A New Heart

for the

Don & Sally Durling

A New Heart
For The Htin

Don & Sally Durling

 2011 by Don Durling

Special thanks to:
Anthony Locicero for use of the photo of walking feet. You can
find him at his blog, Anthony Wandered Away at (http://anthonywanderedaway.wordpress.com)
Jean-Marie Hullot for the cover photo of Vang Vieng. See more
photos at http://www.flickr.com/people/jmhullot/
Cessna Wren pictures courtesy of Mission Aviation Fellowship.
You can find them at http://www.maf.org/
Website and book design by Bill Durling.
Get more info and reorder books at http://aheartforthehtin.com

Contents
Chapter
Page
Contents................................................................... iii
Preface.......................................................................v
Forward.................................................................. vii
From Rural Michigan................................................9
To Thailand, Then Laos...........................................18
The Htin Tribe.........................................................24
Meanwhile, Back to Work.......................................31
Missionaries at Last.................................................37
Its a Bird, Its a Plane, Its aWren?.....................43
Lao Pao....................................................................48
The Lost Letter........................................................54
Paw Peng.................................................................60
Feet..........................................................................65
Folksinger Gome.....................................................72
Samet.......................................................................77
Three Strikes, but Not Out......................................86
The First Htin Christian...........................................91
The Long Gap..........................................................97
Time for TEE.........................................................103
The Htin Come to Na Po.......................................110
Early Christians.....................................................116
Ex-Shaman Puns Funeral.....................................125
Uncle Teeps New Birth and Death..................131
Lunchtime Visitors................................................137
Sacraments.............................................................143
Christmas 1993......................................................148
The Dispersion......................................................154
Lyndon...................................................................160
Afterword..............................................................167

iii

Preface
Hi there reader! We need to get acquainted. I dont know who you
are, because I cant see your face. You may be an eleven year-old
who is beginning to consider the fact that the Lord might be calling
you to be a missionary. You may be a 21-year-old, who is in the midst
of getting an education, or a 31-year-old who is getting established
in a career. I was once all of those with all of the strains, insecurities,
and complexes that accompany each age. Now though, things have
quieted down a little for me, and I am away from the heat of the
battle. Me? I was a missionary and am ready to relate what it was like
to carry the Gospel to a tribe that had never heard before.
In looking over old letters, notes, and reports for the purpose of
writing this book, it has come to my attention that I had forgotten a lot
of the negative side of being a missionary. I cant help but puzzle just
why it is that ministry to the Htin has always seemed to be a joy, but
other assigned ministries were certainly a mixed bag of positives and
negatives. I concede that there were many hard times as a missionary.
It wasnt easy to put up with privation, but privation was a superficial
problem. I can remember enduring intense heat (with no electricity
for fans) so that sweat would drip off of my chin onto the book during
language study. I remember climbing the mountains in Laos, or sitting
at a desk in the heat and dust of the refugee camp. Sometimes these
things caused me to long for the comfortable surroundings I might
have had as a teacher of English as a Second Language (ESL) either
at the University of Michigan, or even at an urban setting overseas.
These privations, though, were not really serious.
More difficult to endure was the fact that it wasnt easy to get
along with some other missionaries or to have to work under arbitrary
decisions imposed from mission authority that didnt take into
account the reality of the grass roots situation. This kind of problem

seemed to recur often, causing many wakeful hours as I dealt with

them in the sleepless quiet of the night. Old letters I have referred to
have reminded me of this stressful side of being a missionary.
As I have written this account of reaching the Htin, I have
wondered why this one particular ministry seemed to have no dark
side, whereas myriad other ministries, whether in Laos, in Thailand,
or in the U.S. did have a dark and a light side.
I dont want to be superficially saccharine, but in fact, association
with the Htin was an almost unmitigated joy throughout. Maybe it is
because we were never specifically assigned to reach the Htin, except
for the short time we spent in Htin language study. Htin work was
generally a sidelinethat is, we were appointed to general missionary
work in the Province of Sayaboury, and within that framework,
we chose to reach out to the Htin, who were as yet unevangelized.
Then we were assigned to the work of developing Lao Theological
Education by Extension in the Na Po refugee camp, and the joyful
ministry to the Htin opened as a sideline.
As I have written this and referred back to various resources, I
am reawakened to the negative side of missionary work, which while
not completely forgotten, had been pushed back into the obscure
archives of my memory; I think I want to leave those memories there,
undisturbed.
John 16:21 reads: A woman, when she is in travail hath sorrow,
because her hour is come; but as soon as she is delivered of the child,
she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into
the world.
Pardon me if I seem to have forgotten the genuine anguishes of being
a missionary for joy that hundreds of Htin have been born into the
Kingdom of God.

~ Don Durling

vi

Forward
I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.
I Corinthians 3:6

We were the first missionaries to reside in Sayaboury and lived there

for nine years. Our first contacts with the Htin tribe were in 1955.
These early encounters were unique. We would discover carryingloads of woven baskets and mats abandoned at the edge of the trail.
They had been aware of our approach, and fled the scene, leaving
their loads behind. We had heard of their animistic fears and shyness
towards outsiders and we were Americans.
It took years to break down this fear and shyness. Later, when
meeting groups of them along jeepable roads nearer town, they
would approach cautiously and peer under the jeep and reach out to
touch a fender. But, they would not accept our invitations to ride in
the jeep. It was a real breakthrough one day when several Htin rode
into town in the jeep, and later came to visit us at our house.
Don and Sally Durling followed us in Sayaboury. They picked up
where we left off, visiting the numerous Htin villages and learning
their language. Don and Sally really did the hard part of reaching the
Htin for Jesus Christ.
Don tells the rest of the story, a story that really does not end
with this book, but will find its ultimate fulfillment in eternity in the
presence of our wonderful Lord, whom we serve.

~ George W. Tubbs

vii

Childhood in Michigan.

One

From Rural Michigan

or most of us, our experiences of early childhood form

the basis of what we first regard as normal, and as new
experiences cross our paths, that standard of what constitutes
normalcy changes. Experiences of our childhood are understood to
be normal. Our idea of what is normal may challenged, but these
early perceptions of normalcy yield very reluctantly to the demands
of a changing world, and specifically as the changes effect us.
All of my brothers and sistersfive of themhad been born at
home, with an attending doctor, but when it came time for this sixth
one, it was decided that the event should take place in a hospital,
because one of my brothers had just recovered from scarlet fever,
so that further precaution was taken. It was probably a good thing,
because this sixth and last child weighed 11 pounds, and was for
a while the record holder for the heavy-weight baby title from that
small-town hospital. If I hadnt been born in a hospital, I wouldnt
have held that record.
As I grew beyond infancy, my sense of normalcy developed,
and normal was a white frame farmhouse, beside a railroad track, with
hollyhocks surrounding the house. I assumed that everybody in the
world lived in a white frame farmhouse surrounded by hollyhocks.
I assumed that a one-room school where one teacher taught all eight
grades was normal. I assumed that everyone attended a church like
the one we attended. I assumed that it was normal to live on a dirt
road, and have a railroad running just a few yards from our house.
The noise of the railroad was no problem for us because we were
used to it, but whenever we had guests, they would wake with a start
when the train went through in the middle of the night. To us it was
normal, and we would sleep through every train.
As common as the trains were though, they still fascinated me.

A New Heart for the Htin

Whenever I would hear a train coming, I would run to the window,

and as soon as I learned to count, I would count the cars. The passing
train had a strange effect on my system though; the train rushing by
had the same effect on me as hearing water flowing, and my standard
memory of watching the train includes rushing to the bathroom just
as soon as the train was past to relieve myself. Sometimes, I would
have to give up counting the railroad cars to accommodate that more
pressing need.
My Dad farmed eighty acres the standard amount that a
diversified farmer could handle with a team of horses. The field crops
alternated between corn, wheat, oats, and hay. The farm animals
included a few cows, a few sheep, a few pigs, and chickens. After my
Dad bought a steel-wheeled 10-20 McCormick-Deering tractor, the
horses were not so necessary, but we kept them, until the mare was
struck by lightening under a tree in a rainstorm. We kept the stallion
for a while out of a sense of obligation to him, even though the tractor
had made him obsolete.
My normal world was going to meet some challenges though.
When I was ten, we moved to take over a dairy farm, and normalcy now
had to accommodate a larger dairy herd, with milking machinesnot
just the few cows that my Dad milked by hand. It also meant that I no
longer went to a one-room school up the road from us in the country,
but went to a school in town that had two classrooms. My world was
expanding, and my view of normalcy was being challenged.
Those are now called simpler days and that name might fit, if
simpler means more work, more risk and less reward. At the time
we didnt know we were living in simpler days, and we would have
welcomed complexity. We were hard-working farmers, caught up in
the intensity of doing our share for the war effort of World War II.
Work from sunrise to sunset was the norm on our farm in Michigan,
and about the only diversions were church and school. However,
when we heard that the famous Cleveland Colored Quintette from
a Christian and Missionary Alliance Church in Cleveland was going
to be in Fayette Ohio, we decided to go.
Rather than meeting in one of the churches, this quintette was
going to be ministering in a second-story auditorium grandiloquently

10

Don & Sally Durling

called the Fayette

Opera
House.
That night we got
our chores out of
the way and drove
the ten miles to
Fayette Ohio.
I had never
before
heard
music that was as
beautiful as the
music they sang.
By then, I was
The Fayette Opera House
probably eleven
years old and was accustomed only to standard hymns that we sang
in churchour church didnt sing like this quintette. After their
singing, the leader of the quintette, named Lacey preached a gripping
message that ended with an invitation to the listeners to dedicate their
lives to the Lord. After the invitation was over, Lacey said that in
prayer that afternoon, the Lord had impressed on him that someone
would go forward that night who would be a missionary; I was the
only one who had gone forward that night.
As my normal world expanded to accommodate the wider
world, I found myself fascinated by automobile design, and if left to
my own devices would probably have ended up pursuing a career that
had something to do with that interest. I knew every model of every
American car being built at that time. I designed, and spent many
hours building a model of a car for competition in the Fisher Body
Craftsmans Guild. My parents took me to Detroit to see the displays
of models that other potential auto designers of my approximate age
had designed and submitted. There, among the others, I saw my blue
fast-back car with a radical sloping hood to enhance visibility. My
car was certainly innovative, but I didnt win any prize scholarship.
Maybe the Lord prevented me from winning a scholarship to keep
me from being tempted to go that way.
I graduated from High School before I turned 17, and aware that

11

A New Heart for the Htin

God had His mark on me, started looking for a Bible Institute to enter.
Some of the Bible Institutes wouldnt accept entering Freshmen until
they were 18, and I would be barely 17 when the fall term opened,
so I picked the Grand Rapids School of Bible and Music, where they
did accept 17-year-olds. By this time my idea of normalcy was still
rooted in a white frame farmhouse, but had grown to accommodate
a wider world including cities. Actually I had known of the idea
of foreign missions most of my life, having heard about it often in
church, and hearing from Rev. Lacey that he sensed the Lords call on
me when I was only eleven. Nevertheless, I was still pretty naive in
general, and was at a loss as to how to become a missionary.
As I was finishing my third and final year of the Missions Course,
I started to wonder what to do next. I would be twenty soon after
graduating, but had no idea what to do to be a missionarynot even
sure if indeed I should be a missionary. Among our chapel speakers
was a couple who were independent missionaries to Haiti. I heard
them, and they seemed to be real sure of the mission they were on, so
when I got a chance to talk to them some time later, I put the question
that had been bugging me to them. I asked how one knew he was
called to be a missionary. They glibly quoted the Great Commission,
leaving the implication that a missionary call was nothing more than
that. So, without much further questioning I proceeded to apply to a
faith mission that was in need of a young man volunteer, to work for
a year on a childrens camp that was under development in central
Cuba. Since the Korean War was on, I was subject to being drafted
into the military, but the draft board said that if I would become
ordained as a minister, they would defer me so I could go to Cuba.
So, when the pastor of a nearby independent Baptist church offered
to arrange for an ordination council, I agreed, and after the ordination
examination, his church ordained me. Over the next several months,
enough support was raised from various churches near my home, so
that I was appointed for a year to work at a childrens camp in Cuba.
I left home, visiting that missions home office in Philadelphia, and
from there proceeded on to Miami by train and flew the short hop to
Cuba.
It was by far the worst year of my life. I came home a year later

12

Don & Sally Durling

with a good knowledge of Spanish, and having made friends of

many Cuban people, but with a thoroughly wrecked self-image. I
had gone to Cuba too young, too naive, and too unquestioning in the
face of abusive authority. I had endured a year of being the target
of transferred hostility from a very frustrated senior missionary, and
came back home, thoroughly disillusioned with the lack of spiritual
dimension in the work of the missionary I had gone to work under. I
was unable to understand just what the problems were until decades
later, when with added years, I became wiser and realized more of
what human nature iseven missionary human nature. My selfconfidence was so shattered that after returning from Cuba, when
asked to go to Philadelphia to report to the home office of the mission
I had worked with, I couldnt talkonly stammer, so that I was
unable to tell them what I had been through.
I spent the rest of that winter leading singing for revival meetings
in various churches in the area. However, as spring approached, the
farmers started working the fields again, and the season for revival
meetings ended. With no more winter revival meetings, I was no
longer in Christian work of any kind. I anticipated that the draft board
would summon me, however they made no move to draft me because
I was an ordained minister.
As a preschooler, I had heard my father talk about the horrors of
war with a man who came to buy cream from us, and I had feared the
Army and war ever since. Nevertheless, I had to face the fact that the
Korean War was going on and that some of my friends had gone to
fighteven die there. I felt that I should rightly be drafted, but they
were not drafting me, because I was a Reverend.
Although ours was a devout Christian family that went to church
every time the doors opened, and had family devotions daily, we had
never practiced fasting. I was desperate to know the Lords peace in
the matter though, and I decided that I would try fasting, but since
our family never practiced fasting, I felt as though I wouldnt dare be
open about it, and did a hidden fast. I went to the table, messed up
my plate and ate a little so my parents wouldnt notice, and went back
hungry to the bedroom to pray. As unlikely as it seemed, I couldnt
escape the conviction that the Lord wanted me to go to the draft board

13

A New Heart for the Htin

and volunteer to be drafted. I battled with the issue for a few days and
nights, then one day, without telling anyone where I was going, I
jumped into my car, and went to the draft board and volunteered
telling my parents only afterward.
A few days later, I reported to the induction center in Detroit, and
was shipped off to basic training in Camp Pickett, Virginia. Basic
training was physically grueling, as Army basic training usually
is, but it was nothing of the emotional strain I had gone through in
Cuba. In the Army, if I was berated, it was one sergeant berating a
whole platoon of traineesI had sympathetic company. In Cuba, I
suffered alone, forbidden to release my emotional baggage to any
other missionaries; it was only after I had learned enough Spanish to
release my tensions to Cubans who could see what was going on that
I could find sympathetic ears. In the Army though, I was usually able
to find Christian fellowship anywhere they sent me, so in general, I
found the Army to be a congenial situation.
Although the Korean War was going on, it had never really
dawned on me that I might actually go to Korea, and have to fight. I
had no interest in fighting, and in fact when we were doing bayonet
practice, our cadre tried to work us into a frenzy, by having us stab
the bag and shout KILL! KILL! I had no interest in killing anyone
thoughnot a Korean Communist or anybody else, so I stabbed away
at the bag, and shouted TILL! TILL! and the guy never caught on.
As it turned out, the Korean truce was signed while we were in basic
training, and we were a happy bunch of basic trainees. At that time
then, I realized that I might have actually had to see action in Korea
if the truce hadnt been signed.
Whew!
After basic training, I was given orders to take a furlough,
then report to Seattle Washington for shipment, so I did that, and
was put on a troopship for Korea. Even the troopship was not a bad
experience. Although I had volunteered to the draft board to go to the
Army, I learned once in the Army not to volunteer for anything, and
thus avoided any heavy duty such as kitchen or clean-up duty. After a
relatively relaxing two weeks on the troopship, we docked in Pusan,
Korea, and I began my first experience in the Orient.

14

Don & Sally Durling

Singing with my Army quartet.

I knew next to nothing of the Far East, but I soon found out that
they didnt speak English, nor did they speak Spanish. I was assigned
as a stock records clerk at 55th Quartermaster Depot. Pusan was the
only city that had not been controlled by the Communists at any
timeand it was filled with refugees, many of these were absolutely
destitute, shutting the cold out by building huts of cardboard leftovers
from shipping war materiel. Although the war had stopped, these
refugees were desperately poor, and willing to do anything to house
and feed themselves.
Until that time, I knew nothing of the strength of the Korean
Christians, but I was to learn something of it the first day I was there.
I went to sleep in our Quonset barracks in the 32nd Quartermaster
compound that first night, and was awakened the next morning at
5:00 AM by the sound of church-bells ringing all over the city of
Pusan. Obviously, there were Christians among the Korean populace,
and soon I was able to find Christians among the GIs too. Although
not all Army chapel services preach the Gospel, I had learned that
one was more apt to find other Christians in chapel than elsewhere, so
soon I met a fellow soldier named Andrew Bailey from Clear Creek,
West Virginia, who was a Christian. Bailey introduced me to other
Christians, bringing me into warm Christian fellowship that was to
last all of my time in Korea. I found out that the Korean churchs

15

A New Heart for the Htin

early morning prayer meetings were a daily event; Christian Koreans,

who had suffered so much because of the war, met at that time every
day to pour out their souls to the Lord. I met and fellowshipped with
evangelical missionaries whose dedication to their work was most
admirable. Some had been born in Korea of missionary parents.
Some had suffered imprisonment alongside their Korean brothers
for refusing to bow to the Shinto shrines when Korea was a colony
of Japan. These missionaries were giants, and the Lord had given a
bountiful reward for their work. In short, my year and a half stint in
the Army in Korea rebuilt my confidence in missions that had been
destroyed in Cuba, so that by the end of my stint there, I found myself
anxious to continue my education so I could come back to Asia as a
missionary. My time in Korea had been a real blessing to me, and
I had the highest regard for the Korean Christians, but it seemed
obvious that Korea didnt need missionaries as did other countries.
As much as I wanted to return to Korea, it became clear that if I were
to go where the need was greatest, it wouldnt be to Korea.
After discharge from the Army, and with the GI Bill in hand, I
entered the University of Michigan to study Far Eastern Languages
and Literatures. I was highly motivated, and completed my BA
work in less than three years. My GI Bill was not used up yet
when I graduated, so I went on for an MA in Linguistics. I was in
correspondence with Overseas Missionary Fellowship, which had a
long history of work in the Far East, anticipating going out with them;
however, a problem arose. One morning while I was studying at the
Summer Institute of Linguistics in Norman, Oklahoma, I awoke with
a severely twisted back, and a lacerated tongue. My roommate asked
me if I was subject to having epileptic convulsions. He told me that
I had just had onethe first one of my life. Knowing the condition
of my back and tongue, I knew he was accurately reporting what had
happened. My life was changed, and whatever the diagnosis would
be, my future was in question.
I resumed a reduced load at the University of Michigan that fall,
with the goal of getting my MA in Linguistics in January 1959, but
I was reluctant to appear in public for fear I might have a seizure.
In class or in church, I tried to sit in an obscure back seat. I stopped

16

Don & Sally Durling

driving for a while, and sold my car. A neurologists examination

confirmed that there was indeed something irregular in my brain
pattern, and I was put on Phenobarbital. Even though I was able to
finish my MA in January 1959 as planned, and had no more seizures,
there was a real question as to whether I would be acceptable to
any mission. I continued my application process to OMF (Overseas
Missionary Fellowship) though, and one official of that mission
encouraged me by saying that he didnt think it would be a hindrance.
In the meantime, my Chinese teacher told me of a project that the
University of Michigan was undertaking in SE Asia, through a contract
with USAID. It was to develop English as a Second Language (ESL)
programs in Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. I had studied linguistics,
so it was in the line of work I was prepared for, and in the part of the
world that I was interested in, but it was not missionary work. I went
ahead and applied for it though, partly to please my Chinese teacher,
and partly because I realized that with my health problem, I might not
be accepted as a missionary.
After graduating with my MA in Linguistics, I went back home
for a few weeks, and I got a letter from the director of the University
of Michigan project, accepting me as a team member, but I still hadnt
heard from the mission. I thought that as a man of faith I should
turn down this lucrative and prestigious job for the higher calling
of presenting the Gospel, so I wrote back, turning the University
of Michigan job down. Soon thereafter though, I got a letter from
Overseas Missionary Fellowship, saying that in view of my health
problems, they wanted me to wait for two years to see how my health
was before they would consider appointing me. So, I meekly went
back to the man in charge of the University of Michigan contract, and
said that I had reconsidered, and would take the job they had offered
me for two years.
Not long after that, I flew first class to start work in Bangkok,
Thailand.

17

Two

To Thailand, Then Laos

his University of Michigan job was a heady thing. We rubbed

elbows with officials of the Thai Ministry of Education, and
we set up our project at the College of Education. We lacked
nothing, either for our project or for our personal lives. We developed
courses according to the pattern of English as a Second Language
(ESL) procedure which had been pioneered at the University of
Michigan, but here, we were developing courses and texts particularly
for the needs of those who spoke the Thai language, and according
to the needs of Thailand as seen by the Thai Ministry of Education.
My particular job was to develop a book of English Pattern Practices
for speakers of Thai, as an adjunct to the book of English Sentence
Patterns for speakers of Thai, compiled by another University of
Michigan staff member.
During that time in Bangkok I got acquainted with many good
missionaries, and again found warm Christian fellowship. After a
while though, the war in Vietnam was heating up, and spilling over
into Laos, sometimes putting our University of Michigan colleagues
in Laos at even more risk than those in Vietnam. The team leaders
decided to shift personnel around so that only single people, without
family responsibilities, would work in Laos. This meant that since I
was still single, I would go to Laos, and those from Laos who had
families, would be moved to the safety of Thailand. That is how I got
to Laos.
Thailand had been filled with missionaries of many missions,
but Laos had basically only two Protestant missions that had been
there since before World War IIthe Swiss Mission Evangelique
in southern Laos, and the Christian and Missionary Alliance in the
north. Our University of Michigan project was situated in the north,
so soon I found Christian fellowship at the International Church, and

18

Don Durling & Sally Durling

Students at Education National Center in Dong Dok.

among them were some missionariesall Christian and Missionary

Alliance at this point. Again I was in contact with the C&MAthe
group I had first heard of long ago when I was eleven years old, when
Rev. Lacey had given me the first indication that the Lord would call
me as a missionary, way back in Fayette, Ohio.
I found out that The Christian and Missionary Alliance had a long
and fruitful ministry in Laos, and in fact throughout SE Asia. It was
the first Protestant mission to establish a foothold in Vietnam. Then
from Vietnam, in the years immediately preceding 1930, it branched
out into the other countries of what was French Indochinanamely
Laos and Cambodiaand also into Thailand.
The Presbyterian Mission had preceded the C&MA in Thailand,
but hadnt been able to adequately cover NE Thailand, and agreed
that the C&MA take over that responsibility. That NE part of
Thailand was the part that was most closely tied to Laos, ethnically
and linguistically.
The first Protestant missionaries to reside Laos had been those
of the Swiss Mission Evangelique, who entered southern Laos early
in the 20th century. In those early days, the Swiss lost many of their
people to disease. Although the Presbyterians had made several
evangelistic trips into northern Laos, seeing a good number of
converts over many years, they had never had permanently resident
missionaries in Laos. With the arrival of Ed and Thelma Roffe in
Laos in 1929 though, the C&MA had missionaries living in Laos. In
the decade of the 1930s, more C&MA missionaries came, so that by

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A New Heart for the Htin

the outbreak of World War II, there were four couples: Mr. & Mrs.
Ed Roffe, Mr. & Mrs. Walt Whipple, Mr. & Mrs. Franklin Grobbs,
and Mr. & Mrs. Herb Clingen. Although no C&MA missionaries
died and were buried in Laos, several Swiss were buried there, and
one Presbyterian lady from northern Thailand, who had died while
she and her husband were on an evangelistic trip of several months.
Franklin Grobbs and his wife were interned in the Philippines by
the Japanese during World War II, and he died of disease during that
internment.
With my arrival in Laos, I found that two of those original four
missionary couples were still serving in the countrythe Roffes and
the Whipples. After World War II, a number of new missionaries were
available to come into Laos. Some were appointed directly to Laos,
and others were originally appointed to China, but had to leave when
the missionaries departed as a result of the Communist revolution
that came about in 1949. Because of this influx of new missionaries
in the 1950s, new provinces had been opened, and ministries to new
tribes were initiated. Also, in the early 1950s, after China was closed,
Overseas Missionary Fellowship (OMF) opened a work in southern
Laos, working alongside the Swiss Mission Evangelique.
As I began to get acquainted with the mission situation in Laos,
having been transferred from Thailand, I discovered that there were
not so many missionaries here, because Laos was a much smaller
country. At that time, in the early 1960s, the Christian and Missionary
Alliance was still the only Protestant mission that had made a serious
long-term commitment in northern Laos. Even as various new
missions were opening work throughout Thailand, missions seemed
reluctant to make a commitment to Laos, probably due to fear of the
Vietnam conflict spreading into Laos. Also, because of the war threat,
foreigners living in Laos were not able to travel around much, so
most of the missionaries were living in the capital city of Vientiane
(pronounced vieng-chan).
Often I found myself in the company of the missionaries, either
in church functions, or socially. Among the missionaries, there were
two single girls, and my natural inclination would have been to have
a date with one, and then a date with the other, but the problem was

20

Don & Sally Durling

that they were rooming together. It wouldnt be very diplomatic to

date one and then the other, so as a tentative step, I took them both
out for dinnera threesome. Then I had to stand back, and decide
which of the two I really wanted to date. Of course, it was a matter
that took a lot of thought and prayer, but when I finally did decide
which one it would be, we started to date, and she turned out to be the
right one! We continued to date, and as our relationship deepened, we
realized that we wanted our relationship to be permanent. However,
there were problems.
Time was passing, and I was coming close to the end of my two
year contract with the University of Michigan, and had to make a
decision. I was in the part of the world that I felt God had called me
to. There was no recurrence of epilepsy, and the waiting time of two
yearsthe condition set by the OMF mission that I had corresponded
withwas coming to an end. In the meantime, though, I was dating
Sally Holmes, who was a missionary of the C&MA.
The fact that Sally Holmes was becoming the center of my life
was not in contradiction to my call as a missionary. She had been
independently called to be a missionary even before she knew who
I was, and had in fact preceded me to Laos. If I re-applied to OMF,
it would mean saying good-bye to her. My relationship to her was
becoming more important than anything else, except my relationship
to God himself. To get married to her wouldnt be easy though. I had no
training in an Alliance (C&MA) School, nor had I done home service
with the Alliance, so all sorts of rules would have to be waived for me
to become an Alliance missionary. It was unheard of that an Alliance
missionary could get married to a non-missionary and continue on
the field. Moreover, because the war threat was particularly serious at
that time, the US Embassy forbade Americans on direct government
hire or contract hire to have dependents in Laos with them. If I
re-applied to OMF, I would lose Sally, and it seemed that I had no
chance at that time of qualifying as an Alliance missionary. If she
would quit the C&MA mission to marry me while I was still with the
University of Michigan project, she would become my dependent and
thus could not stay in Laos. However, I was being offered a second
two-year contract by the University of Michigan project, so if the

21

A New Heart for the Htin

Alliance would waive

their rule against a
missionary
marrying
a non-missionary, and
if the US Embassy
would allow her to stay
on in Laos as working
independently
even
though she was married
to me, we had a chance.
Frankly though, it didnt
seem very likely.
Time was running
short,
because
the
time for the end of my
contract, and home leave
if I should renew the
contract, was coming
up in just a couple of
months. However, Walt
Whipple, who was
chairman of the C&MA
Mission at that time,
came to our rescue,
and interceded with the
C&MA authorities to
Our wedding day!
let Sally marry me even
though I wasnt a missionary yet. He also interceded with the US
Embassy to consider Sally, not as my dependent, but as independently
employed by the C&MA Missionwhich she was indeed. Within a
few weeks permission was granted from the C&MA for her to marry
a non-missionary, and from the US Embassy to let her stay in the
country even after she married me!
Thus it was that the way was opened for Sally, who was the most
important person in my life, to become my wife! After dinner at our
favorite spotan outdoor restaurant where we could watch the sun

22

Don & Sally Durling

setting over the Mekong RiverI asked her if she would marry me.
She consented!
We were married at the end of June, with a Lao legal ceremony on
June 29, 1961. The US Embassy sent a witness to officially validate
the rite according to U.S. laws. The next day we had a Christian
ceremony in the little church in Vientiane. For our honeymoon, we
went back to the US for my month of home leave, and to meet the
families of both sides. Then we came back for two more years, she
completing her five year term as secretary and bookkeeper for the
C&MA Mission, and I doing a second two year contract with the
University of Michigan project.
Those two years were good to us. Sally continued her work as
secretary-bookkeeper for the mission, and I continued teaching with
the University of Michigan contract at the College of Education,
doing quiet work on the side in providing opportunities for fellowship
among Christian students. During that two year period, we lost one
son stillborn, but God gave us another healthy son, Tim, who would
eventually be the big brother of three more children.
Also, during that two year period, we went to visit missionaries
George and Martha Tubbs in Sayaboury (pronounced sign-YUP-boolee) Province, of northwestern Laos, and among the people there, we
saw a group of three or four people scurrying along the road with
mats they had woven for sale. George told us they were of the Htin
tribe, locally known as the Pai (pronounced pie) tribe.
The Htin were to become very important to us.

