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!