Flying by the seat of your pants

It was not my idea of a holiday cruise. We shot along the mighty Mekong River in a low-profile, home-made wooden canoe with a Toyota 1600cc car engine strapped to the back of the boat. My blackened crash helmet had seen better days and I was painfully aware that I couldn’t swim. The mozzis were having lunch on my legs and my 40lb rucksack had painfully embedded itself in my shoulder blades. Worse still, there were four more hours of this turbo-skimming, death-cheating ride to go!

Still, at that particular moment, it felt just about right. It was exactly what was called for. I had a job to do and it was only on my last day in Laos that I had even noticed the wooden sign swinging on the back of the cafe door: “Tourists must not do anything opposing Buddhism or promoting other religions – especially the distribution of media”.

Laos had long been an enigma. ‘Lazy Laos’ as they say. The locals are so laid back, they waste away their days by listening to the rice grow! At least that’s what their more industrious Cambodian neighbours say. The French colonialists have left their imprint firmly stamped across the country and especially so in the towns where huge mansions bask in acres of manicured gardens and the coffee shops spill out across the pavements. And it’s true: there really isn’t too much that moves quickly here. Day or night, urban or rural, Laos has one of Asia’s more lethargic populations.

Lift the lid however and you’ll understand why I found myself messing on the Mekong. Thirty years of Communism has hamstrung the Lao community, noticeably the rural groups and most severely, believers among those rural groups. I had read about the beating of believers. I knew how pastors had been forced at gunpoint to renounce their faith. I had heard all the stories of forced animist rituals, of coercion into sacrificing animals and into speaking to the spirits. They have done all they can to squash the Church here.

I also knew that although Christianity had taken root in a handful of tribes, the vast majority of the 138 distinct ethnic groups in this fortress of Communism, remained tightly cordoned off to Gospel preaching, to any form of public evangelism and certainly nobody was going to encourage me to distribute Christian literature, CDs or any other “offensive” material. Yet there were believers here among these northern tribes. People had been coming to Christ and needed basic help, instruction maybe and certainly encouragement that others in the world cared enough simply to help.

I knew I could easily be arrested for what I was doing. My rucksack was simply bulging with materials that had been specially written for these groups and it was no joke to have to pass under the examining scrutiny of the border police. People back home were praying, lots of them and they were praying fervently today - and I felt it - but I’d be lying if I said my heart wasn’t pounding!

I never met the believers of course. I couldn’t for their safety. Instead, I dropped the little bundles of tracts close to schools, down at the rivers where the ladies wash their laundry and along pathways where I was certain nobody was watching and equally certain they would be found. Was it all a waste? Would I have been better preaching openly in the villages and getting myself arrested and deported? Certainly some would say it’s a useless exercise if not downright irresponsible to do what I was doing. But that’s not what local workers are saying. They know the risks too – and they are far more serious for them than they would have been for me. But they knew that somehow what I was doing was a key piece in the bigger picture of all that was going on in the area. After all, this was their ministry. They had produced the materials, planned out the trip for me and arranged to do the follow-up work themselves.

I delivered my packages and then hot-footed it down to the river and back to my converted Toyota marine-rocket. There was no time for sightseeing here. I didn’t mind taking the risk but I certainly wasn’t going to hang around and wait to see if I got caught! It was time to leave and leave quickly. The contraption roared into life first time and I was so glad it had a Toyota and not a Rover engine!