaboury and lived there

for nine years. Our rst contacts with the Htin tribe were in 1955.These early “encounters” were unique. We would discover carrying-

loads of woven baskets and mats abandoned at the edge of the trail.

They had been aware of our approach, and ed the scene, leaving

their loads behind. We had heard of their animistic fears and shyness

towards outsiders and we were Americans.

It took years to break down this fear and shyness. Later, when

meeting groups of them along ‘jeepable’ roads nearer town, they

would approach cautiously and peer under the jeep and reach out totouch a fender. But, they would not accept our invitations to ride in

the jeep. It was a real breakthrough one day when several Htin rode

into town in the jeep, and later came to visit us at our house.

Don and Sally Durling followed us in Sayaboury. They picked up

where we left off, visiting the numerous Htin villages and learning

their language. Don and Sally really did the hard part of reaching the

Htin for Jesus Christ.

Don tells the rest of the story, a story that really does not end

with this book, but will nd its ultimate fulllment in eternity in the

presence of our wonderful Lord, whom we serve.

~ George W. Tubbs


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Childhood in Michigan.


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One

From Rural Michigan

F

or most of us, our experiences of early childhood form

the basis of what we rst regard as “normal,” and as new

experiences cross our paths, that standard of what constitutes

normalcy changes. Experiences of our childhood are understood to be “normal.” Our idea of what is “normal” may challenged, but these

early perceptions of normalcy yield very reluctantly to the demands

of a changing world, and specically as the changes effect us.

All of my brothers and sisters—ve of them—had been born at

home, with an attending doctor, but when it came time for this sixth

one, it was decided that the event should take place in a hospital,

because one of my brothers had just recovered from scarlet fever,

so that further precaution was taken. It was probably a good thing,

because this sixth and last child weighed 11¾ pounds, and was for

a while the record holder for the heavy-weight baby title from that

small-town hospital. If I hadn’t been born in a hospital, I wouldn’t

have held that record.

As I grew beyond infancy, my sense of “normalcy” developed,

and normal was a white frame farmhouse, beside a railroad track, with

hollyhocks surrounding the house. I assumed that everybody in theworld lived in a white frame farmhouse surrounded by hollyhocks.

I assumed that a one-room school where one teacher taught all eight

grades was normal. I assumed that everyone attended a church like

the one we attended. I assumed that it was normal to live on a dirt

road, and have a railroad running just a few yards from our house.

The noise of the railroad was no problem for us because we were

used to it, but whenever we had guests, they would wake with a start

when the train went through in the middle of the night. To us it wasnormal, and we would sleep through every train.

As common as the trains were though, they still fascinated me.


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Whenever I would hear a train coming, I would run to the window,

and as soon as I learned to count, I would count the cars. The passing

train had a strange effect on my system though; the train rushing byhad the same effect on me as hearing water owing, and my standard

memory of watching the train includes rushing to the bathroom just

as soon as the train was past to relieve myself. Sometimes, I would

have to give up counting the railroad cars to accommodate that more

pressing need.

My Dad farmed eighty acres — the standard amount that a

diversied farmer could handle with a team of horses. The eld crops

alternated between corn, wheat, oats, and hay. The farm animalsincluded a few cows, a few sheep, a few pigs, and chickens. After my

Dad bought a steel-wheeled 10-20 McCormick-Deering tractor, the

horses were not so necessary, but we kept them, until the mare was

struck by lightening under a tree in a rainstorm. We kept the stallion

for a while out of a sense of obligation to him, even though the tractor

had made him obsolete.

My “normal” world was going to meet some challenges though.

When I was ten, we moved to take over a dairy farm, and normalcy now

had to accommodate a larger dairy herd, with milking machines—not

just the few cows that my Dad milked by hand. It also meant that I no

longer went to a one-room school up the road from us in the country,

but went to a school in town that had two classrooms. My world was

expanding, and my view of normalcy was being challenged.

Those are now called “simpler days” and that name might t, if

“simpler” means more work, more risk and less reward. At the timewe didn’t know we were living in simpler days, and we would have

welcomed complexity. We were hard-working farmers, caught up in

the intensity of doing our share for the war effort of World War II.

Work from sunrise to sunset was the norm on our farm in Michigan,

and about the only diversions were church and school. However,

when we heard that the famous “Cleveland Colored Quintette” from

a Christian and Missionary Alliance Church in Cleveland was going

to be in Fayette Ohio, we decided to go.Rather than meeting in one of the churches, this quintette was

going to be ministering in a second-story auditorium grandiloquently


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called the Fayette

Opera House.

That night we gotour chores out of

the way and drove

the ten miles to

Fayette Ohio.

I had never

before heard

music that was as

beautiful as themusic they sang.

By then, I was

probably eleven

years old and was accustomed only to standard hymns that we sang

in church—our church didn’t sing like this quintette. After their

singing, the leader of the quintette, named Lacey preached a gripping

message that ended with an invitation to the listeners to dedicate their

lives to the Lord. After the invitation was over, Lacey said that in

prayer that afternoon, the Lord had impressed on him that someone

would go forward that night who would be a missionary; I was the

only one who had gone forward that night.

As my “normal” world expanded to accommodate the wider

world, I found myself fascinated by automobile design, and if left to

my own devices would probably have ended up pursuing a career that

had something to do with that interest. I knew every model of everyAmerican car being built at that time. I designed, and spent many

hours building a model of a car for competition in the “Fisher Body

Craftsman’s Guild.” My parents took me to Detroit to see the displays

of models that other potential auto designers of my approximate age

had designed and submitted. There, among the others, I saw my blue

fast-back car with a radical sloping hood to enhance visibility. My

car was certainly innovative, but I didn’t win any prize scholarship.

Maybe the Lord prevented me from winning a scholarship to keepme from being tempted to go that way.

I graduated from High School before I turned 17, and aware that

The Fayette Opera House


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God had His mark on me, started looking for a Bible Institute to enter.

Some of the Bible Institutes wouldn’t accept entering Freshmen until

they were 18, and I would be barely 17 when the fall term opened,so I picked the Grand Rapids School of Bible and Music, where they

did accept 17-year-olds. By this time my idea of “normalcy” was still

rooted in a white frame farmhouse, but had grown to accommodate

a wider world including cities. Actually I had known of the idea

of foreign missions most of my life, having heard about it often in

church, and hearing from Rev. Lacey that he sensed the Lord’s call on

me when I was only eleven. Nevertheless, I was still pretty naive in

general, and was at a loss as to how to become a missionary.As I was nishing my third and nal year of the Missions Course,

I started to wonder what to do next. I would be twenty soon after

graduating, but had no idea what to do to be a missionary—not even

sure if indeed I should be a missionary. Among our chapel speakers

was a couple who were independent missionaries to Haiti. I heard

them, and they seemed to be real sure of the mission they were on, so

when I got a chance to talk to them some time later, I put the question

that had been bugging me to them. I asked how one knew he was

called to be a missionary. They glibly quoted the Great Commission,

leaving the implication that a missionary call was nothing more than

that. So, without much further questioning I proceeded to apply to a

faith mission that was in need of a young man volunteer, to work for

a year on a children’s camp that was under development in central

Cuba. Since the Korean War was on, I was subject to being drafted

into the military, but the draft board said that if I would becomeordained as a minister, they would defer me so I could go to Cuba.

