The Joys of Missionary Life

There are many "ingredients" that make up a missionary. Total commitment to the Lord and His purposes and a unity with His heart in His love for the people He has sent you to, are major ones, of course. But another very important ingredient is a sense of humour. It is this ingredient that helps take you through the difficult times you often face.

Adjusting to a New Way of Life

When we arrived in Thailand in 1963, Bangkok was, as yet, untainted by Western influence. The Vietnam War had not yet had its effect on the development of this ancient city. Within the next few years, with the American and Australian troops using her as one of its major R & R centres, Bangkok would learn to cater for Western taste and trade. Luxury hotels, department stores and supermarkets with expensive imported food, would soon spring up everywhere. Later still, tourism would become a major industry. But right now, with the exception of the congestion and pollution of the modern-day automobile, Bangkok was as it had been for generations. Western food was virtually unknown and the food parcels sent from church groups were always opened excitedly to find familiar treats such as a can of peaches and a packet of peas. I remember how excited I was one day on my way back from the market when, looking into a small Chinese shop, I discovered a packet of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. What luxury! I hurried home with the packet to show Paul. The next morning I served it up for breakfast with great joy only to find it was full of weevils! Who knows how long that rare commodity had been sitting on that shop’s shelf?

Our appearance and culture was, of course, as different and as fascinating to the Thai and theirs was to us. We were constantly referred to as “ferungs” (foreigners). David particularly drew much attention. Not only were they fascinated by the blond-haired “ferung” baby, but his mode of transport caused much interest and mirth. In those days they had never seen a pram before. Crowds would cross the street to touch the baby and I always had a line of children following after me, skipping, laughing and giggling, as I walked down the street pushing David in his pram. I fell in love with the people from the start...so friendly and always smiling. This was our new “world”.

Our first year in Bangkok was a year of getting acquainted with the language and culture. It was a year full of new sights, sounds, smells and experiences. We had found a little house to rent. It was in a back street in the centre of the busy city of Bangkok and was typical of Thailand’s exotic architecture. Dark brown teak, shutters in place of glass for the windows, stilts to protect it from Bangkok’s constant floods, high peaked roof with low overhanging eaves which ended in ornately carved upturned corners to “keep the spirits from entering the house when they slid down the roof”. A miniature “spirit house” stood in a corner of the yard where previous tenants had offered fruit and flowers to “keep the spirits happy”. Everything was so new and exciting to us. Bangkok’s unique sounds fascinated us. We would wake each morning to the wooden wheels of the occasional vendor’s cart rumbled down the side street, beating a bass harmony to the shrill calls of awakening birds...the tinkling bells around the necks of a herd of little black goats chiming an uneven melody as they trotted gaily in front of the house, herded by a father and his small boy...the clank of washtubs on the concrete in neighboring backyards synthesizing with the lively greetings and chatter of the Thai women, squatting in their sarongs to begin the regular morning wash.

Having no screens at the windows of our rented house, the mosquitoes were rampant and, although we slept under a mosquito net, I would kill dozens of mosquitoes under the net each night. Because of the high humidity I would also wake up during the night feeling very thirsty so I began to keep a glass of water next to the bed. I was to learn very early to always make sure the glass was well covered. I woke up one night needing a drink and, fumbling in the dark, found the glass and started to drink. Instead of feeling the coolness of water I felt the wiggle of tiny legs on my lips. Holding back a screech so as not to wake Paul, I jumped out of bed, turned on the light, and to my horror saw a huge cockroach struggling in the water.

Our first experience of the rainy season was unforgettable. Never had I heard thunder like it! And the lightning seemed to dash in our open windows through the house! Like an ostrich illogically burying its head against danger I would pull the top bedsheet over my head and hide.

Another unforgettable reality of our new surroundings was the wild dogs. As a Buddhist country it was against the law in Thailand to kill animals (believing in reincarnation as they do they think the animals are previous ancestors). From the moment we moved into our little house a pack of dogs would come every night. The barking and yelping and fighting was deafening...all under our bedroom window. This went on for weeks. Every night Paul would go down and throw empty Coke bottles and anything else he could find at them but nothing deterred them. Finally, wearied from lack of sleep, Paul said “Let’s pray and ask the Lord to take the dogs away.” As we lay on our bed we simply prayed “Lord, please make the dogs go away”.

Paul would say many times after, “Why didn’t we think of that before!?”. The next night we lay there “bathing” in the quietness. Way off in the distance we could hear the dogs and guessed, with much sympathy for the people concerned, that they were barking under someone else’s window. We were soon fast asleep and we slept well every night after. The pack never returned.

Chiangmai

When we moved up to Chiangmai I fell in love with it the moment I saw it. It is a fascinating city...full of history, natural beauty and colourful Thai and tribal culture. When we arrived in 1963, though the second largest city of Thailand, it was still like an enlarged village. The main mode of transport then was the foot bicycle. Rice paddies still interspersed the houses and farmers still drove their bullock carts down the street. I remember one day, during the year we spent there, watching with David the elephants work as they cleared the ground next door to where we were living. One day, one of the Thai Christians arrived with a special gift for David. It was a baby monkey. We named him “Gooky” (copying the sound he made) and he and David became best friends. It was so cute to watch the little pet sit on David’s shoulder and part his hair, just as he would with another monkey. They even quarrelled at times. Gooky would squeal at him and then run to sulk in a corner. I would have to make David go and say sorry...holding out his hand to the pet...and it was lovely to see Gooky’s response as he accepted the apology and they would be best friends again. We had the monkey on a very long lead that was attached to a tree next to the house. Many were the times Paul had to climb the tree, sometimes in the midst of pouring rain, to untangle the little pet.

A Forced Fast

Ten days after we got Rebecca home from the hospital (see our post "Experiencing a Wonderful Miracle") my mother arrived in Chiangmai. We borrowed a friend’s jeep to meet her at the airport and it was so wonderful to see her get off the plane. For the three weeks she was there she took the baby each night so I could have some rest. I would wake immediately at the sound of the baby’s cry, but could then go back to sleep peacefully knowing she was in the good care of my mother.

My mother’s visit was such a blessing, not only just having her there but her sharing the care of the baby helped me recover quickly from the birth and the trauma of the previous months. It also proved to be a time of much fun. The usual funds that would come in from people who were supporting our ministry in Thailand had not arrived. The food finally was all gone. We had nothing in the cupboard except some flour. My mother was a real “trooper”.

“I’ve been through this before” she said, referring to the difficult years in England during the Second World War. “We’ll manage.”

I had a little portable oven so she mixed the flour with water and baked some “scones”. As she took them out of the oven one fell to the ground. It hit the floor like a rock. Her “scones” were so hard they proved inedible. The hard sound of it hitting the floor set us into peels of laughter. For four days we had nothing to eat but, instead of being worried or fearful, it had the opposite effect on us. We laughed and laughed through it all. Finally, after four days, a cheque arrived in the mail. We found out later the problem had not been a lack of provision (the Lord is faithful). Funds had been sent for us to our representatives in New Zealand. They, however, had kept it accumulating in the office there and not sent it for three months.

