A Change of Plans

Marcia on a balcony of Naw Bae's house where we
moved in September of 1984 

By mid-1984 we’d done Thai study in Bangkok, moved north to Chiang Mai, had a few weeks of Northern Thai language study, had started Karen language study and we were going to lots of meetings and making lots of village trips on behalf of the Irrigation Project. That was the plan and we were on schedule. But the plan was changing and another move was in the works.

The Mission policy of the day was that we were in Thailand at the request of the Thailand Karen Baptist Church and that our work was under their direction. Of course, we and the Mission had some say in the matter, but we were happy to work under the Karen church. After all, they knew a lot more about what they wanted and needed than we did.

So soon after we moved to Chiang Mai, conversations began with the Karen church about just where they really wanted us to live and base our work. Having no kids at the time to be concerned about where they might go to school, we were pretty flexible. Additionally, all of Thailand was new to us so we had no strong preference of where we wanted to live. If the Karen church leadership wanted us to move, we’d be glad to move.

In our living/dining room on the ground
floor posing with a Christmas "care package"
just received from Jefferson, Ohio

As I recall, the feeling was that there were already too many missionaries in Chiang Mai (An oft
repeated refrain we heard throughout our years in Thailand). Related to this, was that in the past there had been missionaries located in the Mue Se Kee area as well as in the town of Mae Sariang. Those missionaries had left and weren’t replaced so it would be good to keep the mission connection alive in one of those places. Besides, both Mue Se Kee and Mae Sariang had large Karen communities and being located there would likely enhance our Karen language study. An additional advantage would be that the Irrigation Project aimed to reach villages all over Northwest Thailand so a missionary located in either Mue Se Kee or Mae Sariang could more effectively reach out to some of the outlying villages.

I’m not sure what influenced the final decision. Perhaps it was felt that Mue Se Kee could be reached by Johann Facchini and Rupert Nelson who were based in Chiang Mai. Further, the Mue Se Kee accent maybe wasn’t as widespread as the Mae Sariang accent in the Karen language and might influence our Karen study. Plus, Mae Sariang, being close to the Burma border, had several English speaking Karen that might be good teachers. The Mae Sariang Christian Hospital was located in Mae Sariang which was staffed with missionary doctors and nurses as well, so we’d have a missionary community to join and even a mission built house we could live in (though that wouldn’t happen until a future term). Whatever the determining factors were, it was finally decided we would be moving to Mae Sariang.

Marcia and Ratana on our back porch that
served as our laundry area. 

In a previous post, I wrote about a logging truck that lost it’s load of large logs on a curve that killed several people including some prominent Karen church leaders. One of the church leaders killed lived in Mae Sariang and one of his daughters was building a new house on their family compound with funds from the settlement the family received. The daughter, Naw Bae, was interested in renting the house to us. I don’t recall a lot of other options but this was a nice, new house ideal for us so we agreed to rent it from her. The only problem was that it wasn’t finished yet so it delayed our move a little.

Still, by late August of 1984 we’d sold off stuff we’d gotten to live in Chiang Mai and bought other stuff based on the new place in Mae Sariang. We trucked a few things there on our own then finally hired a truck to make the main move. On Saturday, September 1, 1984 the truck arrived (about 5 hours later than expected), and with the help of some local Karen we got everything unloaded. That night was the first in our new home and in less than two years, already our fourth move. Such was our orientation to missionary life!