So, when the pastor of a nearby independent Baptist church offered

to arrange for an ordination council, I agreed, and after the ordination

examination, his church ordained me. Over the next several months,

enough support was raised from various churches near my home, so

that I was appointed for a year to work at a children’s camp in Cuba.

I left home, visiting that missions home ofce in Philadelphia, and

from there proceeded on to Miami by train and ew the short hop toCuba.

It was by far the worst year of my life. I came home a year later


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with a good knowledge of Spanish, and having made friends of

many Cuban people, but with a thoroughly wrecked self-image. I

had gone to Cuba too young, too naive, and too unquestioning in theface of abusive authority. I had endured a year of being the target

of transferred hostility from a very frustrated senior missionary, and

came back home, thoroughly disillusioned with the lack of spiritual

dimension in the work of the missionary I had gone to work under. I

was unable to understand just what the problems were until decades

later, when with added years, I became wiser and realized more of

what human nature is—even missionary human nature. My self-

condence was so shattered that after returning from Cuba, whenasked to go to Philadelphia to report to the home ofce of the mission

I had worked with, I couldn’t talk—only stammer, so that I was

unable to tell them what I had been through.

I spent the rest of that winter leading singing for revival meetings

in various churches in the area. However, as spring approached, the

farmers started working the elds again, and the season for revival

meetings ended. With no more winter revival meetings, I was no

longer in Christian work of any kind. I anticipated that the draft board

would summon me, however they made no move to draft me because

I was an ordained minister.

As a preschooler, I had heard my father talk about the horrors of

war with a man who came to buy cream from us, and I had feared the

Army and war ever since. Nevertheless, I had to face the fact that the

Korean War was going on and that some of my friends had gone to

ght—even die there. I felt that I should rightly be drafted, but theywere not drafting me, because I was a “Reverend.”

Although ours was a devout Christian family that went to church

every time the doors opened, and had family devotions daily, we had

never practiced fasting. I was desperate to know the Lord’s peace in

the matter though, and I decided that I would try fasting, but since

our family never practiced fasting, I felt as though I wouldn’t dare be

open about it, and did a hidden fast. I went to the table, messed up

my plate and ate a little so my parents wouldn’t notice, and went backhungry to the bedroom to pray. As unlikely as it seemed, I couldn’t

escape the conviction that the Lord wanted me to go to the draft board


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and volunteer to be drafted. I battled with the issue for a few days and

nights, then one day, without telling anyone where I was going, I

jumped into my car, and went to the draft board and volunteered— telling my parents only afterward.

A few days later, I reported to the induction center in Detroit, and

was shipped off to basic training in Camp Pickett, Virginia. Basic

training was physically grueling, as Army basic training usually

is, but it was nothing of the emotional strain I had gone through in

Cuba. In the Army, if I was berated, it was one sergeant berating a

whole platoon of trainees—I had sympathetic company. In Cuba, I

suffered alone, forbidden to release my emotional baggage to anyother missionaries; it was only after I had learned enough Spanish to

release my tensions to Cubans who could see what was going on that

I could nd sympathetic ears. In the Army though, I was usually able

to nd Christian fellowship anywhere they sent me, so in general, I

found the Army to be a congenial situation.

Although the Korean War was going on, it had never really

dawned on me that I might actually go to Korea, and have to ght. I

had no interest in ghting, and in fact when we were doing bayonet

practice, our cadre tried to work us into a frenzy, by having us stab

the bag and shout “KILL! KILL!” I had no interest in killing anyone

though—not a Korean Communist or anybody else, so I stabbed away

at the bag, and shouted “TILL! TILL!” and the guy never caught on.

As it turned out, the Korean truce was signed while we were in basic

training, and we were a happy bunch of basic trainees. At that time

then, I realized that I might have actually had to see action in Koreaif the truce hadn’t been signed.

Whew!

After basic training, I was given orders to take a furlough,

then report to Seattle Washington for shipment, so I did that, and

was put on a troopship for Korea. Even the troopship was not a bad

experience. Although I had volunteered to the draft board to go to the

Army, I learned once in the Army not to volunteer for anything, and

thus avoided any heavy duty such as kitchen or clean-up duty. After arelatively relaxing two weeks on the troopship, we docked in Pusan,

Korea, and I began my rst experience in the Orient.


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I knew next to nothing of the Far East, but I soon found out that

they didn’t speak English, nor did they speak Spanish. I was assigned

as a stock records clerk at 55th Quartermaster Depot. Pusan was the

only city that had not been controlled by the Communists at any

time—and it was lled with refugees, many of these were absolutelydestitute, shutting the cold out by building huts of cardboard leftovers

from shipping war materiel. Although the war had stopped, these

refugees were desperately poor, and willing to do anything to house

and feed themselves.

Until that time, I knew nothing of the strength of the Korean

Christians, but I was to learn something of it the rst day I was there.

I went to sleep in our Quonset barracks in the 32nd Quartermaster

compound that rst night, and was awakened the next morning at

5:00 AM by the sound of church-bells ringing all over the city of

Pusan. Obviously, there were Christians among the Korean populace,

and soon I was able to nd Christians among the GIs too. Although

not all Army chapel services preach the Gospel, I had learned that

one was more apt to nd other Christians in chapel than elsewhere, so

soon I met a fellow soldier named Andrew Bailey from Clear Creek,

West Virginia, who was a Christian. Bailey introduced me to otherChristians, bringing me into warm Christian fellowship that was to

last all of my time in Korea. I found out that the Korean church’s

Singing with my Army quartet.


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early morning prayer meetings were a daily event; Christian Koreans,

who had suffered so much because of the war, met at that time every

day to pour out their souls to the Lord. I met and fellowshipped withevangelical missionaries whose dedication to their work was most

admirable. Some had been born in Korea of missionary parents.

Some had suffered imprisonment alongside their Korean brothers

for refusing to bow to the Shinto shrines when Korea was a colony

of Japan. These missionaries were giants, and the Lord had given a

bountiful reward for their work. In short, my year and a half stint in

the Army in Korea rebuilt my condence in missions that had been

destroyed in Cuba, so that by the end of my stint there, I found myselfanxious to continue my education so I could come back to Asia as a

missionary. My time in Korea had been a real blessing to me, and

I had the highest regard for the Korean Christians, but it seemed

obvious that Korea didn’t need missionaries as did other countries.

As much as I wanted to return to Korea, it became clear that if I were

to go where the need was greatest, it wouldn’t be to Korea.

After discharge from the Army, and with the GI Bill in hand, I

entered the University of Michigan to study Far Eastern Languages

and Literatures. I was highly motivated, and completed my BA

work in less than three years. My GI Bill was not used up yet

when I graduated, so I went on for an MA in Linguistics. I was in

correspondence with Overseas Missionary Fellowship, which had a

long history of work in the Far East, anticipating going out with them;

however, a problem arose. One morning while I was studying at the

Summer Institute of Linguistics in Norman, Oklahoma, I awoke witha severely twisted back, and a lacerated tongue. My roommate asked

me if I was subject to having epileptic convulsions. He told me that

I had just had one—the rst one of my life. Knowing the condition

of my back and tongue, I knew he was accurately reporting what had

happened. My life was changed, and whatever the diagnosis would

be, my future was in question.

I resumed a reduced load at the University of Michigan that fall,

with the goal of getting my MA in Linguistics in January 1959, butI was reluctant to appear in public for fear I might have a seizure.

