From Loas to Vietnam

1 November 2007

Dear Phyllis,

Hi, I’m back. These past three weeks have been  tumultuous ones, but the Lord has been with me and I am back in Chiang Mai sitting on my balcony writing to you. I don’t know how to describe all that has happened in the past three weeks, but I will try.

I am embarrassed and yet I am not. Elijah had a low point in which he prayed, “It is enough, now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am not better than my fathers,” I have found the Christian life to be both a wonderful journey, and yet depressing. I have been thrilled beyond expression to discover the marvels of who Jesus is; and at the same time, I have been overwhelmed with the revelation of what a sorry person I am. It is an embarrassment to the Kingdom of God and the Name of Christ that someone like me should profess to be a servant of God. At times I strongly feel the greatest contribution I could make to the work of the Lord, and improve His kingdom, is to get rid of some of the garbage. The world would be a better place with a little less junk. Suicide is not an option, but if I could find someone to shoot me that would be a blessing. I had business where I had to go to Laos. The Ho Chi Ming Trail and the fate of American servicemen, who had been seen there, has always intrigued me. That is one of the most dangerous places I know in SEA, and it seemed like the best place to go. From that point on, the Lord’s dealings with me were various and came in small stages.

The first was a fear of God. One of the first things the Lord taught me after I was saved was to have a genuine fear of God. I was in pilot training in the Air Force and had been saved about two months when I got caught doing illegal aerobatics with an aircraft. It had all the promise of my being eliminated from the Aviation Cadet program and the end of my flying career. For three days I was the most repentant young man the Lord ever saw. I promised the Lord if He would deliver me from this terminal fate I would never do anything foolish again. God was gracious – I was forgiven – and that experience has prevailed over the years, to save me from a lot of foolish things.

The Lord told me very clearly that He wasn’t impressed with my attitude. He told me in a very stern tone that there were a number of things He could do for discipline that were highly undesirable; one of which was to blow one leg off. Stepping on a land mine had a certain appeal to me, but the Lord told me there were ways where He could fix it so I would come back on one leg, whether I was careful or not. That thought sobered me up considerably.

After I got to Vientiane I had business with the Chinese girl I met going up to China three months ago. We are trying to get 3000 Bibles to Christians in Yunnan and Shanxi, and she is a key figure in that project. Rosy had three Chinese friends she wanted me to meet. When we went over there, somehow we got talking about the four temperaments. They surprised me by knowing exactly what I was talking about. I looked at one girl sitting across from me and my heart melted. I said, “Sister, you are melancholic.” It was like I was inside her and could read her heart. She said, “You are correct, “I don’t like myself.” Looking at her was like looking at a mirror. That gave me an unusual objective perspective of myself that I couldn’t get from subjective introspection. That really helped me get a better view of what was going on inside me. I experience a great deal of self-hate. I suspect a large portion of my bravado is due to the fact that I have so little respect for myself that I am not jeopardizing anything valuable by doing dangerous things.

The next thing was the Lord laid on my heart to get a motor bike. Until then, the only thing I had in mind was to walk down the Ho Chi Ming Trail. I knew that was utterly ridiculous, and if I was going to do something ridiculous, why not ride a motor bike?

The Lord gave me a lovely brand new Suzuki 110, and I started out Monday morning headed south to Savanakhet. You talk about fun – it doesn’t get much better than that. I have had a dream for many years of riding a motor bike around southern Laos, and it couldn’t be better. The first day was pure joy sailing at high speed down highway 13, the main artery of Laos, on a lovely sunny day. Unfortunately, the fun dissipated after the sun went down. For the last two hours I had to ride after dark. There wasn’t that much triadic on highway 13 but trucks coming at me were miserable. With on coming traffic it was just like someone pulling a pillow case over my head. It was absolutely blinding. On one I was so blinded I completely lost my orientation and steered into the truck. That was close. After that, when on coming traffic blinded me, I would slow down to almost a halt. The alternative was to follow other traffic. If a car passed me going slightly faster than I was, I could speed up and safely stay behind that car.

After two hours of that tough riding it was a great relief to finally arrive in Savanakhet and find a decent guest house. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Anything tasted good after that, and I got a good night sleep.

The next day promised to be a fairly short run up to Lao Bao. I thought I could probably make it in four hours. I had a leisure time of devotions and spent some time riding around Savanakhet to familiarize myself with that town. After another good meal I took off for Lao Bao shortly after noon.

Things went reasonably well until the last 40 or 50km where I hit rain. Riding a motor bike in rain is no fun at all, and Thai raingear is only slightly better than nothing at all. I knew the Ho Chi Ming Trail was not exactly on the border, but I rode clear to the Vietnam border. Actually Lao Bao is in Vietnam. I didn’t have a visa for Vietnam and had no intention of actually going in. On the way to the border I saw a reasonably good looking guest house and rode back 20km to a small village, Ben Dong, to stay there.

At last I was in my target area. This was where I had planned to go for 10 years. I was excited about starting out the next day to find the Ho Chi Ming Trail and start heading south to see how far I could go. But early in the morning – well before dawn – there was an ominous sound outside indicating something wrong was happening.

Gomen nasai. What happened next was very significant but I will continue that next week.

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On the way back I was within 20km of Vientiane. I had ridden 1800km on two lane roads. That entire trip was like riding through a safari zoo at 100kph. There were literally thousands of goats, cows, dogs, children, and an occasional pig, along with hundreds of two wheel farm tractors and other challenging obstructions.

They are building a new four lane highway near Vientiane and the traffic was bad. The stretch I was on was dirt and gravel, when suddenly a car pulled directly in front of me. I never had a chance. I skidded into it hitting the car head on; tipping over, and sliding under the car. Lying on the ground bleeding from both arms, I was more sick about the new bike I had crashed than for myself. There was nothing anyone could do. I pulled the bike out from under the car, started it, and went on.

It didn’t look that bad, but I was more than overwhelmed with praise to God the next morning when I returned the bike. There was only a tiny scratch on one side, and the lady at the bike rental assured me that everything was fine. The Lord must have sent some angels by with wrenches and new parts to fix it during the night.

About e-mail: three weeks ago I pulled the plug on Internet and gave my computer away. After I was in Laos, I thought I could still use Outlook Express for e-mail without having Internet Explorer. After I got back to Chiang Mai, I bought myself another computer, and told them the only thing I wanted on it was Word and Outlook Express. All I want is a word processor with e-mail. So I am now back in communication. Jettisoning Explorer has proved to be a multi-facet blessing. I didn’t realize the amount of time I was wasting every day looking at Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. By closing that down, this has freed evenings to get back to reading, writing letters, and general being considerably more spiritual.

Lord willing, I will see you next week, and tell you the rest of the story,   bill