A Missionary in Thailand

 

Church attendance was rather sparse this Sunday morning here in Provo. I guess nobody heard about the Nestle Crunch Bar all the fathers would get right after the service was over in honor of Father's Day.

It reminded me of my brief stint as branch president in Thailand during my mission long times ago. We rarely had more than 5 people, plus livestock and poultry, show up on Sunday.

Church was held in our cinder block house on the outskirts of Khon Kaen. Attendees included a professor from Khon Kaen University, our maid Sister Phiilailuck, a local duck farmer, a shell-shocked Peace Corps volunteer, and the occasional American Marine from Nam Phong Air Force Base, where they were flying covert bombing raids over Laos and Cambodia at the time.

We usually invited the Peace Corps guy to stay for Sunday dinner. Sister Phiilailuck did not work on Sundays, but she always left us a huge selection of curries, salads, and cold rice for the day to warm up ourselves. I wish I could remember that guy's name, but I can't. He was short and blonde and had decided he'd made a mistake in volunteering to go abroad. He was a homebody, not a wanderer, and as we sat eating our exotic leftovers he'd reminisce about the bread his mother baked and the milk and honey his father produced on their farm and how they'd all sit down together for a big bowl of bread with milk and honey on Sundays. He'd get a little misty-eyed. His Thai was execrable, having learnt it at some government program back in the States for a month prior to coming over. (As was mine when I first got to Thailand!) So he felt pretty isolated and lonely. When his time was up he dropped by our place, as happy as a pig in mud, to leave us his stash of pork & beans.

The duck farmer was a nice guy, very quiet and devout. He killed a turkey for Thanksgiving and delivered it to Sister Phiilailuck to pluck and cook for us. All that day as Elder Day and I were out tracting we thought of the delicious roast turkey we'd have when we got back home that evening. But alas, Sister Phiilailuck had no experience with either a bird that size or with an oven (in fact, we didn't have one -- she did all her cooking for us on two gas rings.) So we returned to a large dead bird smoldering in a wok. We broke out the pork & beans instead.

While branch president, I was told by the mission office to find us a new house and place of worship. Our current abode had shutters downstairs, but no screens or bars in the windows. During Sunday services it was not unusual for a stray chicken to flutter in during Sacrament to check things out. Curious water buffalo stuck their heads in during the hymn singing to find out what all the ruckus was about. And sometimes joined in with a pious bellow.

But the biggest problem were the flies, which came in like locusts. They settled on our food and refused to budge even when we waved our arms athletically over them. I kept getting ill as they poisoned the food, although the other Elders didn't seem to be affected that much. So my proselytizing hours were dismal.

I never did find us another place. Decent rental houses were mysteriously expensive for farangs like us who didn't have Thai girlfriends. A piece of Siamese eye candy could spread some lolly around for her man, to promote an inexpensive pad, but we upright lads were out of the running.

 I can no longer put names to most people I knew in Thailand. My missionary journals, faithfully scribbled upon during my two year stint in Thailand, have all disappeared over the years due to frequent moves and a divorce. My philosophy has always been 'I can put stuff in a cardboard box, but I'll be darned if I can be bothered to carry that box around!' So names, among other things, have dispersed like the ten tribes of Israel, along with my journals.

Hence I cannot tell you the name of our Khon Kaen University professor -- who worked on the Thai translation of the Book of Mormon and was a counselor to President Brown. What I do remember is that one Sunday he came to services, obviously out of sorts. 

And this is as good a place as any to explain that Thais are a cheery and affable people, who will give you the rice out of their bowl at the drop of a mango. But at the same time many of them are subject to deep and savage bouts of melancholy and doubt that rise up like a summer thunderstorm, burst, and then disappear as quickly as they came. This particular Sunday this particular brother was in such a surly mood. After services he stayed behind to inform us that the whole Church was a fraud and imposition and that he was through with it. 

I don't claim any special revelatory powers or gifts, or to have vast reserves of patience, but as someone who had already been out in the world living with a bunch of psychotic misfits (clown alley), I didn't take his rant all that seriously. I remained calm and undisturbed. I figured that after he got it off his chest, he'd get over it. (Which he did.) But Elder Day was so alarmed by his outburst that he told me we should drop everything to take the next bus the 281 miles down to Bangkok to inform President Brown personally of this grave apostasy.

Elder Day was like that; he was always wanting to rush down to Bangkok to inform the mission office of something or other that seemed a crisis to him. The maid kept beer in our fridge for when her non-member brother visited? Our squat toilet backed up? A local Protestant minister was saying the Book of Mormon was the work of the devil? Bam! We'd better get down to Bangkok to report on it right away! To which I'd patiently reply 'May wai.' (No way.)

 Elder Day had but one joke, which he liked to trot out at least once a week. It went like this:

'A farmer worked hard to send his son to college for an education. When the son graduated he visited his father on the farm, and his father asked him 'Son, what all did you learn at that there university?" To which the son replied "Why dad, I learned all about Pi R Squared in my math classes!" The father grew red in the face and yelled at his son: "You damn fool, pie are not square -- pie are round!"

I heard that Elder Day eventually picked up a degree in civil engineering after his mission. I hope he was able to pick up at least one more joke along the way, too . . .

I should probably look up all my old companions that I

so cheerfully malign in these memoirs, using social media, but when I joined Thailand Missionaries on Facebook I was immediately accused of being a troll and then bashed unmercifully in the comments section. So I unfollowed that group pronto and haven't tried to reconnect with anyone since. We artistes bruise so easily.

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An email response about the above from one of my companions --

I remember Elder Day, but don't remember any interactions with him.

I was comps with Elder Raynolds and Elder Fletcher when I was a Sr.  Both of them thought I was a moron, which I was compared to them.  Not even smart enough to let them lead.  Ditto with you.  Shoulda let you make all the decisions and just follow you around and flirt with the girls and drink Fanta orange.  That was the first advice I got, on the 2nd or 3rd day in country, from Elder Kuzi, or whatever his name was.  He said "Don't hesitate to take a break and drink a Fanta Orange, or whatever."  And Elder Thayne gave me advice too, on one of my first P-days, when I split with my comp (Elder Jim Allen, who wanted to see a movie, and I didn't.) "You see something interesting, just go ahead and take a picture of it.  It's novel to you.  It won't be novel after you've been in the country a while."  And from the airport to the mission office we were picked up by the visa Elder and his companion turned around to us in the van and said "This is a one baht coin.  It's worth about 5 cents.  Treat it like a quarter."  I didn't follow any of those pieces of advice.  Should have.

Hey, how come you didn't tell me stories about being in the circus?  I don't remember you doing so.  I guess I didn't ask.  I was too freaking straight.  Gotta follow all the mission rules.  Wow, I'd do it so differently now.  I'd visit only members,wouldn't do any proslyting at all, and would be much more generous to our maids.  It's now embarrassing to think about all my mistakes as a missionary.  I even once asked a Russian diplomat sitting next to me at the dentist office while waiting for Elder Christensen to get his braces tightened, when his country would let missionaries in.  He didn't like the question.