In class or in church, I tried to sit in an obscure back seat. I stopped


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driving for a while, and sold my car. A neurologist’s examination

conrmed that there was indeed something irregular in my brain

pattern, and I was put on Phenobarbital. Even though I was able tonish my MA in January 1959 as planned, and had no more seizures,

there was a real question as to whether I would be acceptable to

any mission. I continued my application process to OMF (Overseas

Missionary Fellowship) though, and one ofcial of that mission

encouraged me by saying that he didn’t think it would be a hindrance.

In the meantime, my Chinese teacher told me of a project that the

University of Michigan was undertaking in SE Asia, through a contract

with USAID. It was to develop English as a Second Language (ESL) programs in Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. I had studied linguistics,

so it was in the line of work I was prepared for, and in the part of the

world that I was interested in, but it was not missionary work. I went

ahead and applied for it though, partly to please my Chinese teacher,

and partly because I realized that with my health problem, I might not

be accepted as a missionary.

After graduating with my MA in Linguistics, I went back home

for a few weeks, and I got a letter from the director of the University

of Michigan project, accepting me as a team member, but I still hadn’t

heard from the mission. I thought that as a “man of faith” I should

turn down this lucrative and prestigious job for the higher calling

of presenting the Gospel, so I wrote back, turning the University

of Michigan job down. Soon thereafter though, I got a letter from

Overseas Missionary Fellowship, saying that in view of my health

problems, they wanted me to wait for two years to see how my healthwas before they would consider appointing me. So, I meekly went

back to the man in charge of the University of Michigan contract, and

said that I had reconsidered, and would take the job they had offered

me for two years.

Not long after that, I ew rst class to start work in Bangkok,

Thailand.


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Two

To Thailand, Then Laos

T

his University of Michigan job was a heady thing. We rubbed

elbows with ofcials of the Thai Ministry of Education, and

we set up our project at the College of Education. We lacked

nothing, either for our project or for our personal lives. We developedcourses according to the pattern of English as a Second Language

(ESL) procedure which had been pioneered at the University of

Michigan, but here, we were developing courses and texts particularly

for the needs of those who spoke the Thai language, and according

to the needs of Thailand as seen by the Thai Ministry of Education.

My particular job was to develop a book of English Pattern Practices

for speakers of Thai, as an adjunct to the book of English Sentence

Patterns for speakers of Thai, compiled by another University of

Michigan staff member.

During that time in Bangkok I got acquainted with many good

missionaries, and again found warm Christian fellowship. After a

while though, the war in Vietnam was heating up, and spilling over

into Laos, sometimes putting our University of Michigan colleagues

in Laos at even more risk than those in Vietnam. The team leaders

decided to shift personnel around so that only single people, withoutfamily responsibilities, would work in Laos. This meant that since I

was still single, I would go to Laos, and those from Laos who had

families, would be moved to the safety of Thailand. That is how I got

to Laos.

Thailand had been lled with missionaries of many missions,

but Laos had basically only two Protestant missions that had been

there since before World War II—the Swiss Mission Evangelique

in southern Laos, and the Christian and Missionary Alliance in thenorth. Our University of Michigan project was situated in the north,

so soon I found Christian fellowship at the International Church, and


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among them were some missionaries—all Christian and Missionary

Alliance at this point. Again I was in contact with the C&MA—the

group I had rst heard of long ago when I was eleven years old, when

Rev. Lacey had given me the rst indication that the Lord would call

me as a missionary, way back in Fayette, Ohio.

I found out that The Christian and Missionary Alliance had a long

and fruitful ministry in Laos, and in fact throughout SE Asia. It was

the rst Protestant mission to establish a foothold in Vietnam. Then

from Vietnam, in the years immediately preceding 1930, it branched

out into the other countries of what was French Indochina—namely

Laos and Cambodia—and also into Thailand.

The Presbyterian Mission had preceded the C&MA in Thailand,

but hadn’t been able to adequately cover NE Thailand, and agreed

that the C&MA take over that responsibility. That NE part of

Thailand was the part that was most closely tied to Laos, ethnicallyand linguistically.

The rst Protestant missionaries to reside Laos had been those

of the Swiss Mission Evangelique, who entered southern Laos early

in the 20th century. In those early days, the Swiss lost many of their

people to disease. Although the Presbyterians had made several

evangelistic trips into northern Laos, seeing a good number of

converts over many years, they had never had permanently resident

missionaries in Laos. With the arrival of Ed and Thelma Roffe inLaos in 1929 though, the C&MA had missionaries living in Laos. In

the decade of the 1930s, more C&MA missionaries came, so that by

Students at Education National Center in Dong Dok.


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the outbreak of World War II, there were four couples: Mr. & Mrs.

Ed Roffe, Mr. & Mrs. Walt Whipple, Mr. & Mrs. Franklin Grobbs,

and Mr. & Mrs. Herb Clingen. Although no C&MA missionariesdied and were buried in Laos, several Swiss were buried there, and

one Presbyterian lady from northern Thailand, who had died while

she and her husband were on an evangelistic trip of several months.

Franklin Grobbs and his wife were interned in the Philippines by

the Japanese during World War II, and he died of disease during that

internment.

With my arrival in Laos, I found that two of those original four

missionary couples were still serving in the country—the Roffes andthe Whipples. After World War II, a number of new missionaries were

available to come into Laos. Some were appointed directly to Laos,

and others were originally appointed to China, but had to leave when

the missionaries departed as a result of the Communist revolution

that came about in 1949. Because of this inux of new missionaries

in the 1950s, new provinces had been opened, and ministries to new

tribes were initiated. Also, in the early 1950s, after China was closed,

Overseas Missionary Fellowship (OMF) opened a work in southern

Laos, working alongside the Swiss Mission Evangelique.

As I began to get acquainted with the mission situation in Laos,

having been transferred from Thailand, I discovered that there were

not so many missionaries here, because Laos was a much smaller

country. At that time, in the early 1960s, the Christian and Missionary

Alliance was still the only Protestant mission that had made a serious

long-term commitment in northern Laos. Even as various newmissions were opening work throughout Thailand, missions seemed

reluctant to make a commitment to Laos, probably due to fear of the

Vietnam conict spreading into Laos. Also, because of the war threat,

foreigners living in Laos were not able to travel around much, so

most of the missionaries were living in the capital city of Vientiane

(pronounced vieng-chan).

Often I found myself in the company of the missionaries, either

in church functions, or socially. Among the missionaries, there weretwo single girls, and my natural inclination would have been to have

a date with one, and then a date with the other, but the problem was


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that they were rooming together. It wouldn’t be very diplomatic to

date one and then the other, so as a tentative step, I took them both

out for dinner—a threesome. Then I had to stand back, and decidewhich of the two I really wanted to date. Of course, it was a matter

that took a lot of thought and prayer, but when I nally did decide

which one it would be, we started to date, and she turned out to be the

right one! We continued to date, and as our relationship deepened, we

realized that we wanted our relationship to be permanent. However,

there were problems.

Time was passing, and I was coming close to the end of my two

year contract with the University of Michigan, and had to make adecision. I was in the part of the world that I felt God had called me

to. There was no recurrence of epilepsy, and the waiting time of two

years—the condition set by the OMF mission that I had corresponded

with—was coming to an end. In the meantime, though, I was dating

Sally Holmes, who was a missionary of the C&MA.