Through it all it was wonderful to see the faithfulness of the Lord in the provision for the children. During those four days numbers of food parcels arrived. We had excitedly opened them at the time thinking there would be cans and packets of food for us in them, but each parcel had been filled with baby food. We were all so thrilled to see this and we laughed. We knew it was a time of testing for us but the children never went without. Not once, during that whole time, or any time before or after, did the children ever go without.

The Boiling of Water

When Rebecca was first out the hospital, a Thai lady, Sowcum, would come each day to help me in the house. I had been told by one of the missionary doctors to make sure that we boiled the water for at least 20 minutes to kill any "bugs" that may be in it. Sowcum would do this each day for me but I was not sure if she was really bringing the water to boil. As I was giving the children breakfast one morning I saw her putting on the large kettle to boil the water before putting it into the water urn to cool. Sure enough she took it off the stove before it had boiled and poured it into the urn.

"Sowcum" I said, "I don't think the water had come to the boil. We foreigners have such weak stomachs we must boil it for 20 minutes."

"Sorry, ma'am" she said, and proceeded to pour the water back into the kettle again. I noticed, however, she only poured out half the water.

"I think there's more water still in the urn" I said.

"That's okay, ma'am" she said. "The first lot of water I put in the urn I did boil for 20 minutes."

Back to Bangkok

After our year in Chiangmai we returned to Bangkok. Paul found a little two-bedroom, two storey, house for us to rent. It was again in typical Thai style, built in strong Teak with the wooden shutters at the windows and the long overhanging roof turning up at the edges. It was right next to a small “clong” (canal) which was to prove quite an experience in the rainy season. One particular time, after heavy rain, the lower level of the house was totally flooded and as we waded through to the kitchen I had to help the children dodge many scorpions floating on the water!

Right from the start we included the children with us in the ministry. In their thinking, they, too, were missionaries. David’s heart to tell everyone about Jesus was demonstrated from an early age. After arriving back in Bangkok from Chiangmai, I would, on occasion, like many of the Westerners in the city, take the children to Swimming Club to swim in the pool . One of David’s school friends would go there regularly with his father who was a doctor. David’s little friend told him that his Dad didn’t believe in God. From that moment David would tell the man about the Lord every time he saw him. One day when we arrived at the pool, David saw the father and immediately headed for him. It was amusing to watch the doctor. The minute he saw five-year-old David heading for him, he dived into the pool and swam to the other side to get away from the little evangelist.

When Paul was away on his missionary trips the children would climb into bed with me at night and we would pray for him. Our bed was an old wooden doublebed the owners had left in the house. Each night as we got into bed I would hear a strange scuffling noise. I took the mattress off. The bed was too heavy to move but I searched all around it and under it but could find nothing. Night after night the scuffling noise continued and I searched and searched to no avail. One day, when I returned from the market with the children, as I went through the screen door into the kitchen, something fell from the top of the door to the ground, just missing my head. I gave a gasp when I saw what it was. It was a baby rat! As the children came in, another one fell down, then another. I looked up and there, on the ledge of the wall, the mother rat was carrying another baby in her mouth. I called out to a missionary friend, who, with his wife, was visiting with us at the time. He removed the invaders and, at last, the mystery of the “scuffling” was solved. The kitchen was situated right beneath our bedroom. The heavy wooden bedhead of our bed had been the nest of a family of rats! I didn’t smile then but I have to smile as I think of it now...just one of the “joys” of missionary life!

A Special Time in Cambodia

I was working with Paul Kauffman for the Orient with World Outreach, then known as "The Slavic and Oriental Mission". (Together with Paul Kauffman we had a great friendship with Len Jones its founder. As there was now virtually no ministry into the Slavic countries Paul and I suggested that he change the name of the mission to "World Outreach", which he did). I was editor of World Outreach's magazine "The Evidence" which qualified me to travel with a press card. This enabled me to get into many places which would have otherwise been impossible. One such situation was the inauguration of the new President of Cambodia.

Just prior to this time I had ministry in Singapore, taking a leaders' seminar. It had been organised by Canon James Wong. There were several hundred leaders from all churches present and it was a wonderful time of blessing. I had been staying, as was our custom, at the home of Brother Goh - a man of great love and a leader in the Body of Christ in Singapore. Brother Goh and his family have the dealership for Yashica cameras and he used to receive samples from different firms around the world. One of these samples was a pearl handled 16 mm camera from Scandanavia (video cameras didn't exist back then). When Brother Goh heard I was going to Cambodia he asked me if I would like to take it.

So I found myself in PnomPhen. General Lon Nol had taken power in Cambodia and, as I watched thousands of young people (many of them teenagers) who had supported him and helped him to power, in a celebration march-pass, a French missionary told me that most of the ones I was seeing would eventually die. Tragically this proved to be so true as "the killing fields" were not far away.

Through my press card, I was in the official staging area for the inauguration ceremony of the President. With my 16mm pearled handled camera, I was positioned together with all the major international camera crews of the various networks. We were only about 30 to 40 feet away from the swearing-in platform. The network cameras were silent as they ran but, unfortunately, as I attempted to film this historic event, my camera made a significant, though not too disconcerting, whirling sound. At a lull in the proceedings I headed for a dark hallway to put in a new film. Much to my disappointment, when I opened the camera, there before me was a tangle of film. What a disaster! Maybe I was never really called to be a cameraman :).

However, this visit opened up a ministry into Cambodia. Later I was to return to PnomPhen where Todd Burke was experiencing a great visitation of the Lord. In the midst of so many people being slaughtered, and many young people without work, they became part of a unique Training School. As they studied the Word of God, book by book, they would then go out preaching what the Lord was teaching them each day and many were responding to the Gospel.

As the situation worsened we were able to get Todd Burke out of the country. We felt led of the Lord to send him an air-ticket which got him out just before the North Vietnamese took over.

A Divine Appointment

While based in Bangkok I took many trips to Penang, Ipoh and Singapore for ministry to leading churches in these cities. One of these times, Brother Goh organised a special gathering with key leaders in Singapore. However, I got caught in a traffic jam on the way to the Bangkok airport and missed the flight. When I finally got on a flight I was too late for the meeting which had been pre-arranged. I was to learn, however, the Lord had a purpose for me being on the particular flight I found myself on.

On the plane I was seated next to a fine looking man. He was a Muslim. We got talking and found ourselves becoming firm friends. We talked openly together of our faith. I shared with him my faith in Christ. He shared with me how he loved his family and prayed 5 times a day. He was obviously a good man and I admired his sincerity and dedication. Neither of us could convince the other to change our beliefs so, as the plane touched down, we smiled in appreciation of one another.

As I walked down the aisle of the plane towards the door I looked back and there he was waving and smiling, so I waved and smiled. We proceeded to the Immigration. I looked over to another queue and there he was. He smiled and waved. I smiled and waved back.

The next I saw him was on the long escalator carrying the passengers up to the top and the receiving area. I was on the escalator next to his. I was standing, relaxing on the escalator step, with my luggage beside me on the step, being taken speedily up to the top. But his escalator had stopped and he was trudging up the steep steps, carrying his heavy luggage. As I passed him I smiled and said...

"This is what I was talking to you about. You are trying to work your own way to heaven. But Jesus came to take me up there. He did all the work for me."

With that parable I left him. I often wonder what he thought. I still think of him and pray for him.