23

Three

The Htin Tribe

ack when I was still with the University of Michigan

project in Bangkok, I had heard of this tribe along the ThaiLao border called the Htin tribe. A missionary working in
northern Thailand had told me that he had visited in Htin villages in
Nan (pronounced as the prefix non-) Province of northern Thailand,
in an area that bordered Sayaboury Province of Laos. So, the Htin
that we had seen scurrying along the roadside in Sayaboury, were the
same tribe, but on the Lao side of the border. I asked George Tubbs
more about the tribes of this province.
The lowland Lao make up almost half of the population of
Laos, and they are generally in control of the government and
economy. Throughout Laos though, there are dozens of ethnic
minorities, generally living in the mountainous areas. The Province
of Sayaboury had four main tribal groups. Two of these groups, the
Hmong (pronounced as it is spelled) and Mien (pronounced MEyun) whose languages were related to Chinese, were scattered over
several countries of SE Asia. The Khamou (sometimes written as
Kmu) were scattered over much of northern Laos and into Thailand.
The Htin though were found only in the border area of Nan Province
of Thailand, and Sayaboury Province of Laos. The Htin were the
poorest of those 4 main tribes in the area.
The Htin and the Khamou were already in this area when it was
settled by Lao migrating from further north 1,000 years ago. The
Hmong and Mien were the latest arrivals, having migrated into the
area from south China over the last couple of centuries. The original
inhabitants were no match for the later arrivals, and the Khamou and
Htin eventually learned to accept the fact that they had little political
or economic power, either against the more numerous Lao, or the
later arrivals of Hmong and Mien from China.

24

Don Durling & Sally Durling

Presbyterians had been the first Protestant mission to enter

Thailand, and they had found the most response in northern Thailand.
When the Presbyterian missionaries based in northern Thailand,
and northern Thai evangelists had made trips from Nan Province of
Thailand into Sayaboury and Luang Prabang (pronounced LOO-ang
pa-BAHNG) Provinces of Laos earlier in the century, many of the
Khamou had responded and become Christians. When the Alliance
entered Laos in 1929 with the promise of having missionaries actually
living in the country, the Presbyterians turned the whole of their work
in Laos over to the Alliance.
Hmong in Xieng Khouang (pronounced seeing KWONG)
Province started becoming Christians in a large peoples movement in
the 1950s, and there were some Christians among the Mien in China
and Thailand. The Htin, however, were completely unreached at that
time. Although they were not the fewest in number, they were the
poorest and least influential of the four main tribes of this province.
They were not ones to stand up for their rights, but they passively
accepted whatever came to them, not willing or strong enough to
fight back. In some cases, when outsiders that they didnt know
entered their villages, they would abandon their houses and all flee

25

A New Heart for the Htin

into the forest in fear. Some ruthless outsiders, seeing no opposition,

would then torch the villages of bamboo and thatch, destroying what
little the Htin had.
They had been hunters and gatherers, until they learned to
practice slash-and-burn rice farming from the Lao. However, even
though they had learned rice cultivation, they reverted to hunting and
gathering when their rice crops fell short, and were in fact still able to
subsist on food they could hunt and gather from the forest if need be.
They needed little from the outside economy. If they had a castoff set
of clothing, some salt, and a machete from the outside, they could eat
and make houses from what they could find in the forest. If they didnt
have enough clothes or blankets during the chilly nights of the cool
season, they could sit by the fire all night, and sleep in the sun during
the daytime. They lived in obvious dependence on the provisions God
gave them through creation, but instead of worshipping the Creator,
they had since time immemorial spent their energies appeasing spirits
sent by the Enemy to oppress them, demanding sacrifices of what
little they had. If someone among them became sick, they would
consult the spirits through their witch-doctors, and the spirits would
often require the sacrifice of a chicken, or a pig, or whatever they
had, impoverishing them even further.
One of their defenses against the arbitrary demands of the
spirits was to possess as little as possible; if they didnt have a pig,
the spirit demanding a sacrifice couldnt demand that the pig be
sacrificed. When they made casual conversation, the subject was
usually centered on their abject poverty, so that the spirits who heard
wouldnt demand more sacrifices, and thus bring them under more
bondage. Whereas other tribes would plant extra rice so they would
have some to sell, the Htin often planted crops that would not feed
them until the next harvest, so the spirits would see their poverty and
not afflict them. After their rice ran out, they would revert to foraging
for food in the forest until the next rice-harvest.
Sometimes they were able to weave mats, and barter or sell them.
Some villages had access to tea leaves, which they would pickle by
sealing the leaves with brine in sections of bamboo, and burying
them in the ground until they were properly fermented. They could

26

Don & Sally Durling

then sell these pickled tea leaves or barter them for things in town,
such as burlap bags to use in place of blankets. To keep warm, they
sometimes put two children to sleep together in one bag. In the 1960s,
when some of them came into town to barter, they would walk to a
place just outside town the night before, where they would sleep, then
come into town to do their business, making sure they got outside of
town before sunset, because they were afraid of spending the night
in a Lao town.
Because of their extreme poverty and lack of political or economic
clout, other ethnic groups felt free to oppress them or make demands
on them. When they did make purchases in town, shopkeepers would
sometimes deliberately short-change them, knowing that many Htin
didnt know how to count money. Oppression came from various
sourcesthe spirits that they appeased by demanding sacrifices, and
outsiders taking advantage of them.
In an area with scattered villages of Hmong, Mien, Khamou or
Htin villages, separated by hours of walk on mountain foot-trails, it
had become customary that wherever a traveler found himself as the
sun was setting, he could stop off and eat an evening meal and sleep
in the nearest village, of whatever tribe. In that manner, there was a
certain amount of social interchange between the various tribes.
In the late 1950s, there was one Htin man named Sen See, who
had emerged as being somewhat of a leader among them, and was
recognized by Lao provincial authorities as a spokesman for Htin
interests. The fact that any Htin seemed to be emerging as any kind
of a leader was seen as a threat by some from other tribes. One night,
two travelers stopped as the sun was setting, and took advantage of
Sen Sees hospitality, eating supper that he had provided, sleeping
overnight in his house, and then eating breakfast. As they stood up
after breakfast, they shot and killed Sen See. Then they left, confident
that there would be no retaliation from the Htin. This all happened
before I ever traveled among the Htin, but George Tubbs knew Sen
See, and told me about it. I did eventually get to meet his widow and
son.
Because of things like that, Htin generally drew back from any
kind of explicit or implicit leadership. Given a group of ten Htin, it

27

A New Heart for the Htin

seemed that nobody wanted to emerge as leader, but each wanted to

be nothing more than one-tenth of the whole.
Also, because of their low status, the Htin had very little ethnic
pride or identification. If one could pass as a Lao, he would, and
thereafter deny his Htin identity. Even whole villages would
sometimes try to portray themselves as something other than Htin
trying to pass as Northern Thai. Of the four main tribes in the
province, they were at the bottom of the pecking order.
What I had seen from the back of the Jeep that George Tubbs
was driving that day, was a representative remnant of the original
inhabitants of the territory, who had learned centuries earlier to
live off the land, keeping as low a profile as possible. They piled
poverty on poverty by sacrificing what chickens or pigs they had to
the demands of the spirits they appeased. They were afraid that if
they became too influential, they would suffer as Sen See did. If they
became too comfortable, they would suffer from increased demands
from the spirits.
There were Christians among the Khamou and Hmong in
Sayaboury Province, but there was not a single Christian witness
among the Htin. Yet, God knew and loved them, and He wouldnt let
me forget them.
Years earlier, I had heard of the existence of Htin on the Thai side
of the border. Now, from the back of the Jeep that George Tubbs was
driving, we had seen them, and having seen them, we would never be
able to forget them.
When a missionaryor I suppose any sensitive Christiansees
people so severely oppressed, a flood of emotion wells up that is
unpredictable. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, none of the
three passers-by had expected to find a man who had been beaten
by thieves. The Priest might have been walking along thinking
devotional thoughts, praying, or reciting Psalms of praise, then
suddenly, this sight appears before him that he is not prepared to deal
with. Devotion is his thing, not this. He probably got confused and
didnt know how to handle it. The Levite might have been preoccupied
with his religious duties or whatever, then suddenly, his attention was
drawn by this gruesome spectacle that would divert him from what

28

Don & Sally Durling

he meant to accomplish. They were unaware that before their eyes

lay an opportunity for service far beyond anything that service in the
temple could give.
The despised Samaritanahhe had no agenda to accomplish;
he had no role to fulfill. He responded as a human to human need, and
he changed the meaning of the name Samaritan by what he did for
the man along the roadside that day.
I saw men along the roadside in Sayaboury. They hadnt fallen
as victims of robbers but they were still victimsvictims of sin, of
satanic oppression, of delusion. They were also victims of prejudice,
and economic oppression. My response to them wouldnt be settled on
that day, but I would respond to their need. I might leave Sayaboury,
and go back to teaching in my posh job. I might pass by on the other
side because of the occupation I was doing well inor the role I was
fulfilling. It was significant that I was preparing young Lao for higher
educationeven university training overseas, wasnt it?
George Tubbs provided me with another opportunity to meet
the Htin before I
became a missionary.
He had long heard of
the Yellow Leaf, who
were considered by
most to be wild men.
They didnt have regular
houses or villages. They
didnt plant crops, or
raise animals, but spent
their time foraging in the
forest, living in lean-to
shelters for a few days, then moving on. The term Yellow Leaf
was used for them, because it was said that they would construct
their lean-to of leaves, and sleep under it until the green leaves dried
and turned yellow, then they would go somewhere else and put up
another shelter.
George had heard that there was a Yellow Leaf family that
moved around in the area of a particular Htin village that he knew

29

A New Heart for the Htin

of named Forked Creek Village, and he wanted to go and make

contact with them. He invited me to go along, so I took a week off
from my teaching, and went with him. We had to sleep in the forest
one night going there, because it was more than a day walk. He had
hired two Hmong men who were not Christians, but knew the area
as guides, and a few young men from a Christian Khamou village
to be carriers. We got to Forked Creek Villagemy first experience
in a Htin village, and were put up in the house of a man who was
crippled. Because he was a cripple, his wife had to do all of the field
work without his help.
George told the people in the village of our purpose to meet the
Yellow Leaf that were in the area, and they assured us that a Yellow
Leaf man stopped in to their village from time to time. Some time
earlier, he had been bitten by a bear, and had been given opium by
some Hmong to kill the pain, so since that time, he would stop in to
get leftover opium fiber to satisfy his addiction.
Lo and behold, the man came while we were there! He was tiny
and thin. George asked him about his family, and he said that his
family consisted of himself, his wife, his son, his sons wife, and
two children. George asked him to bring his son around so we could
meet him, and he left. He was gone a long time, but eventually came
back with his son. The son wasnt used to coming into any kind of
village, and here he was summoned to come into this Htin village,
and there he saw two men who looked like nothing he had ever seen
beforelike freaks (George and I). He was trembling as he came up
the ladder into the house.
At that time I didnt know enough Lao to understand all that
George said to them, but after talking to them, George gave them
some gifts, and the next day we started our return trip. In that one
week, I had met the elusive Yellow Leaf, and spent the night in a Htin
villagethe village of Forked Creek.
I went back to the class-room, but the sight of the Htin scurrying
along the roadside that first time, and later actually sleeping in a Htin
village wouldnt be forgotten.

30

Four

Meanwhile, Back
To Work

e had been up-country; we had seen various tribes:

Hmong, Khamou, Mien, and Htin, but the Htin were
the neediest. However, we still had obligations to fulfill
before we could be missionaries up-country.
During the two-year period after our marriage, while I was still
working for the University of Michigan project, our life was relatively
quiet and predictable. We had a nice apartment in the capital city of
Vientiane, and morning after morning, I would drop Sally off at the
mission office where she worked, then continue on nine kilometers
outside town where the new Teachers College that was the location
of our English as a Second Language (ESL) project was under
development.
Since half of our family unit (namely Sally) was with the mission,
we fellowshipped with the missionaries, meeting for missionary
prayer meeting every week, and regularly attended the Sunday
services of the International Church. We also had the privileges
accorded to US government contract personnel, such as commissary
and postal services, so we werent doing badly.
Our University of Michigan contract had projects in Thailand,
South Vietnam, and Laos, but the program in each of the three
countries had to adapt to the situation in that country. The overall
administration of our projects was in Bangkok, and there in Thailand,
there had been a long history of teaching English, so our project
worked at establishing pedagogical and linguistic validity for the
existing programs, developing textbooks, and giving seminars for
Thai English teachers. Laos though, had been a French colony, and
French had been taught for decades. In the late 1950s and even into

31

A New Heart for the Htin

the early 1960s, people in Laos still considered English to be nearly

useless, so there was very little interest in developing English as a
Second Language (ESL). Instead of improving an existing program
as in Thailand, we had to start from scratch. That meant recruiting
students who had studied only Lao or French, at the High School
level. We would first have to teach them English, developing a core of
English-speakers that would eventually become teachers. Whereas
in Thailand we were developing courses and teaching teachers how
to use those courses, in Laos, we had to start by teaching beginning
English to High School age students. Even at that, we had trouble
getting students.
The US Agency for International Development, or USAID had
several large projects going in Laos, trying to develop an economy
in Laos that they hoped would be a deterrent to Communism. Our
University of Michigan project was only one of several programs to
upgrade education in the country. At that time USAID was building
what would eventually be a university campus nine kilometers
outside of town. The American planners however, didnt realize
the significance of the fact that the site was a haunted forest. Every
Lao knew about it, but the Americans picked it for the location,
accessibility, availability of water etc. The result was that when the
first building was put up, available for the French-language Higher
School of Pedagogy to start using, nobody wanted to go live there
because it was located in the middle of a haunted forest. Since ours
was a USAID sponsored project, we were prevailed on to set up our
English program there in that haunted forest campus.
Morning after morning, we would drive out from town, and our
terrified students would tell of events that had occurred during the
night, sleeping as they were surrounded by a wilderness that was
inhabited by demons. They told of ghostly sounds, and apparitions
appearing in the darkness of the night from the haunted forest. In our
sophistication we disregarded what they said, but it was obvious that
they were fearful, and indeed, we were unable to account for some of
the phenomena that they reported.
At one point, I was doubting the reports that a terrified student
was giving, and expressed my disbelief. He pointed to a dead tree

32

Don & Sally Durling

that had smoke coming out of a crotch twenty or thirty feet up from
the ground. He asked me how I would account for it. Did I think
some person had climbed the dead tree to go set a fire there? I had to
admit that I couldnt account for it, and for the moment at least, he
won the argument.
(Years later, after I had been a missionary living up-country for
some years, I found myself sitting beside one of those former students
on a flight from Sayaboury to Vientiane. In the meantime, he had
graduated from a University in the U.S. Of course, we talked about
the old days, when he was in his early teens, starting to learn English
on that developing campus that was being built in a haunted forest.
He said he didnt believe in such things as haunting phenomena
anymore, and I found that I had changed to the opposite side. I had
seen enough witchcraft and demonic activity that I believed such
things did happen. Now, in his sophistication, he didnt.)
At first, there was just one large building which was constructed
that would eventually become the administration building, but in those
early days, when it was only the English Section there, everything
was housed in that one building: girls dorm, boys dorm, classrooms,
dining room, language lab, and offices were all in the same building.
One day, walking into the room that was used as the boys dorm,
I saw a drawing of a cross posted on one of the bunks, so I inquired,
and found out that two of the Hmong students were Christians. I
remembered the joy of Christian fellowship that I had known at the
University of Michigan; there I had found the fellowship with other
Christians in the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship group to be like
an oasis in the desert. Picturing these two students in a non-Christian
society and school, I thought of what a good thing it would be if we
could encourage them to have Christian fellowship.
As time passed, the campus expanded, and in spite of the
problem of the haunted forest, the French-language Higher School
of Pedagogy eventually was moved out there from their previous
location in town. There were a few Christian students among them
also, so the Christian presence expanded. That gave us a viable core
of students from Christian homes, so we welcomed the Christian
students to our apartment for a Christian student fellowship every

33

A New Heart for the Htin

Sunday afternoon.
The war threat that prevailed at the time of our marriage seemed
to be somewhat diminished. The city of Vientiane where we lived
didnt seem to be under threat of attack anymore, so families of
Americans working there were allowed to live in Laos again. That
was fortunate for us, because two years after we were married, God
blessed us with a baby son whom we named Tim, and because of the
improved situation, we were allowed to continue living in Vientiane
as a family.
From the time of our wedding in June 1961 to the time that we came
home to get ready to return as a missionary family, our life was very
much that of privileged Americans working overseas. My colleagues
werent really sympathetic with our missionary interests, but neither
were they intolerant of our attempts to work among students. They
turned a blind eye to the fact that we were having student Christian
fellowship meetings in our home. With the foreign community in the
city, there were opportunities to socialize with Americans and others.
There was an International Church with regular services in English
that we could attend in addition to the Lao services, so we could
identify ourselves as Christians with no particular strain. However,
in trying to identify with the local culture, some Americans went the
limit in taking their shoes off, and bowing down at Buddhist Shrines
in spite of the fact that there was no particular pressure to do so.
There was one particular ceremony that presented a problem
though. It had become customary that whenever one of the staff
was due to leave, the Lao would put on a ceremony called a Baci
(pronounced bah-see). This was essentially an animist ceremony that
had come to coexist with Lao Buddhism, in which people sit around
on the floor in a circle, surrounding an elaborate centerpiece of flowers
and cotton strings. The Lao elder presiding does some incantations in
a language that was called Brahmin, pronouncing a blessing on the
person that is scheduled for departure, asking for the spirits of the
sky, the earth, etc. to give journeying mercies. Then he ties one of
the strings onto the wrists of that person for whom the ceremony is
being given. After that, other people would tie strings onto the wrists
of the person being honored, speaking blessings or good wishes in

34

Don & Sally Durling

English, Lao, or whatever language was understandable. Then any

of those attending, would tie strings on each others wrists, so that
by the time the ceremony was finished, everybody involved would
have their wrists covered with white cotton strings. The whole thing
seemed like a harmless little ceremony to most of the foreigners in
Laos. However, as harmless as the Baci ceremony seemed, we were
told by Lao Christians that it was something that they themselves
wouldnt participate in. The basis of the ceremony was not only nonChristian; it was to invoke spirit powers.
Above all, I didnt want to offend Lao Christians, nor did I want
to yield any ground to the unseen powers of darkness, so I knew I
had to avoid the Baci. I was faced with an enigma though; if I didnt
participate, it would appear that I was unwilling to participate in the
farewell party for a co-worker. I found a solution that may seem a
bit cowardly, but it worked anyway. I would go to the party, and sit
quietly, but I would take my camera with me, and as soon as I saw
someone tying strings along the row where they were getting close to
me, I would jump up, looking for a good vantage point from which
to take a picture, and incidentally avoiding the person tying strings.
I knew though that someday it would come time for my own
departure, with the impending farewell ceremony, and I wouldnt be
able to escape it so easily. I simply had to tell the Lao lady who was
in charge of that kind of thing that since I was a Christian, I didnt
want my wrists tied in a Baci ceremony, and consequently, there was
no farewell party for me at all when I left that University job.
As demand for instruction in the English language increased, our
English Section was expanded by the addition of some British Consul
teachers, and some Americans with International Voluntary Services.
Since the University of Michigan mandate was to set up the program,
with the Lao Ministry of Education operating it thereafter, completion
of our University of Michigan mandate was within sight, which was
also in accordance with our personal plansthat both of us become
regular missionaries. To both return as Alliance missionaries, meant
for Sally to resign, and for us to re-apply as a family.
We came home in October 1963, and according to the necessary
procedure, Sally had to resign from the mission, and then we applied

35

A New Heart for the Htin

and were interviewed for appointment to missionary work as a family.

Many rules were waived for me to be accepted, because I had not
graduated from an Alliance College, nor completed home service,
but the fact that I had quite a bit of experience in Laos by then, and
that I had gotten a good running start on learning the Lao language,
was taken into consideration. So after a rather intimidating interview,
we were appointed and returned to Laos as regular missionaries in
the summer of 1964. Our appointment was to do language study,
and for that purpose, we were sent up-country to live in Sayaboury
Provincethe province that the Htin were in.
But the Htin were still without a Christian witness.

House in Sayaboury, 1967. Sally is holding

Marys hand while carrying Helen.

36

Five

Missionaries at Last

inally it was time for us to settle into language learning and

start our ministry as a missionary family. By this time, George
and Martha Tubbs were no longer working in Sayaboury
Province; Ollie and Winnie Kaetzel were there. We settled into the
house that George & Martha had previously lived in, and got into the
routine of missionaries in language study. We learned to live without
electricity, and to buy from the morning produce market, which was
so early in the morning that if the sun was up, market would have
closed already. It took some practice to get used to the market. The
main vegetable was something that looked like Swiss chardit was
available in both wet and dry seasons. Sometimes I would go to
market in the early morning darkness, and with a flashlight look for
vegetables. Most of it was Swiss chard, or extra long green beans.
Sometimes I would shine my flashlight and see something that looked
as though it might be lettuce, but on closer inspection we would find
out that it was another green similar to Swiss chard. Buying meat
was a little easier though, because our neighbor, who was also our
landlord, was a butcher, and we could put in an order for a pig leg in
advance. I would cut the pig leg up and make pork steaks of some of
it, roasts of some, and stewing meat of some of it.
During our first few months in Sayaboury the only child we had
was Tim, so there were just the three of us. After a few months,
however, the Lord blessed us with a little girl that we named Mary,
after the mother of Jesus.
Living in Sayaboury, the sense of the exotic soon wore off, and
kerosene became our mainstay. We lit our house with kerosene
lamps, cooked our food on a kerosene stove, and even kept our food
from spoiling in a kerosene refrigerator. Whereas my concept of
normalcy as a child had been a white frame farmhouse surrounded

37

A New Heart for the Htin

by hollyhocks beside a railroad track, on a gravel road, that was not

the concept of normalcy for our children. Normalcy for our children
became an unpainted clapboard house with poinsettia bushes around
the house, and guava trees in the yard. We were living in a town
though, with neighbors close by, all of whom had dark hair, and
spoke Lao. It was a normal lifejust a different normalcy.
Tim is outside playing with neighbor friends, talking
fluent little kid Lao. Suddenly he comes rushing
into the house and runs for a mirror, becoming
distraught at seeing his image. Apparently some of
his playmates have said something about his blond
hair. He hadnt realized before that he looked different
from his playmatesnow this image that he sees in
the mirror has confirmed what they said.
As far as he is concerned, the whole world is filled
with little kids that have black hair. His eyes are
larger than any of his playmates, his skin is pallid,
and his hair is blond. The mirror has confirmed it
he looks like a freak!
We hired local young people to tutor us in our home and proceeded
to sharpen our Lao language skills. Finally, we felt that we were in
the calling the Lord had put upon us. We got acquainted with the
local Christians from town and from villages outside town. We had
opportunity to worship with Lao Christians, with Hmong Christians,
and with Khamou Christiansbut no Htin were Christians yet.
From time to time though, we saw them on the streets. They
didnt have a distinctive dress, but we could usually distinguish them
because their clothes were more ragged than anyone elses. We could
also spot them by what they were trying to sell or tradethe mats
they wove, or the pickled tea-leaves they preserved and sold. Here
we were in the province they lived in, but still not able to walk to

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Don & Sally Durling

their villages because of the obligation to study Lao.

Then I heard of one village that was closer to town than most
less than a days walk away. If I could find someone to guide me to the
village, I could go there one day and return the next, not interrupting
my Lao language classes. I was able to find a non-Christian Hmong
man willing to take me there for a fee, so made an appointment for
him to show me the way. When I got to our starting point though, he
hadnt had his morning opium pipe yet, and wasnt ready. Eventually
however, we did leave, and after several hours walk, we got to the
Htin village before dark. That day hunters from that village had killed
both a deer and a barking deer (about the size of a common dog)
so they shared some venison with me. They plucked a few edible
weeds from the forest, and lay them beside the rice and meat that was
served. We ate a tasty and nutritious evening mealglutinous rice,
venison, and greens. Then came the pattern that I would learn was to
be repeated wherever I went to Htin villages to present the Gospel.
After supper, the men of the village would come into the village
headmans house where I usually stayed, to listen to what I had to
say. The gospel presentation that I gave that first time also followed
a pattern that I was to follow on later trips to Htin villages. I gave a
condensed chronological account of eternal God, the fall of Satan,
creation, sin, the flood, Babel, then the birth, life, substitutionary
death, and resurrection of Jesus, and the reason that Jesus came. My
ability in Lao was still pretty weak at that first village and I got the
word for paradise mixed up with the word for parable, so I had
Adam and Eve being expelled from the garden of parables. The Htin
were polite, and probably wouldnt have understood very well even
if I had used the right word, because my Lao was not that good yet.
However, I had, as a missionary, had my first experience in trying to
take the Gospel to the Htin.
I slept that night in the headmans house, and went back home so
I could resume Lao study on schedule the morning after I got home.
I had a certain feeling of accomplishment, because I had gotten to a
Htin village, and had presented the Gospel, albeit rather inadequately.
I was soon to be humbled though, because my next trip to that village
didnt go so well.

39

A New Heart for the Htin

In our early days in Sayaboury, that village was the only Htin
village that I knew of that was within one days walking distance,
and later on I had reason to revisit them. Since I had been there once,
I thought I could remember the trail, and I set off alone. Trails can
be deceptive though, and can change from time to time. If a rice field
has been planted in a new place, trails will change accordingly, and
although there may be a trail that is a main trail going from one
village to another, sometimes the trails going to a rice field will be
more used, and appear to be broader than the main trail. Anyway, my
self-confidence in being able to walk back to that village alone was
not well-founded, and I found myself walking further than it should
have been. I had walked nine hours on a trip that should have gotten
me to my destination in seven hours, so I knew something was wrong.
In less than an hour I realized that darkness would falland I
was lost and alone. I was on a trail going around the side of a gently
sloped mountain with the peak to my left, and the valley to my right,
and I realized my predicament. I heard the sound of the stream in
the valley to my right though, and an idea came to me. I abandoned
the trail, and inched my way directly downhill through the heavy
undergrowth toward the stream that I could hear flowing. I hoped
that by following the stream, I could find a place where some village
would come to get water, then I could follow the path up and stay in
that villageany village would do. It actually took me quite a while
to get through the underbrush to where the stream was, and when I
finally got to the stream, it was very nearly dark. I found a rock in
the middle of the stream that I could sit on, and pried the leeches off
of my legs. I washed the leech-thinned blood from my legs as best
I could, and sat there taking stock. As close as it was to darkness,
there was little chance I would find another human being that night.
I sat on the rock, my head in my hands, thinking of the prospect of
sitting on this rock in the middle of the jungle all night. On a rock
surrounded by water like that, leeches couldnt get to me, and it might
inhibit snakes and other creatures. I was sure I could stay awake all
night. (How could anyone sleep in a situation like that?) Although
mosquitoes and later on chill would be a bit of a problem, they would
in fact help me to stay awake. I planned to stay there until dawn, and

40

Don & Sally Durling

then I would try to find some village again.

Since I had planned to go to only that one village, stay overnight
one night, then return home the next day, I had not wanted to carry
anything unnecessary on my back. I brought none of the usual
equipment such as a knife, sleeping bag, or matches to start a fire.
Now, I was lost, and in a few minutes when darkness fell, I would be
able to see nothing. The approaching darkness seemed to intensify
sounds, and all of the instruments of this jungle symphony were
tuning up for a twelve-hour concert of birds, animals, insects and
whatever. There were shrill calls. Whooshwhoosh sounds, stabbing
staccatos, and the constant sound of the flow of the protective stream
around my rock.
My mind went back to our unpainted clap-board house surrounded
by poinsettias in town. To think that just that morning I had set out
from our comfortable home, where even now, my wife was putting
our children to bed. The thought of Sally singing choruses with them
by the light of a kerosene lamp was comforting, but the fact that I
wasnt with them was discomforting.
As light for sight decreased, night sounds took up the slack. The
cacophony of forest sounds increasedbut hidden among the sounds
of nature, I could hear a chop, chop, chop sound too. It must be a
man felling a tree or cutting firewood, and he was certainly not too
far away, or I wouldnt be able to hear him. I stood up, clambering,
stumbling, slipping, sliding over the rocks in the creek-bed, hurrying
to get to the source of the sound before the impending darkness would
make the woodsman stop chopping, and deprive me of my homing
signal. As much as I could, I ran, if you can run in a rocky flowing
stream, wearing rubber thong slippers. Then I rounded a bend, and
there he was, still choppinga Hmong patriarch who, although not
a Christian, had been a friend to George Tubbs, and had become my
friend too. He greeted me warmly; then breathlessly I explained my
predicament, and how I happened to be alone in such an unlikely
place. Then a few minutes later, this friend took me into his large
lean-to. He told me that was moving into the area to find new land.
He had come with one of his wives and put up a temporary shelter to
start living in while he made fields and built a more permanent house.

41

A New Heart for the Htin

His wife cooked a chicken for supper, and we ended it with a cup of
coffeeunheard of luxury for this untamed forest.
It was his practice to have his opium pipe after supper, so he
slowly moved away from the supper tray, while his wife and children
moved up to the supper-tray for their turn to eat. He reached for his
opium pipe and paraphernalia. He lit the lamp used for vaporizing the
opium and took a small wad of black opium. Rolling it into a ball,
he put the wad of opium into the opening made in the globe-end of
his opium-pipe; the other end of the pipe went into his mouth while
he was lying in a fetal position on the floor. Then gently he lifted
the globe-end of the pipe with the hole stuffed with opium over the
flame, and took a long draw. As it met the flame, the opium vaporized,
flowing easily and smoothly into his lungs. Aaaahhaches and pains
vanished. Family, the cares of parenthood, worries about adequate
food or clothing all faded away as unimportant. Opium gave sweet
satisfaction, and no concern of any kind could dislodge it. It was
easy to make conversation with someone who was smoking opium,
because all answers were easyeverything was alright; the vaporized
opium had brought rapture.
After he had his opium pipe, and we conversed for a while, I
settled down for the night, under the roof of this friendno worry of
leeches, wild animals, or having to sit on a rock all night. God had fed
me as though it were manna from Heaven albeit in the home of this
opium-smoking patriarch who was a friend. God had prepared for me
a covering in the wilderness. His sovereignty controlled, even in this
vast forest where not a single Christian lived.
I was glad to sleep in his house that night rather than face the
prospect of sitting up on a rock in the middle of a stream, or lying
down in the forest, with wild animals or snakes prowling about. I
went on to the Htin village the next day, then headed straight home.
Certainly I was much wiser after that experience, and would be less
confident about traveling alone on the trail.
For the time being though, Lao language study would have first
priority.