The fact that Sally Holmes was becoming the center of my life

was not in contradiction to my call as a missionary. She had been

independently called to be a missionary even before she knew who

I was, and had in fact preceded me to Laos. If I re-applied to OMF,

it would mean saying good-bye to her. My relationship to her was

becoming more important than anything else, except my relationship

to God himself. To get married to her wouldn’t be easy though. I had no

training in an Alliance (C&MA) School, nor had I done home service

with the Alliance, so all sorts of rules would have to be waived for me

to become an Alliance missionary. It was unheard of that an Alliancemissionary could get married to a non-missionary and continue on

the eld. Moreover, because the war threat was particularly serious at

that time, the US Embassy forbade Americans on direct government

hire or contract hire to have dependents in Laos with them. If I

re-applied to OMF, I would lose Sally, and it seemed that I had no

chance at that time of qualifying as an Alliance missionary. If she

would quit the C&MA mission to marry me while I was still with the

University of Michigan project, she would become my dependent andthus could not stay in Laos. However, I was being offered a second

two-year contract by the University of Michigan project, so if the


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Alliance would waive

their rule against a

missionary marryinga non-missionary, and

if the US Embassy

would allow her to stay

on in Laos as working

independently even

though she was married

to me, we had a chance.

Frankly though, it didn’tseem very likely.

Time was running

short, because the

time for the end of my

contract, and home leave

if I should renew the

contract, was coming

up in just a couple of

months. However, Walt

Whipple, who was

chairman of the C&MA

Mission at that time,

came to our rescue,

and interceded with the

C&MA authorities tolet Sally marry me even

though I wasn’t a missionary yet. He also interceded with the US

Embassy to consider Sally, not as my dependent, but as independently

employed by the C&MA Mission—which she was indeed. Within a

few weeks permission was granted from the C&MA for her to marry

a non-missionary, and from the US Embassy to let her stay in the

country even after she married me!

Thus it was that the way was opened for Sally, who was the mostimportant person in my life, to become my wife! After dinner at our

favorite spot—an outdoor restaurant where we could watch the sun

Our wedding day!


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23

setting over the Mekong River—I asked her if she would marry me.

She consented!

We were married at the end of June, with a Lao legal ceremony onJune 29, 1961. The US Embassy sent a witness to ofcially validate

the rite according to U.S. laws. The next day we had a Christian

ceremony in the little church in Vientiane. For our honeymoon, we

went back to the US for my month of home leave, and to meet the

families of both sides. Then we came back for two more years, she

completing her ve year term as secretary and bookkeeper for the

C&MA Mission, and I doing a second two year contract with the

University of Michigan project.Those two years were good to us. Sally continued her work as

secretary-bookkeeper for the mission, and I continued teaching with

the University of Michigan contract at the College of Education,

doing quiet work on the side in providing opportunities for fellowship

among Christian students. During that two year period, we lost one

son stillborn, but God gave us another healthy son, Tim, who would

eventually be the big brother of three more children.

Also, during that two year period, we went to visit missionaries

George and Martha Tubbs in Sayaboury (pronounced sign-YUP-boo-

lee) Province, of northwestern Laos, and among the people there, we

saw a group of three or four people scurrying along the road with

mats they had woven for sale. George told us they were of the Htin

tribe, locally known as the Pai (pronounced pie) tribe.

The Htin were to become very important to us.


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Three

The Htin Tribe

B

ack when I was still with the University of Michigan

project in Bangkok, I had heard of this tribe along the Thai-

Lao border called the Htin tribe. A missionary working in

northern Thailand had told me that he had visited in Htin villages in Nan (pronounced as the prex non-) Province of northern Thailand,

in an area that bordered Sayaboury Province of Laos. So, the Htin

that we had seen scurrying along the roadside in Sayaboury, were the

same tribe, but on the Lao side of the border. I asked George Tubbs

more about the tribes of this province.

The lowland Lao make up almost half of the population of

Laos, and they are generally in control of the government and

economy. Throughout Laos though, there are dozens of ethnic

minorities, generally living in the mountainous areas. The Province

of Sayaboury had four main tribal groups. Two of these groups, the

Hmong (pronounced as it is spelled) and Mien (pronounced ME-

yun) whose languages were related to Chinese, were scattered over

several countries of SE Asia. The Khamou (sometimes written as

K’mu) were scattered over much of northern Laos and into Thailand.

The Htin though were found only in the border area of Nan Provinceof Thailand, and Sayaboury Province of Laos. The Htin were the

poorest of those 4 main tribes in the area.

The Htin and the Khamou were already in this area when it was

settled by Lao migrating from further north 1,000 years ago. The

Hmong and Mien were the latest arrivals, having migrated into the

area from south China over the last couple of centuries. The original

inhabitants were no match for the later arrivals, and the Khamou and

Htin eventually learned to accept the fact that they had little politicalor economic power, either against the more numerous Lao, or the

later arrivals of Hmong and Mien from China.


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Presbyterians had been the rst Protestant mission to enter

Thailand, and they had found the most response in northern Thailand.

When the Presbyterian missionaries based in northern Thailand,and northern Thai evangelists had made trips from Nan Province of

Thailand into Sayaboury and Luang Prabang (pronounced LOO-ang

pa-BAHNG) Provinces of Laos earlier in the century, many of the

Khamou had responded and become Christians. When the Alliance

entered Laos in 1929 with the promise of having missionaries actually

living in the country, the Presbyterians turned the whole of their work

in Laos over to the Alliance.

Hmong in Xieng Khouang (pronounced seeing KWONG)

Province started becoming Christians in a large people’s movement in

the 1950s, and there were some Christians among the Mien in China

and Thailand. The Htin, however, were completely unreached at that

time. Although they were not the fewest in number, they were the

poorest and least inuential of the four main tribes of this province.

They were not ones to stand up for their rights, but they passively

accepted whatever came to them, not willing or strong enough toght back. In some cases, when outsiders that they didn’t know

entered their villages, they would abandon their houses and all ee


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27

then sell these pickled tea leaves or barter them for things in town,

such as burlap bags to use in place of blankets. To keep warm, they

sometimes put two children to sleep together in one bag. In the 1960s,when some of them came into town to barter, they would walk to a

place just outside town the night before, where they would sleep, then

come into town to do their business, making sure they got outside of

town before sunset, because they were afraid of spending the night

in a Lao town.

Because of their extreme poverty and lack of political or economic

clout, other ethnic groups felt free to oppress them or make demands

on them. When they did make purchases in town, shopkeepers wouldsometimes deliberately short-change them, knowing that many Htin

didn’t know how to count money. Oppression came from various

sources—the spirits that they appeased by demanding sacrices, and

outsiders taking advantage of them.

In an area with scattered villages of Hmong, Mien, Khamou or

Htin villages, separated by hours of walk on mountain foot-trails, it

had become customary that wherever a traveler found himself as the

sun was setting, he could stop off and eat an evening meal and sleep

in the nearest village, of whatever tribe. In that manner, there was a

certain amount of social interchange between the various tribes.