Reaching Out in Asia

When we were based in Bangkok we were reaching out to other nations in S.E. Asia as well. We worked together with Paul Kauffman, a very dear friend, in Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam. I often flew into Saigon during the Vietnam war. Flying over the land I could see the extent of the bombing with craters covering the countryside. I worked in Saigon with Timothy Chow and the Vietnamese chaplains ministering to the thousands of wounded Vietnamese soldiers who were helicoptered into the hospital in Saigon. Many with legs off, arms off, and blinded, came to the Lord. A very special memory of one of the meetings is of a small child leading her blinded father to the altar to receive the Lord. We gave "little Bibles" to the troops out in the fields of battle. These were booklets with many specific scriptures applicable to the situation of life they were in.

Garth Hunt, with the Christian Missionary Alliance, was a key man and a good friend, who had a church multiplication program with great results.

This was a time of war and urgency to get the Gospel out. I used to arrive from Bangkok usually on Sunday mornings. That was coupe time in Vietnam and twice a new government took over as I arrived. You could not tell who was driving your taxi. It could be a Viet-Cong. You didn't know. Claymore mines were going off regularly in hotels.

It was a joy to meet Billy Graham during that time. He had come to minister to the US troops. I had been asked by the missionaries in Thailand to invite him to come there for a special evangelistic campaign. He spoke to 5000 of the troops at the airforce base. It had been pouring with rain and they were standing in mud. The amplification system had failed. No-one could hear anything. But when Billy Graham stood up and spoke, the rain still pouring down, he could be heard perfectly. Such was the anointing of the Holy Spirit upon him.

Ministering on the Canals of Thailand

A major ministry of our Bangkok team was to the many who live in the stilted houses along the canals - little canoes their only means of transport. The canals reach out for many miles in all directions giving Bangkok the name of "the Venice of the East".

In 1959, while I was General Secretary of the North Shore Y.M.C.A. in Auckland, I became friendly with Jock McColum, a joyous Irishman who had previously been a drunkard from Dublin. He was gloriously saved and came to New Zealand using every opportunity to witness for the Lord. One of his methods was to use a special heat sealer to seal Gospel tracts in polythene envelopes. He prepared thousands of these in large packages and had them taken out to sea on ships to be dropped overboard to float and be washed up on the coastline to be picked up by people - a message out of the blue, as it were. He quoted the Scripture...

"Cast your bread upon the waters, for after many days you will find it again" Ecclesiastes 11:1.

It was this idea we took hold of for the canals of Bangkok. We sealed colourful tracts in polythene envelopes and rented a boat every week to flip these out to the excited people on the verandahs of the houses on stilts. If the tracts fell in the water they were not spoilt or lost. Naked little children would dive into the water to retrieve them.

One day, when we returned from our time on the canals, one of our Thai team, Lek, said...

"Could we pray for the Lord to give us our own boat? I would like to work full-time on the canals."

I suggested we pray right there and then. So we gathered around together and prayed a simple prayer asking the Lord to provide us with our own boat. A few minutes afterwards I left the team and went to the central Post Office to check our post box. While there a missionary from another organisation came in. We knew one another casually. He enquired what I had been doing and I told him that I had just been out, as was our regular custom, reaching out to the people on the canals. To my total surprise he said...

"Would you like a boat? A lady sent us money designated for a boat four years ago. But we don't have any work on the canals so it's been sitting there in bank all that time. If you want it you can have it."

The Lord had not just answered our prayer immediately, He had actually answered four years before we asked! So true is His word in Isaiah 65:24...

"Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear"!

What a miracle!

The Power of the Gospel

Through one of our literature distributions in Chiangmai, Unoope Pimpar, an airforce man with a hot temper, responded to argue against us and the Gospel message (see our post "Seeing God at Work in Thailand"). However, the Lord convicted him and he surrendered his life to Jesus and was wonderfully saved, together with his wife, Noongluk, and their children. Unoope was discipled and led the follow-up team of 12, who handled the responses of hundreds of thousands of Thai from the 71 provinces all over Thailand. I have not witnessed anyone who kept such immaculate records. He had photos and details of every one of the enquirers from all the Newspaper Campaigns and Gospel tract distributions. He had records of every piece of correspondence to each one and the communications to missionaries and Christian workers closest to where they lived in each province.

In Thailand many people read every piece of literature. Some of the accounts that reached us were wonderful. Here are a few examples...

A woman was standing on top of the bridge which spans Bangkok's Chao Phraya River. She was about to commit suicide. However, before she jumped, she looked down for a moment and saw a package lying at her feet. She thought maybe her luck had changed and it was something valuable. She picked it up, opened it and found a small bottle of medicine. She was angry but then she noticed the colourful paper it was wrapped in. It was one of our Gospel tracts called "The Light of Life". She read it, responded and wrote in to tell us she had received Jesus, the gift of eternal life.

A missionary went out into a remote unreached area of Thailand. To his surprise he found a strong lone believer. Upon enquiring how he had come to faith in the Lord Jesus, the man explained how he had read the message in the newspaper. One of our full-page Newspaper Campaigns had been the wrapping for goods he had bought at the local village market.

After we left Thailand and returned for a visit, I was having lunch with Unoope. He handed me a response to a tract that had just come in that day. He knew I would understand, without telling me. On every piece of literature we distributed we put a date and a symbol to show where it had been distributed. This tract had been given out 15 years earlier. And now a response had come from a 19 year old man in Rangoon, Burma. This meant he had been 4 years old when the tract was given out in Bangkok and somehow that Gospel message had got all the way to Rangoon and reaped the harvest. Great little missionaries are Gospel tracts. The Book of Acts says...

"The word grew and multiplied" Acts 12:24.

The Worst and the Best Meal of My Life

I was ministering in a village bamboo and thatched roofed church out in a desert place in Thailand. After the meeting I was invited to a humble house for a meal.

They were lovely people and wanted to treat me like a king. First, they brought out a deep leather woven basket partly full of sticky rice. As I looked down at the rice I could see that many dirty hands had been there before me. Then came the dried fish off the roof, accompanied by a myriad of flies. To get to eat the fish I had to wave my hand in front of my face to chase away the flies and then get it into my mouth quickly. This was followed by a large duck's egg, coloured red, blue and green. Last came a glass of dirty water. One grows to appreciate the custom of giving thanks and blessing the food before each meal.

This meal is certainly the one I remember above all others in my whole life. It was the worst meal I've ever experienced - but it was also the best meal I've ever had. These beautiful people had given me their best. They could not have done better for the King of Thailand himself. I rejoiced.

Children's Day Miracle

Working in Asia one cannot ignore the massive number of children. They are all so charming and always smiling. The population, when we arrived in Thailand in 1962, was 26 million. Now it is closing in on 70 million. This represents a lot of children.

Unique to Thailand, they have a designated Children's Day. A strong conviction came to us that we should do something special to reach the children of Thailand. We got the idea to produce a 12 page colour booklet showing the salvation of the Lord for children, followed by a special Bible Correspondence Course, in a simplified form, for those who responded.

Because the Child Evangelism Fellowship, led by four single ladies, were working directly into this field, I approached them to see if they would be willing to take on this project if I provided the funding and the artist to help them in the production. I said as this was their calling I wanted to help them do it. If they chose not to do it, I would do it anyway. They agreed and we began to prepare.