42

Six

Its a Bird, Its a Plane,

Its aWren?
Wren: a Cessna 182 adapted for short take-off and landing.
The most obvious addition is a canard placed forward

of the wingright behind the propeller.

ou might say that the trip that I took into Htin territory the
time I got lost was the trip in which I was getting my feet
wetboth literally and actually. Nevertheless, eventually I
would be ready to take more serious trips that were deeper into Htin
territory, and of a longer duration.
The Laos Mission fortunately had the services of Missionary
Aviation Fellowship available in the country. Mostly it was used
for maintaining contact with churches in other provinces, but it was
available for us to use as necessary in our province. Accordingly, I
made arrangements to be flown into the only remaining airstrip in
Htin territory. It was at an abandoned Army camp.
The plane was scheduled to be in our province on Nov. 11, 1965,
and would be in the province again on Nov. 16, so I planned to have
the plane fly us to the airstrip on Nov. 11 and then pick us up five days
later. It was crucial that I have someone with me on the trail, because
I was going into territory that I knew nothing about, and also, I didnt
know the perils that might await such a greenhorn as I on the trail.
The plane came to the airport of our town, and we got in, stowing
our backpacks and fastening ourselves into the seats. We took off,
and soon were looking down at the town, seeing our house, and
other landmarks that were common and familiar from a ground
perspective. We headed west, still climbing, and soon were flying
over the foothills and mountains into the bush.
From the air, it seemed that there were many villages, and (again

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A New Heart for the Htin

A Cessna Wren at Pha Lang Ma airstrip.

from the air) they didnt look very far apart. We found the landing
strip, and after the pilot made a few passes to see what it looked like,
we made our approach, and bounced eventually to a stop. We got out
of the plane at about 2:30 p.m., meaning that we would have about
three or four hours of light left before darkness fell.
The Army camp by the airstrip was completely deserted, and
there was nobody within sight to talk to, so nobody could tell us what
direction to go to find a village. We had seen several villages from
the air, but once we got on the ground, we didnt know how to get to
them-things look different from the air!
We unloaded our gear, which was comprised of our backpacks,
and a disappointment box that contained a can of pork and beans,
two cans of sweetened condensed milk, a can of pineapple, a can of
potted meat, and a little bit of Tang. Someone had advised us to stash
such a box of goodies at the landing strip, in case we needed to have
our spirits lifted at the end of our trip.
After the plane left, we had prayer, and decided to start walking
on a trail going roughly northeast. After walking about an hour and
seeing nobody, we decided to walk back to the airstrip and sleep
in the abandoned Army camp. We faced the prospect of emptying
our disappointment box the first day, and the plane wouldnt be

44

Don & Sally Durling

coming back for us for another five days. When we got back to the
airstrip though, we realized that we still had about an hour of daylight
left, so decided to take a trail in another direction and see where we
ended up. After walking about a half hour, we could hear chickens,
indicating that there must be a village nearby, so we kept walking.
Shortly before darkness fell, we did in fact arrive at a Htin village
called Old Mountain.
The village chief hosted us, and the acting chief of the village fed
us and gave us a place to sleep. This village chiefs 19 year-old son,
who was a soldier, had recently died of a fever. Maybe because of his
grief, the chief seemed more open than most Htin to hear the Gospel
message that we were bringing.
The next morning, we proceeded on the trail toward Samet (told
about in a later chapter). Samet was the biggest village in the area,
and probably sort of a hub for the Htin in that area. The chief there
was actually the dominant chief over a total of nine villages. The
village was more permanent than most Htin villages, having been in
the same place since World War II. Whereas other Htin villages relied
primarily on weaving and selling or trading mats or baskets for their
economy, Samet had become a center for producing a kind of pickled
tea leaves.
When George Tubbs had come across Htin in the 1950s he had
given a very basic presentation of the Gospel to them by using the
wordless book, which was very appropriate for the illiterate Htin.
When the Htin opened the first page, George had explained that the
black on those first pages represented sin. The next pages were red, to
represent the blood of Jesus, that could take away their sin, and make
their hearts white (the color of the next pages). Finally came the gold
pages, which represented the streets of Heaven.
Another means that George had promoted was the use of Gospel
Recordings. A recording technician came to do the recording, and
George contacted a capable Htin man with a good voice, to record
the gospel message. George told the man in Lao what to say, and
then the Htin man would tell it in Htin to the machine. Then the
recordings were pressed into discs, and provided to the missionaries
that could use them, along with hand powered phonographs that

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A New Heart for the Htin

required no batteries. The village of Samet had been given one of

these hand-powered phonographs along with the gospel records, but
their phonograph had gotten broken.
A person who didnt know the hard life that the Htin led to keep
themselves fed and clothed might have called the area a Shangri-la.
On a clear day, they said you could see planes landing at the airport
of Sayaboury-a distance that it took three days to walk, or twenty
minutes to fly in the MAF airplane.
The arduous climb to get to Samet left me with a bad headache,
because I wasnt used to pushing myself on the trail like that.
However, the elation of being in a place of such natural beauty, for
the purpose of communicating the Gospel, kept me from feeling
depressed in spite of the headache that I was experiencing.
The morning that we left Samet, a caravan of five or six elephants
had arrived from a large Thai Lieu area called Silver City. They had
brought clothing etc. to trade for the pickled tea leaves that Samet
was famous for producing. This caravan had traveled three days to
get there from where they lived.
The third night, we went in the direction of Sayaboury, to another
Htin village called Sente (pronounced sen-tay). By that time, we
were a difficult full days walk from the landing strip that we had
arrived at, and two days walk from Sayaboury. I was tempted to

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Don & Sally Durling

walk on toward home, but when they told us that there would be
more mountains on the way, I decided to walk back to the airstrip as
originally planned. Of course, we presented the Gospel to the people
who gathered around us to listen in the head-mans house at Sente,
but although they listened politely, they werent about the break ranks
with the influential chief at Samet.
In returning to the landing strip, we didnt try to go all of the
way in one day, but instead, went headed in the return direction
for a considerable distance, then went a half hour off the main trail to
try to include another small village. The people in this village were
desperately poor, and didnt have even blankets so they could sleep
warm at night. Their protection from the cool night air was to stay
awake and keep a fire going all night long, then go out and sleep in
the sun during the daytime. Fortunately, the coolest weather came
during the dry season, so they had the daytime sun that could keep
them warm. The food there didnt taste good, but I am not sure if it
was that the food was of inferior quality, or that I felt consciencesmitten to be eating at the table of people that were so desperately
poor. We did have opportunity to present the basics of the Gospel
there before we went to sleep.
The next day we returned to the village that we had found just
before darkness fell on the day of our arrivalthe village of Old
Mountain. We knew that from there we could easily walk to the
landing strip in the morning to be there when the MAF plane came
to pick us up. The headman of that villagethe one whose 19 yearold son had died, seemed to be the one most moved by the Gospel
message, but there was not yet any move on his part to become a
Christian.
The plane came for us at about noon.
No great breakthroughs were evident on this first trip deep into
Htin territory. Nevertheless, the seed that George Tubbs had started
planting was beginning to be followed up and this first trip would be
followed by several more trips.

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Seven

Lao Pao

anguage study is a very demanding matter, and there are

strict rules about keeping it first place in the priority of
things to be done. However, we were allowed a certain time
for vacation, and if we didnt take the vacation that was permitted,
I figured that nobody could complain about taking a few days off
of language study to make longer trips deeper into Htin territory.
I had learned though that I couldnt do it alone. I needed to have
someonepreferably a jungle-wise Christiango with me on the
trail to keep me from killing myself.
During the 1960s, most of the Christians in northern Laos were
tribal, with relatively few Christians among the ethnic Lao majority
themselves. The Khamou tribe had been the first to respond to the
gospel; when they were first reached by Presbyterian missionaries
from northern Thailand who had taken long walking trips into Laos to
present the claims of Christ in that unreached area. The Presbyterians
however, never had missionaries permanently living in Laos, and
eventually their work was followed up by C&MA missionaries.
Later, hundreds, and eventually thousands of Hmong became
Christians in a peoples movement in the 1950s, so that there were
soon more Christians among the Hmong than among the Khamou. As
for the Htin, although there were probably more individual Htin than
Hmong in the province of Sayaboury where we lived, the Hmong
held more political and economic power than anyone except the Lao
themselves; thus they were a group to be reckoned with.
In the villages of this province of Sayaboury, there were a
few Khamou and Hmong churches, so when I went on walking
evangelistic trips among the Htin, I usually tried to get a Christian
from one or the other of these groups to accompany me. One of these
was a Hmong man by the name of Lao Pao (both rhyme with now).

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Don Durling & Sally Durling

Although I never knew Lao Pao before he became a Christian, I

was told that he was a crude wastrel. He had been addicted to opium
and tobacco, and he was a compulsive liar, even when to tell the truth
would have been to his advantage. Because of this reputation, he held
almost no status or influence in the Hmong village he had lived in
before becoming a Christian. By the time I got to know him though,
he was a relatively stable member of the Hmong church, although
still not a strong leader. He had this advantage thoughto anybody
that had known him as a worthless profligate before he became a
Christian, he had a strong testimony because of the radical nature
of the change in his life. Also, he was a friendly out-going type who
liked to meet peopleand he usually tried to make himself available
to me when I needed a companion on the trail.
Lao Pao was not necessarily an easy person to get along with
on long trips though. When I had made plans for a rather long trip,
lasting almost two weeks, I would find him pressuring me to cut
the trip short, and head for home. Actually, the trips were hard on
me physically, and every component in my being was crying for an
excuse to get off the trail and back to my wife and family. The Devil
was already on my tail taking advantage of every new mountain to
climb or whatever other obstacle there was, to make me want to give
up; so I didnt really need to have my trail-partner pressuring me to
turn back too.
During those trips, I would be without word from my wife and
children for up to 13 nights. If some crisis loomed, they had no way
to contact me because they didnt know where I wasonly that I
was somewhere in the mountains of Htin territory. If I met someone
walking to town, sometimes I would write a short note, and ask
them to take it to my wife when they got to town. In the 1960s,
there was no telephone service in our whole province, and of course
cellular phones were not yet invented. From our home, we had radio
contact with the mission headquarters every morning, and we also
had contact with the Missionary Aviation Fellowship (MAF) plane
whenever it was in the air, but aside from that, there was only the
telegraph service at the post office in town. There was no way to
send messages while I was on the trail; the only contact we had was

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A New Heart for the Htin

through prayer. However, God graciously took care of my wife and

children at home during those trips, and kept me alive on the trail.
Back to Lao Pao. If two people are constantly in each others
company for many days, they are
apt to get on each others nerves.
Sometimes Lao Pao got on my
nerves, and I got on his nerves, so
that we would find the smallest and
most insignificant things adequate
fodder for an argument.
One day we were skirting an
already harvested opium field, where
the poppies had gone to seed, and he
started to pull the poppy seeds off
and chew them.
These are sure good-tasting
poppy-seeds, he said, and continued
expounding on good and bad quality
opium poppies.
Lao Pao
I was hot, tired, thirsty, and had
absolutely no interest in knowing the qualities of good opium poppies,
so knowing that he had been an opium addict before he became a
Christian, I charged, Lao Pao, arent you just lusting after opium,
eating poppy seeds as the nearest thing to opium that you can have?
Yeah, sure. Thats right, he acknowledged unconvincingly.
Of course, poppy seeds and opium are not the same thing, and
even here at home in America, we eat poppy seeds sprinkled on rolls,
but I didnt need logic on my side to instigate an argument with him.
Although Lao Pao wasnt the easiest person to have on the trail
with me, our arguments at least kept us motivated, and in spite of his
badgering me on the subject, we seldom if ever cut our trips short.
However, there were some real pluses in having him with me. The
reason I took him with me was that he knew how to stay alive in
the forest, and he kept me alive in places that otherwise I would
have probably died. I dont remember any time when Lao Pao was
watching out for me that we were caught out at night, unnecessarily

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Don & Sally Durling

having to sleep in the openwe usually made it to a village.

The more important benefit though was one that I hadnt
anticipated. We were there to present the Gospel of Jesus to people that
had never heard. I would present my biblically accurate account of the
Gospel and they would listen politely, but it didnt really affect them
very much. When Lao Pao talked though, they knew where he was
coming from. They knew that like them, he had fruitlessly appeased
the demons, and only grew more in bondage to them, untilunlike
themhe had found release in Jesus. They werent convinced of the
truth of the Gospel yet, but they heard him with more understanding
than they heard me. Lao Pao wasnt perfect (neither was I) but he
knew deliverance from the Enemys power, and that communicated
something to the Htin that I couldnt communicate.
Seeing tremendous changes in the lives of people who became
Christians like Lao Pao makes me marvel at the power of the Gospel
message. Missionaries, with limited resources and with tremendous
cultural and language barriers to overcome, are charged with an
awesome task. Yet, with our limited resources, there was a power
helping us that was way beyond the power of human governments.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars were expended in various
projects undertaken by the American development programs of
USAID. Agriculturalists wanted to upgrade the production of pork
in Laos. The people of Laos had raised and consumed pot-bellied
pigs for centuries. These pigs were small, had a large proportion of
fat to meat, and a lot of their body weight was made up of bone. The
American animal husbandry experts figured that if they could cross
Lao pot-bellied sows which would have resistance to local diseases,
with American boars, they would get offspring that would have smaller
bones, less fat, and more meat from the American boar, but still have
resistance to local disease from the native sow. The trouble was that
when the meatier offspring was produced and taken to market, the
Lao didnt want to buy them. They wanted pigs just like the pigs they
had always hadthey wanted more fat than meat. One day someone
came to our door wanting to sell us an American pig to butcher. He
was hoping that an American would take this American pig off of his
hands, because the Lao didnt really want that kind. He was, in fact,

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A New Heart for the Htin

trying to pawn off inferior goods onto me. Thousands of American

dollars had been spent, flying American boars half-way around the
world, trying to influence the Lao to produce and consume a more
practical kind of pork, and it had all gone to waste. Many projects
such as this were backed with almost limitless funds, but failed to
achieve the desired end.
A program to improve the production of ducks however, did meet
with more success. The kind of duck that people bred up-country at
that time was a small duck marked somewhat like a mallard. They
roamed and found food freely. These ducks though had a particular
habit of dropping their eggs wherever they were at the timefor
some reason they had lost their nesting instinct. Owners of the ducks
would collect their eggs, and put them under a hen, and the hen would
unknowingly hatch them. She would mother the ducklings when they
were small, until they grew up enough to have feathers, then they
would start swimming in ponds. With her babies swimming away, the
mother would realize that they were ducks and she was a hen, and the
relationship would end.
American experts saw that was very inconvenient for the owners
to have to gather the duck eggs from wherever the mother duck had
laid them, so they imported a large dark colored kind of duck that
did have a setting instinct, and that one project did succeed. People
stopped raising the mallard-looking type, and started raising the
imported duck. Good job!
The task of bringing the Gospel was something vastly more
formidable though. Missionaries, and local Christians after them,
came with the audacity, not just to cultivate a taste for a different kind
of pork, or a more manageable duck, but they came with the audacity
to introduce worship of the Creator-God. Centuries of appeasement
of spiritsthe most basic and internal part of their vital force, is
challenged by missionaries that look funny, speak with severe accents,
and have inadequate understanding of what makes the hearers tick.
The amazing thing about this high-stakes effort is that it works! It
works not because of the cleverness of messengers like Lao Pao and
me, not because of a promised economic advantage, nor political
power, but it works because the power of the Spirit of God fills the

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Don & Sally Durling

void, still empty after millennia of spirit-worship.

Lao Pao had been born again, and although Lao Pao and I were
unlikely witnesses, the message we brought would eventually find
lodging in the hearts of the hearers. We were ridiculously incompetent,
woefully weak, and laughably inept, but our message was eventually
heard, and would bear fruit.

I am resting in our house, sitting in a wicker chair

beside a hissing kerosene pressure lamp, feeling
sorry for myself. We could have stayed in America
with all of the conveniences of American life.
I lean back a couple of inches, and the wicker chair
becomes an airplane seat. I close my eyes, and the
hissing sound is no longer a kerosene pressure lamp,
but it is the sound of jet engines, flying us homeward
across the Pacificso tempting.
My reverie is broken. My God-appointed ministry is
here in Laos, beside a kerosene pressure lamp, until I
take another trip to present the Gospel to Htin.

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Eight

The Lost Letter

had traveled to several Htin villages, usually accompanied by

either Lao Pao or some other local Christian. The people received
us well, extended hospitality to us, and politely listened to our
presentation. Generally, after supper in the house of the village head,
we would sit around and start talking. If anyone was going to smoke
opium, that was the time to lie in a fetal position on the floor take
the pipe in hand, and all their problems found a temporary solution
in the opium pipeit was the evenings event after supper in most
Hmong or Mien villages, but it wasnt as common among the Htin,
because most of the Htin were too poor to be able to indulge the
habit. However, whether it started with opium or not, the villagers
would generally assemble at the village heads house, to hear what
we had to say. Lao Pao or whoever else was traveling with me would
usually start talking first, telling how he had been delivered from the
spirits they had appeased, and how the Lord had forgiven him of his
sins and delivered him from opium. I came to realize that when I
would give my one-shot condensation of the Gospel, it was important
to end with the resurrection, otherwise they would think that Jesus
was a great mantoo bad he is gone! We trusted that the seed planted
would eventually take root and come to life. However, there was no
obvious evidence that such a thing was happening yet.
We had been to several Htin villages carrying this message with
no visible results. Then one day, the pastor of the Hmong Church
south of town said, I have gotten a note from a Htin village that they
want to hear more about the Gospel of Jesus.
Delighted, I queried further, What is the name of the village?
I cant remember exactly, but it was something like Forked
Creek or Forked Stream, or Flowing Creek or Flowing Stream
something like that.

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I pressed further, Can I see the note?

I seem to have lost it, he replied.
That particular Hmong pastor was one of the most eloquent in
the Hmong language, but he spoke Lao with a very strong Hmong
accent, so even at best, it was hard to for me to understand what he
was trying to say. Also, I knew that a literate Htin was such a rarity,
that even if I had gotten to see the note, I would probably have a hard
time figuring it out anyway. I searched my memory and consulted
with anybody that had been on the trail with me to try to identify any
village which we had been at, that had a name something like that. We
came up with the names of three villages that might sound like that.
To chase all of these scattered villages down meant days of walking,
but this was an opportunity not to be lost under any circumstances.
I am not naturally an outdoorsman. I had endured Army basic
training, and that was enough. To slog up and down the mountains
day after day was not an easy thing for me. I had never been athletic,
and had never had any interest in hunting or fishing. I would never
have been willing to walk through the jungle in pursuit of a deer
or any other wild animal. When I did go on trips into Htin territory
though, I usually carried my own pack, because I figured that it was
likely that someday Communists would be in the area, and they would
make a big thing over the fact that the missionaries had imposed
on other people to carry their back-packs. However, in carrying my
pack, I was most careful not to carry anything that was unneeded. If
I discovered at the end of a thirteen night trip that I had carried an
extra band-aid or water purification pill over all of those miles, and
brought it back home, I would carefully plan the next time not to take
such extra weight. I didnt carry an extra pair of shoes, taking only
the rubber thong slippers that I wore on my feet. Since at that time the
Htin were almost universally illiterate, there was no need to take any
literature, other than my small English New Testament.
Even with my pack at its lightest, the trails were hard on me.
When slogging up a mountain to another village, I would pant for
breath, my legs would ache and I would always be looking for the
summit. I would think it looked about twenty minutes away, but it
would seem to back up, and not turn out to be the summit, but only

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A New Heart for the Htin

a crest, beyond which was another crest that looked like another
summiton and on.
Even though I didnt relish the idea of unnecessarily making my
way back to villages that may not have written the note, I couldnt
lose the prospect by failing to follow up on that note of inquiry, and
made plans to goto all three villages if necessary. For the sake of
the Gospel, I would have to endure some more hardness.
I arranged with a Khamou Christian named Paw Peng (pronounced
just the way it looks) to go with me one at a time to two of those
mystery villages. With difficulty, I had tried to go to the first one
alone, and they denied that they had sent it. Paw Peng and I went to
the second, and they denied it. Then with high hopes, we went to the
third of the villages. It was actually the third time that I had been to
this particular village of Forked Creek, because it was the village that
George Tubbs took me to looking for members of the Yellow Leaf
tribe before I was a missionary.
We arrived at the village, and met the head-man.
Youve come back again.
Yes, we are back again.
We exchanged the customary pleasantries, and were shown a
place where we could sleep; we reminisced about the former trips
and asked about the men of the Yellow Leaf tribe that we had met
there. Then we broached the subject that had brought us back.
Do you know Bamboo Creekthe Hmong Christian Village?
They did.
Do you know the pastor there?
They did.
He said that he had received a note from a Htin village saying
that they wanted to inquire more about Jesus, but he lost the letter,
and couldnt remember the name of the village. He thought it was
something like Forked Creek, Forked Stream, Flowing Creek, or
Flowing Stream village. We have been to two other villages with
names similar to that, and they say that they didnt send the note. We
were wondering if it came from this village.
There was a silence, and then the assistant village head-man, who
was apparently the only one in the village that knew anything about

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Don & Sally Durling

writing, carefully collected his thoughts, and in consciously wellmeasured voice replied.
I didnt write any such note, and if I did, may my right hand
wither.
Because of this unnecessarily adamant denial, (Methinks thou
dost protest too much.) I suspected that the note had actually been
sent from this third and last village and that the writer was most
likely this man we were talking to. In the meantime though, for some
reason, he had been dissuaded from acknowledging his interest.
It looked like a lost cause. We had undertaken those three trips to
scattered villages with no apparent result.
In the several days of walking that it took us to try to find the
source of that lost note, we again experienced the distress of the trail,
coupled with disappointment of failing in our immediate mission of
finding and identifying the writer of the note of inquiry. Nevertheless,
we had reinforced the message that we were carrying by making
another trip, and we had again climbed mountains.
The way of life that the Htin had known was being challenged.
On one hand, there was this little bit of evidence of interest in the
Gospel, but there were other forces at work among the Htin also.
One day the Hmong patriarch of the province (the one that I had
heard chopping wood when I was lost) came to our house with a big
story that I had trouble understanding, because neither of us spoke
perfect Lao, which was our common language. He was aware of our
particular interest in the Htin, and started telling me about this latest
story.
Some kind of a propagandist had been going from village to
village among the Htin. He would arrive after dark, and insist that
no fire be lit so that nobody could see his face. Also, he spoke to
them in Laonot any Htin dialect. His pitch was that there was a
being named Lord Fortune who had seen how the Htin had been
mistreated by everyone aroundFrench, Lao, Hmong, and others.
This mistreatment had been going on for centuries and this Lord
Fortune was going to come and rescue them, taking them away to
another place which would be like a heaven, especially for the Htin.
He told them that this Lord was building large airships to carry

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the Htin away, and he offered as proof the fact that they could hear
sound of this construction. They could hear the rumbling coming
from the northeast.
It is true that there was a rumbling sound that came from the
northeast from time to time that nobody could explain; it might have
sounded like distant thunder, except that it was going on throughout
the dry season, when there was no threat of a storm for months at a
time. Some theorized that it was the sound of bombs being dropped
by B-52s in North Vietnam and adjacent areas of Laos, but that
seemed unlikely because the bombing would have been hundreds of
miles away.
This propagandist though, assured the Htin that this rumbling
sound coming from the northeast was proof that this Lord Fortune
was busily at work building airships to take the Htin to their promised
land.
The Htin were ripe for this. They were a tribe of very low ethnic
self-esteem. They had certainly been mistreated by all of the people
mentioned, and had long since retreated into a passive attitude where
they never stood for their rights or defended themselves. They would
usually flee rather than resist any of those that mistreated them.
This propagandist for Lord Fortune (whom nobody had ever
seen) told them that to show their readiness to be rescued by this Lord
Fortune; they were to plant no crops that year. Their regular cycle of
slash-and-burn farming called for clearing the mountainside fields in
about January, and leaving the cut trees and brush to dry in the sun.
April was a month of searing heat from cloudless skies, and that was
the time that the dry brush was burned off, leaving cleared fields with
ash as fertilizer. Seed-rice was put into the ground just in time for the
rains which started in Mayjust right for good growth. There were
no alternative crops so for their agriculture, it was this or nothing.
Not all Htin had heard the propaganda of Lord Fortune, and
probably some who had heard had not heeded, and had gone ahead
and planted their fields. Nevertheless, most of the Htin in Laos
did not make a rice-field that year. The Htin, however, knew a lot
about hunting and gathering, so they were able to live off the natural
produce of the forest better than many other tribes would have, thus

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Don & Sally Durling

avoiding starvation.
To this day, I dont know what was behind all of it. One possibility
is that the propagandist for this Lord Fortune had a political agenda,
trying to destabilize the Htin for some larger plan. Whatever the case,
it was apparent that the Htin were not going to be able to continue
in their isolation. At the same time that they were being presented
with the Gospel of God, they were being seduced by a bogus and
mysterious Lord Fortune.
Maybe the assistant village head-man at Forked Creek Village
had changed his mind because the shamans of the old Htin spiritworship had dissuaded him, or maybe it was because the propagandist
for Lord Fortune was gaining influence. Anyway, the Enemy seemed
to have won that battle, but that isnt the final outcome.

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Nine

Paw Peng

od eats up in Heaven.
I blinked! Had I heard right?
It was the first time that this Htin village in northern Laos
had heard of Jesus. I had just given an accurate biblical account of
creation and the Gospel, then Paw Peng (pronounced just as it looks)
who went with me on the trail for that trip was fielding questions.
Sure enough, someone had asked him if they would have to feed
God, and Paw Peng had told them that God eats up in Heaven.
Paw Peng accompanied me on the trail as much as Lao Pao did,
and like Lao Pao, he had experienced a rather remarkable conversion
a few years earlier. He had no Christian background in his family
or his village. Once he had violently killed a man, and was terribly
plagued by guilt. Although he had become a witch-doctor, he could
find no relief from his guilt, until one night the Lord revealed to him
in a dream that he should go see the missionary that lived in town.
He went to see George Tubbs, who was the missionary living in that
province at that time, and poured out his distress, lying on the floor
of the missionarys house sobbing his guilt-ridden heart out. George
told him of Jesus who had come to take the penalty for our sins, and
Paw Peng prayed asking for salvation from his sin through Jesus.
Paw Peng was not a very polished person but I was very
dependant on him, because I knew nothing of finding my way, or
survival in the forest. He was a reliable partner on the trail, and had a
positive Christian testimony. As my trail-partner, he rescued me from
potentially disastrous situations more than once.
Twice, Paw Peng and I were caught on the trail at nightfall. One
of these times, we had stopped at a Lao village a couple of hours
before nightfall, and had been assured that if we continued on the
trail, we would be able to reach the next village before dark, but

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Don Durling & Sally Durling

darkness arrived long before we reached that village. We had been on

the trail for several days already, and my feet were blistered, but we
were heading back toward home, and we wanted to cover as much
distance that day as possible. According to the practice of the jungle,
that Lao village should have housed and fed us for the night, but they
seemed reluctant, and that is probably the reason they gave us the
false assurance that we would reach the next village before nightfall.
As twilight, then darkness descended on us, we realized our plight.
We were following a creek, crossing back and forth over it, with our
feet wet most of the time. I started to use a stick to help keep my
footing, but was still slipping and sliding a lot. Paw Peng, seeing my
distress, offered to carry my pack in addition to his; he put a pack on
each end of a stick and balanced the stick on his shoulder. Although I
couldnt see him well, I could sometimes see his silhouette, and tried
to follow. Eventually, about two hours after nightfall, we did arrive at
a village, and were given food and a good floor space to spread our
sleeping bags.
The other time we were caught out, we didnt make it to any
village. Again we were following a stream, but faced the unhappy
prospect of sleeping in the open. There are some rules to go by that
he knew, but I didnt. If there was danger of wild elephants or tigers
coming to drink at a watering-place in the area, it was best to keep a
fire going all night to ward them off. Here though, there was abundant
water, and we found a large rock in the middle of the stream that we
could unroll our sleeping bags on. Paw Peng gave me the flattest spot
on the rock, while his spot arched up in the middle, so he had more
trouble sleeping than I did. However, we managed to endure until
morning came. On another occasion, he rescued me from a potentially
serious mistake of a different nature. We were sitting around on the
floor of a Htin house, and the host casually asked me, Would you
like a boiled egg?
It seemed a little strange to me that they offered it apart from a
meal, and offered it to me only, but it sounded good, and I responded,
Sure, Id like a boiled egg.
They folded a large banana leaf into a cup-shape, filled it with
water, and put the egg in it. Then they put it in the ashes close to the

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A New Heart for the Htin

flame, and by time the banana leaf had wilted and failed as a cooking
pot, the egg was adequately boiled. Innocently, I ate it.
Unknowingly, I had sent a signalknown to the local people
that could have been disastrous, had Paw Peng not intervened.
A few days later, he brought the matter up. You know that time
you ate the boiled egg?
Yeah, I remember.
By accepting that, you were sending them a signal that you
wanted a girl for the night. I told them that you didnt understand that
custom, and that you didnt really want a girl.
That was a lesson to me that I should be careful. In my ignorance,
I could get myself into trouble. I really needed someone like Paw
Peng or Lao Pao along to protect menot only from dangers of the
jungle, but from unknown local customs.
Now, this same Paw Peng, who is so essential to me while I am
traversing the trails of Htin territory, seemed to have gone too far in
his lax explanation of spiritual issues. When I heard him say that God
eats in Heaven, my first reaction was that Paw Peng had blown it, and
I, as a missionary, should set the record straight. He was literate, so
he was able to read the Bible for himself, and in fact had attended a
short-term Bible school session, but now he said thisto people who
were hearing the Gospel for the first time.
I let him go on though. I had noticed that whenever I gave my
biblically correct account of Gods works in creation and redemption,
people listened respectfully, but with something less than avid interest.
However, in the conversation that usually followed, when Paw Peng
gave his testimony and answered their questions, their faces lit up
with understanding. He often told how as a witch-doctor, he would
do spirit ceremonies to protect a man from slashing himself at ricefield clearing time. The man who had sought his help, would get
through his clearing job without a scratch, but then Paw Peng would
accidentally slash himself while doing his own field. Sometimes he
would perform a sacrifice to a spirit to make a neighbors sick wife
well. She would get well, but then Paw Pengs own wife would get
sick. Such was the futility of appeasing the spirits.
When he told his account of the tower of Babel, it went something

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Don & Sally Durling

like this:
A long time ago, everybody in the world spoke the same
language, and lived in the same place. They were real wicked, and
figured out that they could do almost anything if they got together on
it. They decided that they would build a tower so high that it would
reach right up to Heaven. They built and built, putting stone upon
stone, and it got higher and higher, until pretty soon, it was scraping
on the bottom of Heaven, going scraaape, scraaape. Then God
looked down to see what they were doing, and said Oh oh! If I dont
do something about this to stop them, they are going to climb right
up here.
God decided that the way to put a stop to this was to confuse their
language. They went to bed that night, all talking the same language,
but the next morning they woke up speaking different languages.
A Vietnamese carpenter asked his Lao helper to hand him a board,
but the Lao couldnt understand him, so he handed him a hammer
instead, making the Vietnamese so mad he hit the Lao helper over
the head with the hammer. The Thai stonemason asked his Hmong
helper to bring a hod of mud, but the Hmong couldnt understand him
and brought him rocks, making the Thai stonemason so mad that he
threw the rocks at the Hmong. The Cambodians got into a fight with
the Khamou, and pretty soon everybody was fighting each other, so
the Hmong ran away to the higher part of the mountains, the Khamou
to the foothills, and the Lao to the lowlands. The Vietnamese ran to
Vietnam, the Cambodians to Cambodia, the Thai to Thailand, and
that is where they are today. That is the way he told it!
Now though, this colorful co-laborer in the Gospel had said that
God eats up in Heaven. I hadnt said anything about his colorful
account of the tower of Babel, but now, he had gone far enough, and
I was about to interrupt him to explain the spiritual nature of God, to
give some idea of His omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence.
(Hmmm, how would I say those words in Lao?) Then, I saw again the
interest on the hearers faces, and I remembered the polite boredom
with which they listened to me. I mentally debated whether it was
best to let him go on for the effect, or to stop him and set the record
straight for reasons of accuracy.

