Limbo 1 - Blest Be the Thai

 So, in the year 1982, we were commissioned in June, moved from our house in August, and our freight was shipped in October but we hadn’t left yet! Actually, we wouldn’t leave for Thailand until it was snowing heavy in November. June through November was our time of limbo waiting for a visa.

We didn’t need a credit card type of visa but we needed an official “renewable non-immigrant” visa from the Thai government that would allow us to live and work in Thailand for a year at a time. After the year was up, it could be renewed for another year after jumping through the requisite hoops. To get this renewable non-immigrant visa as a missionary we had to be represented by one of five Christian organizations that had been officially sanctioned by the Thai government. These organizations had been formed in the 1970s (I think) and the American Baptists had joined forces with the Presbyterian and some other mission groups to form the Church of Christ in Thailand or CCT. Part of the process was to establish how many visas each organization needed so they could maintain that number of missionaries in the future. I was told the CCT wanted to be honest so they totaled up the number of missionaries they had on the field at the time and submitted that number to the government.  That number became their quota of visa slots indefinitely. I was also told some of the other Christian organizations padded their numbers so they could add additional missionaries if the need arose. Since our group was more honest, I’m sure it makes us a little more holy than the others but our group has also had decades of visa challenges.

So…..we had to wait for a missionary in the CCT to leave the country so that their visa slot would open and be available to us. So, while officially commissioned and on salary in June, we didn’t actually go to Thailand until November. We basically just hung out for the summer and through the fall. We made a lot of family visits like in the photo above visiting Marcia’s father and our niece Emily. We also tried to be useful and visited as many churches as would invite us to speak. The goal was to promote our mission work but we hadn’t done any work yet and really had no idea what our work would look like. I doubt we were very effective, but we enjoyed meeting lots of nice people!

We were novice public speakers and neophyte preachers at best. My first real “mission sermon” was to be at our home church, the First Baptist Church of Jefferson, Ohio. Then and now, I depend on notes to speak, even if I don’t refer to them that much. Without notes, I ramble at best and go completely incoherent on a bad day. So, I had my notes well prepared on yellow, legal size paper and had reviewed everything repeatedly so I was ready to go. I was sure I had all the notes folded up and tucked inside my Bible. I even looked in the Bible several times before church that Sunday morning to make sure the notes were there. Sure enough, there was the folded yellow legal size paper safely tucked in the Bible. All was well and I was relaxed and confident strolling up to the pulpit. I had a quip or two ready as I opened the Bible and unfolded the yellow legal size paper. Only after the paper was fully open did I look down to see not my notes, but a grocery list. Panic struck! Surely the sermon was some other yellow legal size paper stuck in the Bible but after a frantic search, there were no sermons to be found
. Sadly, my panic degraded into incoherency. I’m sure I’ve had bad sermons since then but none worse.

Another memorable church visit was to a nearby town. The pastor was a very formal, quiet and stoic kind of person. I think he was a good pastor, but of the “frozen chosen” variety. We did our presentation emphasizing our destination was Thailand to work among the Thai people, etc. It was a fairly small group at an evening service so at the end, this very formal pastor asked us all to stand in a circle, join hands, and join together in singing “Blest Be the Tie that Binds”. As he said it, the “tie that binds” became the “Thai that binds” and he cracked up laughing. Not just a chuckle, he lost it. Laughing out of control was so out of character for him that everyone else cracked up too and stayed laughing for a good, long while. I don’t know if we ever got through the song but eventually, the pastor got it together enough to end the service.