Bunty and I, with the children, went to New Zealand where we were due at a Conference in the city of Nelson. During the Convention I was asked to share about the work in Thailand. So I spoke of the planned Children's Day project. After I shared, David Shock, a visiting ministry from Long Beach, California, jumped up and said...

"I will give the first $100 to this outreach" (this was before New Zealand had changed from pounds to dollars).

Well, the place went wild. Someone jumped up and said "I'll sell my TV". Another, "I'll sell my car". The taking of offerings was very conservative in those days and the leaders of the convention were totally unprepared for this response. They looked around for boxes and pens and paper and encouraged the people to give cash or a pledge and to have it in by September (It was April at the time of the Convention). It was a great time of joy in giving. They put it all in a large box and gave it to us.

The organisers had given us the use of a house for our whole family to stay in during the convention and when we got back there we tipped the box out onto the lounge room floor and began to count - 21,000 pounds! (around $200,000 to $300,000 at today's rate). What is even more amazing is that 24,000 pounds actually came in - more than was pledged.

We went back to Thailand with a goal to print 1 million, 12 page colour booklets. However, we found we needed twice the money to do the follow-up than the initial printing of the booklet, so we were able to print 600,000 and these were distributed throughout the 71 provinces of Thailand in one day. Soon we were to leave Thailand and move on to Hong Kong but we heard later that the team from the Child Evangelism Fellowship took three years to handle the follow-up from that one day! How powerful is the Word of God!

Millions Hear the Gospel

Answering the call of God to reach the greater population of Thailand (see our post "To the Regions Beyond") we, together with our Thai team, started to develop a suitable message. Then Aderik came to the Lord. Not only was it wonderful to see him come to a personal experience with the Lord, he was a wonderful provision of the Lord for getting the Gospel out to the nation. As one of the leading cartoonists in the land he helped us shape the message in an idiomatic form which could readily identify with the Thai people. We prepared it in a 4-page format and then I went with Aderik to Bangkok to meet the General Manager of a printing company that produced the newspaper, "The Daily News". The goal was to print a first batch of one million copies.

A New Idea Emerges

The manager proudly showed us his newspaper with the front and back pages in full plate colour showing Thai traditional dancers. It was a beautiful production. These special editions were every Wednesday and Sunday when the lottery results came out.

"How would you like to have a full-page presentation of your message on these special days?" he asked.

He gave the price - 1,000 pounds. I quickly made calculations. It would be going all over the country to the best reading public - into the homes, the factories, the eating places, the palace - with no distribution costs. I kept my excitement to myself and said...

"Yes, we would like to do that".

We returned to Chiangmai in the north and prepared the illustrated message in one full page format with a reply slip at the bottom, and then returned to the Daily News with a confirmed date plus the full payment. Somehow we had the payment, although I can't remember how it arrived. Back to Chiangmai, and we put in place a beautiful correspondence course and a team to handle the follow-up. We eagerly awaited the time of the publication . The day came and I went to the newsagent ready to buy many historic copies. In 1963 this was the first of this kind of evangelism. We were so disappointed when we opened the newspaper and found our full-page Gospel message was not there. We learnt later that the management has been pressured not to print it because of Communist influence.

However, the Lord had used them to give us the idea and we subsequently went to bigger and better newspapers and put them in. Thousands responded from all of the 71 provinces of Thailand. From around 20 Newspaper Campaigns 246,000 Thai Buddhists responded. Our team, led by Unoope Pimpar, did a magnificent job of handling the follow-up with the Bible Correspondence Course, "The Living Word". Records, with photographs, were kept of each person giving details of their growth and responses.

This type of evangelism was later tried in other countries with limited success, but for Thailand it was the direction of the Lord. The last Newspaper Campaign was held in 1986 in "Thai Rath", Thailand's biggest newspaper with a circulation of over 3 million. It cost $5,000 and 10,000 responded in one day. How powerful is the Word of the living God!

Seeing God at Work in Thailand

On our arrival in Chiangmai, Bobby Nishomoto, a missionary from Hawaii, Samarn, a Thai evangelist, and Sombat, joined us in a team to reach the northern area of Thailand. We distributed large quantities of Gospel literature throughout the region, going from house to house and had many outreaches to the villages, seeing many people saved and water baptised in the ponds and rivers.

On one occasion we went to Fang, near the Burmese border. A thatched roof was erected with bamboo poles, and the town people gathered. We had a great meeting and Samarn, who has a gift of miracles, prayed for a forty-year-old woman who was deaf and dumb from birth. The people were astonished when she heard and spoke for the first time and great praise rang out. Then, suddenly, stones began to rain on us. They were being catapulted from behind the wall of the Buddhist Temple which was a few hundred yards away. Amazingly, no-one moved and no-one was hit. I saw a stone coming straight for me. It hit a thin bamboo pole in front of me. Great were the victories we experienced in those days.

A Church is Born in Chiangmai

We began a Gospel meeting in a shop front in the busy shopping area of Chiangmai. This was a difficult task in 1963 and when we saw 80 people come to the Lord at our Gospel hall it was considered quite a visitation of God in those days. At that time many missionaries had been in Thailand for ten to fifteen years and had seen only one or two converts.

One night, when we were gathered with the new converts in the little shopfront, I preached on the story of David and Goliath, through an interpreter, using the old Bible story as a picture of how Jesus defeated our enemy, Satan, for us. I was acting it out, jumping on a chair whenever I was taking the part of Goliath bellowing across the valley to the army of Israel, and jumping down to be David, swinging my arm as he shot the stone from his sling. Unbeknowns to me, outside a young boy was hiding behind the wall listening intently, peering around every now and then to watch the histrionics. As he heard the simple Gospel message, his heart responded, and when Bobby went out to talk with him, he received the Lord Jesus as his Saviour. That young boy, Boonmark, was to become a well-known Christian radio ministry in Thailand and pastor of one of the fellowships that sprang from the little shopfront meeting.

At the same time Boonmark was hiding behind the wall, Teeung, a business manager in the city, came off the street into the shopfront, believed the Gospel message he heard and received the Lord as his Saviour. His wife, Supit, a night club singer, would later follow him. She was to compose many wonderful Christian songs which she would sing in traditional Thai style.

Another man, Unoope Pimpar, received a Gospel tract and, a violent man, reacted with such anger that he planned to come with a knife to "kill the missionaries". Bobby and Samarn went to visit him and, on finding Unoope ill and his little boy with a hernia, prayed for them in the name of Jesus and both were healed. As result both Unoope and his wife received the Lord. Noongluk would later testify how, while trying to support the family by selling homemade cakes in the market, she was amazed that her cakes never seemed to run out. She would sell them and still the same number would be in her basket. We shared with her from the Bible about the miracle of Jesus, feeding the 5000. Unoope and his family would later follow us to Bangkok and he became the director of our literature ministry throughout Thailand. Aderik, a top cartoonist known throughout the nation, also came to the Lord. He, too, was later to work with us, using his talent to reach millions.