In the late 1950s, there was one Htin man named Sen See, who

had emerged as being somewhat of a leader among them, and was

recognized by Lao provincial authorities as a spokesman for Htin

interests. The fact that any Htin seemed to be emerging as any kind

of a leader was seen as a threat by some from other tribes. One night,two travelers stopped as the sun was setting, and took advantage of

Sen See’s hospitality, eating supper that he had provided, sleeping

overnight in his house, and then eating breakfast. As they stood up

after breakfast, they shot and killed Sen See. Then they left, condent

that there would be no retaliation from the Htin. This all happened

before I ever traveled among the Htin, but George Tubbs knew Sen

See, and told me about it. I did eventually get to meet his widow and

son.Because of things like that, Htin generally drew back from any

kind of explicit or implicit leadership. Given a group of ten Htin, it


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28

seemed that nobody wanted to emerge as leader, but each wanted to

be nothing more than one-tenth of the whole.

Also, because of their low status, the Htin had very little ethnic pride or identication. If one could pass as a Lao, he would, and

thereafter deny his Htin identity. Even whole villages would

sometimes try to portray themselves as something other than Htin—

trying to “pass” as Northern Thai. Of the four main tribes in the

province, they were at the bottom of the pecking order.

What I had seen from the back of the Jeep that George Tubbs

was driving that day, was a representative remnant of the original

inhabitants of the territory, who had learned centuries earlier tolive off the land, keeping as low a prole as possible. They piled

poverty on poverty by sacricing what chickens or pigs they had to

the demands of the spirits they appeased. They were afraid that if

they became too inuential, they would suffer as Sen See did. If they

became too comfortable, they would suffer from increased demands

from the spirits.

There were Christians among the Khamou and Hmong in

Sayaboury Province, but there was not a single Christian witness

among the Htin. Yet, God knew and loved them, and He wouldn’t let

me forget them.

Years earlier, I had heard of the existence of Htin on the Thai side

of the border. Now, from the back of the Jeep that George Tubbs was

driving, we had seen them, and having seen them, we would never be

able to forget them.

When a missionary—or I suppose any sensitive Christian—sees people so severely oppressed, a ood of emotion wells up that is

unpredictable. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, none of the

three passers-by had expected to nd a man who had been beaten

by thieves. The Priest might have been walking along thinking

devotional thoughts, praying, or reciting Psalms of praise, then

suddenly, this sight appears before him that he is not prepared to deal

with. Devotion is his thing, not this. He probably got confused and

didn’t know how to handle it. The Levite might have been preoccupiedwith his religious duties or whatever, then suddenly, his attention was

drawn by this gruesome spectacle that would divert him from what


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Don & Sally Durling

29

he meant to accomplish. They were unaware that before their eyes

lay an opportunity for service far beyond anything that service in the

temple could give.The despised Samaritan—ah—he had no agenda to accomplish;

he had no role to fulll. He responded as a human to human need, and

he changed the meaning of the name ‘Samaritan’ by what he did for

the man along the roadside that day.

I saw men along the roadside in Sayaboury. They hadn’t fallen

as victims of robbers but they were still victims—victims of sin, of

satanic oppression, of delusion. They were also victims of prejudice,

and economic oppression. My response to them wouldn’t be settled onthat day, but I would respond to their need. I might leave Sayaboury,

and go back to teaching in my posh job. I might pass by on the other

side because of the occupation I was doing well in—or the role I was

fullling. It was signicant that I was preparing young Lao for higher

education—even university training overseas, wasn’t it?

George Tubbs provided me with another opportunity to meet

the Htin before I

became a missionary.

He had long heard of

the “Yellow Leaf,” who

were considered by

most to be wild men.

They didn’t have regular

houses or villages. They

didn’t plant crops, orraise animals, but spent

their time foraging in the

forest, living in lean-to

shelters for a few days, then moving on. The term “Yellow Leaf”

was used for them, because it was said that they would construct

their lean-to of leaves, and sleep under it until the green leaves dried

and turned yellow, then they would go somewhere else and put up

another shelter.George had heard that there was a Yellow Leaf family that

moved around in the area of a particular Htin village that he knew


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of named Forked Creek Village, and he wanted to go and make

contact with them. He invited me to go along, so I took a week off

from my teaching, and went with him. We had to sleep in the forestone night going there, because it was more than a day walk. He had

hired two Hmong men who were not Christians, but knew the area

as guides, and a few young men from a Christian Khamou village

to be carriers. We got to Forked Creek Village—my rst experience

in a Htin village, and were put up in the house of a man who was

crippled. Because he was a cripple, his wife had to do all of the eld

work without his help.

George told the people in the village of our purpose to meet theYellow Leaf that were in the area, and they assured us that a Yellow

Leaf man stopped in to their village from time to time. Some time

earlier, he had been bitten by a bear, and had been given opium by

some Hmong to kill the pain, so since that time, he would stop in to

get leftover opium ber to satisfy his addiction.

Lo and behold, the man came while we were there! He was tiny

and thin. George asked him about his family, and he said that his

family consisted of himself, his wife, his son, his son’s wife, and

two children. George asked him to bring his son around so we could

meet him, and he left. He was gone a long time, but eventually came

back with his son. The son wasn’t used to coming into any kind of

village, and here he was summoned to come into this Htin village,

and there he saw two men who looked like nothing he had ever seen

before—like freaks (George and I). He was trembling as he came up

the ladder into the house.At that time I didn’t know enough Lao to understand all that

George said to them, but after talking to them, George gave them

some gifts, and the next day we started our return trip. In that one

week, I had met the elusive Yellow Leaf, and spent the night in a Htin

village—the village of Forked Creek.

I went back to the class-room, but the sight of the Htin scurrying

along the roadside that rst time, and later actually sleeping in a Htinvillage wouldn’t be forgotten.


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31

Four

Meanwhile, Back

To Work

We had been up-country; we had seen various tribes:

Hmong, Khamou, Mien, and Htin, but the Htin werethe neediest. However, we still had obligations to fulll

before we could be missionaries up-country.

During the two-year period after our marriage, while I was still

working for the University of Michigan project, our life was relatively

quiet and predictable. We had a nice apartment in the capital city of

Vientiane, and morning after morning, I would drop Sally off at the

mission ofce where she worked, then continue on nine kilometers

outside town where the new Teacher’s College that was the locationof our English as a Second Language (ESL) project was under

development.

Since half of our family unit (namely Sally) was with the mission,

we fellowshipped with the missionaries, meeting for missionary

prayer meeting every week, and regularly attended the Sunday

services of the International Church. We also had the privileges

accorded to US government contract personnel, such as commissary

and postal services, so we weren’t doing badly.