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A New Heart for the Htin

For Paw Peng, and for me too, language was a tool for
communication. To be used effectively, a common meeting ground
of experiences shared by the speaker and the listener are necessary.
There is no use in telling someone that a grapefruit is like a big orange
if he doesnt know what an orange is. There is nothing to be gained by
telling people about God in theologically correct words, if they have
no point of reference in their life to indicate what the words mean. I
decided to let Paw Peng go on, trusting that the Holy Spirit would use
his free interpretations of biblical truth to reach the understandings of
these people with whom he shared so many common experiences. I
let his explanation stand, and the Htin then had it on good authority
that God ate in Heaven, also that the tower of Babel had scraped
on the bottom of Heaven.
Later on, I came to understand the Htin better, and to see what
makes their world tick. One central dogma of Htin spirit worship is
that the spirits they appease like to see them poor. For a Htin spiritworshipper to have abundant or even adequate rice for the months until
the next harvest is a dangerous thing. The spirits become jealous, and
start demanding the provisions that are available, bringing sickness
or disaster of some kind so that the Htin will have to appease them
with sacrifices of whatever they have. Thus the spirits eat from the
provisions they have stored up by demanding sacrifices. God doesnt
do that; He doesnt take our provisions by demanding sacrifices,
so he doesnt eat from our granaries. The obviously easy way to
communicate that, is to say that God eats in Heaven.
Although Paw Peng was of the Khamou tribe, he understood how
the Htin thought. What he had said didnt make sense to me, but it
sure did make sense to the Htin!

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Ten

Feet

hen we were on the trail, Lao Paos or Paw Pengs feet

were never out of my sight, because when two or more
people are walking single-file on a jungle trail, it is the
unspoken duty of the person behind to keep watch for blood-sucking
leeches on the feet and legs of the person immediately in front of him.
Paw Pengs feet were rugged, alright. His toenails looked like walnut
shellsdark, thick, and coarse. The soles of his feet were almost as
thick as the soles of leather shoes, which he didnt need. Even the
tops of his feet looked leathery, from so many years of exposure to
sun, wind, and rainnot the leather of polished shoes, but rough
and scaly, long since impervious to sunburn. There was nothing
remotely beautiful about his feet, but waitIsaiah 52:7 says that Paw
Pengs feet are beautiful, because they bring tidings of salvation on
the mountains. That is where we are on the mountains, and that is
what we are doingbringing tidings of salvation. So his feet must
be beautiful!
Then I would look at my feet. Mine werent as calloused and
course as were Paw Pengs, but they had their own problems precisely
because they were not calloused. Those two very essential extremities
down there going back and forth all of the time, would get blistered
and ulcerated.
Feet were the most reliable means of transportation, because in
the 1960s, there were very few roads in Sayaboury Province. It was
possible to drive about 1 hour north, and two hours south of town,
but roads beyond that which had been built by the French during the
colonial period had deteriorated into uselessness. They had washed
out and not been maintained because of the war. Only horses or
elephants could travel on them; they were not usable even for a Jeep.
Fortunately, our mission was blessed with the services of

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A New Heart for the Htin

Missionary Aviation Fellowship (MAF), which started service in

Laos in 1965. MAF ferried pastors whenever needed, and sometimes
took Bible School students out on week-end ministries. Also, it
was very useful for mission work in Xieng Khouang Province
where most of the Hmong were, because that province had many
landing strips that had been built by the military forces. The planes
use was somewhat more restricted in our area though, because not
so many landing strips had been built. We were able to fly to Lao
Administrative District centers (something like county seats) and
there were a few other landing strips, but there was only one landing
strip that we could use deep in Htin territory. Thus, if I were going
to take a trip, the MAF pilot would often fly me and whoever was
going with me into that strip, and we would walk from there to the
places we planned to visit. Often we would walk home rather than
returning to the landing strip, because when we were on the trip, we
were beyond any communication, and if for some reason the plane
couldnt pick us up, there was no way they could advise us. We might
walk back to the landing strip for nothing, and we would still be three
days walk from home.
On my earlier trips, I had tried wearing socks and tennis shoes,
because that was what I was used to wearing, but eventually I found
out that they were a liability. Whenever I crossed a stream, socks
and tennis shoes would stay wet for a long time, and soften my skin.
Walking with softened skin in wet shoes hastened the development
of blisters, so later on I abandoned the use of socks and tennis shoes
for rubber thongs which were the standard wear of people living in
up-country Laosunless they went barefoot. My trips were usually
in the dry season, but even then it would occasionally rain, and going
downhill on a wet trail wearing thongs was real tricky, because the
slippers would slip on the wet trail, and my feet would slip on the
wet slippers. If the trail was slippery like that, sometimes I would
take them off and go barefoot. However, there were dangers in going
barefoot too, because some parasites enter the body through cracks
between the toes. I figured though, that the risk of getting a parasite
sometime in the future was to be preferred over the immediate danger
of slipping and falling head over heels down the mountain trail.

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On the trail my feet were no match for Paw Pengs. Early on a

trip, although my lungs were panting, my heart pounding, and my
legs aching as I ascended the trails, my feet would start out doing
pretty well. After several hours on the trail though, I would see a
little blister start to appear, which didnt seem to be any problem
we had places to go and people to talk to. It always felt good to sit
on a rock for a while, or lie down and rest once we got to a village,
and the lungs, heart, and legs would soon recover. However, the little
blisters on my feet didnt go away overnight, and were still there
the next morning. The next day on the trail, the blisters would get
a little bigger and more bothersome, until sometimes by the end of
a long trip, the whole heel was one big blister on each foot, and the
rest of the sole of my foot was a boomerang-shaped blister. It was
like walking on little water-balloons until they broke, then there was
tender new flesh again.
It happened like that at least twice. Once, when I was returning
to Vientiane after a trip on the trail, as I was getting off the plane,
I motioned for Sally to bring the Jeep to me rather than for me to
walk to the car, because walking was so painful. The other time I
remember, I wasnt being picked up by plane, but I was walking
home to Sayaboury, and had eagerly anticipated getting to the village

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of the Hmong patriarch who had provided food and shelter for
me the time I was caught out as darkness fell. I knew that he had
horses and although I wasnt a horseman, I hoped I would be able to
give my blistered feet some relief. When I got there, though, I was
disappointed to find out he didnt have a saddle, and since I didnt
know how to ride a horse under the best of circumstances, much less
could I ride without a saddle. He tried putting a wood frame on the
back of his most reliable horse, padded it with blankets, and helped
me sit on it, but I felt as though I were on the top of a skyscraper
during an earthquake, so I decided to walk another day on blistered
feet.
On one other occasion, a short-range foot problem was
bothersome. On that occasion my foot slipped off a rock crossing
a stream, and I jammed my big toe into the silt at the bottom of the
stream. I didnt feel much hurt though, until we were resting in a
house a little further along on the trail, and it began to ache intensely.
If I elevated my foot it ached, if I put it level it ached, and if I put it
down it still ached. It seemed that the degree of pain was unnatural,
and I suspected that the Devil was trying to get us to turn back, so
asked Paw Peng to pray for me, which he did. After trimming the
toenail, and squeezing a spot of puss the size of a pinhead out, the
pain went away, and we proceeded on the trail.
The other foot-problem that I had was tropical ulcers appearing
on my ankles. They appeared at the bloody spots left by leeches.
Bacteria would find its way under the skin, and a tropical ulcer would
appear. After a few days it would seem to heal over, then re-infect
under the skin and break open again. I got it treated by a very good
German-born doctor at the American Embassy clinic in Vientiane.
In looking over my feet, one of the nurses was puzzled at their
coarseness.
Why are his feet like that? she asked.
In his German accent, the doctor said, Cant you see? Its
because he goes barefoot.
The Lord preserved the health of my wife and children in town
during those trips, and also preserved my health on the trail, when
I was days walk from town or even sometimes days walk from the

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Don & Sally Durling

landing strip.
Only once did I have something like intestinal flu threatenbut
it didnt last. I had flown with Ollie Kaetzel and a local pastor to go
to Flat Paddy, a Khamou village, for a Christmas celebration, landing
at the Lao Administrative District airstrip 3 hours walk north of
the village to which we were going. After the celebration was over,
Ollie and the pastor would be returning north to the landing strip to
fly home, but I was going to return walking by a round-about route to
visit some villages. They left, walking north toward the landing strip,
and I left with a couple of the local Christians headed south. Trying
to keep the weight of my back-pack down I had taken no medicine
with me that time. About a half-hour out on the trail, I realized I felt
feverish, but managed to get to a Htin village, where exhausted and
weak, I lay down to rest. I had fever and diarrhea. Then, I heard a
little sound like the drone of a mosquito, that kept getting louder and
louder, until I realized that it was Dave Swanson, the MAF pilot,
flying not far overhead of the mountain we were onhe was going
to pick up Ollie and the pastor. My spirit hit bottom. Here I was,
three days walk from home, getting the flu, and there was the plane
going to pick up my co-workers. A few minutes later, having picked
them up, the plane went overhead again. It was passing right over
the mountain village I was inso close that it almost seemed that I
could have hollered and they would hear me; of course they couldnt.
Thoughts of how easy my life would have been if I had continued
as a teacher rather than a missionary, or even how much better off I
would be had I chosen to ride back to town with Ollie assailed my
feverish head. My dry throat craved orange juice, but there was none
to be had anywhere for any price.
Later, when I saw Dave, the pilot, I said, Dave, I would have
given you $100 for a glass of orange juice that day you were flying
overhead.
He answered, If I would have known that, for $100 I would have
dropped you some.
In spite of my distress that afternoon, I was all right the next day,
and continued the trip.
Generally, I didnt want to carry one ounce more in my back-

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A New Heart for the Htin

pack than I thought I would need for a trip. However, realizing that
I might get sick eating questionable food like that, on another trip, I
did decide to take a couple of sulfa pills with me. I was within a few
days of the end of my trip, when I met a man of another tribe who was
having severe stomach trouble, and the closest doctor was two days
walk away. Fairly sure that I could make it the rest of the way through
the trip, I offered him my two hoarded sulfa pills.
I sure appreciate these two pills, and would like to give you
something in return, he said.
It sounded good to me. I would really have liked to have
maybe a chicken to share with Paw Peng and our host family.
The trouble is that I dont have any chickens now.
That was a pity.
How about if I give you a spot of opium that you can take to the
next village and you can trade it for a chicken there?
Sounded fair, I thoughthmmm, but what if someone heard
that this missionary had accepted opium in payment for something?
Nope, I guess I wont. Ill just take your spoken thanks.
The Lord preserved the health of my family in town, and in spite
of temporary distress at times, I was pretty healthy during those
times on the trail. I had suffered ulcers and blisters, but everything
considered, I hadnt suffered much. I may have felt sorry for myself
in my struggle against sin, but unlike many brothers and sisters
in Christ and some in the community of missionaries, I had never
suffered to the point of bloodshed (Hebrews 12:4).
John W. Petersons song Follow Me really expressed the way
I felt on the trail:
I traveled down a lonely road, and no one seemed to care.
The burden on my weary back had bowed me to despair.
I oft complained to Jesus how folks were treating me,
And then I hear Him gently say to me,
My feet were also weary upon the Calvry road;
The cross became so heavy, I fell beneath the load.
Be faithful weary pilgrim, the morning I can see.
Just lift your cross and follow close to me.

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Don & Sally Durling

I work so hard for Jesus, I often boast and say.

Ive sacrificed a lot of things to walk the narrow way.
I gave up fame and fortune; Im worth a lot to Thee.
And then I hear Him gently say to me,
I left the throne of glory and counted it but loss.
My hands were nailed in anger upon a cruel cross,
But now well make the journey, with your hand safe in mine
So lift your cross and follow close to me.
Oh Jesus, if I die upon a foreign field some day,
Twould be no more than love demandsno less could I repay.
No greater love hath mortal man, than for a friend to die.
These are the words He gently spoke to me,
If just a cup of water I place within your hand
Then just a cup of water is all that I demand,
But if by death to living they can Thy glory see,
Ill take my cross and follow close to thee.

Reprinted by special permission

of Brentwood-Benson Music Publishing, Inc.

My feet may have had blisters and ulcers, but they hadnt been
pierced by nails.

71

Eleven

Folksinger Gome

uring my time in the Army in Korea, I had been part of a

quartet that sang at GI meetings and in hospitals. We called
ourselves the Pusan Gospel Quartet. The bass was from
California, I was the baritone, the second tenor was from Tennessee,
and the first tenor was from Texas. We were a diverse lot, but we
enjoyed Christian fellowship and we enjoyed singing together.
The Texan wanted to record some of our singing to send back to
his family to hear. He was recently acquainted with missionary couple
of the Assemblies of God who had just arrived to work in Korea, and
among their possessions, they had a wire recorderprecursor to the
tape recorder. We went to the home of these new missionaries one
afternoon to do that recording.
I observed these newly arrived missionaries, Mr. & Mrs. Louis
Richards, and mentally compared them to the other missionaries I
knew there in Korea. They were not youngin fact they were grayhaired, and at that age, would probably not ever gain much fluency in
the Korean language. They were starting out with a new missionno
churches to work with, and I figured that probably after a fruitless
year or two, they would be on their way back to the U.S. They were
congenial and nice people all right, but their chances of achieving
anything looked hopelessly remote.
Soon after that recording session, the four of us in our quartet
split up, because the tenor was transferred to Japan and the second
tenor completed his tour of duty. Finally, the bass and I left Korea,
and I heard nothing more about Mr. & Mrs. Richards until until
but that is getting ahead of the story. Well come back to the Richards
later.
After the Army, University, work with the University of Michigan
overseas, marriage, acceptance as a C&MA missionary, and Lao

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Don Durling & Sally Durling

language study, I found myself walking among the Htin in Sayaboury

Province of Laos, to bring the message of Jesus to them.
On one of those trips, I had been flown to the Lao Administrative
District airstrip north of where we lived, and walked to a Khamou
village where there were only two Christian families. Even though
they were quite remote, we tried to visit these two families as often
as possible, because they needed teaching and encouragement. I got
to their village, and there in the house of the older Christian was a
gaunt man sittingprobably a house guest. They introduced me to
him, and said that he was a Htin who was passing through. He was
called Folksinger Gome.
Every ethnic minority has their own distinctive style for folk
singingthey may even have several styles within the same tribe. To
people that have had no television, no theater, no concert performances,
and very little radio, the art of folk singing, according to their own
style is a vital form of entertainment. For tribal people who have
become Christians, one of the most effective ways of telling a Bible
story is to put it into a folk song. To the outsider, some of such music
is meaningless, and maybe even repugnant, but to the insider, the
very exclusiveness of the art form adds to its beauty. Imagine, if you
were part of an exclusive group that had over centuries developed
a particular art form, unique to your culture and your outlook on
life. Imagine if only a few thousand people could share that! That
musicthose lyrics, would speak to you like nothing else.
For the tribal groups of Southeast Asia, and probably the whole
world, their uniquetheir particular musical model is the ultimate
form for expression and appreciation. Hmong have their folk-songs
that no other tribe can imitate or appreciate, that speak of Hmong
values, Hmong legends, Hmong history, Hmong joys and sorrows
everything that is Hmong and that is about being Hmong. Mien have
folk songs that their ancestors brought with them from China. To an
outsider they sound like a sad, mournful, funeral dirge, but to Mien
people, the songs can tap the deepest wells of Mien feeling, flavored
with a tang that only the Mien knowoutsiders cant penetrate
that emotion. Khamou also have their folk songs. There are several
styles; some are smooth and easy to listen to even from the point of

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A New Heart for the Htin

view of an outsider. Other Khamou folk songs are rhythmiceven

staccato. These are styles that have developed over centuries without
borrowing from the dominant Lao culture. The styles though are not
the important thingthe important thing is the soul-stirring spiritual
core of a tribe that has honed its art form to perfection of expression.
Htin too have their folk songs. Interestingly, the dominant folk
song style among the Htin was not sung in their original language,
but in an old form of northern Thai that the northern Thai no longer
use. That particularly Htin form of expression can bare the darkest
fears, plumb the deepest passions, and fan the brightest hopes that
any Htin could knowand could express only to other Htin.
Folksingers could always get a hearing among the Htin. They
had several styles of singing, and some of the styles required a agile
tongue, something like that of an auctioneer, but it was an art form
that was musical and to the Htin, intensely gripping.
This particular folksinger that I met in that house had traveled
quite a lot. Whereas most Htin died in the same area that they were
born in, seldom traveling outside of Htin territory, Folksinger Gome
had traveled widely in Laos and Thailand; he knew a lot and had a lot
to communicate. Yet, he could communicate this wide experience by
means of a communication designed exclusively and specifically for
Htin. However, Folksinger Gome was dying of TB (tuberculosis).
I looked at Folksinger Gome, and thought that if someone like
him would become a Christian, he might be the means by which a
lot of Htin would hear the gospel, because he was certainly gifted,
and a unique communicatorbut he was dying of TB. I mentally
considered how I might help him, and practical factors sprung up into
view. The only way to medically help him would be to take him back
to the town we lived in, which was three days walk away, unless we
had the MAF plane available. If I took him back to town with me,
the treatment those days would be to get an injection of penicillin at
the hospital in town three times a week for a period of six months.
He had nobody in town that could take him in, so that meant that if I
undertook to help him, I would have to find a place for him to stay
probably have a thatch house built behind our house, and I would
have to provide food for him for those six months. Of course, I had a

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Don & Sally Durling

wife and little children, and if he was around us for that time, maybe
they would get infected with TB. Moreover, he wasnt the only one
in such need. There were probably dozens of others in dire need as
he was, and I certainly couldnt help them all. I weighed all of these
considerations without letting anyone else in the present company
know what I was thinking. Compassion and practicality struggled in
my mind.
Finally, I made a very practical decision that it was too much to
undertake, and left himprobably to die very soon, while I went on
evangelizing in other villages.
More than a decade later, my wife and I had reason to go to
Bangkok, and we were staying at the Alliance Guest Home, which
was available not only to Alliance missionaries, but to missionaries
from many missions. At that time, there was a young American
couple there who were making a round-the-world tour of Assembly
of God mission fields, and they had just come from Korea with a
most interesting account to tell. They told the account of a Korean
pastor, who had as a young man been dying of TB. His case was so
advanced that he was coughing up not only blood, but pieces of lung
tissue. In his hopeless state, he had been brought to a mission to hear
the Gospel, where the preacher was an American missionary who
had to speak through an interpreter because he didnt know enough
Korean. The young Korean man, who had less than a month to live,
went forward at the meeting, and the missionary took him into his
office, and led him to the Lord, so he no longer needed to fear death.
After he became a Christian, his family disowned him, and since
he was beyond treatment, he decided to go up into the hill country
around Pusan to die. Before going however, he wanted to stop by to
thank the missionary that had led him to the Lord, so he went to say
good-bye to them at their house. The missionaries decided that rather
than letting the young man go up into the hills to die, they would
help him. They took him under their wings, providing for him, and
praying for him until the Lord brought healing to his whole body, and
with his renewed strength, he has been greatly used of the Lord.
The Korean is Yong-gi Cho, who became pastor of the largest
church in the world. The missionaries were Mr. & Mrs. Louis

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A New Heart for the Htin

Richards, whom I had met years earlier, and whom I thought were
slated for failure.
Hearing that, I was immediately hit with the comparison and
contrast of Rev. & Mrs. Louis Richards ministering to Yong-gi
Cho, and my leaving Folksinger Gome to die. Any comment that
I could make after being faced with this comparison is triteno
adjective in the dictionary is adequate to describe the realization of
a lost opportunity that came to me. I could, in the interest of selfprotection callously insulate myself in a perversion of the truth of
predestinationthat it didnt really matter in the end. Or, I could reel,
helpless in a muck of impotent depressionmorbidly convinced that
my failure was, if not unforgivable, so reprehensible that by any
measure, I was worse than an abject failure.
However, God does allow U-turns.

76

Twelve

Samet

(written by Sally)

his was the big daythe day unlike any other in my time as
a missionary wife and mother. This was the day that we were
going to go to a Htin village up in the mountains. Usually
it was Don leaving with Paw Peng or Lao Pao accompanying him
on the evangelistic trips while the children and I stayed behind in
our house in Sayaboury. This time would be different. This time, the
children and I were going along!
Although the town of Sayaboury, where we lived, was the
provincial capital, it was a small village with a couple of dirt roads,
no electricity or city water, no restaurants, and a market that ran so
early in the morning that you had to shop by flashlightif it was light
enough to see, you were too late.
When Don was gone on his trips, we seemed to have all kinds of
trouble with breakdowns and with the hired help. The car wouldnt
start, the pump wouldnt work, one of us would get sick, or the hired
man wouldnt show up. The better Dons trip seemed to go, the more
problems we who were left behind seemed to have.
Usually, when Don was gone, I wasnt afraid to be alone with the
children. George and Martha Tubbs, who had lived there before us had
installed a bath with indoor plumbing, for which I was ever grateful,
so we didnt have to go outside the house at night. We had a well
in the yard, and we had a pump powered by a hard to start gasoline
engine that pumped water up to a gravity tank, with plumbing into
the house. We put our drinking water through a filter to purify it.
One night we were having our devotions with the children before
they went to bed, and Mary asked to sing the water filter song.
Puzzled, we enquired further, and discovered that the chorus she
wanted was, Jesus Gave Her Water That Was Not from the Well
She naturally assumed that if the water wasnt from the well; it must

77

A New Heart for the Htin

be from the water filter.

There were screens on the
windows of our house, but the cracks
between the clapboard siding of
the house were wide enough that
bugs could get in anyway, and we
had to use mosquito nets. We didnt
have any bars on our windows to
inhibit thieves, and hot nights were
extremely hot, so we left the shutters
open to catch any breeze that might
come in. Whether Don was at home
or not, it never entered my mind that
I should shut the shutters. Then one
day when Don was away, a lady from
Sally with Mary.
the little store kitty-corner from our
house said, Arent you afraid to be
there all alone? Id never stay alone. There was something in her
tonejust something in the way she said it that put a fear in my
heartlike the voice of Satan himself. That night I found myself
fearful and praying most of the night. I had to get back to Gods
word, and claim His promises to overcome that fear. We thank Him
for His faithfulness.
That is the way it was when we were at home without Don. But
this time, the trip was going to be different! The children and I were
going to accompany Don to the Htin village of Samet! Tim was two
and a half, and Mary was one year old. Don wanted to take us along
to have the people there see that he was a husband and family man,
and like them in that respect.
This was also the village where the head-man had told Don he
could guarantee that no Htin would ever become a Christian.
We packed two back packs with the sleeping bags, diapers, water
pills, canteen, and other things wed need for the overnight stay. We
even took a camerasomething that Don never took on trips because
of the extra weight. This trip, however, was to be a short trip, and also,
Don had arranged for carriers to meet us at the landing strip so wed

78

Don & Sally Durling

landing strip

View of the landing strip from the cockpit.

have help with the packs instead of having to carry our own packs as
Don usually did. I was excited, and yet somewhat apprehensive. Not
having been overnight in a Htin house before, I didnt know how it
would be, and didnt know how the children would react. However,
God had burdened us with the Htin people, and I was actually going
to get to see them in their homes and in their own village. It was very
exciting.
To be out here on the cutting edge of missions this was really a
heady experience for mea fulfillment of my dreams. Having grown
up in a Christian home, from very early in my life, I can remember
standing up in church in our Busy Bees for Jesus group and saying
that I loved Jesus and He had given me a clean heart. Mother usually
had missionary speakers home for a meal, or had hosted them or other
guest speakers overnight. So, besides hearing missionary messages
in church, we got to learn more about missions at home. Early in
my life, I felt the call of missions. However, as a teenager, I got to
thinking of missionaries as old ladies in long black dresses, and that
wasnt for me. Consequently, I planned my high school studies in
commercial courses with no plans for the mission field.
Nevertheless, God had other plans. In youth camp at Beulah

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A New Heart for the Htin

Beach Ohio, we had

a woman missionary
speaker who not only
brought good messages
and a challenging
presentation
of
missions, but beyond
that, she was smartly
dressed in pretty, upto-date clothes! She,
through the grace
of God, caused my
whole outlook on
missionaries and missions to change. Once again, I was brought into
alignment with Gods call upon my life.
After graduation from high school came work, Nyack College,
and then working in the Kentucky mountains with the Beefhide
Gospel Missionthis was a place I had always said I would never
go. However, if one is to be totally yielded to the Lord, there can be
no refusal of things to do or places to go, so the Lord placed me in the
Kentucky mountains where I found submission to His will to mean
continuation of fellowship with Him, and I discovered that I was
happy there. After Kentucky, there were other years of preparation
and study at Houghton College. Finally, in September 1958, I found
myself in Laos as bookkeeper and secretary to the Field Chairman.
Other chapters have told of Don and me meeting in Laos, of our
marriage there, and eventually being assigned to Sayaboury Province
in up-country Laos.
Now, here I was, off to my first overnight in a Htin village. The
children were too small to understand much of what was going on,
but they liked the prospect of an airplane ride. They were used to
being in different villages of other ethnic groups, so it was not too
unusual for themexcept that this time they were going to ride in the
airplane rather than in a Jeep.
The MAF (Missionary Aviation Fellowship) plane was waiting

80

Don & Sally Durling

for us at the airport. We got in,

and strapped ourselves down,
and Dave Swanson, the pilot
checked everything before
starting the engine. The engine
sputtered a little, then started and
ran smoothly. We taxied to the
end of the runway; Dave revved
the engine up, and we took off.
After take-off, we flew toward
the westtoward Htin territory,
and when we looked down, we
saw mountains, rivers, and trees.
Dotted among the trees were
sparsely scattered little villages
and trails that ran to and from
the little villages and rice fields.
We circled around to get into
position to land uphill on the
little inclined landing strip that
had been cleared by and for the Lao Army a few years earlier. We
touched down, and were soon bouncing along among hummocks of
grass that had grown up since the strip was last used.
We had arrived! As we got out of the plane, we looked around
and saw mountains, trees, a run-down building, and a trail. What we
didnt see was any peoplemore specifically, no carriers. The plane
had other places to go that day, so after saying good-bye, it took off,
and left us there with our children and our back packs. What to do
now, Lord? We could see the one thing there was to do. Don and I
each took a pack and put it on our back, and Don carried Mary in his
arms. Thankfully, Tim was old enough to walk some of the way.
This first stretch was the easier part of the trip, but I didnt realize
it and at that time found myself thinking, This isnt too bad. I think
I can make it okay. Later Id find out that the hard part was ahead.
Going down a gradual incline, an hour later, we reached a small village
on the trail, and stopped for a rest. The carriers from Samet met us at

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A New Heart for the Htin

this first village. Thankfully, we

would have help for the rest of
the way. They had started out to
meet us after they saw the plane
circle around and knew that we
were actually coming. After
purifying some water to drink
with the pills that we had brought
along, eating some glutinous rice
that they offered us, and having
a short rest, it was time to move
on. There were 4 carriers; two
took the back packs, and two
others carried the children on
their backs. Now we were going
noticeably downhill. When we
finally reached the bottom, we sat
down to rest on the rocks at the
stream, while the carriers took a
So tired...
swim to cool off.
Then came the hard part. We had to go up the other sideand it
went up, and up! The carriers hurried along this familiar hill to their
home village, but my pace was a bit slower.
As I made my way up trying to reach them, I saw them sitting,
resting on some rocks up ahead, waiting for us. Then I saw Don (who
had been trying to keep close enough to the carriers to be able to
reassure the children if they got concerned, yet be able to keep me in
sight to know I was okay.) I saw him catch up with the carriers, and
sit down to wait for me. I knew that once I got close to them, they
would jump up and start on again, and I wouldnt get any chance at
all to restand I was the one who needed rest more than anybody.
So, I lay right down alongside the trail where I was to make sure that
I too got a rest. I didnt care who came along and saw meI was
tired. If the Communist insurgents had come, I figured theyd just
have to shoot me. (It wasnt likely that there were any insurgents in
the area, but it was within the realm of possibility; we never knew

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Don & Sally Durling

Tim and curious Htin children.

when there might be some of them in the area.) When I got up, I saw
the carriers get up and zip up the mountain, followed by Don.
By the time I got up to the village, everyone was gathered around.
Tim, with his white hair and skin was attracting a lot of attention.
Standing outside of the longhouse where we would be staying, it
seemed as though every child in the village was there in a circle that
had formed around him. Being a fearful, shy, and quiet people, they
were curious, but they didnt want to get too near this odd child who
was so white.
This village of Samet was the only Htin village we know of that
lived in longhouses. The houses were long, because when a daughter
got married, they just added a room on to the end of the house for the
new family. The houses were up on stilts and the pigs and chickens
were kept under the houses. After we climbed the ladder to the porch,
we entered the first room in the house which was where we as visitors
would stay. It was a large room with a fireplace in the middle and no
furniture, except for a couple of logs to sit on by the fire. There was
an area away from the fire for us to spread our sleeping bags.
People in the back rooms had to walk through this room to get to
their rooms, and since there were many rooms in the longhouse, a lot

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A New Heart for the Htin

of people had to walk through this room. A couple of the carriers also
slept in this front room.
They would have fed us, but in order to not be a drain on them,
we bought a chicken from them and they prepared it for us, and gave
us some rice. When we finished eating, the village men started to
come in and gather around so Don had opportunity to present the
Gospel to them again. They sat and talked a while before leaving to
turn in for the night. We settled into our sleeping bags for a nights
rest. It was hard to get to sleep with so many thoughts of the days
events going through my mind, to say nothing of the hard floor. The
next morning, after thanking them for their hospitality, we had that
same long trip to look forward to, but we had been with the Htin in
their village, which made it all worthwhile.
As we sat in the abandoned army shelter by the landing strip,
waiting for the plane
to pick us up, we
saw some cherrygrowing
tomatoes
by this deserted, rundown building which
was formerly used by
the army. It is just as
if they were there for
us. We picked some
and were refreshed.
We thanked the
Lord for this added
blessing he had given
us.
We marveled at
His goodness as we sat there. The plane arrived to pick us up, and we
were thankful for this plane that played such a vital part of getting
out Gods word. We returned home with a prayer that the Lord would
soon release these people from the power of the evil spirits that had
them bound and made them so very fearful. We prayed that the village
chiefs guarantee that no Htin would ever become Christians would

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Don & Sally Durling

come to nothingwe were praying that the Htin would become

Christians.
I was tired as we arrived home, but so thankful for this opportunity
to know the Htin better.