Over the year we were in Chiangmai we would cover every house and every village in the northern region of Thailand with the message of the Gospel. Some time later the Communists would fly from the north and drop propaganda into the whole area but we were thrilled that, possibly for the first time in Asia, the message of Jesus Christ had reached there first.

Leadership Gatherings

We also sent out a series of special Bible studies on "First Principles" to Christian leaders all over Thailand and, for four years, held conferences at the Baptist camp site in Pattaya Beach, outside of Bangkok. Hundreds gathered on these occasions from all over Thailand. God poured out His Holy Spirit on us each time we gathered. There was a great release of teaching and imparting of gifts. Repentance, deliverance, and healing took place in many lives. Some saw visions. One saw the Lord Jesus, his body filled with disease, and we knew it was picturing the condition of the spiritual Body of Christ around the world and all were stirred to pray. Another saw the building where we were meeting ablaze with fire. All rejoiced with great praise to God. A first missionary was sent out from our midst - to Laos.

Experiencing a Wonderful Miracle

Paul's time in Petchaboon (see our previous post "Going to the Regions Beyond") proved to be not only a time of great import to the ministry but also to us personally. I will never forget the day he left, now so long ago, but still printed indelibly on my memory. As I stood saying goodbye to him at the front door of our little home in Bangkok I had no idea of the trauma that lay ahead. I just remember wondering whether I should tell him that I suspected I was pregnant again, but decided to wait until he got back as it would only make him more concerned about me while he was gone. That night I went to a Christian gathering. At the end of the meeting someone offered me a drink of orange juice. Within minutes of drinking the juice I began to feel rather sharp twinges in my stomach. By the time I arrived home the pains were excruciating. For three long days I vomited violently, unable to take even a sip of water without a violent reaction. I was so weak I could only give instructions to Peujun, the Thai girl living with us, to bath or feed David. On the third night I lay stretched over the bed on my stomach, exhausted, dizzy, my head hanging over the edge, my whole body wracked by the spasms and vomiting. I could only think, "I hope this doesn't do any damage to the baby." That night I began to miscarry. After three days the pains began ease and finally stopped, but I still continued to miscarry. As the days stretched into weeks there was no improvement. I longed for Paul to come home. He, of course, knew nothing of what was happening and, out there in the remote villages of central Thailand, I had no way of contacting him. A letter would have arrived long after he had already left and phones were non-existent there.

One night, as I knelt beside my bed, I cried out to the Lord..."Oh Lord, please, I want to keep this baby".

A stillness came over me, that beautiful peace which comes with the sense of the presence of the Lord, and deep within my soul I heard Him speak.

"The baby is going to be all right."

I got up from my knees with a firm conviction deep within, a quiet unexplainable confidence. The baby was going to be all right. Little did I realise I was about to learn one of the most important truths of the Christian life.

The Trial of Faith

I had both seen, and experienced, a number of miraculous answers to prayer. So when the Lord spoke to my heart with that clear word of assurance that the baby, fighting for life within me, was going to be all right, I expected a change in my condition to happen quickly, if not immediately. But this was not the case. Instead of improving I got worse. Like Abraham, who waited twentyfive years for God to give him the son He promised; like Joseph who, after receiving dreams from God that he would rule over his brothers, experienced the exact opposite - thrown into a pit, sold as a slave, ending up in the lowest prison in Egypt - until the time that his word came to pass (Psalm 105:19); like all the heroes of faith in the Scripture who believed God's word to them despite the opposing circumstances, I was about to learn the reality of the trial of faith. The words of Peter in the Bible were to become a living reality to me...

"...now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith - of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire - may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed" 1 Peter 1:6-7.

I was to learn the importance of knowing the promise of God and standing on His Word in the midst of the opposite circumstances of life. With each passing day and no change in my condition, I battled doubt and fear. But each day, as I waited on the Lord, His quiet peace and assurance would again whell over me and I would say to myself, "All I know is - the Lord says the baby is going to be all right". At long last the day came when Paul returned home. It had only been three weeks but had seemed a life-time. It was so good to have Paul's strong faith helping me through my times of weakness and testing, when people expressed their fear for the baby to hear him say too, "The Lord says the baby is going to be all right!"

Throughout our personal trial, the work we had been called to do in Thailand continued to grow. As Paul and I prayed together we felt a clear direction from the Lord to move from Bangkok to Chiangmai, in the north. This proved to be another challenge to our faith. I was due for another doctor's appointment. The months had passed and I was now five months pregnant and there was still no improvement in my condition. Although I had no pain, needless to say I was very weak. I had been told by the doctor to stay flat on my back in bed throughout the pregnancy. But over the months, as David developed from crawling to toddling, this proved impossible. I did not spend one day in bed.

This time, after I had been examined, the doctor took Paul aside. I did not learn until much later all he told Paul. Not until after the baby was born did he tell me that the doctor had said it would be a dead baby and that he feared for my life too. At that time Paul only shared with me that the doctor had said I should not go to Chiangmai. The flights were on old DC3s and were notoriously bumpy, and there was no one in Chiangmai capable of caring for me as the missionary doctor from the McCormick Hospital there was in the United States on a year's furlough. Paul had wanted to send me home to Australia where I could be with my mother and under the best medical care. But the doctor had said I would not be able to take the flight. We felt like we were boxed in. We had already arranged with people to move into our little house and we had sold our furniture in preparation to go. The new tenants were due to move within the next few days.

After Paul shared what the doctor had said, I went up into the bedroom to pray.

"What do you want us to do, Lord?" I asked.

My Bible was in front of me and I opened it up to read as I was praying. What I read came as a clear direction from the Lord, for with the words came a knowing within.

"Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you. Make level paths for your feet and take only ways that are firm. Do not swerve to the right or the left..." (Proverbs 4:27).

I knew that meant Chiangmai. We were not to turn aside from what we had planned. I went downstairs and shared with Paul.

"I believe we must go to Chiangmai as we've planned. The Lord will take care of me and the baby".

Within days we were on the DC3 to Chiangmai. For the first time the plane took a direct flight instead of stopping several times on the way, and it was an unusually smooth flight despite its passage over the mountains. The Lord was, as always, faithful to His Word. Paul had already organised our housing in Chiangmai during a brief prior visit, so we moved straight in. It was directly opposite the McCormick Hospital. As we knew the missionary doctor was away on furlough, Paul set out to see if there was anyone at the Thai government hospital who was capable of caring for me. This was the only other hospital in Chiangmai. He came back very excited.

"Guess what!" he said, "I've found a Thai doctor who not only trained in Britain and America but is also a specialist in cases like yours!"

The doctor was actually a professor at the medical school in Chiangmai. An expert in the field of gynalogical difficulties, he was probably the leading doctor in the whole country to be able to handle this kind of situation. Although he did not practise normally and did not normally attend private patients, he offered to visit me personally at home every week. This was unheard of in Thailand. I couldn't believe it. I was going to be under better care here in Chiangmai than I would have been in Bangkok. We were both amazed, so relieved and so thankful to the Lord for His faithfulness. When the doctor came to examine me I learnt for the first time what was causing the trouble.

"The baby is lying in the wrong position, horizontally across the womb, and the placenta is below it" he said. "I will have to take it by caesarean section at the eighth month."

I was, by now, six months. With this knowledge from the doctor Paul prayed with me. The next week when he visited again, he was astounded.

