Pwo Karen Evangelism: A New Role to Play

The men's side of the sanctuary of the new church
in Oh Loh Tha Village south of Mae Sariang. Part of 
the Pwo Evangelism effort in 1985

In the recent post titled “The Mae Sariang Christian Hospital” we mentioned that the mission leadership from the American Baptists and Swedish Baptists came to the opening of the new wing at the hospital. The post also mentions that with their coming, numerous meetings and gatherings were held in addition to the formal opening ceremony. As it turned out, much to our surprise, Marcia and I were the subject of a significant part of the discussions.

The Baptist Union of Sweden (The BUS) came to Thailand to work among the Pwo Karen but it should be remembered, that the BUS is a small group with very limited numbers of missionary staff. In fact, the BUS no longer really exists having combined forces in 2011 with two other groups in Sweden and now work as the Uniting Church of Sweden. Though relatively small, the BUS was able to access Swedish government funds at the time which enabled them to sponsor programs like the Irrigation Project (Duane) and the Pwo Karen Scholarship Program (Marcia) with which we were already working. There was literacy work aimed at the Pwo Karen as well which was headed by Sten-Goran and Marianne Liljestrom.

Baptism service at Mae Khu Tha Village in the
Mae Ngow River - December 1988. Thra Thu Nu is on
the far right.

Then, there was the Pwo Karen Evangelism Program. Being strictly religious in nature it did not receive government funding but was already ongoing. Generally speaking, villages north of the town of Mae Sariang were Sgaw Karen, the more dominant of the Karen groups, and south of the town of Mae Sariang were the Pwo Karen. However, the difference between Pwo and Sgaw is not always clear cut with some villages and people being seen as “blended” Pwo and Sgaw. People in the blended villages were often comfortable in both the Pwo and Sgaw dialects but the two languages are not mutually understandable.

In the broader area, up the mountain from Mae Sariang in the Mae Haw area New Tribes Mission (now
called Ethnos360) was active among people that were seen as strictly Pwo Karen. A little further away, the OMF (Now OMF International) also had missionaries working among non-blended Pwo Karen in the Om Koi area.

The Mae Sariang Association of the Karen Baptist Churches of course, had long established evangelistic outreach led by Thra Thu Nu and they had a long and successful history of planting new churches and winning individuals and at times, whole villages for Christ. Being Sgaw Karen, their efforts had largely focused on Sgaw Villages but they had started to make some inroads into the blended Pwo/Sgaw areas south of Mae Sariang as well.

Part of Duane's role was to organize training
seminars for the evangelists. Here, Thra Lay Thu from
Chiang Mai is teaching - 1986

Into the mix came the BUS offering to fund a group of evangelists whose focus would be the Pwo Karen south of Mae Sariang. This included a number of villages along the Mae Ngow River and also quite a number of villages in the mountains drained by the Mae Ra Mo Creek. In addition, there were pockets of Pwo Karen in the Chiang Rai area as well as further south in central Thailand. Still more Pwo Karen communities were in other parts of Thailand as well but too far away for the BUS work.

I believe it was Swedish missionaries Anders Hovemyer and Connie Ahstrom (now Connie Brandel) that had started the BUS evangelistic work among the Pwo Karen in the Mae Sariang area. By the time we arrived in Mae Sariang however, they had both returned to Sweden. Eva Quist had been watching over the Pwo Scholarship program and also had some role with the evangelistic work, but she was soon leaving which was why Marcia was asked to look after the educational work. The Liljestroms were based in Mae Sariang to do the literacy work, but they were also leaving to return to their home country of Finland. They would soon return to Thailand but would be based in Chiang Mai, not Mae Sariang. With no other Swedish missionaries in Mae Sariang, the result of the various meetings associated with opening the new wing of the hospital was that I (Duane) was asked to look after the Pwo Evangelism Program while continuing to work with the Irrigation Project as well.

On the one hand, I didn’t mind. The evangelists and the local committee that looked after the work were great people and good to work with. Checking on the Irrigation Project work, I was already visiting many of the villages where the evangelists were also working so it was easy to check in on the evangelists as well. Finally, evangelism was the goal of everything we were doing so it was exciting to be an additional part of the process.

Thra Thu Nu was an eager student at 
trainings as well as a highly respected teacher,
pastor, trainer and evangelist. - 1986

I wasn’t theologically trained so my role was to be more administrative and working as an organizer and
enabler. That was fine with me. After all, the Karen already had 150 years of successful evangelistic work so they didn’t need someone from the outside to come and reinvent what they already knew.

On the other hand, between Marcia and I, we were already watching after two projects and now, we were adding a third. It would be like three full time jobs so we already had plenty to do. Language wise, we had been learning Sgaw Karen, not Pwo Karen which was another challenge. There were also a couple complications. One we were already aware of, and another would soon be apparent. But we had come to Thailand to be useful and to help the church grow and after the meetings associated with the opening of the new wing of the hospital, I became the BUS mission representative to the Pwo Karen Evangelism work.