As long as our children were little, Sally and I had a

little time to ourselves after they went to bed. Since
our town had no electricity, moonless nights were
really dark, and we had no electricity for fans, so we
often would go out on the back porch and sit in the
cooler darkness.
One such night Sally brought out a piece of chocolate
cake for each of us to eat. We enjoyed the cake, and
put the plates down on the bench beside us. After a
while we each picked up our plates to go back inside
the house. In the darkness, Sally saw that there was
still something on the plate that she figured must be
a remainder of the cake. She was about to pick it up
with the fork and pop it into her mouth, but decided
she should take it into the light first. It turned out to
be a slug that had crawled onto her plate.
Yuck!

85

Thirteen

Three Strikes,
But Not Out

y the beginning of dry season that started in October 1966, I

was finished with Lao language study, so our responsibilities
for ministry in the province were broadened. Kaetzels had
been needed in the Royal Capital City of Luang Prabang, so we were
going to be involved increasingly with the Khamou and Hmong
churches in Sayaboury province. This included going to minister in
the Khamou village in the northern Administrative District of the
province called Flat Paddy Village that Ollie Kaetzel had ministered
in from time to time. (The village that we had gone to for a Christmas
celebration when Ollie and the pastor had flown overhead while I was
right below them, sick with intestinal flu.) To get there, we usually
flew to the northern Administrative District airstrip, which was less
than a half hour by plane. Then, to get to the village from that landing
strip, we would walk, backtracking to the SSW, three and a half hours.
That village was partly Christian and partly spirit-worshippers. Early
in the dry season, I planned a trip there, but neither Lao Pao nor Paw
Peng could go with me, so I needed to find someone else to be a
companion on the trail. There was an old Christian Khamou man that
used to live in that village, who was willing to go with me. His name
was Grandfather Gert. Although we were not going to a Htin village
this time, he had been well acquainted with the Htin, because there
were a lot of Htin villages around there, and he also spoke Htin.
We landed at the landing strip, and proceeded to walk SSW
toward the village, passing through a few Lao villages en route. It
was not a particularly difficult walk, and nothing seemed amiss on
the trail, so Grandfather Gert and I walked along making small talk,
with no particular concern. After ministering there a couple of days,

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Don Durling & Sally Durling

we walked back toward the airstrip and chatted with an American

volunteer friend that I knew living there, while waiting until the plane
came, then we flew home.
A couple of weeks afterward, Grandfather Gert came scurrying
to the back door of our house in Sayaboury. He was highly agitated
for an old man, and said, Missionary, you know that day we were
walking on the trail from the landing strip to the village of Flat Paddy
where the Christians are? We almost got shot.
Then he told the rest of the story. Word had come back from
the Communist guerillas who were beginning to infiltrate the area,
that there had been three of them hiding beside the trail as we were
walking along. The one in charge was Hmong, and the other two
were Htin. The Hmong was getting ready to shoot me, because I
obviously didnt look like I belonged in the area, but the two Htin
fellows were friends of Grandfather Gert, and were afraid that if they
tried to shoot me, he might get hit, so they persuaded the Hmong not
to shoot. They had also been alongside the trail when we returned a
few days later, but again held their fire. That meant that there were
two unknown Communist guerillas to whom I was indebted for my
lifeand they were Htin!
One strike, but I was not out.
During that same dry season, and not knowing the extent to which
the insurgents were beginning to infiltrate the area, we naively had
hoped to relocate in a Htin village. If we could do that, we would
be living in a Htin environment, and thus would learn the Htin Lua
language more easily. We had little children at the time, so it was no
small feat to try to live in the mountains, where there were no roads.
One likely location seemed to be in the area of Sapi (pronounced
spee). It was within sight of the Thai border, and quite deep into
Htin territory. The main advantage of the area was that there had once
been a landing strip there adjacent to a military camp that had been
long since abandoned. The landing strip had become overgrown, but
it would be easier to restore it than to build a new one. Also, it was
right at a Htin village. The only landing strip in Htin territory that was
still usable, and that we often used, was at a place where there was no

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village nearbyjust another abandoned army camp.

Considering that the Sapi landing strip was the most promising
location for us, I again went there and talked to the village elders
about the possibility of restoring the airstrip, and coming with my
family to live there. Typical of Htin, they didnt make much comment,
but verbally agreed that when they came into town, they would come
by our house, and I would pay them a price for the labor of clearing
the brush that had overgrown the strip. A long time passed though,
and they didnt come, so the next time the MAF plane was in our
province, Dave Swanson, the pilot, agreed to over fly the village at
a low altitude, and drop the money tied to a rock down to them, thus
paying in advance for the clearing labor.
The next step after they cleared the brush away would have been
for Dave and me to fly to the single usable airstrip in Htin territory,
and walk about a day to Sapi, where he would assess the airstrip closeup from the ground before attempting to land there. We dropped the
money with no incident, but several days later, someone came to our
house in town, carrying the money backthey didnt want to clear it,
but I still didnt know why.
Later we learned why. Soon after that, the Communist guerillas
set up a camp within sight of Sapi Village. It was a good thing that we
had been blocked from living there.
Second strike, but still not out.
In that same dry season, the Lord preserved my life a third time.
By that time I had been a missionary long enough that I was able
to function on mission committees. A committee meeting had been
called, and I flew by a scheduled commercial flight to Vientiane for
that committee meeting. The meeting was finished on Friday, and
although there was a commercial flight that I could take to return on
Saturday, I knew that the MAF plane was going to fly up on Sunday,
so decided to save the mission the cost of an airplane ticket, and
delayed my return until Sunday, when the MAF plane would go to
Sayaboury to pick up Bible School students returning from week-end
ministries.
On Sunday morning we had our usual radio check at seven

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oclock, when missionaries up-country were all contacted. I went into

the Mission Chairmans office to hear the radio traffic, and I heard
Sallys voice crackling on the radio from our house in Sayaboury,
then heard Ollie Kaetzels voice from Luang Prabang, and Ollie said
he had something to say to Sally. Then he asked her if the scheduled
commercial plane that I would have been on had arrived, and Sally
said that it hadntit had stalled in mid-flight and plummeted into
the Mekong River.
On Saturday, the schedule for that commercial flight was to fly
a triangle. First from Vientiane to Luang Prabanga little more
than an hour flight by the two propeller DC-3. Then after unloading
and reloading, it would fly the short twenty minute hop from
Luang Prabang to Sayaboury, and finally from Sayaboury back to
Vientianea little less than an hour. They would usually ascend to a
decent flying altitude for the first and last laps, but since the middle
lap was quite short, they generally flew at low altitude, visually
following the Mekong River and the dirt road that led from the river
on down to the town of Sayaboury. If it was cloudy, they tried to
stay low and fly under the clouds. On that particular day, the plane
was overloaded from Luang Prabang to Sayaboury, and when flying
under the heavy clouds, trying to keep the Mekong River in sight,
it had stalled and plunged into the river. A fisherman on the river
said that it looked as though the pilot had seen a dense, heavy cloud
ahead, which he mistook for a mountain so he pulled up sharply,
causing the DC-3 to lose air-speed and stall, plummeting into the
river. The wreckage was never found in the muddy river. A Catholic
Bishop had been on the plane.
Third strike, but I was still there!
I rode up on the MAF plane that Sunday afternoon, saving the mission
the price of a ticket, and in the process saving my life too. Sally and
the children came to meet us at the airport, and the Bible School
students who had come up for a week-end ministry boarded the MAF
plane to return to their studies the next day.
I have often wondered what reports were sent back to overseers
concerning those three events. In particular, I have wondered if the

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communist guerilla troops had sent back a report to their headquarters

about seeing this American-looking fellow on the trail, and how they
had me in the sights of their rifles, but let me go. I have wondered if
demonic spirits who had been trying to block the spread of the Gospel
had reported back to their evil authority that they had manipulated to
set up an ambush, that had for some reason or other been foiled.
I wondered if I had really come that close to moving my wife
and children into an area that was going to be taken over by the
insurgents. Had the villagers deliberately hindered our move to that
convenient airstrip, or was it the sovereignty of God, working through
the councils of the Htin elders in that village?
I wondered about the plane crash that I came so close to being a
part of. Did I escape it because of my depression-kid frugality that
wanted to save the mission the price of an airplane ticket? Were the
agents of darkness who were trying to put an end to our ministry foiled
by the unseen Angels of God? Was there warfare in the Heavens that
was mercifully hidden to our eyes?
In similar situations fellow missionary colleagues who were
following the same calling have had their lives taken. Some fellow
missionaries of the Christian and Missionary Alliance in countries
neighboring Laos have been killed in warfare, or violence, or died
of diseasesometimes leaving young children behind. Several of
the early Swiss Mission Evangelique missionaries in south Laos had
died of disease in the early 1900s. Then there is the Presbyterian
missionary couple from northern Thailand who went by overland
trail evangelizing into Laos; the wife died, and was buried alongside
the trail. In our case God, in His sovereignty, had spared us. We may
not know the reason, but we take comfort in the fact that our God
reigns.
Whatever it was, it seemed clear that within that particular dryweather period of a few short months, I had been spared from death
three times, and it was very sobering. Apparently, God had something
for us to do yet.

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Fourteen

The First Htin

Christian

re you looking for someone to teach you Htin?

I looked at the young fellow standing there on our porch, and
said that indeed, I would like to learn Htin, and asked if he
knew someone that could teach me. I had no idea that he was asking
for himself, because he didnt look like a Htin. Of course not all Htin
look the same, but generally, they have curlier hair and deeper set
eyes than Lao, They are apt to be smaller than any of the other ethnic
groups around, and this fellow standing in front of me looked more
like a Lao than a Htin. He said though, that he was a Htin, and would
be interested in teaching me.
Generally, Htin were afraid to stay even overnight in the Lao
town. Once in a while though, a young person would separate from
his family and leave his village to come and live in town, working for
Lao, hoping eventually to pass as Lao. However, traditional village
Htin rarely would come into town and stay overnight. This fellow
though, was willing to come with his wife and live in town while he
taught me Htin. We agreed on a wage, and we made arrangements
for housing for them, and they were indeed willing to come and live
in town.
In a few days, he came back with his sparse belongings, and
moved into town with his wife. At that time, I knew of only four Htin
in Laos who were literate, and of course that literacy was in the Lao
language, because their own language was unwritten. This teacher
was not one of those who were literate.
We settled somewhat uneasily into the routine of Htin language
study. He sat across the desk from me day after day, and spoke
Htin words and sentences that I tried to write down, sometimes

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using international phonetic characters, and sometimes using Lao

characters. It was not easy for either of us, because the weather was
hot, and I didnt really like sitting at a desk hour after hour myself.
It was even worse for him, because he had never tried to sit at a desk
before, so it was even harder.
After teaching us a few weeks, he said that he wanted to become
a Christian. I was delighted, but of course realized that sometimes
ulterior motives are involved. After all, he was being paid for
teaching me Htin, and the thought occurred to me that he might be
trying to please me by saying that he wanted to become a Christian,
hoping that would enhance his employment. On the other hand, it
was unlikely that any Htin would make such a decision lightly.
The crisis of becoming a Christian isnt the same in every culture.
The crisis of conversion for any tribal spirit-worshipper in Laos was
usually the destruction of the fetishes they carried on their persons,
or put on a shelf in their houses. These were not merely passive
good-luck charms, but were articles representing blood sacrifices,
spirit encounters, or maybe a tooth or hair of a revered dead relative.
Nor were they merely symbols, but tangible ties to the appeasement
of spirits. Power was invested in the fetishes, and to destroy such
fetishes, they would either have to be burned, or if they were not
combustible, thrown away in an irretrievable place, such as being
thrown into a river or lake. To do such a thing was fearsome, and
was asking for revenge from an offended spiritmaybe the spirit
of the deceased father or mother whose tooth or hair they carried.
Willingness to actually destroy the fetishes was strong evidence of
sincerity that a person was really putting himself under the power
of the blood of Christ to deliver him from the power of the spirits.
Our Htin teacher brought his fetishes out to be destroyed. We prayed
for salvation, and protection from the spirit powers that were being
displaced, then we burned the combustible fetishes. Later, the noncombustible fetishes were thrown away in a river or lake where they
could not be retrieved. Our teacher and his extended family had
become Christians. His wife was living in town with him, but his
widowed mother, two little brothers, and little sister stayed back in
their village.

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The thought which had crossed my mind that maybe he was

making this break and becoming a Christian with the idea of building
up his status as our teacher, turned out to be wrong. Only after he
had become a Christian, did he tell me that he had in fact come to
teach me Htin, because he wanted to become a Christian. It was not
as I had suspected that he decided to become a Christian because
he was teaching me Htin. He had learned about the Gospel from an
old Lao man living in his village that had received a tract some forty
years earlier in Thailand, but had not become a Christian at that time.
Only after being a witch-doctor most of his life, had this old man
come to believe in Jesus.
Gradually, I began to realize that although our teachers knowledge
of the Htin language was that of a native speaker, he didnt carry a
lot of influence among the Htin, because he lived in a village that
was mixed with Lao, and was in fact partly Lao himself. He grew up
speaking Htin and Lao, so was thoroughly fluent in both, but he may
not have been seen by other Htin as a main-line Htin. Nevertheless,
there had been a break-through in that the demonic defenses holding
the Htin in captivity had been breached by the Gospel.
The guarantee by the head-man of the village of Samet that no
Htin would ever become a Christian was wrong!
But, the Enemy took note of that.
One day the teacher came to us in distress to say that his little
brother, who was probably about ten years old, had become demonpossessed. Up until that time, I had never had experience with that
kind of thing, but fortunately another C&MA missionary living
in Sayaboury had. She was Dutch, and had been a missionary in
Indonesia where she had seen demon-possession before coming to
Laos. Some deliverances are quick, she said, but others take prayer
and fasting over a period of time.
The teachers mother and little brothers and sister all walked into
town, and we gathered in the teachers simple house to wage spiritual
warfare. We fasted and alternately sang hymns, prayed, and read the
Bible for a couple of days, then the demon gradually released his
hold on the little brother, and he became normal again.
In retrospect, it seems that the Enemy, seeing his monopoly

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hold on the Htin being threatened, summoned stronger demons to

challenge the event. Our teacher, his wife, and his widowed mother
were adults, and less vulnerable, so the demons attacked one of the
weaker ones in this case the younger brother. Praise the Lord he
was delivered.
That was my initiation to the evil of demon possession, and it
was a very sobering experience. It wasnt the last time I would see it
though.
We continued study of the Htin language, but it had come to
the point that we rarely took trips outside town anymore, because
insurgent activity was increasing, and it was particularly dangerous
for me as an American to travel by foot on a trail. On a few occasions,
this teacher did go with me on shorter trips, but there was not much
response among the Htin yet. Once we flew by MAF plane to the
landing strip in Htin territory that we had used in the past. By that
time, guerilla warfare was threatening again, and the Army camp by
the landing strip had been re-opened. I stayed at the Army camp,
because they said it wasnt safe for me to go to the villages, but this
new Christian did travel to some of the nearby Htin villages, and then
came back, but there was still no breakthrough.
Word came to us that one Htin village had relocated to an area
that was accessible by Jeep. It was in an area that an irrigation dam
was being built, so there was quite a settlement of Lao and Hmong
laborers and equipment operators for that project, and was not
considered dangerous. Consequently, the Htin teacher went with me
in the Jeep to this newly relocated Htin village. After driving more
than an hour, we planned to park the Jeep in the village, and then stay
overnight so we could present the gospel after supper, when all of
the men of the village were free. We parked the Jeep as planned, and
after supper started telling the Gospel, when all of a sudden we heard
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! just outside the village. Convinced
that it was a insurgent attack, the Htin teacher and I fled from the
house into the moonless black night. I had dark pants and dark socks
on, and was able to find a hole big enough only that I could hide my
upper torso in, and spent the rest of night with my head in that hole.
I suppose it was kind of an ostrich-like position, but my face was

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light colored, and so was my shirt, so I tried as best I could to hide

those parts in the hole, whereas my pants and socks were dark, and
almost invisible in the darkness. After the explosions had stopped,
the teacher went back to the village to spend the rest of the night, but
I stayed with my head and upper torso hidden in the hole. The next
morning we found out that some cows had wandered into a minefield,
setting off the explosions. I also found the next morning that I was
itching furiously from some tiny bugs in the soil of the hole I had
been in. No damage was done, but there was no visible result from
our presentation of the Gospel either. However, the fact that there
was need for a mine field so close to that village was evidence of a
deteriorating situation that was serious. I think that was the last time
that I tried to sleep overnight in a Htin village.
Because of a shortage of missionaries able to live up-country, the
Field Conference of 1971 decided that we needed to move to Luang
Prabang province, because Kaetzels had been needed elsewhere; we
had to say good-bye to our teacher and the rest of the Htin.
I tried to take trips back to Sayaboury once a month or so, but by
then, the insurgents had infiltrated much of the country-side, and my
ministry was pretty much limited to what I could do in town, or along
the main roads.
Our teacher, this new illiterate Christian, had fellowship with
Khamou Christians, Hmong Christians, and what few Lao Christians
there were, but there were still no fellow believers among the Htin.
He had heard that I came into Sayaboury town about once a month,
and although by then the insurgents controlled the area that he lived
in, one time he did risk his life, coming into town to try to see me, but
I had already left.
The welfare of this first Htin believer and his family that we
had left behind weighed heavily on me. There was no way that
we could safely communicate with him after we left the province,
and he returned to his village. He was still illiterate, and moreover,
the influence of the Communist guerillas in the countryside was
increasing with every passing month, so it would have been very
risky for communication to pass between us.

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All we could do was pray for him, and occasionally hear news of him
from Christians of other tribes. Years later I was to hear from him
again, though.
Our year in Luang Prabang was a pleasant one. We
had a nicer house and the town had electricity.
January of the year we lived there was quite chilly,
so we heated the living room with a kerosene spaceheater. Bill, who was three years old at the time,
figured that our calico cat must be cold too, so he
picked her up and put her on the kerosene heater. She
was hyper-active and strong, and had no intention of
letting her feet get burned, so she reacted violently,
with the result that the heater overturned, spilling
kerosene on the floor, which was quickly ignited by
the flame of the heater. The terrazzo floor wouldnt
burn, and we got the fire out before it caught on to
the furniture.
We suggested to Bill that in the future he find some
other way to warm the cat.

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Fifteen

The Long Gap

he threat of war extending into Sayaboury Province was

increasing, so that meant that I couldnt go on walking
trips among the Htin scattered throughout the mountainous
countryside as I had earlier. In that five year term, we had spent the
first two years in Sayaboury, where the Htin were. The middle year
of that term we were in Vientianeaway from the Htin, and then the
last two years we were back in Sayaboury again. At the beginning of
that term, the only thing that hindered travel throughout the province
was Lao language study, but by the last two years of that term, there
was too much threat from insurgency to be able to travel around.
After that five year term, we were on home assignment from mid1969 to mid-1970, then we came back to Sayaboury for one more
year, during which time we were limited to ministry in town and Htin
language study.
In the meantime, the Lord added to our family. Helen Joy had
been born in 1967, and Bill was born during our year of home
assignment in 1969.
The Lao Evangelical Church had asked the 1971 Field Conference
of the Mission to appoint a missionary to the city of Luang Prabang,
due to a pressing need in that province. That is why we had to leave
Sayaboury, with the right to travel back to minister once a month or
as possible. Then, the Field conference of 1972 appointed us to the
Laos Bible Training Center in Vientiane, which for the time being at
least, formalized the end of our Htin work or any work in Sayaboury.
Our ministry of training pastors at the LBTC (Laos Bible Training
Center) lasted for two yearsuntil 1974, when we were due for our
second home assignment. During that time, Sayaboury Province
was increasingly coming under Communist control. Bible School
students on week-end assignments would occasionally take trips to

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Sayaboury, but we ourselves were never able to be where there were

Htin.
Helen and Bill were outside playing with the two
children of the Thai care-taker of the Bible School
campus. The four of them were trying to get some
tamarind pods down out of a tree beside our house.
They were using a machete with a hook end, but it
didnt have a handle, so they slipped it over the end of
a long bamboo pole, reaching high over their heads
trying to cut the pods down. The son of the care-taker
pulled on the bamboo pole, and the machete slipped
off the pole, and fell, with the point hitting Bill in the
forehead.
Helen came screaming upstairs to our second-floor
apartment, yelling that Bill had been hurt. I rushed
down to see Bills face covered with bloodI didnt
know if he had eyes or a nose leftI could see only the
blood streaming down. I lost control, and hollered at
the care-taker that had come onto the scene by then,
LOOK AT WHAT YOUR KID DID TO MY KID!
As it turned out, Bill had a small, deep cut where
the point of the machete had hit the middle of his
forehead, causing copious bleeding. It healed up
quickly, but left a small scar that he has to this day.
For my part, I had to humbly apologize to the caretakerthe father of the little boy who wielded the
machete. Though no serious harm had been done to
Bill, I had made a serious gaffe by losing my temper.
During the two years at the LBTC, one thing happened that played
a significant part of the Htin story. Often, when the Lord knows that

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His people are going to undergo some trial or persecution, He moves

among them in unexpected ways. Laos had seemed to be tottering
on the brink of a Communist take-over for many years, and we had
become somewhat used to the threat hanging there, but had learned
to live with it. We didnt realize that soon, it would really happen,
with serious consequences for all Christians, and the closure of the
Bible School. Seemingly to prepare for that, the Lord blessed us with
a significant moving of the Holy Spirit among the staff and students
at LBTC in January 1974.
As mentioned before, it was customary for the older students
to go out on weekend ministries, traveling by the MAF plane or by
other available means. Following that, it was our practice to have a
service of sharing and informal reporting every Sunday evening after
the students returned to school. After one Sunday evening service,
one spiritually sensitive student came to me saying that he was under
an unbearably heavy burden of prayer, and asked that some of the
other students gather with us and pray. We went into my office,
and started to praydeeply moved by the Holy Spirit. Different
ones of us were praying, when we noticed that one of the students
was quietly relating a vision that the Lord was giving him, so we
listened. Various messages were being related to those of us present,
and there were some messages to me that were very meaningful and
appropriate. I had become seriously frustrated by repeated tension
among the missionaries, and felt that I had endured as much as could
be expected. I didnt intend to return to the mission field after our
upcoming home assignment. Some of the students knew of this, and
one of the messages spoken to me by this student under the direction
of the Holy Spirit was Missionary, you can go home to your country
and your people and the Lord will not leave you, but His blessing
will not be on you unless you come back. This brought me up short.
Another message that I didnt understand at the time was Missionary,
why didnt you help the people in black shirts? then, The Lord
will send someone else (to help them.) I couldnt figure out what
that meant; I couldnt think of anybody who was characterized by
wearing black shirts. In retrospect, I believe that it was of the Lord
that I didnt understand what was meant at the time, because it might

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have been more than I could bear; however, his words stayed with
me.
We came on home for our home assignment as planned, although
now we certainly did plan to return. As I prepared for the traditional
missionary tours, I got into my artifacts that I would take and show
in the churches among whom I was to tour. There in my closet I saw
a black shirt. Although Htin usually wore whatever cast-off clothing
they could get, I had noticed that on the rare occasion that they could
buy new clothes, they bought black shirts with seams sewn in white.
During our previous home assignment, I had gotten a black shirt to
wear to represent the Htin while doing missionary presentations, and
had left it hanging in the closet. There was the black shirt! Although
not all Htin wore black shirts, many of them did when they could
afford them, and I had chosen that to be symbolic of the Htin. It was
a striking admonition to me that I hadnt done all that I could for
the Htin. Maybe it had a specific meaning that I had left Folksinger
Gome to die.
That year of home assignment started in the summer of 1974,
as planned. Then in May of 1975, just a few weeks before we were
to return to Laos after our home assignment, we were at the C&MA
Annual Council when word came that the Communists had taken
control of all of Laos, and the missionaries had to leave. Consequently,
that home assignment was extended to last for two years, rather than
the normal one year. That second year was taken up worryingand
prayingfor those we had left behind in Laos. We wondered what
had become of our books, of the Bible School property, etc. Nobody
knew what was going to happen in SE Asia, but we were given other
missionary conference tours to fill out the second year, and were
preparing ourselves for going to another field for a future ministry.
I wondered particularly what had become of that first Christian
the man who had come into town to teach us Htin. Hmong Christians
and Khamou Christians were much stronger in the faith, and lived in
villages where there were hundreds of Christians together. However,
he and his family were the only Christians among the Htin, and the
Htin as a whole had a long history of passive yielding to whoever
was in power.

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Once while singing in the choir at my home church, we were

singing the hymn When He Shall Come by Almeda J. Pearce. We
sang the first verse:
When He shall come, resplendent in His glory,
To take His own from out this vale of night,
Oh, may I know the joy of His appearing,
Only at morn, to walk with Him in white.
Then we went on to the second verse:
When I shall stand within the court of Heaven
Where white-robed pilgrims pass before my sight
Earths martyred saints and blood-washed over comers
These then are they who walk with Him in white.

Earths martyred saints. I choked up. Our Htin teacherilliterate
and so exposedmight be among them. Were those in white only
those martyred in the tribulation period? I didnt know, but I thought
of that man; maybe he was one of the martyred saints. Maybe the
next time I saw him, he would be among those robed in white. The
third verse added to my emotion, and I could no longer sing:

When He shall call, from earths remotest corners,
All who have stood triumphant in His might,
Oh, to be worthy then to stand beside them,
And in that morn to walk with Him in white.
Hymns of the Christian Life. Christian Publications Inc.
Camp Hill, PA 1978; # 134

If he were among those that were martyred, is that the way I would
see him next time?

As it turned out, years later I found out that he hadnt been martyred.
He came to see us in Thailand in 1988. Nevertheless, that experience

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moved me deeply, and reinforced the burden of prayer that we carried

for the Htin.
In the summer of 1976, we were reassigned to work in Northeast
Thailand, where the Lao language was almost universally understood.
In addition to ministry to NE Thai churches, we regularly ministered
to Lao in refugee camps. The large Lao refugee camp nearest to us
had no Htin, but on one occasion we did get to travel to northern
Thailand, and got to see some of the Htin we had known earlier.
However, we were not in a place where we could have continuing
contact with them.
All four of our children were attending Dalat School in Malaysia
by that time, but we got to be with them three times during the
yearthey had two school vacations in which they came home to
be with us for a few weeks, and we went to visit them during our
annual vacation. In the long months of separation, children can be
going through some serious crises, and maybe neither the staff of
the school, nor the parents who are living in another country will
realize the extent of the problems. A particularly serious crisis arose
concerning one of ours, and we felt it was necessary to return to the
U.S. early in 1978 for the sake of our children. We thought it would
probably be a matter of a couple of years; however, it finally turned
out that we were home for nearly ten years. During those ten years,
it was important that we live in our own house in Michigan where
our children had cousins, aunts, uncles and a grandmother. Cousins
in particular helped, because they are friends that you dont have
to makethey are built-in. During those years, I was occupied in
several ways at different times: factory work, teaching English as a
Second Language (ESL), working with Hmong and Lao Churches,
and farm work. While working with Hmong and Lao churches,
we would occasionally hear of Htin living in Stockton California,
Rochester Minnesota, various parts of Ohio, Canada, etc. We learned
of some of them that had become Christians in Canada or the U.S.,
but we were not in close contact with any of them.
Although our ministry among the Htin was not yet finished, it
certainly was on a prolonged hiatus; we didnt know what was ahead.