"The baby has moved!" he said. "It's now in the right position and the placenta has moved up." He shook his head in amazement. "That just does not happen."

Paul shared how we had prayed and the Lord Jesus had answered, and this Buddhist doctor nodded and agreed it was a miracle. We began to call our little unborn baby "our miracle baby".

Our Miracle Baby

I had set my eyes on seven months. It seemed such a long way away but I knew the baby had a good chance of survival if I could only make it to seven months. When I finally reached it I sighed with great relief. In my thinking I had made it to the "safety line". One week later I started in labour. After our tiny little girl arrived in the world, two months premature, the doctor came to me in amazement. He had discovered what had been causing all the problem. The placenta had been ripped at one end. It had obviously torn when I had been vomiting so violently. He could not believe that the baby could have survived. He could not understand how she had received the nourishment she needed. She truly was a miracle.

"The Lord has a special purpose for this little one" said Paul.

About ten days after she was born, we received a letter from a Christian group in New Zealand.

"Last Wednesday night" they wrote, "we were in a prayer meeting when a sense of urgency came upon us to pray for Bunty. We continued to pray until we all felt the burden lift. Did anything special happen that time?" they asked.

It was the exact time I was giving birth.

Paul had taken me in a wheelchair to see the baby soon after she was born. We had gazed at her tiny form in the humi-crib through the window. She had tubes in her nose and taped to her little face, but she looked so beautiful and we thanked the Lord together for her. The second time I saw her, however, I was alone. Paul was in a meeting with our missionary team and I so yearned to see her I walked slowly up the ramp to the second floor where her special room was. As I looked at her through the glass I had such a longing to hold her. Then she turned her little head towards me and opened her eyes and gazed around. Illogical as it was, because I knew she could not yet focus, I burst into tears.

"She should be seeing me" I cried to myself, "not the cold surrounding of a humi-crib."

The ache is my heart was so great I couldn't stand to look any longer and I ran down the corridor, sobbing. Suddenly, Paul turned the corner and was holding me and comforting me.

"I was in the middle of the meeting" he said, "and I suddenly knew you needed me. So I left them and came straight over."

On the third day after giving birth I went home to Paul and David, leaving our precious little girl still in the hospital. Our crisis was not yet over. It was still touch and go whether our tiny baby would survive. Missionary and Thai friends came with us to see her in the hospital and every time they saw her tiny frame I watched their faces fall and then look with pity at us. We would smile and assure them,

"She's our miracle baby. The Lord has said the baby is going to be all right."

They said nothing to me, but to Paul they expressed their concern.

"You mustn't get your hopes up too high." And to one another, "We feel so sorry for the Collins's".

At home, baby parcels were arriving from family and friends overseas. Amongst them was a "My Baby" book. I opened it. The words were written as though the baby was talking. I shook away the unwelcome thought from Satan, "Will she live to ever read this?", thanked the Lord again for the miracle and, under "My name is" slowly and deliberately wrote "R E B E C C A".

For six long weeks I could only watch our little girl through the window as she lay in the humi-crib. I had not even touched her, let alone held her. Then came the wonderful day, as I stood looking at her through the glass with such a longing in my heart, the doctor said "I think it would be all right for you to hold her now". Oh the joy as they let me into the room, opened the humi-crib and put my tiny baby into my arms. I held her little hands, stroked her little face, told her how much I loved her and how she was a special little girl, our little miracle, and how God had a special purpose for her. Every day I spent time with her and then one week later the doctor said,

"I think you can take her home now. She still only weighs 4 lbs but she'll do better with you than staying here. She needs her mother."

Words cannot describe the feeling as we drove home with the precious bundle and put her in the cot that had been waiting for months to hold her. The next few months were exhausting. Night and day, every two hours she would wake for her milk. But they were also wonderful days as she settled in with her family, getting stronger and stronger as the time passed. Soon the crisis was over and she was a normal, healthy little girl. We celebrated her first birthday. Then, farewelling all the ones we had come to love in Chiangmai, we left to set up our base in Bangkok.

As the years passed, the children grew with the awareness that they were part of the ministry with us. Whenever Paul and I went to distribute Gospel tracts to the crowds in Bangkok, David and Rebecca would always go with us. Keeping close to me they, too, would hand out the tracts and give people the message of Christ. They were also part of our times of prayer, and every night we would read to them and tell them the stories of Jesus. One night, when Rebecca was four years old, something very special happened. I woke to hearing David crying and asking for a drink and was about to get out of bed when he stopped. I waited to see if he would ask again, but it was obvious he had gone back to sleep so I got back under the covers. It was the cool season at that time, the only time of the year when the normally very hot and humid Bangkok feels a chill and we needed to put covers on the bed. As the children came into our bedroom the next morning, as they always did when they woke up, Rebecca said...

"Mummy, I saw Jesus last night".

"Did you, Sweetheart", I said, thinking she had been dreaming.

"Yes" she told us. "I was cold and Jesus came and rubbed my arms to make me warm."

I began to realise she was describing more than a dream.

"What did He look like?" Paul asked.

"He had hair like Mummy's" She pointed to my shoulder-length hair, "and He wore a long white gown with a golden belt."

"What did he say to you?" I asked.

"Nothing" she said. "He just listened. I told him all about my toys. Then David woke up and wanted a drink and Jesus said 'It's all right' and then David went back to sleep".

I remembered David waking and I knew she was describing a real experience. The Lord had visited her.

"What happened then?" I asked.

"Jesus said he had to go" she said "And he went back to Heaven again."

A few days later I was carrying her down the stairs to the living area when suddenly, pointing to the window, she said...

"Ohh...look, Mummy, look!"

The house had a strip of window at the top of the wall in the living area. The sun was just rising and its brilliant rays, caught by the window, were so dazzling we had to turn our eyes away.

"Oh, no it's not" she said. "I thought it was Jesus coming back again".

I realised then the glory she had seen as the Lord had visited her. He must have come in a blaze of brilliant, dazzling light.

As the years passed by Rebecca grew with a great sense of the call of God on her life. She knew she had been born for a purpose. She received the Lord personally into her life at a young age and as a young adult returned to Chiangmai. Today, she and her husband, Timothy, with their seven children, do humanitarian work and minister the Gospel to the tribes of the surrounding areas. She is our miracle girl, and that miracle is now being outworked in the precious lives of many tribal people.

Going to the Regions Beyond

One of the first things we did when we arrived in Thailand (see our post "To Go or Not to Go") was to design several "Bookshop Bicycles". We fitted aluminium boxes with shelves to hold Gospel tracts and Bible portions and attached these to the back of the bicycles. The boxes were cut in such a way they would fold down to make a little stall, displaying the precious goods. This was fun and workers were soon out on the job getting the Gospel out in this way.

We longed, however, to see people experiencing the same miraculous power of God we had seen in New Zealand (see our post "Entering a New World"). We had formed a real friendship with the missionaries from the Finnish Free Mission and later would join together with them for a number of training schools in Moobarn Setaket, just out of Bangkok. One day I expressed to them my desire to minister where the Gospel had never been heard, so they invited me to go to Phetchaboon where they were working. Thus the day came when, with great excitement and anticipation, I ventured out into the middle of Thailand, to the Phetchaboon province.

