Travel-Meet-Wash-Rinse-Repeat

 

Marcia in the driveway beside our Mae Sariang
house holding an XL sized katydid. Our trusty
 4wd Toyota pickup is in the background. It
seemed we were always on the road for one
reason or another. March 1985

We offer this travelog as a response to the question “What is a typical day for you on the mission field?” We were often asked this when visiting churches in the US but really had no good answer.  There just wasn’t one kind of day that was typical. What was typical though, was a series of days as depicted below:

Thursday: In the previous post (“Marcia Goes Hiking”) we wrote about a motorcycle/hiking style village trip.  At the end of that trip, we got back home to Mae Sariang about 5:00 pm on Thursday, but there wasn’t much rest time. In fact, Marcia had a meeting that evening at the Pwo Hostel that lasted until about 11:00 pm.

Friday: The next morning was Friday, so we unpacked, did some laundry and put various things away. I (Duane) did some number crunching on waterlines we were working on in villages, did some banking and since it was close to the end of the year, worked on our annual report we’d soon be sending to mission headquarters back in the US. After dinner, Marcia went to the Pwo Hostel for a game night with the kids, then we finished the day off with playing cards with some of the other Mae Sariang missionaries.

Saturday: I worked on a letter to a US based Christian organization specializing in engineering advice on waterlines being built in remote areas like we were doing. I was asking about flow rates of long runs of pipes trying to better gauge what pipe sizes we should be using in villages. There was no email yet in 1984 so all letter writing was by hand or typed, stuffed in an envelope and mailed. We might get a reply in 3 weeks to a month or more. In the afternoon, I needed to get organized for a meeting with the Pwo Evangelism Committee which got started that evening and broke up about 10:30 pm.

Some travels took us back to Bangkok where
street vendors selling jasmine flowers were a
common scene.
Withayu Rd, Bangkok, March 1983

Sunday: On Sunday, there were visitors in town so I helped drive them to a nearby village called Mae
Tia where we all attended the church service there and stayed for lunch the church provided for us all. We got back to Mae Sariang around 2:30 in the afternoon. We were going to help take the visitors around the next day as well so there were preparations to make through the rest of the afternoon. Marcia was leading a prayer meeting for the missionaries in the evening so she was getting ready. Then, the prayer meeting went from 7 pm until about 10 pm.

Monday: Monday, we left with two visitors from Sweden heading to Mae Tia. At Mae Tia we met up with two visitors from Burma who were also engaged in development work and wanted to take a look at what our Irrigation Project was doing. Along with the visitors from Burma, we also met up with Waw Hae, one of our agricultural workers, and Thra Thu Nu a key church and evangelism leader. From Mae Tia, we all went to the village of Chetakwae where we looked at coffee and orange tree plantings and their village rice bank. Of course, any village visit includes some general visiting and having a meal together. From Chetakwae, it was off to the village of Huay Ma Fai where we showed the visitors a village water system the Irrigation Project had helped install. We got back to Mae Sariang about 4 pm where we dropped off our guests. I needed to make another quick trip on the motorcycle to meet Waw Hae again and look at a steep rock wall where the village wanted to build a flume to carry water for irrigation. It was then back home about 7 pm for dinner and to talk with the Swedish guests. After the guests left, it was time to pack up clothes and business items for the next trip which would start early in the morning.

Tuesday: The day started at 5:00 am with breakfast, and final preparations. By 7:00 am we were on the bus to Chiang Mai. We got to Chiang Mai around noon where we met up with fellow American Baptist missionaries, Marshall and June Peters. We had some banking to do then met with Rupert and Dee Nelson about irrigation project matters, and then Francis Hudgins to talk about TBMF Conference matters. In the early evening, our former Chiang Mai neighbor, Helena Facchinni took us to the train station where we boarded the overnight sleeper train to Bangkok.