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Time for TEE

uring my days as a student at the University of Michigan,

Dr. Kenneth Pike, who was a professor of linguistics at the
University of Michigan and missionary of the Wycliffe Bible
Translators, taught the Sunday School class that I attended. He gave
a piece of advice that was to be helpful in the future with regards to
setting priorities between family and mission. He said that there was
a difference between his responsibility as a father of his children,
and his responsibility to all of the needy children of Mexico, which
was his field. Dr. Pike said that although he had a responsibility as
a Christian to all who were in need; his responsibility to his own
children was a responsibility that was particularly his, because he and
his wife had brought them into the world. The general responsibility
was broad, and encompassed all who were in need of his help, but
there was a unique responsibility that he had as a father to the children
that he had fathered.
The decade that we spent back in the US for the sake of our
growing children was justified, because we were the only parents
that those four children had. Serving the Lord in this case meant to
minister to the needs of our children first, because we were serving the
Lord, according to our unique responsibility as parents. Our role in
missionary work did not necessarily supersede our role in parenting.
Bill is the youngest of our children, hence, the last to graduate
from High School, and the last one to leave home. When he was in
that last year of High School, he and I both worked for my brother on
his dairy farm, which was a job of no particular eternal consequence,
except that it was allowing us to continue intensive parenting for as
long as it was needed. One day when Bill and I were working in the
barn together, he said, Dad, I really hope that you can go back to the
mission field.

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A New Heart for the Htin

With Sally and the kids (Bill, Mary, Helen and Tim)
at Prattville Community Church.

I agreed. I hoped we could go back too, and as it turned out, a

really significant ministry was about to open up.
Theological Education by Extension (TEE) was an idea whose
time had come. Christian churches, burgeoning throughout Africa
and Latin America had a problem in developing leaders for the
future. Too often, young people from rural areas, and called to
the ministry, would go off to a Bible school in the city, then upon
graduation take up a ministry in the city, not returning to minister in
the villages from which they had come. On the other hand, preaching
elders, with families, and tied down by work to their fields or jobs,
were carrying the burden of ministering in rural churches, albeit with
inadequate Bible training. TEE was developed as a means of training
the preaching elders in their villages, where they were, without
moving them away. Ideally, the elder would study the programmed
courses after work at home, and meet along with others who were
studying, under the guidance of a leader once a week or so. It would
take him more than twice the time to cover the same course of study
as the youth going away to a Bible school full-time, but it provided
continued contact with the church he was ministering in without
disrupting his family. Also, matters that he was learning in theory
were constantly being put into practice in his ministry.

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For most of the countries of Latin America and Africa, TEE was
an alternative to regular Bible school, but it soon became evident that
for countries that had no available Bible schools such as Laos at that
time, it was the only solution to the problem of training leaders.
By the late 1970s and early 1980s, TEE was also being used in
ethnic churches in North America, among them, churches of refugees
from SE Asia. However, it became evident that the greatest need was
in the countries from which they had come, where there were no
regular Bible schools. Previous to 1975, Laos had one Bible school
in the north developed by the C&MA and one in the south by the
Swiss Mission Evangelique, however, both had been closed under
Communism.
Pastors who remained in Laos, and had studied at the Bible Schools
were getting older, with no reinforcements coming from the youth.
The need was manifest, the method of solving the problem seemed
evident, and the place that TEE courses could be developed seemed
obviously to be in a refugee camp, since no traditional missionaries
could live in Laos. Since I had already had some exposure in trying
to develop a course in the US, while working with Hmong and Lao
churches, and since our children were grown now, we were able to
return to Thailand to take up the task of trying to develop TEE for
use inside Laos.
As time went on, the situation in Laos was easing up a little, but
still no missionaries were allowed to work within Laos. However,
David Andrianoff, the son of Ted and Ruth Andrianoff, who had
spent their lives as missionaries in Laos, was able to go with his
wife and children, to work in Laos on development projects with
World Concern. In that position he was able to keep his hand on the
pulse of the situation of the church there in Laos. Eventually, the
time came when he felt that things were ripe to start the development
of TEE for eventual use inside Laos. He made a recommendation to
Overseas Ministries of the C&MA to that effect, and they asked if I
would go out for a period of two months to try my hand and see if it
was feasible to undertake such a task. I took leave of my family and
my brothers dairy farm for the months of March and April 1987,
and went to Thailand to try this out in the Na Po (pronounced NAH-

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poe) refugee camp in NE Thailand. After trying it for this two-month

period, it did seem feasible, and so it was decided that Sally and I
would go back to do this.
We went under the auspices of CAMA Services, the relief and
development arm of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. CAMA
Services had an excellent vocational training program going in
the Na Po camp, plus a pre-school program. (Later on an opium
detoxification program from one of the camps that was closing was
moved to the Na Po Camp also.)
It was in September 1987 that we returned to Thailand. It was
the first time since we had been missionaries that we went overseas
without any childrennone of them were with us because they were
all either in college or working in the U.S. We settled into a house
in a city near the refugee camp, and started regular working days
of commuting into the camp. We had other responsibilities, but our
main purpose for being there was to develop the TEE program, and
test it out in the camp.
When the Communists took over in Laos, they brought about
language reform, which simplified the spelling, but had also changed
some of the vocabulary of the Lao language. Most of those in the
camp had become familiar with this language reform, so they were
aware of what would be or would not be acceptable within Laos at that
time. Knowing these changes that had come about in Lao language
and society, they would be able to help us as typists or proof-readers,
and we could test-teach our materials there.
We started into what would turn out to be a long 6 year task
of developing TEE for use inside Laos. The job was not simple
translation per se, because some radical changes had to be made.
As much as possible, symbolism was used from areas that would
be familiar to people within Communist Laos. Also the available
Lao Bible didnt yet have a complete Old Testament, so if scripture
references were called for from Old Testament books that were not
currently available in the Lao Bible, parallel passages had to be
found, or the teaching point changed. If it had been Bible translation
itself, it would have had to be carefully controlled, to be true to the
original meanings, but this was not Bible translationit was Bible

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Don & Sally Durling

Don teaching a TEE class.

teaching lessons, and if the form in which they were originally written
wouldnt work in Lao, we were free to change the teaching format.
I dont naturally take to sitting at a desk for long periods of time,
and so was perpetually tempted to turn away from my desk and
engage somebody in conversation. However, over the long grueling
years, sitting in a hot refugee camp at a dusty desk, 12 courses
were prepared. Generally, I followed the SEAN courses originally
developed in Spanish by the Anglican mission to Chile, South America.
These courses had already been translated into several languages,
and I usually worked from one of several English adaptations, done
variously in the US, Great Britain, or the Philippines. Occasionally
though, I would read a paragraph in English, and then I would ponder
how it should be expressed in Lao, and not be able to come up with a
satisfactory translation.
It was then that I realized the sovereignty of the Lord in taking
me to Cuba for that most difficult year when I was a naive twenty
years old. One good outcome was that during that year, I learned
a lot of Spanish, and that meant that I could refer to the original
Spanish courses of the SEAN texts that had been done in Chile.
When I was trying to create a paragraph or sentence that would be
easily understood in Lao, I could saturate myself with the meaning

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of the paragraph from one or more of the English translations first,

and if that seemed to miss the mark, I could go back to the original
Spanish much in the same way that Bible translators go back to the
original Greek or Hebrew.
At the time I started work on TEE in 1987, contact with the
Christians in Laos was very limited, and it was not known if the TEE
program would ever find acceptance within Laos, but at least it was
being used in test-runs in the refugee camp. I mentally weighed the
chances, and decided that if it could help prepare one person for the
ministry, all of my years invested would be worth it.
At the beginning of the task, I had no idea of how I would proceed.
I would look at the many courses availablesome of which were
nearly an inch thick. Knowing that one page might take me hours
to translate and knowing the gap that existed between English (or
Spanish) and Lao, I was tempted to quit before I started. However,
as problems arose, solutions appeared. Some problems seemed to lie
in ambushundetectable for a long time, and then they would loom
large and overwhelming.
Obviously, I am not a native speaker of Lao, and the Lao language
itself varied from province to province and from decade to decade.
I think in English, (although I sometimes dream in Lao) and I tried
and tried to get people to tell me where my Lao language sounded
stilted, but Lao people dont like to criticize. They would usually say
that it was fine and that they could understand it all right. I did a first
draft by hand, leaning heavily on dictionaries, and consulting with
knowledgeable Lao around me. Then the typist that was entering it
into the computer would correct obvious errors as he typed it in. Next,
I would test-teach it to real students, and get their feed-back, and
revise it. The test-teaching, feedback, and revision had to be repeated
a few times. By the time I was finishing the first course of study,
things in Laos had eased up enough that the church was able to set
up a TEE committee, and I submitted a text to that committee within
Laos for critiquing, and they would say, rather unconvincingly:
It is finewe can understand it all right.
This went on for a while, until one time, one of the people on the
committee made a casual remark about the parts that sounded like

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they were written by a foreigner (namely me!)

THAT is what I had been looking for!
Then as time went on, it was decided that our computer enterer
had been corrupted by my form of Lao. I wrote what I was translating
into Lao by hand onto a tablet, and he would copy from that to enter
it into the computer. As he entered the lessons into the computer, he
was supposed to change any misspelled words or awkward Lao into
smooth-flowing, vernacular Lao, but he had become so used to my
form of Lao, that it had come to seem colloquial to him. Finally, the
committee in Laos decided that it was going to be necessary to have
someone go over the texts after him to make it sound like it was not
written by a foreigner.
This long grueling development of TEE was our primary ministry for
a long time, but the Lord had another very happy ministry waiting for
us that we had not anticipated.
We knew that Mary, who was working in a group
home for adolescents in California, had a serious
boyfriend whom we had never met. We expected that
at some time we might be hearing of an engagement.
One evening after we got home from working in the
refugee camp, we were relaxing in our house in town
when the phone rang.

It was Mary. She said that Jeff had something that he
wanted to say to us. Very properly, he asked me, as
Marys father, if he could have her hand in marriage.
We had confidence in Marys judgment, so gave our
approval, and the next time we returned to the U.S.
for a three-month leave, Mary and Jeff were married
in Michigan.

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Seventeen

The Htin Come to Na Po

o refugee camp is ever established with the idea of it being

a permanent dwelling-place. The refugees are either on their
way to another country, or waiting for the situation in their
country of origin to improve so that they can go back. However, if the
basic necessities of life in a refugee camp are taken care of by outside
humanitarian organizations, some of those refugees tend to want to
hunker down and stay in the refugee camp as long as they can.
When they first arrive, most of them are dirt poor and without
food even for the next meal. However, as time goes on, things get
easier. Various government and relief agencies come in to provide
shelter, food, and basic needs. Then medical services are brought
in, and as time goes on, the camps that were designed as places of
temporary asylum, become a way of life.
By 1990, the Thai Ministry of Interior (MOI) and the United
Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) decided that it
was time to start making moves to close the Lao refugee camps along
the border. Over a period of years, hundreds of thousands of people
fleeing Laos had come through these camps, and most had been
processed for settlement in various countriesprimarily Australia,
Canada, France, and the United States. Fifteen years had passed since
Laos had become Communist, and it seemed that for those who had
not yet been resettled in one of the countries above, working toward
a goal of eventual repatriation to Laos was the only remaining option.
Thus, as a first step toward closing the refugee camps down, it
was decided that all of the remaining refugees from several scattered
camps would be consolidated into one camp. The camp that was
chosen was the one we worked inNa Po. In addition to Na Po,
which was primarily populated by ethnic Lao, there was a large camp
further west that was populated primarily by Hmong, named Vinai

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(pronounced V-nigh). Also, there were a couple of other camps still

in northern Thailand, populated by various ethnic groups, including
the Htin.
The process of consolidating the camps had to be worked out
rather delicately though, because there was a great deal of resistance
from the Hmong in particular against giving up what had been their
primary turf, and neither the Hmong nor any of the ethnic groups
wanted to be moved far away from the area they were familiar with.
Since the Hmong were so numerous, and had gathered quite a
bit of clout through their involvement on the anti-communist side
in the war, the UNHCR and Thailands MOI were aware that it was
going to be a very difficult thing to get them to agree to leave the
camp they were in, to be relocated at Na Po. Knowing that the Htin
were relatively powerless and fewer in number in the camps, it was
decided to move them first. I had heard of the possibility of Htin
coming, and went to ask about it from the assistant director of the
UNHCR office in camp.
Is it true that the Htin refugees from northern Thailand are going
to be moved here to Na Po? I asked.
Yes, that is what we have planned, she said, but we dont
know anything about the Htin. It would help if we knew what they
were like. We are thinking of clearing Section 8 out, because we have
always had a lot of trouble controlling that areait is so far from our
administrative offices here.
Suddenly, I was an expert. I knew more about the Htin than
anyone else in the Na Po Camp, because of my association with
them 25 years earlier in Sayaboury Province of Laos. My input was
soughtI was the local authority on the Htin!
When Na Po was still primarily a Lao camp, Section 8 had been
populated by old rightist Army veterans, and they consistently resisted
Thai authority. Sometimes they would go outside the camp and steal
a water buffalo from nearby Thai villages. When reports got back
to the camp, and the Thai guards would go to investigate the next
morning, there would be no evidence of the theft. In the middle of the
night, the buffalo would have been butchered, the bones buried, the
blood cleaned up and nothing was left that could prove the theft. As

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long as these crusty old soldiers lived in Section 8, there was always
trouble of one kind or another, and they could get away with a lot,
because they were in the most remote corner of the camp. By the
time that the Htin were being planned for though, a lot of the veterans
had gone to other countries, and it was the plan of the Thai authorities
to move those remaining veterans out of Section 8 and scatter them
among other sections, where they could be kept under observation
better. If they were going to put the Htin in that remote corner of the
camp, it was important to know that the Htin wouldnt be rebellious.
I assured the UNHCR lady, I have known the Htin quite well
while in Sayaboury, and you can rest confidant that they will not be
trouble-makers.
Eventually, the few remaining old soldiers from Section 8 were
in fact dispersed throughout other sections of the camp, and Section
8 was empty, waiting for the Htin. We assumed that there would be
adequate advance notice of the arrival of the Htin, but such was not
to be the case.
Helen Joy had graduated from Houghton College
in 1989, but hadnt been able to get a teaching job,
so she was living in our house, substitute teaching,
and working part-time wherever she could. She was
going to need to have an operation on one of her feet,
so Sally got permission from the mission to return to
the U.S. and take care of her until she recovered from
that operation.
During that summer of 1990, while Sally was still in the U.S. taking
care of Helen Joy, the Htin came. One day, I was sitting in our office
in the camp, working on the TEE courses, when I heard a bus coming
bythen another, and another. Finally, a whole line-up of nine buses
was driving through the camp toward Section 8. I jumped up from
my desk, and walked the short distance to get to where the buses
were unloading. There they weremore Htin milling around the

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buses than I had ever seen in one place at one time. I was overjoyed.
I wanted to start talking to them, but after so many years, didnt
recognize any faces of people that I had known. Eventually, I picked
one person out at random, and went up to him. I tried to muster up
as much of the Htin Lua (pronounced LOO-ah) dialect that I could
manage.
Speaking Htin Lua, I asked, If I talk to you in Htin, would you
understand me?
Responding in Htin Lua, he responded, No, I wouldnt
understand, but I knew that he had understood, or he wouldnt have
been able to answer me!
There was a slow drizzle coming down that day, and the poor
people who were not used to riding at all, had just endured a grueling
24 hour bus trip. Nothing was ready for them, except for the empty
buildings that were waiting for them. Aware of the fact that these
people needed help immediately, one agency set out to find food
that they could eat until they got their own cookware unpacked. The
Scottish lady doctor from the camp hospital came down to set up
a temporary on-the-spot clinic where the new arrivals were milling
around. She needed an interpreter, so I asked who could help her with
that, and they pointed to a young man carrying a guitar. I went up to get
acquainted with him, and much to my surprise, he introduced himself
in English, My name is Nott (pronounced naught). I am Htin. I
had never before talked to a Htin in English; I had usually talked
Lao to them, and they would answer in either Lao or in a northern
Thai dialect, which was similar enough to Lao to be understandable.
Nott spoke good English, and to my surprise, seemed glad to identify
himself as a Htin. I was meeting a new generation of Htin the likes of
which I had never met before. Most of the Htin I had known in the past
were reluctant to admit that they were Htin, feeling that everybody
looked down on the Htin, and none of them had ever spoken to me
in English. Now, standing before me was a young man who spoke
English, and without hesitation identified himself as a Htin.
That same day, the Thai camp commander called an emergency
meeting of the various agencies, to see who could help the newlyarrived Htin, and in what way. Having seen that they had arrived

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with nothing prepared for them, I was eager to help. The buildings
of sheet-rock walls and tin roofs that were available for them had
cement floors, which would be hard to sleep on. So in my impulsive
idealism, I found myself saying, CAMA Services will provide 500
grass mats for them tomorrow.
After the meeting, I went
back to the CAMA compound,
found Insom, the Thai who was
the overall director of CAMA
services projects in the camp,
and said, I promised 500 grass
mats for the Htin by tomorrow.
He raised his eyebrows and
questioned, Where are you
going to get them?
I said, Why, at the store in
Insom
town where we usually buy such
things.
He said, The season for making grass mats is after rice harvest;
no merchant in town will have that many in stock now.
Oh-oh, my credibility is at stake now. Nevertheless, I went to the
store in the city where we usually bought things, and presented them
with my urgent need. With all of their stock, and getting more from
another store, they were able to produce 430 immediately, and we got
the remaining 70 within a few days.
That evening after the first Htin arrived, I could hardly wait to
get home and phone Sally at home in the U.S. caring for Helen Joy. I
was anxious to tell her that the Lord had brought us back into contact
with the Htin after a hiatus of about 25 years. That bit of news was
going to give us an uncommon joy in our ministry for the next two
and a half years.
The routine work that I had been doing developing TEE lessons
at my desk there in the hot refugee camp had suddenly taken a
bright turn. My job was no longer only dealing with translation and
composing TEE texts, but coupled with that was the joy of seeing
and talking to Htin every day. I know that actually God loved the

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other ethnic groups as much as He loved the Htin, but the difference
was that God had specifically placed the Htin on our hearts. Maybe
we could say that God loved all of the language groups, but He had
chosen us to be the particular vehicles to express that love to the Htin.
He loved them through us!
More Htin were to arrive from time to time, until Section 8
was fully populated by Htin; eventually there were about 1500 in
residence there. At that point, there were probably more Htin within
a stones throw from our CAMA compound, than I had been able to
reach in two dry seasons of walking to 50 villages in the mountains
of Sayaboury.
We had sown the seed 25 years earlier. Now, God was giving us
the opportunity to water it, and thenthenhold on, because that is
in the next chapter.

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Eighteen

Early Christians

arious ones of us have different things that stick out as

important points when we accepted Jesus as our Savior.
Some of us remember it as a specific eventmaybe we
even remember the day and hour. Maybe it was in Sunday School,
in Vacation Bible School, or in talking with an individual who led
us to the Lord. Others may have grown up in a Christian home and
were led to the Lord by our parentssome may not remember a
specific time or place. There are those who became Christians as
adults that have had a miraculous deliverance from bad habits, or
some particular bondage, while others had to struggle against the
habits for a long time.
Generally speaking though, salvation has stood out in our lives
as being an individual matter, and likewise we see others coming into
faith one at a time. We may have made the decision in a crusade, or
evangelistic meetings with other people around us, but coming into
faith is not for us a community, nor a whole village matter. The closest
we might see to people becoming Christians in groups might be that
the parents and maybe children of a family would be saved at the
same time, and consequently, their home would become a Christian
home as a unit. For that reason, it might be hard for us to understand
how a whole village or community would become Christian at one
timeas a group.
In many cases, tribal people see different elements of their lives
as one unit. Health, crops, religion, etc. are all part of village life,
and thus are inseparable. There may be a village chief, and a village
witch-doctor, but the overlap between political (chief) and spiritual
(witch-doctor) matters would be such that it would be inconceivable
that the various issues of village life could be separated. Village life,
consisting of festivals, planting crops, harvesting, births, deaths,

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marriages, relations with the spirit world, etc. are all part of the village
unit, with decisions made collectivelyusually by consensus.
If an individual becomes a Christian in such an environment, he
suddenly doesnt fit. His individual Christian faith throws a monkeywrench into the unity of village life. In some such situations, he could
move to another villagea Christian village of his same tribe, if there
is one, or he could move to the city, where diversity is permitted, but
then he would be without the social and emotional support of the
village that he grew up in. The new Christian would be looking for
other Christians to have fellowship with.
If an individual living in a tribal village is quietly considering
the claims of Christ, he might bring up the matter with others that
he thinks might also be interested. If there are enough of them, they
might decide to air the matter openly, and maybe they could negotiate
with the rest of the village to become a Christian sub-group within the
village. It comes down to the choice between breaking with the village,
or becoming Christians in groups. In some situations, the whole
village might decide to become Christians, and thereafter, ceremonies
involving village matters (birth, death, marriage, agricultural events
such as planting or harvesting, etc.) would be Christian, rather than

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spirit-worshipping.
Instead of offering
sacrifices to spirits,
they would pray to
God to bless the crop,
marriage, child, etc.
Instead of heathen
festivals, they would
celebrate Christian
holidays. Instead of
going to the witchdoctor for spiritual
issues, they would
go to the church
elders etc. for biblical
counsel and prayer.
This is seen as a
group conversion
and if it involves a
large part of a tribe,
might become a
peoples movement
with other villages
becoming Christians.
Such village conversions or maybe peoples movements are
nonetheless valid, and make it easier for new Christians to maintain
their tribal identity. In such cases, what appears to be a group conversion
may in fact be individuals making their personal profession of faith,
but making it in unison with others, so that no one individual has to
break away and be without a Christian support group.
Even though this is not the way we are used to seeing people
become Christians, the evidence is clear that whether converted
as individuals or in groups, what they were before and what they
become after gives clear testimony that there is a change. In any
case, Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
(Romans 10:17)

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In the refugee camp, people still had a certain degree of village

identification, even though they were lumped together in a section
of the camp. Certain witch-doctors still held influence over certain
groups, and there were influential patriarchs of extended families
whose voices were influential. So, even in the refugee camp, if a
person was to become a Christian, some of the old sanctions still
held.
Many of the Htin from Laos had heard of Jesus for the first time
when I went to their villages with either Paw Peng or Lao Pao in the
mid 1960s. They heard it, and for the time being at least, they rejected
it. Maybe the seed had rested dormant all of those years, or maybe
there were some who secretly believed, but who were waiting until
there were others who would become Christians with them.
Building bridges to the Htin wasnt as hard in the refugee camp
as it had been in their isolated villages in Laos during the 1960s.
They knew of our interest in them from a long time ago. At one point,
I asked to meet with all of the older men in the office of the head of
Section 8. A lot of them came, and a lot of them remembered me.
Some remembered riding in our Jeep, or guiding us on the trail. To
those who remembered me, I was not a Johnny-come-lately in
my interest concerning the Htin. I was a Donny-been-around-along-time. Fortunately, it was the older ones who had known and
remembered me, because if there was going to be opposition to the
Gospel, it would probably be from this age group; they were the
power wielders within spirit-worshippers. In talking to these older
people, I tried to take advantage of the fact that I had established
contact with them, and presented the Gospel to them decades ago
before their children of marriageable age had been born. I was trying
to break down barriers that might be erected, should some of the
younger individuals decide that they wanted to be Christians.
Our CAMA Services project in the refugee camp had something
to offer nearly all ages. We had a good vocational training program
available that adult men could profit by. The vocational training
program offered courses in electric wiring, engine mechanics,
electronics, and wood-working. We also had a pre-school program
that they could send their little children to. Soon they did indeed

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start comingbringing their children to pre-school, or enrolling in

the vocational training courses.
The pre-school program needed staff, and there were no stringent
qualifications for those helping in the program, so Htin young people
started volunteering their time to help in the pre-school. Lao Christians
in the CAMA Church warmly received them, and before long, the
CAMA compound was teeming with Htin children as students, and
young people as teachers in the pre-school program. Older people
would bring their children or grandchildren, and sit around waiting
the whole time until the half-day of pre-school was over.
Among the Htin there were some who spoke a dialect of northern
Thai in their homes, and some who still spoke the original Monkhmer dialect that they called Htin Lua. One young man named
Nope, who was a Htin Lua started to come to church, and about that
same time, a single mother that was a volunteer in the pre-school
started coming. Probably neither of these had a strong position in
Htin society, and because they were in the refugee camp, found it
possible to act on their own. I think they came as individuals willing
to break with the rest of the Htin, and become identified with the
Lao Christians. However, they did become Christiansand were still

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known as Htinliving in Section 8.

In most situations of people becoming Christians, there seems to
be a particular crisis that identifies their change. In rural Laos, among
the tribal people, or among country Lao, the crisis often involved
destruction of their fetishes. Most rural houses had a shelf in their
house with fetishes that represented some dead relative, or individuals
wore other fetishes around their neck. Maybe it was the tooth or hair
of a deceased relative, or an old copper or silver coin that had been
imbued with some spiritually significant power. Sometimes they
were objects made of wood or bamboo that carried witchcraft power.
This had been the case when our former Htin language teacher had
become a Christian in Laos.
In the refugee camp though, things were not quite the same.
Fetishes had in some cases been left behind as they fled, and since
they were in a new area, the spirits of the local territory didnt have
the same hold on them as when they were in an area where their
forefathers had lived for centuriesmaybe millennia.
It came to be that the particular crisis of conversion in the refugee
camp was willingness to come to worship in a Christian church. People
would come to the CAMA compound on week-days to study in the
technical school, or volunteer to teach in the pre-school program, or
bring their children for that program. Nobody though would come
to a worship service on Sunday merely to observe. If they came to a
worship service it usually meant that they had considered the claims
of Christ, and had decided to become Christians.
After a few months, in addition to the young man, and the
unmarried mother, three families, and then a fourth young family
decided to become Christians and started coming to church. One of
these was a Htin husband with a Hmong wifeso probably he was
not seen by the bulk of the Htin as being a thorough-going Htin. These
families though, also were well accepted by the Lao Christians, and
became a part of the Lao congregation.
Then, in the middle of 1991, it came time for Sally and me to
return to the US for three months of home assignment. During that
time, we went to visit a few Lao churches within driving distance of
where we lived in south central Michigan. We went to a church north

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of Detroit to meet with the Lao there, and there were a few people
from Leamington Ontario, nearby in Canada that had driven over
for that serviceparticularly to teach some Lao Christian songs. I
asked where they were originally from, and they said they were from
Sayaboury Province. Since we knew Sayaboury Province quite well
we asked what district they were from in Sayaboury Province, and
they told specifically where they were from. It was in Htin territory.
In giving a report of our work in the refugee camp to those assembled
there at that Lao church, I told of our past association with the Htin,
and how the Lord had brought Htin into the camp. Not long after that,
the people from Leamington Ontario invited me to come to speak to
them, and when I got there, I found that although there were some
Lao in the service, the congregation was predominately Htin. It was
the first time in my life that I had been in a Christian service that was
mostly Htin, but it wouldnt be the last.
Upon our return to the refugee camp from home assignment,
Insom, our Thai co-worker, said that during our absence there were
some 50 Htin that had become Christians. One of them was Nott
the fellow who had introduced himself to me in English, and some
of them were relatives of those we had met in Leamington Ontario.
Thereafter we got serious about new believers courses, dividing
them into classes for older illiterate individuals, young literate men,
and young literate women. After a few months of these classes, 59
were baptized. Thereafter, when we met for church on Sunday, this
congregation too, was predominately Htin with a good number of
young people among them. The young people in particular were
eager to learn Christian songs, and also to learn musical instruments
such as guitar, according to the musical forms of contemporary Thai
Christian music.
About that time I started praying that before the Htin left the
camp to be repatriated to Laos or elsewhere in Thailand, 30% of them
would be Christians. Then word came of a prominent shaman that
was considering becoming a Christian. Word was that if this man
would become a Christian, more than 100 others would become
Christians with him, and sure enough, it happened. That mans name
was Pun, and his story is given in a later chapter.

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With this large number of new Christians, the courses for

new believers were expanded. I was the one that taught the class
particularly for the older illiterate ones, being very careful not to write
any words on the blackboard, or do anything that would embarrass
them because of their illiteracy. Actually, although they were not
literate, there was a lot of wisdom stored up in those old heads, and it
was not only a case of them learning Christian truth from me, but also
of these older Htin teaching me a lot about the Htin way of looking
at things. These classes for the Htin illiterati continued without end
as long as they were in the camp.
By now there were a significant number of Htin Christians in the
campgetting closer to the 30% that I was praying for. However,
there was a lot to be done in the matter of deciding what kind of effect
Christian faith would have on Htin customs.
Helen Joy had graduated from Houghton College
with a degree in elementary education, but after she
graduated, she couldnt find a job. She came back to
Michigan and lived in our house, doing substitute
teaching, and other part-time work, but it wasnt
really enough for her to maintain her livelihood and
pay off her student loan.
Finally, a friend of her aunt Helen (after whom she
had been named) knew of a job in Kotzebue, Alaska
above the Arctic Circle. As the plane circled this large
Eskimo town where she had accepted employment,
she looked down, and felt lonesome even before the
plane landed.
To be sure, it was isolated, but she could talk to us by
phone occasionally, and she told of the church she
was attending, and others who attended there. One
name that came up increasingly was that of David
Ropera bush pilot that had lived in Alaska for most

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of his life, and had owned his own plane since he was
sixteen years old.
You guessed itour second son-in-law is a pilot. Now
though, he flies passenger jets for Alaska Airlines,
and they live in Anchorage Alaska, so it isnt so
lonesome anymore.