The Finns offered one their key workers, Sombat, to be my interpreter. Sombat was to become a great friend over many years and is to this day. His story is a wonderful account of God's salvation. He came to the Lord at fourteen years of age as one of the first converts in the Phetchaboon province. As a result he was thrown out of home by his father and was made to stand up in front of his whole school to be publically ridiculed. "This silly boy has become a Christian" the headmaster accused. Sombat went to Brother Pekonen. "I don't think I can make it" he told him. Brother Pekonen went up into the mountains where he fasted and prayed for seven days that Sombat would stand strong in the Lord. He did.

Because I wanted to go where the Gospel had never been, the Finnish missionaries took me to a remote, previously unreached, village. There they erected a large tent, composed of just the top canopy, and then, with loud speakers, drove around inviting people to the meeting. That night I watched with great excitement as people, holding blankets over their shoulders and carrying torches, streamed from all directions towards the tent. 800 in all! Little did I know I was about to learn a big lesson.

I ministered my "best" message that night. As I, animatedly, indicated a point with my hand, Sombat would do the same as he interpreted. To my amazement the people burst out laughing. Apparently it was because they had never heard English before and Sombat and I looked like we were having a fight. Not to be put off, I continued and at the end gave an invitation for anyone who wanted to receive the Lord as their Saviour to indicate by raising their hands. Not one response. I thought, "Ah, the answer is to show them the Lord is real". I invited anyone who was sick to come forward for prayer and the Lord Jesus would heal them. Again, not one response. I felt deflated and such a failure. But the Lord was teaching me a very important lesson and preparing me for His plan and purpose for us in Thailand.

There were four people who came to the Lord during those four nights of meetings. Although I was very happy for those four precious people, I was so disappointed that there had been so few. But all during those four nights the Lord had been speaking to me. Here I was - a foreigner in their land...someone they had never seen before. If I preached on John 3:16..."God so loved the world..."...Who is God? And what is love? Is God a buddha on the shelf, a spirit in a tree, or a photo of an ancestor on the wall of their house? I began to realise the importance of the Lord's commission to go into all the world and teach all nations (Matthew 28:19-20).

Thoughts were coming into my heart from the Lord. If I could reach the same number of people who were in the tent that night, every night for a year, how many would I reach? I quickly calculated it up in my mind. About 292,000. Well, came the thought, the population would have grown by a million or so in that time. We would always be running behind. (At the time of writing this post the population of Thailand has grown from the 26 million in 1963 to around 65 million now). I had seen how the Thai team could communicate with their own people. I knew that 75% of the nation could read [in 1963]. What if we got the Gospel message the way the team communicated it down onto the printed page? That way, we could reach millions of people.

Thus, that night, was the birthing of a ministry we had not planned but which was literally going to reach millions and personally impact multitudes.

Discovering the Wonder of the Cross

My years at Christian Television Association were very fulfilling. Nothing was more exciting than seeing the Gospel message go out across the nation and being involved in it, both in performing and producing and also in the general office work during the week. Though Sunday was the main day for the programs to be aired (mostly "live") I was able to go to church in the mornings, so my Christian life stablised.

I use that word "stablised" both positively and negatively. For, although I was firm in my faith in the Lord, I was also becoming very dissatisfied. What caused this dissatisfaction was a plan I formed (which, of course, turned out to be the instrument the Lord used). I had a great idea one day (at least I thought it was) to write a movie script based on the life of Paul, the apostle. I had never really read the book of Acts through. I thought it was just a record of history, and therefore would be boring to read. But to write about Paul I knew I needed to read it. So I set myself to the task. I was totally unprepared for the effect it would have on me. As I read it, I was amazed at the lives of those early believers. The more I read the more I realized I was nothing like them. I was a believer. I loved the Lord. But I did not have the joy, the victory, or the power that I saw in their lives. Something was wrong. Something was missing.

I began to cry out to the Lord,

"Lord, if this is all the Christian life is I may as well give it up."

It was the expression of desperation. I did not really mean I would give up the Lord. But I knew there had to be more than I was experiencing. I was in my room alone at the time, sitting on my bed. In front of me was my bookshelf. My eyes fell on one of the books and, as clearly as could be, the Lord spoke to my heart - "Read that book". It was a book I had bought sometime before when a visiting missionary had come to the church. He had shared how he "lived by faith". I had felt sorry for him so at the end of the meeting bought one of the books he was selling at the back of the church - to "help him out", I thought. I had no intention of reading it. I'd put it on my bookshelf where it had been sitting, gathering dust. The book was "CT Studd", the story of the founder of WEC International. I picked it up and began to read and my life was never to be the same again.

I could not put the book down. Even in my lunch-hour at work I would read it. One day, lunch was over and I was reading it as I walked down the busy street of North Sydney back to the office. I had come to the part where CT Studd, a missionary in China at the time, was leading a meeting with the other missionaries. They were singing the great old hymn "Stand up, stand up for Jesus, ye soldiers of the Cross". CT Studd said,

"We're already standing up. Let's show the Lord we really mean it. Let's all stand on our chairs and sing it".

All the missionaries got up on their chairs to sing - except one. He was disgusted at the behaviour. As I read, I was too. I thought to myself, I agree with that missionary. I wouldn't stand up on my chair. I continued reading as I walked, undistracted by the busy traffic on the road or the pedestrians passing by. The next chapter told the account of some of the missionaries travelling by boat down the river. The girl who was later to become CT Studd's wife was standing on deck. The missionary who had refused to stand on his chair joined her and asked her a question that was to hit hard at my heart as I read it..."Why is it that I don't have the joy that you and the other missionaries have?"

"Yes, Lord" I interrupted my reading, "that's what I want to know. Why don't I have that joy?"

The girl's reply was a direct arrow to my heart. "Are you willing to do anything for Jesus?" I stopped reading.

"I don't know" I thought. "I don't know if I'm willing to do anything."

As I walked down the road I then prayed a prayer that I now suggest to others never to pray unless you really mean it. I was about to get the quickest answer to prayer I have ever had.

"Lord, please show me anything I am not willing to do for you."

At the exact moment the words were out my heart I passed by a hotel filled with men drinking beer.

"Go in there" the Lord spoke clearly to my heart, "and tell those men about Me."

My reply? No hesitation. "Lord, thank you for showing me something I'm not willing to do."

That moment began an earnest, focused seeking of the Lord for me. I now knew what the problem was and I wanted to be willing to do anything for Him. I was scheduled to go to a young people's camp in a few weeks so I set my eyes firmly on that. "I will find the answer there," I determined.

I can honestly say I was the only young person that got anything out of the camp. My friends were all complaining how boring it was. But my life was transformed. I sat on the edge of my chair at every word the speaker spoke. He was sharing a truth from Romans chapter 6 that had just become revelation to him. How Jesus had not only died for our sins so that we could be forgiven for what we had done and have eternal life, but that we had died in Christ. Our "old man" - the person we were outside of Christ - had died with Him 2000 years ago so that we could now walked in "newness of life", a whole "new creation" in Him. "It's the Gospel for Christians" he said. I could hardly contain my excitement as I left the camp. I knew it was the answer. "Make it reality to me, Lord" was now my prayer.