Our University of Michigan contract had projects in Thailand,

South Vietnam, and Laos, but the program in each of the three

countries had to adapt to the situation in that country. The overall

administration of our projects was in Bangkok, and there in Thailand,

there had been a long history of teaching English, so our project

worked at establishing pedagogical and linguistic validity for the

existing programs, developing textbooks, and giving seminars forThai English teachers. Laos though, had been a French colony, and

French had been taught for decades. In the late 1950s and even into


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the early 1960s, people in Laos still considered English to be nearly

useless, so there was very little interest in developing English as a

Second Language (ESL). Instead of improving an existing programas in Thailand, we had to start from scratch. That meant recruiting

students who had studied only Lao or French, at the High School

level. We would rst have to teach them English, developing a core of

English-speakers that would eventually become teachers. Whereas

in Thailand we were developing courses and teaching teachers how

to use those courses, in Laos, we had to start by teaching beginning

English to High School age students. Even at that, we had trouble

getting students.The US Agency for International Development, or USAID had

several large projects going in Laos, trying to develop an economy

in Laos that they hoped would be a deterrent to Communism. Our

University of Michigan project was only one of several programs to

upgrade education in the country. At that time USAID was building

what would eventually be a university campus nine kilometers

outside of town. The American planners however, didn’t realize

the signicance of the fact that the site was a haunted forest. Every

Lao knew about it, but the Americans picked it for the location,

accessibility, availability of water etc. The result was that when the

rst building was put up, available for the French-language Higher

School of Pedagogy to start using, nobody wanted to go live there

because it was located in the middle of a haunted forest. Since ours

was a USAID sponsored project, we were prevailed on to set up our

English program there in that haunted forest campus.Morning after morning, we would drive out from town, and our

terried students would tell of events that had occurred during the

night, sleeping as they were surrounded by a wilderness that was

inhabited by demons. They told of ghostly sounds, and apparitions

appearing in the darkness of the night from the haunted forest. In our

sophistication we disregarded what they said, but it was obvious that

they were fearful, and indeed, we were unable to account for some of

the phenomena that they reported.At one point, I was doubting the reports that a terried student

was giving, and expressed my disbelief. He pointed to a dead tree


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33

that had smoke coming out of a crotch twenty or thirty feet up from

the ground. He asked me how I would account for it. Did I think

some person had climbed the dead tree to go set a re there? I had toadmit that I couldn’t account for it, and for the moment at least, he

won the argument.

(Years later, after I had been a missionary living up-country for

some years, I found myself sitting beside one of those former students

on a ight from Sayaboury to Vientiane. In the meantime, he had

graduated from a University in the U.S. Of course, we talked about

the old days, when he was in his early teens, starting to learn English

on that developing campus that was being built in a haunted forest.He said he didn’t believe in such things as haunting phenomena

anymore, and I found that I had changed to the opposite side. I had

seen enough witchcraft and demonic activity that I believed such

things did happen. Now, in his sophistication, he didn’t.)

At rst, there was just one large building which was constructed

that would eventually become the administration building, but in those

early days, when it was only the English Section there, everything

was housed in that one building: girl’s dorm, boy’s dorm, classrooms,

dining room, language lab, and ofces were all in the same building.

One day, walking into the room that was used as the boy’s dorm,

I saw a drawing of a cross posted on one of the bunks, so I inquired,

and found out that two of the Hmong students were Christians. I

remembered the joy of Christian fellowship that I had known at the

University of Michigan; there I had found the fellowship with other

Christians in the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship group to be likean oasis in the desert. Picturing these two students in a non-Christian

society and school, I thought of what a good thing it would be if we

could encourage them to have Christian fellowship.

As time passed, the campus expanded, and in spite of the

problem of the haunted forest, the French-language Higher School

of Pedagogy eventually was moved out there from their previous

location in town. There were a few Christian students among them

also, so the Christian presence expanded. That gave us a viable coreof students from Christian homes, so we welcomed the Christian

students to our apartment for a Christian student fellowship every


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Sunday afternoon.

The war threat that prevailed at the time of our marriage seemed

to be somewhat diminished. The city of Vientiane where we liveddidn’t seem to be under threat of attack anymore, so families of

Americans working there were allowed to live in Laos again. That

was fortunate for us, because two years after we were married, God

blessed us with a baby son whom we named Tim, and because of the

improved situation, we were allowed to continue living in Vientiane

as a family.

From the time of our wedding in June 1961 to the time that we came

home to get ready to return as a missionary family, our life was verymuch that of privileged Americans working overseas. My colleagues

weren’t really sympathetic with our missionary interests, but neither

were they intolerant of our attempts to work among students. They

turned a blind eye to the fact that we were having student Christian

fellowship meetings in our home. With the foreign community in the

city, there were opportunities to socialize with Americans and others.

There was an International Church with regular services in English

that we could attend in addition to the Lao services, so we could

identify ourselves as Christians with no particular strain. However,

in trying to identify with the local culture, some Americans went the

limit in taking their shoes off, and bowing down at Buddhist Shrines

in spite of the fact that there was no particular pressure to do so.

There was one particular ceremony that presented a problem

though. It had become customary that whenever one of the staff

was due to leave, the Lao would put on a ceremony called a “Baci”(pronounced bah-see). This was essentially an animist ceremony that

had come to coexist with Lao Buddhism, in which people sit around

on the oor in a circle, surrounding an elaborate centerpiece of owers

and cotton strings. The Lao elder presiding does some incantations in

a language that was called Brahmin, pronouncing a blessing on the

person that is scheduled for departure, asking for the spirits of the

sky, the earth, etc. to give journeying mercies. Then he ties one of

the strings onto the wrists of that person for whom the ceremony is being given. After that, other people would tie strings onto the wrists

of the person being honored, speaking blessings or good wishes in


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35

English, Lao, or whatever language was understandable. Then any

of those attending, would tie strings on each other’s wrists, so that

by the time the ceremony was nished, everybody involved wouldhave their wrists covered with white cotton strings. The whole thing

seemed like a harmless little ceremony to most of the foreigners in

Laos. However, as harmless as the Baci ceremony seemed, we were

told by Lao Christians that it was something that they themselves

wouldn’t participate in. The basis of the ceremony was not only non-

Christian; it was to invoke spirit powers.

Above all, I didn’t want to offend Lao Christians, nor did I want

to yield any ground to the unseen powers of darkness, so I knew Ihad to avoid the Baci. I was faced with an enigma though; if I didn’t

participate, it would appear that I was unwilling to participate in the

farewell party for a co-worker. I found a solution that may seem a

bit cowardly, but it worked anyway. I would go to the party, and sit

quietly, but I would take my camera with me, and as soon as I saw

someone tying strings along the row where they were getting close to

me, I would jump up, looking for a good vantage point from which

to take a picture, and incidentally avoiding the person tying strings.

I knew though that someday it would come time for my own

departure, with the impending farewell ceremony, and I wouldn’t be

able to escape it so easily. I simply had to tell the Lao lady who was

in charge of that kind of thing that since I was a Christian, I didn’t

want my wrists tied in a Baci ceremony, and consequently, there was

no farewell party for me at all when I left that University job.

As demand for instruction in the English language increased, ourEnglish Section was expanded by the addition of some British Consul

teachers, and some Americans with International Voluntary Services.

Since the University of Michigan mandate was to set up the program,

with the Lao Ministry of Education operating it thereafter, completion

of our University of Michigan mandate was within sight, which was

also in accordance with our personal plans—that both of us become

regular missionaries. To both return as Alliance missionaries, meant

for Sally to resign, and for us to re-apply as a family.We came home in October 1963, and according to the necessary

procedure, Sally had to resign from the mission, and then we applied


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and were interviewed for appointment to missionary work as a family.

Many rules were waived for me to be accepted, because I had not

graduated from an Alliance College, nor completed home service, but the fact that I had quite a bit of experience in Laos by then, and

that I had gotten a good running start on learning the Lao language,

was taken into consideration. So after a rather intimidating interview,

we were appointed and returned to Laos as regular missionaries in

the summer of 1964. Our appointment was to do language study,

and for that purpose, we were sent up-country to live in Sayaboury

Province—the province that the Htin were in.

But the Htin were still without a Christian witness.