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Nineteen

Ex-Shaman Puns Funeral

e drove into our parking place under a roof in the CAMA

compound and parked, expecting it to be a routine day of
desk work producing TEE. It wasnt.
Uncle Pun died last night, said the lady who was running the
pre-school program.
You must mean that Uncle Teep died, I countered, thinking of
a man wasting away with cancer. It wouldnt be Uncle Pun, because
he was hale and hearty.
No, it was Uncle Pun that died, and confirmation came from
other sources that it was indeed Uncle Pun that had died. He had
called out in his sleep during the middle of the night, and although
they rushed him to the camp hospital, he was gone already.
Uncle Pun had been a shaman before he became a Christian.
Now, the fact that he had been a shamana witch doctordidnt
necessarily mean that he was any more evil than anyone else. The role
of shaman was usually pressed onto a young man who was judged
by the village to be a man of extraordinary wisdom, and sensitivity
to the spirits. Most young men chosen for that role would avoid it if
possible, because to be a shaman, and to be in contact with spirits,
was an invitation to suffering and emotional distress. Uncle Pun was
a man highly respected for his wisdom, just about 50 years old, and
with a good wife, several children, and some grandchildren.
Uncle Pun had been the man who, a few weeks earlier was
introduced to me as a shaman who was the leader of a significant
number of people. (It was he, they said, who would bring 100 others
with him if he became a Christian.) It was known that he was
considering whether to become a Christian or not, and he was the
object of some controversy. That being the case, I was aware that the
Enemythe Devil would be apt to target him for an attack to try

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to dissuade him.
With this in mind, when I had gotten a chance to see him, I asked
him: Uncle Pun, I am concerned that during this time that you are
weighing the matter of becoming a Christian, the spirits will get angry,
and attack you, before you come under the protection of Jesus blood.
Will you give permission for me to pray that you will be protected by
the blood of Jesus, even before you have decided for sure?
After considering it, he answered, Yes, go ahead and pray for
me.
I prayed for him, and he was protected, then, a few days later, he
did in fact decide to become a Christian.
He started attending church services, and the new believers class,
which I had set up particularly for those older ones who could neither
read nor write. After a few weeks of the new believers course, we
were looking forward to the time when the more than 100 people
that had become Christians with Uncle Pun would be baptized. Now,
Uncle Pun himself had died suddenly.
I went down to the Htin section, and to their living area. Not
knowing what to expect, I went to the section that his family
occupied, ducked down so my head wouldnt hit the top of the door,
and hesitantly went in. His body was still lying on the bed.
The air hung heavy with tension. His spirit-worshipping neighbors
and relatives were crowded into the room, as was his family. From

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the point of view of these non-Christian friends, he should be buried

according to their spirit-worshipping traditions. Their reasoning was
that he had served the spirits all of his life, until the past few weeks,
so he should be buried the spiritist way. The final word though, would
come from his good wife, and the headman of all the Htin there in
Section 8. Both of these were as new in their Christian faith as Uncle
Pun himself.
I self-consciously walked across the room, feeling woefully
inadequate and alone. Physically, I was out of place, being twice as
big as any of them. My hair, the set and color of my eyes, the angle of
my nose, and my beard all shouted that I didnt really belong among
them. They were a community of long standing, where everybody
looked alike; as a group, they were the sum and substance of their
ethnic identity. Although they were not an influential tribe, they
were the very definition of what it was to be Htin, and the spirits
that they had revered and worshipped were Htin spirits. All of this
had stood for hundredsmaybe thousands of years. They knew who
they were, what they were doing, and how to handle such crises in
a Htin way. Only recently had this definition of what it was to be a
Htin been breached first by a scattered few, and then a significant
number of Htin praying to Jesus, as the Creator-God. In the eyes
of those of decision-making age that were gathered around Uncle
Puns still warm body lying there, a temporary and (they expected)
short-termed glitch had appeared in their society. Uncle Pun and
others had become Christians. Although they were polite, and not
about to create a scene, their spirits cried out within them that this
outsized monstrosity that had just entered the room was the one that
had caused this disruption.
There was another side though. Uncle Puns wife and most of his
children in that room had given themselves to the worship of Jesus
along with the recently deceased. Their decision was not superficial,
and their commitment was without condition. Also, the strangelooking person standing so ill at ease in their midst wasnt really an
unknown. Many had known of him walking to Htin villages more
than 25 years ago. His coming didnt really make sense to the Htin
at that time, because he wasnt selling anything, nor was he buying

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A New Heart for the Htin

pickled tea-leaves or mats or anything else they might have for sale.
He and the man who came with him at that time were just telling
about Jesus. Now, here he was in the refugee camp, and intruding
into territory where they felt, no foreigner should intrudehow to
declare closure to the life of one of their own.
I was that uneasy misfit, and in a time of sorrow as that was, I
felt it deeply. However, although I was not a Htin, I represented the
Christian faith. In the camp there, I was a messenger of the Gospel,
and that is what I had been since the time I first met the Htin in Laos.
Although they didnt recognize Him at that time, it was God who
made the Htin themselves, and He had made the ground and forests
where they had foraged and farmed. There was really no reason for
me to be reluctant in my mission.
I could see that the widow and headman were under great pressure.
The air hung heavy with quiet tension. No matter how his body was
disposed of, the status of his soul was secure, but yet, since he had
become a Christian, closure for his mortal remains should show that.
As for me, even though I was in a room full of people, I have
never felt more alone. As I went alone to sit on an empty bench,
the void between me and the others in the room was palpable, and I

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really ached for someone to sit beside me. Then after a few minutes,
Uncle Puns son-in-lawone of the new Christians, came and sat
beside me, buttressing my spirit. I wasnt alone anymore; Im sure
that the Holy Spirit motivated him to come to sit by me. I really dont
remember what I said, but I know that whatever I said, I said with a
tremulous voice. The headman stood there, and the spirit-worshipping
elders sitting on benches across the room presented their case. The
headman seemed under strain, but turned to the widow, and she said,
He is a Christian now, in Heaven, and he should have a funeral as a
Christian. The headman agreed, and the decision held.
Htin usually disposed of the dead within 24 hours, and in tropical
heat, it is appropriate. Wood had to be secured for making a casket,
and then his body was taken up to the church, where it lay in state
sort of an assurance that the spirit-worshippers would not try to do
their spirit-things. Although Htin usually buried their dead, and Lao
or Thai usually cremated their dead, in the final analysis, whether
cremated, or buried, the Lord could raise him up at the time of the
resurrection. After a funeral service conducted by Rev. Insom, Uncle
Puns body was cremated.
That day that had started out so routine, had become a real
watershed. A pattern for Htin Christian funerals had been set, and
a clear precedent had been set that even a former shaman, if he had
become a Christian, would not be buried as a spirit-worshipper.
Uncle Puns widow and other members of the family continued
studying in new believers classes, and were baptized a few weeks
later. Uncle Pun was survived by three married daughters, and three
unmarried sons, one of whom was still an infant. The two older sons
seem to have inherited the wisdom of their father, and at least one of
them shows evidence of being gifted as a Christian leader.
One day a short time after Uncle Puns death, his widow came
into the Bible study bringing her youngest son with her. She came in,
sat down, and said:
My husband came back to me for a moment during the night and
clasped my hand. I was somewhat taken aback, and said, It must
have been a real comfort to have dreamed that he came and clasped
your hand.

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She replied, It wasnt a dream. He really did come and clasp my

hand. It was really him.
I didnt know how to answer, so I didnt try.
Tim, being the oldest of our children, was on the job
market before the others, and he had gone to work
for his cousin in the Aleutian Islands before we had
returned to Thailand in 1987. It was a lonely existence
for him to be in such an isolated place, so he came
to visit us in Thailand a total of 3 times in the more
than six and a half years that we were working in the
refugee camp. The flight from Dutch Harbor, where
he worked, to Anchorage cost him as much as the
flight from Anchorage to Bangkok.
Of course, while he was visiting us, Sally and I kept
working in the camp, so to while away the time that
we were working, Tim, (who had forgotten how to
speak Lao) walked around enjoying the Lao snacks
that he had learned to like as a child.
He also played ping-pong. One of the Lao players
was exceptionally good, so that Tim could not beat
him, no matter how he tried. Tim was relieved later to
learn that this fellow had been a champion ping-pong
player in Laos before he fled to Thailand.

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Twenty

Uncle Teeps New Birth

And Death

hen the Htin still lived in their remote villages, as we had

known them in the 1960s, they were pretty much beyond
the reach of any medical treatment. There was a hospital
in the town of Sayaboury staffed by doctors from the Philippines, but
the Htin villages were very remote, ranging from one to three days
walk from town, so they seldom were able to come to the hospital if
they got sick. The standard way for treatment was to go to the village
shaman, or witch-doctor, who would intercede with the spirits, and
he would order a treatment that consisted of either some folk remedy,
or a sacrifice to the spirits.
For the Htin that had come into the refugee camps though,
things had changed; there was medical treatment available. Common
afflictions such as fevers, intestinal problems, broken bones etc. could
be cared for quite adequately. Nevertheless, there were still some
who became seriously ill with problems that not even the doctors in
the camp could cure. One of these was Uncle Teep.
Uncle Teep was considered a loser by most of the Htin. He
didnt usually have any money, but whenever he did come into some
money, he would spend it on whiskey, and would go on a binge until
the whiskey and his money were gone. Maybe it was because of his
addiction to drink, or maybe it was for some other reason, but Uncle
Teeps wife had left him, and gotten married to someone else, so
he was alone in the world. Although he had one teen-age daughter
who was living in the camp with her mother, he had nobody that
was dependant on him, and he lived with Notts family, who were
relatives. Nott told me about him and said that Uncle Teep was dying
of a cancer in his nasal cavity.

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A New Heart for the Htin

Since Nott had become a Christian, he was concerned that others

become Christians too. His concern for Uncle Teep had some urgency
about it, because it was obvious that he would probably be dying
before long. The doctor in the camp had told Uncle Teep that he
should prepare for death by arranging his inheritance. Although the
Burmese doctor probably didnt realize it, most Htin owned nothing
of importance to pass on to their families, so for them, to prepare
an inheritance meant to give last words to be remembered by those
around him. Obviously, the doctor expected him to die soon.
Nott wanted me to go present the Gospel to him, but I was
convinced that since Nott understood the way of salvation, and could
speak in his own dialect of Northern Thai, which was Uncle Teeps
dialect, it would be better if Nott talked to him. However, I said that
would be glad to accompany him.
Uncle Teep was probably several years younger than I, but it
seemed thoroughly appropriate that I should call him Uncle Teep,
because Nott, and everybody else that referred to him, called him
Uncle Teep. In spite of the fact that he hadnt lived as many decades
as I had, he was weak and infirm and close to death, whereas I was
still robust. Although he had begun life considerably after I had, the
end of his life was much closer than was mine, so he appeared older
than he was, so it seemed all right to call him Uncle Teep.
Nott and I went into the shelter where Uncle Teep was lying on
his split-bamboo bed. He was not in one of the tin-roofed buildings
with sheet-rock walls that had been erected by the UN, but was in a
small bamboo and thatch addition that the refugees had put upit
was much closer to the kind of house they had lived in before, and
thus more homelike. We bent down to enter, and there Uncle Teep
was lying on a bamboo platform. Nott told Uncle Teep who I was,
and then sat down by his head, while I sat on the edge of the bed
down by the foot. I prayed silently, and waited with baited breath
to see what Nottthis new Christianwould say. Nothing less
than the eternal destiny of the man lying there was at stake. Nott
composed his words thoughtfully, then very respectfully, and very
gently explained to him that he didnt need to be afraid to die if he
would place his sins on Jesus, who had already taken the penalty for

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those sins. Although there was no learned technique, nor set formula
for personal evangelism, Notts presentation of the Gospel on that
occasion was superb in its simplicity and sincerity; it was one of the
most beautiful presentations of the Gospel that I had ever heard.
Then he asked, Uncle Teep would you like to cast your sins on
Jesus to be forgiven so that you would go to Heaven?
Uncle Teep didnt answer immediately. He considered it for a
little while, and then said Yes, I would like to take shelter in Jesus,
and have Him forgive my sins.
Nott prayed with him, and the Angels in Heaven had cause to
rejoice.
In the days and weeks following, I went down to visit Uncle
Teep from time to time to pray for him. I usually tried to go to his
living area by an inconspicuous route, because for me, a foreigner,
to be walking through the section of the refugee camp which was
populated by Htin, was a very conspicuous matter, and people would
wonder why I had come. I would go and pray with him, placing
my hand behind his right jaw where there was a lump protruding
because of the cancer, asking Gods blessing and peace on him, and
praying for healing, sometimes anointing him with oil, according to
the instructions in the fifth chapter of James.
He hung on for months, and it seemed that the Lord was neither
taking him to Heaven, nor healing him. After several months, I
wondered if maybe the Lord was slowly healing him, and took him
back to the doctor who earlier had told him to prepare for death, but
the doctor reiterated that the cancer was still there, and that he would
die.
The burden of his care wasnt very heavy, because Uncle Teep
could still care for his personal cleanliness, he could still walk, and
feed himself. However, he was under the care of Notts family, and
Nott, seeing that he was neither dying nor getting better, suggested to
me that maybe we should pray that he die. I wasnt ready for that yet
though, because I wasnt sure that Uncle Teep would want us to pray
that he die. Nevertheless, Uncle Teep was reduced to spiritual reality;
to him, there was no illusion of better days to come, nor of hopes of
wealth or material things. The only attainable reality for him was in

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things eternal. Finally, one day while I was visiting him, I did dare to
ask the question.
Uncle Teep, would you rather we pray that you go ahead and be
with Jesus, or would you rather stay around like this?
Characteristic of him, he didnt answer quickly, but he thought
for a while, and then replied, I think I would rather go and be with
Jesus. So we were free to pray to that end.
There he wasUncle Teep. He was a paramount example of
salvation by grace through faith. Here before me was one of the least
influential men of one of the least influential tribes of one of the least
influential countries of the world. He couldnt read or write even in
his own language. He had never set foot in a church. He had never
learned the Ten Commandments or John 3:16. He didnt even know
that the Bible consisted of the Old and New Testaments, nor did he
know any names of the apostles. Wouldnt it help if I taught him
some of those things, or would that be adding works as a condition to
grace? The answer is that grace couldnt be augmented or extended
it was complete already in that Uncle Teep accepted that Jesus died
for him, and he stood whole in the righteousness of Christ, with no
merit of his ownhe was ready to die.
Others of us who do know the difference between the Old and
New Testaments, who have memorized the Ten Commandments and
John 3:16, or maybe even have graduated from Bible School might
suppose that we stand in a better stead to be summoned to Heaven
by the Angel of Death. Not so! Uncle Teeps claim to salvation and
Heaven depended solely on the sacrifice of Jesus Christnothing
could be added to that! His merit was Jesus righteousnessnothing
more, and nothing less.
Visiting him as I did from time to time, I always came away
having been blessed, and deeply moved. Every time I went to see
him, I came away with a strong bond of compassion and empathy
with himthe world that he had known was gradually fading, and
the hope of Heaven was so imminent. Although I was older than him,
and knew more of the Bible and Christian teaching than him, he was
way ahead of me in that he was standing on the threshold of heaven,
about to enter.

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Although he kept himself very clean, I wanted to wash his feet,

as Jesus had washed the feet of the apostles, so finally, one day when
I was going to go visit him, I surreptitiously carried a wet cloth with
me, and washed his feetthe feet that would soon be walking on
streets of gold. I prayed with him again, and he responded, praying
with words that I couldnt understand; his speech was becoming
slurred because of the blockage of the cancer in his nasal cavity.
Sally and I went away for vacation in southern Thailand for a
couple of weeks, and when we came back, we were told that Uncle
Teep had died. After a Christian funeral, and according to Htin custom,
had he been buried within 24 hours. I asked the circumstances of his
death, and Nott said that Uncle Teep had asked for him to lay his hand
on his wasted abdomen, and then Uncle Teep had breathed his last.
Because of his failures in his earlier life, Uncle Teep was
considered a loser by most of the Htin, but he had gained the most
important thingeternal life. Kings, the powerful, and the wealthy
have died and had elaborate funerals, but Uncle Teeps entry into
Heaven that day was as grand as any of them. He entered on the basis
of Jesus blood and righteousness.
Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness
My beauty are, my glorious dress;
Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed
With joy shall I lift up my head.
Bold shall I stand in that great day,
For who aught to my charge shall lay?
Fully absolved through these I am,
From sin and fear, from guilt and shame.
Lord, I believe Thy precious blood,
Which, at the mercy seat of God,
Forever doth for sinners plead,
For me, een for my soul was shed.
Lord, I believe were sinners more

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Than sands upon the ocean shore,

Thou hast for all a ransom paid,
For all a full atonement made.
Nicolaus L. von Zinzendorf
(Translated by John Wesley)

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Twenty-One

Lunchtime Visitors

(written by Sally)

e put the containers in which wed had our sandwiches

and fruit back into the cooler to be ready to take back
home later in the afternoon. It was lunch break and our
computer enterer had returned to his family for lunch and a little rest
before returning for the after-noon. The vocational training students
had finished their classes and returned to their homes. The preschool children had likewise finished and returned to their parents.
The teachers had gone to eat and we had remained in our office to
have our lunch.
Our office was made of cement brick up about 3 feet and then
wooden bars a couple of inches apart to let air and light in on three
sides. One of those sides was looking into an adjoining class-room.
The fourth side was not slatted but closed to the top as one of the
refugee families was living on the other side of the wall. The other
two sides were open to the outside. We could look out at a little plot
of grass and some trees that were carefully tended by the refugee
living on the other side of the wall from us. He was great with flowers
and grass and could fix up ways to catch and use all the water around
so nothing was wasted. We also looked out at the area where our
carpentry students practiced building the framework of houses and
the masonry students practiced their masonry lessons. We didnt have
the usual view of rows of long barrack buildings and rows of toilets
that most of the refugees had. Being so open, our office was about
the same temperature inside as it was outside. The fan on the floor
was oscillating between Don and me but didnt seem to be producing
much, if any, cool air.
Now with lunch over Don was looking forward to lying down on
the bench for a little nap. Hed been sitting at his desk translating the
TEE lessons all morning with a blotter under his arm to absorb the

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A New Heart for the Htin

perspiration to keep the pages from getting all wet. Now, for a rest
before our computer enterer returned and it would be time to resume
our work.
Hello, teacher came two or three voices from the doorway.
Hello. Come on in, was Dons reply.
The plans for a rest were put on hold for another day. A group of
Htin boys often came to the office during our lunch hour to visit as
soon as they saw we were finished eating. It was their school lunch
break also and they had some free time before having to return to
class. We were glad to have them come. Sometimes there were two
or three of them and other times there were five or six. They liked to
hear Don tell Bible stories or explain to them about different parts
of the world places they had never been and were just starting to
hear about in school. They also were interested in the computer, the
stapler, books or anything else that we had around. As they picked
things up to look them over, we didnt have to worry for fear things
might disappear with them or get broken because they were very
careful, honest, and could be trusted not to steal.
We bought Bible story comic books in the Thai language and
had them out for the boys to read or to look at while they were in
the office. They couldnt take them home. They werent allowed to
take Bibles or Bible stories into their homes because it would upset
the spirits. These boys were from homes that worshipped evil spirits
but they were interested in hearing of Jesus and listening to the Bible
stories. They not only heard them in our office but they heard them
at school because Nott, the principle of the Htin school, was a strong
Christian and wanted all his people to believe in Jesus. He had Bible
stories for them to read at school as well as telling them about Jesus
Christ.
These boys, around nine to eleven years old, were the ones that
first introduced me to Leet. His father, former Shaman Pun, whom
you read about earlier, had just died. I looked up from my desk that
day to see two of our regular visitors with another boy of their age.
This is Leet, they said. Hes Uncle Puns son.
That was my introduction to Leet, or Little Leet as we called
him because there were two other Leets, Big Leet and Middle Leet.

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Little Leet, however, didnt

run around with these other
boys and at first we didnt
see much of him. One day the
boys came in and said, Leet
has quit school.
When we saw him we
asked him about it and he
said, I know how to read.
He figured that was all he
needed and his mind was
made up. He started to do
some work around the CAMA
compound so he could make
a little money and help his
mother. He would wash the
CAMA pickup truck and do
Little Leet
some cleaning that Insom, the
Thai director, would find for him to do. After that we saw him quite
a bit. Little Leet was a Christian and very interested in learning all he
could of the Bible. He took many correspondence courses and went
to all the regular church meetings and the special meetings. He took
so many correspondence courses and did so well that the publishers
of the correspondence courses asked him to be their evangelist in the
camp. Im not sure they were aware of his age.
He went around passing out tracts. One day he came and said, I
was passing out tracts in a Hmong section of the camp and some of
the men got angry with me. They started to chase me and they chased
me all the way back to the Htin section of the camp. But still he
continued to be a witness.
One Sunday morning sitting in church Don noticed a very small
boy singing along with the rest of the congregation. Look at that
little boy sitting across the aisle around four rows ahead of us, sitting
in front of his mother. He seems to know all the words of the songs
and is singing right out.
Youre right. He does seem to know the songs and is really

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singing, I responded after taking note of him. He was maybe three or

four years old and we were curious as to how he knew the songs. How
would a child that young learn the words to the songs? After inquiry,
we learned that Little Leet had been gathering all the children in his
building and teaching them songs. They lived in long dormitory type
buildings. Many families lived in one building and they were allotted
just a small amount of space for each family. So, there could be many
children in one building.
Leet, how would you like to teach them some Bible stories
also? I asked one day. He agreed to do this and for a period of a few
months we provided him with pictures to teach the children. Then
some of the older young people took over the teaching.
We were getting ready to go home from the camp one day and we
saw a group of children around seven to ten years old gathering in the
classroom by our office. We were quite curious as to what they were
doing. Don asked what it was all about and found that Little Leet
was teaching them the book of Romanshis favorite book! The
children were gathering and waiting for Leet to arrive. We, as foreign
refugee workers had to leave the camp by 5:00-5:30 p.m. every day.
We didnt get to see the activities that went on in the evenings or on
Saturdays. We were allowed in the camp on Sunday mornings for

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church services.
Now, back to the bunch of boys who came to visit after lunch.
One Thai holiday we took these noon visitors on a trip to town. This
entailed getting all their names, UN numbers and parents permission
for them to go. Then the list was taken to the Camp Commanders
office for his permission for them to leave the refugee camp with us.
It was really exciting for them as it was the first time that they had
been out of the camp since arriving and they would get to see some of
the fair, the boat races and the town. Don was surprised to have them
asking, What kind of trees are those over there?
They had very few trees in the camp and most of these boys were
either born in camp or were very young when they, along with their
parents, were first put in a camp. They knew little about life outside
of the camp. Most boys their age would have had to work in the
rice fields and help their families provide food. These boys, however,
knew nothing about making rice fields, planting rice, harvesting,
threshing, or caring for and watching the water buffalo used in
plowing their rice fields. They only knew about waiting in lines for
rice that the UN would provide them and for vegetables and fish they
got maybe twice a week.
After looking around town, seeing some of the boat races and
the fair, Don brought them to our house. He let them see and use
the indoor plumbing, see the stove and water coming from faucets.
Before returning to the camp they enjoyed some ice cream and
cookies. They had seen many things that were new to them. It was a
big day for 14 young boys.
The boys stopped in to visit often. However, one Monday, Wan,
(pronounced one) the shortest of them all, stopped in by himself. The
CAMA church leaders had shown the Jesus video on the previous
Friday night and it was open to everyone. Nott, the school principle,
had told the children in school about it. Wan told us, I waited for my
parents and the others around them to go to sleep. Then I sneaked out
and came over to CAMA and saw the video.
He then proceeded to tell us the whole life of Christ with much
excitement and meaning. I was amazed that he could remember it
so thoroughly. He seemed so ready to turn to Christ. But he wasnt

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A New Heart for the Htin

allowed to become a Christian. All of these boys parents forbade

it. They were from the Htin Lua group of Htin. They were the ones
that still spoke the original Htin language. The ones who had turned
to Christ were all Htin who spoke a dialect of northern Thai except
for Nope, the first Htin young man to come to the Lord. Nope was
a Htin Lua. Those who did not speak their own language any more
but spoke Northern Thai, seemed more open to the Gospel. We pray
that the Holy Spirit will continue to use the stories that they heard,
the books that they read and the video that at least the one boy saw to
bring them to Christ.
As the boys got older, they didnt come in very often. They were
still very friendly but not openly interested in Christianity. Then the
time came for them to leave. A group of Htin were being relocated
in Northern Thailand as they had claimed to really be Thai and not
Lao citizens. Another group of Htin, who were from Laos, had been
repatriated back to Laos. After examining these who claimed to be
from Thailand and checking out their stories, the Thai government
agreed that they indeed were from Thailand. They said that they
would try to find a place for them to settle. They were moved to a
closed refugee camp in the North until they could find a place for
them to make rice fields and build homes. This happened a couple of
months before we were to return to the States.
About two weeks before we left Thailand we made a trip up
North to visit the Htin Christians. We saw some of these young boy
office visitors at that time, some of their parents, and one of their
shamans as well. They were all very friendly but the Htin Lua have
remained very resistant to the Gospel. We praise the Lord that at least
one more Htin Lua has become a Christian since they left and will be
a Christian friend for Nope. We are expecting to hear of many more
of them turning to Christ in the days to come. The Lord God has
told us in Isaiah 55:11 that His word shall not return unto Him void,
but would accomplish that which He pleases. John 3:16 confirms
His pleasure, For God so loved the world that He gave His only
begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but
have eternal life.

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Twenty-Two

Sacraments

hen Jesus was on the earth, most of His ministry was

taken up with teaching and working of miracles, but
there were two ceremonies that Jesus introduced that
were real hands-on, visible events with mystical meanings. Jesus put
his stamp of approval on two sacraments. One of these was baptism,
which had some precedent in the washings of the Old Testament,
and had been practiced by John the Baptist. Jesus instituted baptism
among His followers, and it might be seen as the rite of initiation into
the body of believersthe church. The other sacrament was initiated
by Jesus at the last supper that He had with His disciples, and He
left instructions that it be repeated in remembrance of Him, and in
anticipation of His coming again. Baptism was a one-time ordinance,
whereas Holy Communion was to be repeated whenever Christians
gathered together to remember the Lords giving of His body and
blood for us on the cross, and to anticipate His coming again.
It was important that the Htin be taught not only of the power of
prayer, and the teaching of Jesus, but also that they be familiarized
with these two ordinances of the church for the future.
The only Htin that I had ever baptized while we were missionaries
in Laos was the man whom we had employed to teach us his dialect
of Htin in Sayaboury in the 1970s. However, we were eventually
going to be able to witness the baptisms of many Htin in the refugee
camp.
Rev. Insom, had served in many roles in the camp, but foremost
among them was the role of pastor. He was at the refugee camp all
of the time that we were there. He was originally from northern
Thailand, and had graduated from a Bible school in that area. In the
late 1970s, he had come to work for CAMA Services at what had
been the original refugee camp that most of the early refugees had

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A New Heart for the Htin

fled to, further west along the border. Eventually though, the Thai
authorities decided to set up the Na Po Camp, not as a camp for legal
refugees, but as a detention centersort of an informal jail for
those who were considered lawbreakers, because they had crossed
from Laos after 1980five years after the Communists took control
of Laos. Those crossing over that late were going to be considered
illegal aliens instead of refugees, and originally were not going to
get the benefits accorded refugees. At first, no international agencies
were to be allowed to help them. However, there was concern on the
part of CAMA Services and other agencies, for the welfare of those
that were thus detained. Consequently, Insom was sent to work and
help there within that camp, even before there was legal status for
outside relief agencies. Being a Thai, he didnt look any different from
the refugees, so could live in the camp without arousing suspicion,
serving as the compassionate eyes of a concerned Christian agency
namely CAMA Services.
Eventually, after a period of time existing as a detention center
for those who had crossed illegally from Laos, the status of the Na
Po camp was changed to be a bona fide refugee camp. So thereafter
CAMA Services as well as some other international agencies could
openly work there.
Insom, as the first man on the spot for CAMA Services, was a very
reliable person whether in the pulpit, behind his desk, administering
the school programs, or running errands. His most significant
ministry though was in this capacity as a pastor, where he discipled
new converts that subsequently spread across the globe to Australia,
France, Canada, the United States and other countries.
Although other people would preach in the CAMA Church in the
refugee camp from time to time, the main burden of church leadership
and preaching fell on him, and such things as communion services,
and baptisms were his responsibility. The CAMA building that was
used as a Church, was built under Insoms supervision and had a
baptistry built into the floor of the platform. If baptisms were to be
performed, such a baptistry was necessary because it was usually not
permitted for the refugees to go to a river or lake outside the fences
of the refugee camp.