Three months went by. I had not lost the focus. My prayer had continued all through that time. "Make it real to me, Lord". I was walking home from work, still expressing this to the Lord, when I came to a certain spot in my walk where every day I would stop and look over the view. It was on a hill and from that place I could see across the beautiful Sydney harbour. Every day I would stop there for a few minutes. This day, as I enjoyed the view, the Lord spoke very clearly to my heart.

"Kneel!" Just one word.

Again, "Kneel!"

It was a bright, sunny day. Houses were all around. "Lord, I can't kneel" I said.

I don't know how long I argued with the Lord. But over and over again would come that one word, "Kneel!"

Finally I said, "Lord, I can't kneel. What if someone should see me?"

As clearly as could be came the words to my heart - "There! That is what must go!"

I knew then the Lord was dealing with my fear of what other people would think of me. I was just about to kneel when a woman walked down the side street close to where I was. I pulled myself up and said "'Wait, Lord. Wait until she has gone by and then I'll kneel". Again that clear word - "You kneel because she's going by!"

The joy that filled my heart as I obeyed the Lord is beyond description. It was overwhelming. I got up from my knees a totally different person. The words of Paul in Galatians 2:20 rang in my heart....

"I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And the life I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me."

The joy and victory I had seen in the early Christians as I read the Book of Acts, and that I had longed for, had now become a reality. I was to learn of the power not long after. But that will be another post.

Stepping into the Call of God

While Paul was seeing God move so wonderfully in the South Island of New Zealand, I was in Sydney working with the Christian Television Association. How I got to be there is a testimony to the intervention of God in our lives. It is wonderful to look back and see the Lord's Hand so clearly on your life, even though you may not be aware of it at the time.

From a very young age my dream had been to be an actress. I trained for stage work with the Independent Theatre in Sydney and for radio work with Rosalind Kennadale's Radio Academy and was doing professional acting from the age of eleven. My eyes were on television and ultimately the big screen. I was doing well and everything was going towards this plan. I had no idea that the Lord had other plans.

Quite independently from these ambitions (at least that's what I thought), around the age of fourteen or fifteen I began to wonder about the reality of God. Although my parents were not church-goers, I had been sent to Sunday School, but as I reached my mid-teens I began to seriously want to know the truth. Many people I knew, who said they believed in God, didn't act as though He mattered in their lives at all. Some went to church each Sunday, but it was as though He was non-existent the rest of the week. To me that did not add up.

"If there is a God" I thought, "surely He should be the most important person in our life."

I began to pray earnestly. Every night I would get on my knees and cry out from my heart...

"God, if you are real, show yourself to me."

For three months or so I cried out like this. Then, getting no response, I began to think that it must be that God does not exist. Right at that time a friend of my parents came to stay for a short time with us. One day, when there were just the two of us in the house, knowing she believed in God I asked her why. She mentioned the wonder of all that He had created.

"I can't believe God created everything" I said. "It sounds too much like a fairy story".

She began to explain more but, to this day, I have no idea what she said for suddenly the light had dawned.

"What a fool I've been" I thought, "I've been thinking of God limited like a man. If God is God of course he can create. He wouldn't be God otherwise".

Our friend suddenly said, "I must go down to the shops" and she was gone. I was left alone in our lounge room. It is hard to put into words the wonder that filled my heart as the Presence of God filled the room. I got on my knees and gave Him everything that belonged to me. I gave him my purse, laughing because there was nothing in it. I gave him my dog. I gave him my life. I thanked Jesus for coming and dying for me. In my mind's eye I saw all the believers lined up down through the centuries and I had the strong awareness that I had stepped forward and joined the line.

There was no thought in my mind that I was giving up my ambitions. With joy I added the Lord to my plans. I would be the best actress as a Christian, was my thinking now. I would be His witness in the entertainment business. Several years passed. I was growing in my relationship with the Lord and also as an actress. I was getting regular roles in radio plays and in the theatre and, at the age of eighteen, it seemed as though the world was at my feet. Soon I would step into the "big time". Then one day the Lord challenged me to give Sundays fully to Him. That was all He asked for...just Sunday. As I look back now I understand the "cleverness" of the Lord. He did not ask me for the whole week. Just the one day. But that one day, I was soon to learn, represented my whole life.

A very short time later, much to my joy, I got a call to take the leading role in one of the Independent Theatre plays. This was what I had been waiting for! As I enthusiastically answered the invitation a whisper came to my heart "Remember - Sundays are mine" and I knew I had to speak up. Nervously, I told the producer,

"I want the part very much. Just one thing though - I've become a Christian. I can't rehearse on a Sunday".

I was amazed at her answer. No problem, she assured me. She very much wanted me for the part so she'll organise it so we don't have to rehearse on a Sunday. I was overjoyed.

We met together for the first rehearsal. As the producer walked into the gathering of the actors she announced with great frustration...

"I can't believe it. I've never experienced this in all my years in the theatre. The only day we can get for rehearsal is Sunday!" And looking at me, "Bunty won't you please change your mind?" All the actors eyes were fixed on me.

I shook my head, feeling amazed at myself at what I was doing.

"I can't" I said, "I can't rehearse on a Sunday."

You could feel the shock waves around the room. This just was never done! The producer tried to persuade me. She really wanted me for the part, she said. She continued, many times, asking me to change my mind and each time I said "no" more peace filled my heart.

The part was given to someone else. The actors shook their heads in disbelief at me. As we left, one of them came up and took my hand.

"It's been nice knowing you, Bunty" he said.

"I'm not going anywhere" I replied. It still never enter my head that I was giving up acting. I was just filled with joy at being obedient to the Lord.

Three months went by and I heard nothing from the theatre. No calls came offering roles. I heard on the grapevine that the play I had rejected had been cancelled. And I smiled with the Lord. I would never have had the part anyway. But I began to feel anxious at the lack of calls. Then one came...from the same producer. A one-day reading. "A religious play", she said.

I did not realise what had happened within my spirit at my act of obedience and during the three months that followed, but as I arrived at the theatre and began to walk down the long entrance...a walk I had taken so many times before...a strange feeling filled me. I felt as though I was walking out of light into darkness. As I sat in the foyer with the other actors, waiting the arrival of the producer, I felt so uncomfortable, so out-of-place. The producer arrived and, coming straight to me, whispered wonderful words in my ear...

"I've come to know Him, too!" she said.

Several years later I would meet her again, giving her testimony to the hundreds of people in the St Stephens church in Sydney and over TV, as I helped produce CTA's program "Wednesday at St Stephens".

I was so relieved when the reading was over and I could leave the theatre. As I walked up the long way out I felt like I was walking out of darkness into light. I stood outside "drinking in" the sunlight.

"Lord," I said, "I will never go back there again!"

The Lord, in His great wisdom, had ask me for just one small act of obedience....give Him Sunday. But on that one small act His grace had got to work and He had taken out of me all my ambition and love of acting. My life now was totally His. I was now on the threshold of His plan and purpose for my life.

A short time later I received the invitation to work with the Christian Television Association and have the joy of seeing the Gospel message go out over the TV waves. It was there that the challenge to the missionfield would come. It was there I was to meet Paul and it was from there, together with him, I was ultimately to fulfill the call of God.