House in Sayaboury, 1967. Sally is holdingMary’s hand while carrying Helen.


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Five

Missionaries at Last

F

inally it was time for us to settle into language learning and

start our ministry as a missionary family. By this time, George

and Martha Tubbs were no longer working in Sayaboury

Province; Ollie and Winnie Kaetzel were there. We settled into thehouse that George & Martha had previously lived in, and got into the

routine of missionaries in language study. We learned to live without

electricity, and to buy from the morning produce market, which was

so early in the morning that if the sun was up, market would have

closed already. It took some practice to get used to the market. The

main vegetable was something that looked like Swiss chard—it was

available in both wet and dry seasons. Sometimes I would go to

market in the early morning darkness, and with a ashlight look for

vegetables. Most of it was Swiss chard, or extra long green beans.

Sometimes I would shine my ashlight and see something that looked

as though it might be lettuce, but on closer inspection we would nd

out that it was another green similar to Swiss chard. Buying meat

was a little easier though, because our neighbor, who was also our

landlord, was a butcher, and we could put in an order for a pig leg in

advance. I would cut the pig leg up and make pork steaks of some ofit, roasts of some, and stewing meat of some of it.

During our rst few months in Sayaboury the only child we had

was Tim, so there were just the three of us. After a few months,

however, the Lord blessed us with a little girl that we named Mary,

after the mother of Jesus.

Living in Sayaboury, the sense of the exotic soon wore off, and

kerosene became our mainstay. We lit our house with kerosene

lamps, cooked our food on a kerosene stove, and even kept our foodfrom spoiling in a kerosene refrigerator. Whereas my concept of

normalcy as a child had been a white frame farmhouse surrounded


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by hollyhocks beside a railroad track, on a gravel road, that was not

the concept of normalcy for our children. Normalcy for our children

became an unpainted clapboard house with poinsettia bushes aroundthe house, and guava trees in the yard. We were living in a town

though, with neighbors close by, all of whom had dark hair, and

spoke Lao. It was a normal life—just a different normalcy.

Tim is outside playing with neighbor friends, talking

uent “little kid” Lao. Suddenly he comes rushing

into the house and runs for a mirror, becomingdistraught at seeing his image. Apparently some of

his playmates have said something about his blond

hair. He hadn’t realized before that he looked different

from his playmates—now this image that he sees in

the mirror has conrmed what they said.

As far as he is concerned, the whole world is lled

with little kids that have black hair. His eyes are

larger than any of his playmates, his skin is pallid,

and his hair is blond. The mirror has conrmed it—

he looks like a freak!

We hired local young people to tutor us in our home and proceeded

to sharpen our Lao language skills. Finally, we felt that we were inthe calling the Lord had put upon us. We got acquainted with the

local Christians from town and from villages outside town. We had

opportunity to worship with Lao Christians, with Hmong Christians,

and with Khamou Christians—but no Htin were Christians yet.

From time to time though, we saw them on the streets. They

didn’t have a distinctive dress, but we could usually distinguish them

because their clothes were more ragged than anyone else’s. We could

also spot them by what they were trying to sell or trade—the matsthey wove, or the pickled tea-leaves they preserved and sold. Here

we were in the province they lived in, but still not able to walk to


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their villages because of the obligation to study Lao.

Then I heard of one village that was closer to town than most—

less than a day’s walk away. If I could nd someone to guide me to thevillage, I could go there one day and return the next, not interrupting

my Lao language classes. I was able to nd a non-Christian Hmong

man willing to take me there for a fee, so made an appointment for

him to show me the way. When I got to our starting point though, he

hadn’t had his morning opium pipe yet, and wasn’t ready. Eventually

however, we did leave, and after several hours walk, we got to the

Htin village before dark. That day hunters from that village had killed

both a deer and a barking deer (about the size of a common dog)so they shared some venison with me. They plucked a few edible

weeds from the forest, and lay them beside the rice and meat that was

served. We ate a tasty and nutritious evening meal—glutinous rice,

venison, and greens. Then came the pattern that I would learn was to

be repeated wherever I went to Htin villages to present the Gospel.

After supper, the men of the village would come into the village

headman’s house where I usually stayed, to listen to what I had to

say. The gospel presentation that I gave that rst time also followed

a pattern that I was to follow on later trips to Htin villages. I gave a

condensed chronological account of eternal God, the fall of Satan,

creation, sin, the ood, Babel, then the birth, life, substitutionary

death, and resurrection of Jesus, and the reason that Jesus came. My

ability in Lao was still pretty weak at that rst village and I got the

word for “paradise” mixed up with the word for “parable,” so I had

Adam and Eve being expelled from the garden of parables. The Htinwere polite, and probably wouldn’t have understood very well even

if I had used the right word, because my Lao was not that good yet.

However, I had, as a missionary, had my rst experience in trying to

take the Gospel to the Htin.

I slept that night in the headman’s house, and went back home so

I could resume Lao study on schedule the morning after I got home.

I had a certain feeling of accomplishment, because I had gotten to a

Htin village, and had presented the Gospel, albeit rather inadequately.I was soon to be humbled though, because my next trip to that village

didn’t go so well.


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In our early days in Sayaboury, that village was the only Htin

village that I knew of that was within one day’s walking distance,

and later on I had reason to revisit them. Since I had been there once,I thought I could remember the trail, and I set off alone. Trails can

be deceptive though, and can change from time to time. If a rice eld

has been planted in a new place, trails will change accordingly, and

although there may be a trail that is a “main trail” going from one

village to another, sometimes the trails going to a rice eld will be

more used, and appear to be broader than the main trail. Anyway, my

self-condence in being able to walk back to that village alone was

not well-founded, and I found myself walking further than it shouldhave been. I had walked nine hours on a trip that should have gotten

me to my destination in seven hours, so I knew something was wrong.

In less than an hour I realized that darkness would fall—and I

was lost and alone. I was on a trail going around the side of a gently

sloped mountain with the peak to my left, and the valley to my right,

and I realized my predicament. I heard the sound of the stream in

the valley to my right though, and an idea came to me. I abandoned

the trail, and inched my way directly downhill through the heavy

undergrowth toward the stream that I could hear owing. I hoped

that by following the stream, I could nd a place where some village

would come to get water, then I could follow the path up and stay in

that village—any village would do. It actually took me quite a while

to get through the underbrush to where the stream was, and when I

nally got to the stream, it was very nearly dark. I found a rock in

the middle of the stream that I could sit on, and pried the leeches offof my legs. I washed the leech-thinned blood from my legs as best

I could, and sat there taking stock. As close as it was to darkness,

there was little chance I would nd another human being that night.

I sat on the rock, my head in my hands, thinking of the prospect of

sitting on this rock in the middle of the jungle all night. On a rock

surrounded by water like that, leeches couldn’t get to me, and it might

inhibit snakes and other creatures. I was sure I could stay awake all

night. (How could anyone sleep in a situation like that?) Althoughmosquitoes and later on chill would be a bit of a problem, they would

in fact help me to stay awake. I planned to stay there until dawn, and


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then I would try to nd some village again.

Since I had planned to go to only that one village, stay overnight

one night, then return home the next day, I had not wanted to carryanything unnecessary on my back. I brought none of the usual

equipment such as a knife, sleeping bag, or matches to start a re.

