Visa Run to Penang

3 July 2011

Dear Phyllis,

Hi, I'm home again. It was with a sense of awe and mixed emotion that I walked into my darkened house at 1:00 AM yesterday morning after my six day trip to Malaysia.

First, may I apologize for being a little late last week. I was writing my letter to you Sunday afternoon when Paul came over to discuss a minor problem. He stayed so long that I never got my letter finished before I had to head for the bus terminal. I arrived in Bangkok at 6:00 AM the next morning, but had to wait until 2:30 that afternoon for the train to Butterworth (the terminal for Penang). With half day to kill, I went to Khao san Road (the backpacker Mecca of Bangkok) for breakfast and to get to a cyber café to finish and send my letter to you. As a result, the letter I usually send out on Sunday afternoon had to wait until noon Monday to be sent out from Bangkok.

The 22 hour train ride from Bangkok to Butterworth was uneventful, and after the 20 minute ferry ride to Penang, I got to the guest house where I always stay around mid afternoon Tuesday. They have an excellent visa service there, and the man remembered me from previous trips. (This was my fourth) It really was with much confusion that I decided to go to that place again. An advisory had been sent out to foreigners that the Thai consulate in Penang was a very poor place to try to get a Thai visa. In talking to the man at the visa service, he confirmed that there had been so many false documents submitted for visas in Penang that the consulate had clamped down and became quite strict. Last years one year visa had been a miracle. I told you last week that when I went in there they told me they could guarantee it was almost impossible. When I got my passport back, all they could say was “Very lucky”. If it was that tight last year, what chance did I have to get a new visa this year?

Penang is expensive, but a great place to apply. In four years I have never filled out a form or seen the consulate. I just sign at the bottom of a blank form. The visa service fills in every thing else and handles going to the consulate for me. The man at the visa service said he could not promise anything, but hoped, at a minimum, I could get a three months visa.

As I shared last week, my heart has been in much confusion ever since the disastrous Laos Bible run. It still is. There is much indication my time in Thailand is drawing to a close, and my next station in life may, perhaps be, west China. The Bible courier ministry has changed greatly from what it was 13 years ago, when I first left Japan to go to Vietnam. In those days there was a desperate need for Bibles in several dangerous, difficult, countries. The situation in many places has eased up considerably, and I am doing very little travelling these days.

I am highly critical of lukewarm Christians whose goal in life is to spend their twilight years playing shuffle-board in Sarasota, Florida. I have said, “Let them stay in Sarasota and play shuffle-board. God grant me my desire to be a Christian terrorist to carry the Gospel to Moslem in dangerous countries.” Instead of that, the relaxed life that I now have in Chiang Mai is so pleasant, it would make the retirees in Sarasota envious. Is this what God wants me to do? I'm the most expendable turkey God has in His inventory, and here I am basking in the sun in Chiang Mai. I was totally committed that if my request for a one year visa was rejected, as soon as I finished my present job of making a custom kitchen for Mark's family, I was on my way back to Kashgar, China, and see if I could get a job and a visa to serve the Lord there. That seemed like the most logical move.

Thursday morning I walked back into the visa service office to get my passport, fully expecting to have a three months visa stamped in it. To my utter amazement the man smiled and said it was another top-of-the-line one year permission for Thailand. Now what do I do?

This visa was expensive. I don't know where all the money went, but I do know that I spent right at $300 for everything. Rather than getting a motor bike and touring the island, and spend a day sunning on a beach, I cut expenses to the core, and spent most of the time reading two books.

The first one was a very interesting story of a fellow who road (tried to ride) a motor bike down the Ho Chi Ming Trail. This was especially interesting to me because that has been a priority for me for 13 years. Two years ago I got close when I went to Laos for the express purpose of going down the Ho Chi Ming Trail from the mid point of Lao Bao. I got a bike and road from Vientiane to the Vietnam border of Lao Bao. I had every intention of picking the trail up at that point and going as far as I could go by bike – or perhaps on foot.

I stopped first at the US Embassy in Vientiane, and talked to the director of the MIA program in Laos. He told me that he had been the director of intelligence during war giving instruction to the US bomb crews where to bomb. And he had spent some time actually grubbing around the trail looking for crash sites of American planes and

bones of airmen. He told me that the trail was, in most places, totally overgrown with jungle, and in many places washed out. When I got to Lao Bao, I got stuck in a guest house for two day with torrential rain. When I did finally set out, I went to the exact place where the trail crossed present day highway 9, and couldn't find anything that even slightly resembled what formally was the main artery for North Vietnamese supplies headed south. I was greatly interested in reading the account of this fellow who actually set out from Hanoi for the express purpose of retracing the famous Ho Chi Ming Trail. It was a fascinating book as I have been most of the places where he got to, and my experience was similar to his. Except for a few rare places that have been preserved by the Vietnam and Laos government for historical purpose, the Ho Chi Ming Trail simply does not exist today. But it was a great book.