Fording a river near Mae Sariang on the
way to a village. April 1986

Wednesday: The sleeping berths on the train were a little short for me so my head would often bump the end of the berth and wake me up throughout the night. But we’d get enough sleep to survive and on this particular trip, the train arrived a little early for a change! So, we were able to get to the Bangkok Christian Guest House by 7:00 am get some breakfast, and even able to check in to our room early. The Thailand Baptist Missionary Fellowship operated pretty independently and had a number of committees to look after the welfare of the missionaries associated with it. One of the committees was the Language and Orientation Committee which Marcia was assigned to. So, she was off to her meeting shortly after breakfast. I had some time to work on job descriptions for the Conference Planning Committee which would be meeting the following day. We went out to eat in the evening with a couple other missionaries who were also in Bangkok for meetings, then went out to a movie. It was a treat to watch new release movies in Bangkok as they were shown with the English soundtrack.  We got back to the Guest House about 11:30 pm.

Thursday: Thursday, it was my turn for a committee meeting where we had an all day gathering to plan the TBMF Annual Conference which was to be held in August. Dinner was at a British style restaurant called Bobby’s Arms, one of our favorites at the time. That evening, it was back to catch another movie in English. The date was December 6, 1984 and we got to see the brand-new hit movie, “Ghostbusters”.

L - R Duane (in shorts that are too short), with
agricultural workers Waw Hae (middle) and Dee Wa (right)

Friday: Friday was a free day so we did some shopping. In the evening, Marcia went to a concert to
hear “The Messiah”. I stayed at the Guest House for a while, then went out and did Christmas shopping.

Saturday: Saturday, we were up at 6 am and on the road by 7 am trying to beat at least some of the Bangkok traffic leaving the city. We were driving a pickup truck that the TBMF needed to send to Chiang Mai. So, we drove north and arrived at the small mission managed guest house in Chiang Mai about 5 pm. We went out for dinner at missionary favorite, Babylon Restaurant then back to the guest house which was on the grounds with the Facchinni’s house and our former Chiang Mai house. The Facchinnis’ were always neighborly and we finished the evening by watching some videos at their house. On this night, the chosen movie was “Green Berets” starring John Wayne.

Agricultural workers receiving medical training in
Dr. Bina Sawyer's house in Mae Sariang. Sept. 1984

Sunday: Sunday, it was time to head back to Mae Sariang. For some reason I did not explain in my diary, we stayed around Chiang Mai all day. We met up with some people, tried to do some shopping on behalf of Kinuko Omori back in Mae Sariang, but alas, the stores were closed. Around 5:15 we met up with Johann Facchinni, hopped in his Land Rover and drove back to Mae Sariang arriving around 8:30 pm or so.

Monday and Beyond: Monday, we had a day at home in Mae Sariang, then Tuesday, it was off again on a multi-day village trip along with Kinuko, the mobile health team and others. This trip went up the Mae Ngow River to the village of Mae Khu Tha. We had a Christmas celebration there and looked over the site for an irrigation ditch some in the village wanted to dig.

L - R Guest House manager (name forgotten), then 
Marcia, Francis Hudgins, Rebecca Taylor (nee: Cutlip)
and Phil Gage at a missionary gathering in Bangkok.

So what was a typical day for us? We had travel days, preparation days, and meeting days. Travel days might be in boats, buses, motorcycles, trains, pickup trucks, Land Rovers or walking. And we might be traveling to take visitors somewhere, traveling to look over village based agricultural and irrigation projects, traveling to meet with evangelists and students, traveling for special Church events, traveling to get to a meeting or traveling for some combination of things. Preparation days could be very different if we were preparing for a mission related committee, a local Karen board meeting, preparing a sermon, preparing for a Bible study, preparing something for the hostel kids, preparing to teach related to the Irrigation Project or something related to preparing plans to go on the next trip. Meetings then were also very different depending on which language was to be used and whether the meeting was about evangelism, agriculture, the scholarship program, or something for the TBMF and the mission. Our style of mission work varied widely and kept us moving with days spent at home often few and far between. I suppose, the reality was our typical day was just “atypical”.