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Don & Sally Durling

Although I had baptized one Htin in Laos, it was obviously

fitting that Insom should do any baptism that was to be done in
the camp. Most of the remaining residents of the camp were going
to be repatriated to Laos, or in the case of the Htin claiming Thai
citizenship, they would be permanently settled in Thailand. It was
proper that they be baptized and administered communion by a Thai
preacher rather than a missionary.
Insom had done so many baptisms that he had a good technique
established. He didnt baptize by putting one hand on the persons
back, and another over their face, immersing the person backward.
He had several reasons for doing it in another way. There was cultural
resistance in Thailand against a pastor putting his hands on a womans
body for any reason. Also, immersing people backward usually left
them gasping for air when they came up. Insoms method was that
he would stand in the center of the baptistry, and the candidates for
baptism would come in two at a time, one on his right and one on
his left. Then he would put his hand on their head, and those being
baptized would squat down in the water. As they went down, Insom
would say, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit. It was a very efficient and culturally appropriate way to
perform baptisms.
There were three baptismal services with significant numbers of
the Htin in the CAMA Church. The first group baptism involving
Htin was in October 1991, and included Nope (the first Htin man to
attend church), the four couples that had believed a little later, and
the approximately fifty that had become Christians while we were
away on a three-month home assignment. These were baptized in
one Sunday service. I remember that one of the men being baptized
at that time had a heavy head of naturally tight curly hair that seemed
to resist getting wet, so that even though he had been thoroughly
immersed, he came up with his hair looking dry. Another one was
being baptized with his watch on. When it was pointed out to him, he
didnt want to take it off, because it was a waterproof watch.
The second group of Htin to be baptized was actually handled in
two sections, on SaturdaysApril 11 and 18, 1992. There were going
to be more than 100 who were ready for baptism, and the decision

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A New Heart for the Htin

to divide them into two groups was made for a very practical reason.
The CAMA church building had a rough concrete floor that was hard
to keep clean, and if there were too many bare feet walking across
it, the water in the baptistry would get real dirty, so it was decided to
baptize them in two groups.
These two groups totaling more than 100 people were made up
largely of people who were influenced by ex-shaman Puns decision
to become a Christian. His wife, two of his married daughters, and
his two sons who were old enough to have understood what it meant,
were the first to be baptized. Although he was not with us in body,
we were all very aware of the influence he had had on this group. It
almost seemed as though there was a big vacant gap where Uncle Pun
would have been. Knowing of the reference to baptisms for the dead
in First Corinthians 15:29, I was tempted to suggest that someone
stand in for him to represent this highly influential man who had
been called to Heaven before the date of his scheduled baptism had
come. I sought counsel from others though, and was wisely advised
not to propose it, because of abuses of the practice by some cults.
Nevertheless, I am sure that almost everybody witnessing those
baptisms had ex-shaman Pun on their mind.
Later in 1993, there was a group of young people that had grown
into maturity in the intervening months since the Htin had started
becoming Christians. They were baptized not long before they left
the camp for settlement in other parts of Thailand. Reports have
come of more that were baptized after they had moved into northern
Thailand. It is likely that once they were settled into rural areas of
Laos or Thailand, they would be baptized in rivers rather than in a
baptistry.
The other sacrament that is essential to Christians is the receiving
of the Lords Supper. This was practiced at the CAMA Church in
the refugee camp once a month, using regular bread that could be
bought locally, and a sweetened red drink, served in small plastic
shot-glasses that were available locally.
Aware as we were that the refugees returning to Laos in particular
might be isolated from other Christians, and also might be unable
to purchase bread or a beverage like the one that had been used; we

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thought we should make accommodation for that future situation.

I was still teaching the class of the older illiterates, and decided
that such a place would be good for demonstration of an alternate
communion service. I asked Insom to serve communion to them as
they might have to do it in a place where they wouldnt be able to
buy bread or a sweetened red beverage. He served them communion
using steamed glutinous rice in a serving basket instead of bread, and
water in a metal bowl that served as a common cup.
Different symbols were used, but the significance was the same.
The common food for the apostles was bread, and the common drink
was grape wine. The common food for these new Htin believers was
rice, and the common drink was water, but the important thing is that
the body and blood of the Savior were remembered.
There was no organ playing, no stained glass windows, nor
carpeted floors. Scriptures were spoken in a different language, but
the words of Jesus still rang true:
This is my body given for you;
this do in remembrance of me.
This cup is the new covenant in my blood,
which is poured out for you.
(Luke 22:19-20)

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Twenty-Three

Christmas 1993

ith the closing of the large predominately Hmong camp

at Vinai and the reluctant transfer of those remaining
Hmong to the Na Po Camp, the make-up of the camp
changed. The vocational training project was being down-sized,
because we had reached the saturation pointmost of those wanting
to study the courses that we offered had already done so. There had
been several CAMA projects for the Hmong at the Vinai Camp, but
all of these were phased out except for the Opium Detoxification
Program, which was transferred to Na Po. With that change, we had
several staff members transferred to Na Po from Vinai. The head of
the Opium Detoxification Team was a male nurse from Burma. There
was also a psychiatric nurse from Finland, and a social worker from
Scotland, who had previously been a teacher. Also, a Hmong TEE
project that had been under development in Vinai was brought to Na
Po for completion.
With the arrival of the Hmong, the CAMA Church congregation
was divided into two groups, the Lao-language service now attended
mostly by Htin, was held first on Sunday morning, with the Hmong
service being held afterward. When it came time for the Christmas
celebration though, it was decided that each group needed a full day.
The Lao language service, would celebrate on Saturday, which was
the actual date of Christmas in 1993, and the Hmong congregation
would celebrate on Sunday, December 26.
I had been through many Christmas seasons in my life. I had spent
the first 19 Christmases at the farm home of my family in Michigan.
My 20th Christmas was spent in Cuba, where I had gone as a volunteer
for a year on a Childrens camp (well before Castros revolution). I
had spent two Christmas seasons in Korea, where I was in the Army.
Those Christmases in Korea were very positive times, because of the

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Christian fellowship
I found there with
other Christian GIs,
missionaries,
and
Korean
Christians.
During my University
years, I was again at
home in Michigan
for Christmas. I had
spent one Christmas in
Bangkok while with a
University of Michigan
project before being
transferred to Laos.
After we were married,
Sally and I have been
together for every
Christmas, many of
these were spent in
Laosfirst the two of
us, then with our son
Tim, then Mary, then
Helen, and then Bill.
One
Christmas
that I remember in
Sayaboury stands out.
Nott
Whereas Christmas is
a family event for Americans, in Laos, it took the form of a village
festival among most Christian villages. We went to a few Christmas
feasts in Christian Hmong and Khamou villages in Sayaboury
Province, but we wanted to preserve one day of the Christmas season
to be with our children and nobody else. The only way that could be
done was to keep the shutters and doors of our house closed all day.
It was the cool season; otherwise it would have been oppressively hot
to have the shutters closed all day.
Among our things we had brought from the US was a set of

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Christmas tree lights wired in parallel, but we had no electricity.

Realizing that the string of lights would need something close to
110 volts to operate, I figured out a way to do it. I bought 66 cheap
flashlight batteries, and built a long wood box for them. I knew that
they would have to fit tightly to make a good DC connection, so I
built the box to be snugand it worked! We had 99 volts of DC
power, which was enough to make the string of lights work. With
the shutters all shut, we had to light the kerosene lamps, but they,
along with the string of lights on the Christmas tree gave us a good
family Christmas. There were other Christmases, but we had either
generator power, or later in other locations, we had municipal power
available. I remember some of those, but mostly I remember the year
that we used 66 flashlight batteries to light our Christmas tree.
This Christmas of 1993 in the refugee camp though was different.
The family we celebrated with was our spiritual family. It would
probably be our last Christmas with the Htin, and also with the
Hmong. Future Christmases would be with our blood familyour
children in the U.S.
Christmas of 1993 was indeed memorable for many reasons.
The Hmong had invited a venerable Hmong-speaking missionary
in northern Thailand to come to be their speaker that year, but the
distance to be traveled was great, and he declined. Consequently,
they asked me to speak, but I would have to speak in Lao, going
through a Hmong interpreter. As an honorarium, the Hmong gave
me a heavy silver bracelet, with CHRISTMAS 93 written in raised
letters. I still have that bracelet, and whenever I see it, it brings back
fond memories.
The speaker for the Htin congregation was a Thai preacher, who
was undertaking a church-planting ministry in the provincial capital
where we lived. All of our CAMA team was there for that service,
and we sat close to the front of the auditorium on the right side.
Christmas, wherever it is celebrated by Christians, is the most
important holiday of the year. It usually brings with it monumental
emotionsgenerally positive, but depending on circumstances, the
emotions can be negative. Under any circumstances, the emotions
that come with Christmas are profoundnever passive.

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To me, it seemed that

every tangent of emotion
intersected in that Christmas
season of 1993. None of our
four children were with us
that Christmas. Some of the
Htin Christians had already
left for repatriation to Laos
a few months earlier, and
most of the remaining
Htin would be leaving
in less than two weeks
for northern Thailand. It
would be our last Christmas
as missionaries on the
field, because we would
be returning to the US in
less than three months for
eventual retirement. Our
CAMA team would be
breaking up. Those were
the negative emotions of
that Christmas season.
Those
negative
emotions, however, were
Nope
overwhelmed
by
the
positive emotions. First of all, every Christmas is the celebration of
the event that forces all other events in human history to fade into
pale insignificance, namely, that Jesus Christ took on human form.
Then, more specifically, came the joy of celebrating Christmas with
the Hmong. They were not the tribe that we eventually specialized
in, but they were the prominent fruit of C&MA missionary activity
in northern Laos, and we had many dear friends among them. I had
shared their tables, walked with them on trails, and slept in their
homes for decades. Although we would be with them in the camp for
almost three months more, this day of Sunday, December 26, 1993

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was to be our last Christmas with them.

The greatest emotion for me though, was to go into the church on
Christmas day itself, which was on Saturday that year. As I walked
into the church, there before my eyes was a full church building, and
almost all of those sitting there were Htin. Thirty years earlier, we
didnt know any Htin who were Christians. The number of Htin in
Laos that were literate could be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Thirty years ago, it was the firm contention of the headman of the
most influential Htin village in Laos that no Htin would ever give up
their spirit-worship to worship Jesus.
Now, here before my eyes spread an awesome sighta church
filled with Htin. Most of the young people were literate in both Thai
and Lao. The Htin had been learning musical instruments since they
had become Christians, and so the music played during the service
was primarily in the hands of the Htinand it was beautiful. The
electronic orchestra consisting of two guitars, a bass guitar, and
electronic percussion was all Htin; only the keyboard was played by
a Lao. Htin children sang in various groups, relating the events that
took place in Bethlehem almost 2000 years ago. One young man sang
a beautiful solo honoring the mother of Jesus. Nott, who was gifted
in so many ways, was also a folksinger and held the congregation
spellbound with his captivating narrative of Jesus birth.
I watched; I listened. Short of being in Heaven itself, I couldnt
imagine myself in a happier situation. I couldnt help smiling, and I
felt as though I must be glowing with delight at what my eyes were
seeing and my ears were hearing. True, within days we would be
separated, but the separation would be a temporary interval, until
we would rejoice again in the very presence of the One whose
birthday we were celebrating. In the presence of Jesus, all things
would be new, and we would have more capacity for joy, but for
the time being, I was at capacityexperiencing as much joy as my
mortal being could contain.
Finally, the Christmas program came to an end. I would have
liked to preserve that hour changeless in amber, but time couldnt be
stopped. We went back to our house in town, and the Htin returned
to their area of the refugee camp, where the urgent task for most of

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them was to get packed and ready to leave for northern Thailand. The
busses would be coming back early in January, to return them to the
now-peaceful mountains which marked the border between Thailand
and Laos, from which they had fled during the war years. Sally and I
would go on to phase out the remainder of our TEE work, then return
to the U.S.
The euphoria of that day would eventually have to give way
again to the normalcy of daily life. We still had almost three months
of sewing up the loose ends of our TEE project in the campa camp
that would soon be devoid of Htin. We still have the memories
though, and as a memento of that Christmas, we have the heavy
silver bracelet given as an honorarium with CHRISTMAS 93 in
raised letters from the Hmong congregation.

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Twenty-Four

The Dispersion

he very word refugee implies impermanence. The very fact

that a person is in a refugee camp means that he is waiting
to go somewhere else. In the case of the Htin who came to
Na Po though, there was no longer any possibility of their going to
any place other than to go back to Laos, or the mountainous areas of
northern Thailand.
For those returning to Laos, there were two ways that they could
go. One was to voluntarily repatriate as individuals or families,
generally returning to the area that they had lived in and where they
had relatives. The UN would give them some basic provisions so they
could eat until they were able to harvest a crop, and they would go
where they were familiar. The other way was to go as a group to an
area where there was available land, and in essence start a new village.
This also was with UN help. This was particularly to accommodate
people that didnt have family roots any more in Laoseither their
families had all left, or they had been out of contact with their
families so long that they felt closer to those they associated with in
the refugee camp than they did to family. Some groups of old rightwing Lao soldiers had repatriated as groups, and were given areas of
land where they could settle and practice agriculture.
We had known of a few individual families who had returned to
the area they were familiar with. The young single mother who was
one of the first two Htin to start attending church had gone back to
Laos that way. She was living with her non-Christian parents, and
they returned to Laos in 1991, going to the area that they still had
relatives. We had given her the names of Hmong Christians that we
knew in the area she was returning to, and she did go to meet the
venerable widow of a pastor that we had worked with decades earlier.
However, she lived too far away to be able to walk regularly to their

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worship services.
As time went on though, plans were laid by the Thai government,
the UN, and the Lao government to really press for the voluntary
return to Laos of those remaining, in order that the camp could be
closed. Pressured by the UN, and encouraged by the Thai government,
a few Lao who had voluntarily repatriated to Laos were brought back
into the camp as a promotion, to try to persuade those remaining
that it was OK to go back. This was kind of a propaganda program,
and those that came that way were of course accompanied by some
Lao Communist Cadre. In one such program, one man who was not
himself a Htin, but who was married to a Htin, had a pointed question
for the cadre.
If those of us who are Christians return, will we be free to
continue worshipping as Christians? he asked.
The practiced response from the Communist official was, Yes,
of course, freedom of religion is guaranteed by the Lao Constitution.
Eventually though, this promise turned out to be meaningless.
Then, an area was found that was adequate enough accommodate
a group repatriation of about 300 Htin in a location that was not
exactly where the Htin had lived in Sayaboury Province, but it wasnt
far away, in Luang Prabang province. It was offered to the group of
Htin, and they accepted it.
As plans were made for repatriation of this group returning to
Laos, some personal crises loomed large. Some very close friendships
had developed in the camp. With the proposed repatriation of some to
Laos, while others were waiting to return to northern Thailand, they
realized that they would be separated by a considerable geographical
distance on two sides of a border that could not be crossed with
impunity anymore. Some close friends, some extended families, and
even some married couples would be separated.
One deaf-mute Htin couple that had been married in the camp a
couple of years earlier had a beautiful little daughter, but the wifes
family claimed Thai citizenship, while the husbands family had no
such claim. Eventually, the wifes family insisted that she wait to go
with them to northern Thailand, meaning that they would be separated.
On May 6, 1993, the buses came and the distraught husband had to

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Preparing to return to Laos.

leave his wife and child behind, possibly never to see them again.
That day the husband said good-bye to his wife and daughter, and
walked alone to the place where the busses were loading. I met him
on his way; he stopped and looked at me. Being a deaf-mute, he
could speak very little, but he managed to form one syllable, uttering
his wifes name. What he could not express with his tongue though,
was eloquently expressed by the grief reflected in doleful eyes.
Another family faced a crisis that found a better resolution. The
husband was Htin, and the wife was Hmong, but they had lived in
Section 8 among the Htin. Generally the Hmong pay a very high
dowry for a wife, and the wifes parents in effect lose their daughters
to the husbands family. The Htin on the other hand, pay a relatively
small dowry, but the son-in-law becomes part of the wifes family, so
in the case of this couple, there was no clear precedent as to whether
they should go with the husbands family to return to Laos, or with
the wifes family to Thailandor separate, as some couples had.
Although there was some pressure from the Hmong wifes family
for her to stay behind with them, it was finally decided that the wife
would go with the husbands family. We saw the wife tearfully saying

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good-bye to her Hmong family as the bus prepared to leave, but at

least the marriage was left intact.
On that day of May 6, 1993, about 300 Htin left to go back to
Laos in a group repatriation, and of those about 100 were Christians.
Very little has been heard from them since they left, but we did hear
that in spite of Lao government assurances that there would be no
discrimination against them as Christians, they, and other Christians
in that province, were eventually forced to stop having worship
services.
After that group left the refugee camp, we had anticipated
that attendance at worship services in the church would be down
considerably, but the following Sunday, it seemed that the church
was just as full as ever, and new people started to attend the new
believers courses. That group was the only large group repatriation
of Htin to Laos, although there had been some individual families
that had gone before that, and there were some that would go after
that. By the end of 1993 though, nearly all of those Htin remaining in
Section 8 were ones that claimed Thai citizenship.
It wasnt until just after New Year of 1994 that the large remaining
group of several hundred Htin was finally sent by bus to northern
Thailand. There was a group of five buses that made three trips over
a period of several days. Although the first group was leaving on a
Saturday when we would not usually be in the camp, we went to
say good-bye. Since it was not a regular work-day, we didnt have
permission to go into the camp, but parked outside the gate, hoping
to say good-bye as the busses exited. The bus that Nott was on didnt
stop outside the gate at all, but as it went by, we caught a glimpse of
Nott waving at us as he and his family left.
I saw one young non-Christian fellow who had worked faithfully
as a volunteer for the carpentry section of the CAMA vocational
school on a bus that did stop, and we went to say good-bye to him.
I noticed that he wasnt dressed very warmly. I knew that traveling
all night long through mountainous areas in January would be chilly.
Lot, I asked, Dont you have anything warmer than that to
wear?
Yes, I did have something warmer, but I didnt think of how cold

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it might get on the trip, and so I sent it along with my baggage on a

truck, he answered.
I had on a long-sleeved shirt that I really liked, but I had other
warm clothing, so I peeled it off my back and gave it to him. It was
much too big for him, but it would give him a little bit of warmth.
I saw a middle-aged man who had earlier made himself known to
me as a guide who had taken Paw Peng and me on to the next village
nearly three decades ago. I remembered the trip clearly, because
this fellowyoung at that time, had worn socks on the trail with no
shoes. I was used to seeing people go barefoot, or wear shoes without
socks, but socks without shoes was unusual. I also remember that
on that day we had come to a place where a field was being burned
alongside the trail, and we had to run through the smoke. That man,
middle-aged now and still not a Christian, stuck his head out of the
window to say good-bye.
A young Christian fellow who had often come to us wanting his
picture taken stuck his head out of the window and tearfully said
that he was in love with a Hmong girl who he was having to leave
behind. This fellow had learned to play the guitar very well, and was
an essential part of the little orchestra in the church services. Sally
reached up and patted his arm to show sympathy.
Similar stories could be told of every one of the hundreds getting
on the busses. But it could be summed up by saying that the Htin were
leaving us, and in a few short weeks, we would be leaving Thailand.
God had given us the wonderful joy of seeing a harvest being reaped.
Decades earlier, God had put us in a place where we could sow the seed
of the Gospel among the Htin. It had been arduous, and seemingly
with little fruit, but then after many long years of separation God
transported hundreds of them across Thailand to where we were so
that we could see a bountiful harvest among them. I cant say that we
didnt faint, nevertheless, in due season, God did allow us to reap.
(Galatians 6:9)
We were coming to the end of our term. We were completing our
part of a formidable taskdevelopment of TEE for use in Laos. I
am not usually a good desk-sitterespecially if the desk is in a dusty,
hot refugee camp. However, the Lord had given me grace, and by

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Sad goodbyes.

locking onto specific office hoursa certain time to go to work every

day, and a certain time to come home, I found that I had been able to
do it. I had sat there at the desk, surrounded by dictionaries, Bibles,
and textbooks, dutifully doing what I had been sent to do.
Halfway through that 6 year stretch though, the Lord gave us
this bountiful bonus, first in seeing so many Htin arrive in the camp,
then seeing hundreds of them become Christians, and finally seeing
them leave to eventually go back to resettle in rural areas of Laos and
Thailand. It was a reward that came in a way that we would never
have dreamed of, but which we were glad to see.

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Twenty-Five

Lyndon

Names and even events of this chapter have been

changed to protect people that may still be vulnerable.

e were particularly concerned about those new Christians

that had been repatriated to Laos, and there seemed to
be no way outside of prayer that we could continue to
encourage themno way until Lyndon came to mind. I had first met
Lyndon a few years earlier, when I met him in the living area of
Deacon Far.
I dont remember the reason I had for going into Deacon Fars
house, but I do remember ducking my head to clear the low doorway
to enter; there was Far weaving baskets, and another fellow was there
as sort of an apprentice weaving baskets with Far. This other fellow
looked desolately woebegonehis very visage seemed to be silently
muttering an apology for existing.
I would have been more apt to expect such a downtrodden look
among the Htin, but I first met Lyndon there working with Far in
1988when there were not yet any Htin in the camp. I remembered
him though, and the following Sunday, I saw him in church with Far.
He came up to me after church, and started telling me that he
had lived in a certain town in Laos where there was a missionary. I
guessed that the missionary might be Jerry Torgerson, and he said
that was indeed the man he was talking about. At a time of severe
economic isolation, that missionary had run out of ready cash, and
Lyndons father had lent him money. I took it at face value, and wrote
to Jerry. Jerry wrote back, saying that he didnt remember the person,
nor the event, but in charity he did send a gift to Lyndon, realizing
that he might not have remembered the event.
Later Lyndon came around, and let me know that he was able
to type. At that time I was in need of a typist, and took him on as a

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second typist. Not long afterward though, he came in drunk one day,
and the work he had done that day had to be redone, so I decided to
let him go. I was beginning to see a little bit of the complexities of
his personality. Complexities which were to become a real enigma to
me as time went on.
Later, Lyndon did become a regular in the church services, and
was baptized. When I got far enough along in the preparation of a TEE
text, and was looking for volunteers to study the developing courses,
Lyndon was quick to apply. He was a quick study, and any week that
he really prepared for the class, he was head and shoulders above the
other students, but some weeks he came to class unprepared.
As I got to know him better, I saw him no longer as the desolate
loner that I had met in Fars house weaving baskets. It was however,
evident that in the eyes of status-conscious Lao, he had no rank. For
that reason, he made all that he could of the natural abilities he had
intelligence, and a facile tongue.
Very often he would stop in at the office where I was working,
and complain of someones mistreatment of him, or tell of some
scheme that he had dreamed up. Other refugees were reluctant or
even unwilling to come in while I was working, but not Lyndon.
If he came in while we were eating our packed lunch, Sally might
offer him a sandwich, and he would accept it. Other Lao would avoid
coming in during our lunch time, and certainly decline to eat our food
with us.
Because of our frequent conversations, I learned more and more
about him. In spite of the fact that he had originally claimed that
his father had loaned money to the missionary mentioned earlier, in
fact he didnt know who his real father was. His mother had been a
camp follower, earning whatever she could from Lao soldiers. Once
when Lyndon had asked his mother about his father, she responded
by asking why it was that he wanted to knowand didnt answer
more. I also learned that Lyndon had fathered a daughter in Laos, but
it was not a matter of heavy concern to him, because in Lao society,
stepfathers usually take over in the absence of blood fathers. He also
told me that he had been an opium addict, and that whereas most
refugees had fled into Thailand because of political crimes, he had

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fled to avoid prosecution for thievery.

And the schemes that he dreamed up! Once when he was feeling
short of money, he said he knew of a way he could make a cardboard
box with a false bottom and smuggle opium into the U.S. through the
postal service. He considered it foolproof, but I considered it foolish.
I dont think he ever tried it.
When the Htin, and then later the Hmong started being transferred
to our camp from other parts of Thailand, opium became an increasing
problem. One Htin man had arrived who had gone part-way through
the detoxification program in the previous camp but had not finished
it. When those in charge of that detoxification program in that camp
contacted me asking if we could follow up on this matter, Lyndon
came to mind. I thought that since he was an ex-addict, he would be
in a unique position to oversee the mans continued detoxification.
Lyndon was glad to help out, and the man was put into his care.
I knew from my long conversations that I had had on the trail
with Lao Pao and Paw Peng decades earlier, that opium withdrawal
was difficult and that even after withdrawal, the temptation to revert
was overwhelming. Lyndon, in spite of his insecurities and instability
was usually truthful to mesometimes painfully so. I hadnt really
worried too much about putting this withdrawing addict into Lyndons
handsI guess because I didnt appreciate the extent of the pull of
opium. Eventually though, someone told me that in the process of
association with this man, Lyndon was becoming re-addicted.
I asked him about it, and at first he denied it. He said that he
had smoked some, but wasnt to the point of re-addiction. In time
though, it became apparent that he was in fact re-addicted. When the
truth came out, I found myself angry. He sat on a bench beside me
outside of my office, and I felt like a parent that needed to spank his
son. I doubt that Lyndon had ever been spanked by his mother, but he
had certainly faced punishment from civil authorities.
He knew that my concern was genuine, and although I couldnt
stay in the camp overnight without special permission, I covenanted
with him that I would pray, and I did in fact spend most of that night,
sleepless in our house in town, praying for him. He did manage to
withdraw, and months later, when the CAMA detoxification program

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was transferred into our camp, he became one of their faithful and
loyal workers.
Lyndon was not Htin, and would not have been a crucial part
of this Htin story up to this point, but he was to become intricately
involved with the Htin.
Needless to say, the Htin as a tribe had become very much a part
of the very reason for our existence. Many Htin were among those
who were very close to us. Many Lao, Hmong, Khamou, and various
Thai were close to us also. Lyndon seemed to require a special
category though.
Whenever Lyndon came to the office to visit, I was glad to see
him, and since he was not shy about revealing his inmost thoughts
with me, he wormed himself more deeply into my affection. He was
in a way like a homeless waif, even though he was, by then, in his
mid thirties. Because of the questionable nature of his conception and
birth, he had no status in Lao society. Having no status though, he
had learned to live street-wise (although the towns he grew up in had
no streets.) He had been born with a keen mind. He had developed
a persuasive eloquence to the extent that he became an informal
advocate for people that had grievances to present to the authorities
in the camp. Nevertheless, when rebuked, this intellect and eloquence
would be overwhelmed by the face of the waif, apologizing for his
existence. If he had status, it was momentary, as long as he could
display intelligence and eloquence. Once he closed his mouth, or put
down his pen, he was a waif again. That was Lyndon!
I found myself deeply concerned about the group of new Htin
believers that had repatriated to Laos in 1994. They would be out
of touch with other Christians, and being so new in their faith, were
very vulnerable. Lyndon came to mind.
When that group departed the camp to cross the border and go
overland to the locale of their resettlement, one of the group wasnt
able to go because he had recently had an operation and was held
back. After a few days though, he was leaving to rejoin his family
that had gone on ahead, and Lyndon was going at that same time.
The day of their departure, Lyndon and the other man came into
my office to say good-by. As I was giving that difficult good-by, I

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looked at Lyndon, and thought of his abilities, and the depth of Bible
knowledge he had gained since becoming a Christian. He was going
back without family, because his mother had died, and she was the
only one he had. I gave him a challenge.
Lyndon, there are new Christians there that are in need of
leadership. They are not your people, but you have abilities and
knowledge that they need. I wont be able to see them anymore, so
am powerless to help them. Maybe you can help them, so I leave this
challenge with you.
The vulnerable, insecure waif, hidden behind the facade of a keenminded and eloquent persuader stood there. He was born naturally to
low status, but now he was born again supernaturally of the Spirit
of God. He and the other man walked out of the office to get on the
departing bus.
Word came back from time to time that he was here or there, that
his keen eloquence had won him status in this place or that place,
but I knew that the kind of status he was used to gaining was usually
short-lived. One of the things that he did do though was that he went
to the village where the group of new Christians had been repatriated
to, according to the challenge that I had given him. They were not
his people, but he took on their burden. He preached and taught them
every night for a while. He rounded up materials to build a little
church, and things looked good.
Then he decided that he wanted to sneak across the border to
Thailand and visit some of the friends that he had made there. When
he returned back across the river into Laos, though, something went
wrong. Word came out that he had been arrested. One rumor was that
he was tortured and killed, and that a picture of his battered body had
been sent to the Christians where he had been trying to minister, to
put fear into them. There is no firm confirmation that this rumor was
true.
What is true is that since that time there has been a crack-down
on Christians in rural areas of Laos, and also, that Lyndon has
disappeared without a trace. If this case of martyrdom is true, it is
an isolated incident, because although Christians are under duress
in rural Laos, there is no evidence of a general policy of martyrdom.

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Although there is no account of his death as there was that of

Stephen in Acts 7, I would like to think that Lyndon died for his faith.
I would like to picture him calling on Gods forgiveness as he was
being put to death. I would like to claim Lyndon as a martyr, being
the seed of the church. Maybe the keen eloquence of the man reborn
of the Spirit of God gave witness to those who witnessed his death
in the same way that Paul, witnessing the death of Stephen, saw the
forgiveness called for. Maybe those who killed him or those who
were witnesses of his death will in days to come themselves become
Christians.
Lyndons story here on earth is finished, and we dont know the
details of the end, but when we are on the other side of death, we will
know. At that time, I would like to introduce you, the reader, to my
kinsman Lyndon (although that isnt his real name.)

This is the church built before

Lyndon disappeared.

In the meantime, let us stand with others who are at this very moment
are giving their lives for their faith or being imprisoned in unseen
corners of the earth.

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166

Afterword
This manuscript has lain dormant for something like eight years now,
but I decided to pull it out of hibernation and print up a few copies
of it with our computer. These copies are particularly for family
and friends. Inasmuch as such a period of time has passed, some
things have changed. We have nine grandchildren now, scattered in
Michigan, Oregon, and Alaska. We have gotten older.
I would like to bring you up to date on the situation among the
Htin, and other Christians in Laos (and Thailand), but I dont know
a whole lot about how things are going there. There is some degree
of persecution there. There are a few who have been martyred for
their faith, and more that have been imprisonedparticularly among
tribal people and in remote areas where local authorities think they
can get away with it without being called to account.
Christians have not asked that persecution cease, but have asked
for prayer that they be strong in the face of persecution. Those who
have been imprisoned have generally come out stronger than ever.
However, some under pressure have renounced their faith, and then
been plagued with guilt for having done so.
The Communists dont seem to realize that Christians grow
stronger under pressure. It has been seen in China and in myriad
other locations around the earth.

~ Don Durling
~ February 2006

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How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him

who brings good news Isaiah 52:7

Spanning over thirty years,

A New Heart for the Htin
is the story of one missionary
couples journey into the
up-lands of Laos to spread
the Gospel of Jesus Christ to
the people of the Htin tribe.

http://aheartforthehtin.com