The other book, The Dogs May Bark, but the caravan moves on, was the story of the Morse family who did a historic work among the Lisu people in China, Tibet, and Burma. I personally know Eugene Morse, who was one of the main characters in this account. JO Fraser was the apostle to the Lisus, and his biography, Behind the Ranges, by Mrs. Howard Taylor, is probably in the top 10% of classic missionary biographies that are mandatory reading for any Christian serious about serving the Lord. The work among the Lisu people is one of the most successful missions ever done. Fraser went to Lisuland of west China/north Burma around 1910 and was the first missionary to carry the Gospel to that unreached area. It was about ten years later that the Morse family went into a very close area, but still untouched, to take the Words of life to more Lisus. Two things about the Morse book impressed me very much.

One was the unique response to the Gospel by the Lisus. They had been in chains of darkness by evil spirits for centuries. When the missionaries brought the Good News that Jesus had broken the power of satan, the response was immediate and tremendous. It spread almost like wild fire. Other villages saw, with amazement, what Jesus did for the believing Christians, and pleaded that someone would come and free them. What a contrast that is to what we are seeing today! We plead with our listeners to please accept the grace of God and free salvation. But disinterested sinners refuse God's amazing offer, preferring their own life of sin. We celebrate when one person gets saved. Twenty years after the Morse family began their ministry, the Kingdom of God had gone from zero to thousands in west China/north Burma. Forty years after Fraser first penetrated that area, it was estimated that the Lisu people were 80-90% Christian. I have attended Eugene Morse's Lisu church and preached in another Lisu church here in Chiang Mai, and marvel that the Lisus here are still highly responsive to Christ.

The other thing that impressed me about the Morse account was the horrendous difficulties they faced. I have been in several places mentioned in their travels, but what took them weeks, by the most arduous and dangerous means, I covered in hours by plane and bus. It would be unthinkable for 95% of the missionary force today to consider making such a total abandonment of comfort and safety for the sake of advancing the Kingdom of God in difficult areas.

One of the most depressing events of the historic tsunami in Japan in March was the astounding exodus of missionaries when the nuclear reactor in Fukushima was damaged. At the first suggestion that there might be some slight increase in nuclear radiation, there was whole-scale panic among foreigners. I could not believe it! In Tokyo, that was 300 km away from Fukushima, and upwind, mission boards pulled the entire staff of missionaries out. The Japanese looked in utter bewilderment, as they went on with normal life, to see these gaijins (foreigners) flee in panic. The one positive thing that could be said about this mass exodus is, that these people – whatever they were – certainly were not soldiers for Christ. It is to be hoped that they never return to Japan to face their bewildered neighbours. What they did was a shameless disgrace to the Name of Christ, and it would be unbelievable gall if they returned as missionaries (?) to represent our Lord. In defence of some very good people who got ordered home, very much against their wishes; it has been suggested that perhaps some of these mission boards prudently ordered their missionaries home to avoid being sued by churches for allowing missionaries to be exposed to danger. Such is the state of the mission field today. UNBELIEVABLE!

This is in dramatic contrast to the mentality of missionaries 100 years ago. The last time I was in China, a sister gave me a chart of the number of missionaries – men, women, and children – who were slaughters in the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1901. I knew there were a number of martyrs, but that chart looked like the battle casualty list for the invasion of Okinawa or Normandy. It was shortly after that, that JO Fraser and Russell and Gertrude Morse thought nothing of braving the most horrific hardships to travel for weeks to carry the Gospel to souls for whom Jesus died. They took their children in there and lived for three generations. Yes, some died, some were killed. Sickness and hardship was a way of life. But look what happened! In areas where Satan had held unchallenged reign for centuries, now there were thousands – yes, a million – rejoicing Christians. It has been my great privilege to come along 70-80 years later and see first hand the fruit of their labour. When the Moses first went into north Burma, the Kachin people were an unreached minority group. A few years ago I was fellow shipping with a Burmese pastor in Tachileik, Burma, and asked how many Kachin Christians there were. He replied, “What a stupid question! They all are Christian!”

After reading the Morse book I quickly stepped out of the line for missionaries. I don't want to be called a fraud, and that is certainly what I would be if I pined on a badge as a missionary. I know it is not more spiritual to put rocks in our bed, dirt in our coffee, and walk barefoot when we have shoes. Suffering hardship does not make a missionary. But to choose the safe and comfortable path rather than following Christ in difficult areas is a disgrace. There are many outstanding servants of God who are real soldiers for Christ, in every sense of the word, and yet still live in comfortable environments. It is what is inside the man that determines whether or not he is a missionary. But when I see the relaxed life I am enjoying here in Chiang Mai, I see little difference between me and the retirees playing shuffle-board in Sarasota.

I hope the Lord has a back, or side, door to heaven. I will be delighted to stand with the watching angels cheering the real soldiers of Christ as they come triumphantly through the main gate. But, for myself, I hope I can quietly crawl through a window into heaven. And hope no one sees me.

I am grateful to the Lord for another one year visa to Thailand; but, oh, Lord, please do something in this poor man's heart that I not dishonour You, but somehow bring honour to Your Name. Lord Jesus', please do it – for Your Own Name sake.

bill