Now, I was lost, and in a few minutes when darkness fell, I would be

able to see nothing. The approaching darkness seemed to intensify

sounds, and all of the instruments of this jungle symphony were

tuning up for a twelve-hour concert of birds, animals, insects and

whatever. There were shrill calls. Whoosh—whoosh sounds, stabbing

staccatos, and the constant sound of the ow of the protective streamaround my rock.

My mind went back to our unpainted clap-board house surrounded

by poinsettias in town. To think that just that morning I had set out

from our comfortable home, where even now, my wife was putting

our children to bed. The thought of Sally singing choruses with them

by the light of a kerosene lamp was comforting, but the fact that I

wasn’t with them was discomforting.

As light for sight decreased, night sounds took up the slack. The

cacophony of forest sounds increased—but hidden among the sounds

of nature, I could hear a “chop, chop, chop” sound too. It must be a

man felling a tree or cutting rewood, and he was certainly not too

far away, or I wouldn’t be able to hear him. I stood up, clambering,

stumbling, slipping, sliding over the rocks in the creek-bed, hurrying

to get to the source of the sound before the impending darkness would

make the woodsman stop chopping, and deprive me of my homingsignal. As much as I could, I ran, if you can run in a rocky owing

stream, wearing rubber thong slippers. Then I rounded a bend, and

there he was, still chopping—a Hmong patriarch who, although not

a Christian, had been a friend to George Tubbs, and had become my

friend too. He greeted me warmly; then breathlessly I explained my

predicament, and how I happened to be alone in such an unlikely

place. Then a few minutes later, this friend took me into his large

lean-to. He told me that was moving into the area to nd new land.He had come with one of his wives and put up a temporary shelter to

start living in while he made elds and built a more permanent house.


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His wife cooked a chicken for supper, and we ended it with a cup of

coffee—unheard of luxury for this untamed forest.

It was his practice to have his opium pipe after supper, so heslowly moved away from the supper tray, while his wife and children

moved up to the supper-tray for their turn to eat. He reached for his

opium pipe and paraphernalia. He lit the lamp used for vaporizing the

opium and took a small wad of black opium. Rolling it into a ball,

he put the wad of opium into the opening made in the globe-end of

his opium-pipe; the other end of the pipe went into his mouth while

he was lying in a fetal position on the oor. Then gently he lifted

the globe-end of the pipe with the hole stuffed with opium over theame, and took a long draw. As it met the ame, the opium vaporized,

owing easily and smoothly into his lungs. Aaaahh—aches and pains

vanished. Family, the cares of parenthood, worries about adequate

food or clothing all faded away as unimportant. Opium gave sweet

satisfaction, and no concern of any kind could dislodge it. It was

easy to make conversation with someone who was smoking opium,

because all answers were easy—everything was alright; the vaporized

opium had brought rapture.

After he had his opium pipe, and we conversed for a while, I

settled down for the night, under the roof of this friend—no worry of

leeches, wild animals, or having to sit on a rock all night. God had fed

me as though it were manna from Heaven albeit in the home of this

opium-smoking patriarch who was a friend. God had prepared for me

a covering in the wilderness. His sovereignty controlled, even in this

vast forest where not a single Christian lived.I was glad to sleep in his house that night rather than face the

prospect of sitting up on a rock in the middle of a stream, or lying

down in the forest, with wild animals or snakes prowling about. I

went on to the Htin village the next day, then headed straight home.

Certainly I was much wiser after that experience, and would be less

condent about traveling alone on the trail.

For the time being though, Lao language study would have rst priority.


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Six

It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane,

It’s a—Wren?

Wren: a Cessna 182 adapted for short take-off and landing.

The most obvious addition is a canard placed forward

of the wing—right behind the propeller.

You might say that the trip that I took into Htin territory the

time I got lost was the trip in which I was getting my feet

wet—both literally and actually. Nevertheless, eventually I

would be ready to take more serious trips that were deeper into Htin

territory, and of a longer duration.

The Laos Mission fortunately had the services of Missionary

Aviation Fellowship available in the country. Mostly it was usedfor maintaining contact with churches in other provinces, but it was

available for us to use as necessary in our province. Accordingly, I

made arrangements to be own into the only remaining airstrip in

Htin territory. It was at an abandoned Army camp.

The plane was scheduled to be in our province on Nov. 11, 1965,

and would be in the province again on Nov. 16, so I planned to have

the plane y us to the airstrip on Nov. 11 and then pick us up ve days

later. It was crucial that I have someone with me on the trail, because

I was going into territory that I knew nothing about, and also, I didn’t

know the perils that might await such a greenhorn as I on the trail.

The plane came to the airport of our town, and we got in, stowing

our backpacks and fastening ourselves into the seats. We took off,

and soon were looking down at the town, seeing our house, and

other landmarks that were common and familiar from a ground

perspective. We headed west, still climbing, and soon were yingover the foothills and mountains into the “bush.”

From the air, it seemed that there were many villages, and (again


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from the air) they didn’t look very far apart. We found the landing

strip, and after the pilot made a few passes to see what it looked like,

we made our approach, and bounced eventually to a stop. We got outof the plane at about 2:30 p.m., meaning that we would have about

three or four hours of light left before darkness fell.

The Army camp by the airstrip was completely deserted, and

there was nobody within sight to talk to, so nobody could tell us what

direction to go to nd a village. We had seen several villages from

the air, but once we got on the ground, we didn’t know how to get to

them-things look different from the air!

We unloaded our gear, which was comprised of our backpacks,and a “disappointment box” that contained a can of pork and beans,

two cans of sweetened condensed milk, a can of pineapple, a can of

potted meat, and a little bit of Tang. Someone had advised us to stash

such a box of goodies at the landing strip, in case we needed to have

our spirits lifted at the end of our trip.

After the plane left, we had prayer, and decided to start walking

on a trail going roughly northeast. After walking about an hour and

seeing nobody, we decided to walk back to the airstrip and sleep

in the abandoned Army camp. We faced the prospect of emptying

our “disappointment box” the rst day, and the plane wouldn’t be

A Cessna Wren at Pha Lang Ma airstrip.


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coming back for us for another ve days. When we got back to the

airstrip though, we realized that we still had about an hour of daylight

left, so decided to take a trail in another direction and see where weended up. After walking about a half hour, we could hear chickens,

indicating that there must be a village nearby, so we kept walking.

Shortly before darkness fell, we did in fact arrive at a Htin village

called “Old Mountain.”

The village chief hosted us, and the acting chief of the village fed

us and gave us a place to sleep. This village chief’s 19 year-old son,

who was a soldier, had recently died of a fever. Maybe because of his

grief, the chief seemed more open than most Htin to hear the Gospelmessage that we were bringing.

The next morning, we proceeded on the trail toward Samet (told

about in a later chapter). Samet was the biggest village in the area,

and probably sort of a hub for the Htin in that area. The chief there

was actually the dominant chief over a total of nine villages. The

village was more permanent than most Htin villages, having been in

the same place since World War II. Whereas other Htin villages relied

primarily on weaving and selling or trading mats or baskets for their

economy, Samet had become a center for producing a kind of pickled

tea leaves.

When George Tubbs had come across Htin in the 1950s he had

given a very basic presentation of the Gospel to them by using the

wordless book, which was very appropriate for the illiterate Htin.

When the Htin opened the rst page, George had explained that the

black on those rst pages represented sin. The next

Documents

A New Heart for the Htin