Tagalog to Thai to English and Back Again
By Kimberly Rae Thigpen
Imagine a college student in Thailand who wants to learn English. He arrives at his first class, relieved to discover that his teacher is not only a fellow Asian – Filipino – but the teacher also knows his Thai language. Studying will be much easier than he thought.
Days and weeks pass full of verb conjugation and strange spellings. He wonders why the i before e rule doesn’t apply to weird, eight, beige or foreign. English is difficult, but over time, with his teacher’s help, he begins to read.
His teacher gives him materials in English from a place called Source of Light. He starts reading about one high God who made all things, and a place called Heaven where this God’s followers go after death. The words he understands, but the concepts are vastly different from the Buddhist beliefs he grew up with.
Hesitantly, he approaches his instructor. “What does it mean?” The teacher smiles, and in the student’s own heart language of Thai, explains the truth of salvation. This scenario is unique because the English teachers are missionaries sent from the Philippines to Thailand.
It is effective because English classes are an excellent way to not only build trust in resistant countries, but they also provide nearly instant relationships. It is profound because the missionaries didn’t originally intend to teach English. They started this as a job to augment low levels of financial support. God has taken a need and turned it into an opportunity.
Dr. Abraham Vallega has used SLM materials since he first received them in 1970. Children reached through his church are now adults all over the world, some in prosperous professions who now support the ministry that reached them.
The 20–30 missionaries sent out to Thailand from the Philippines are just one of the ministries Dr. Vallega oversees. He recently was able to meet with several of them in Thailand, where he gave them a full packet of adult SLM material and trained them how to use and grade the lessons, to develop their own discipleship schools. He says SLM lessons are “one of the best materials” for discipleship.
When evangelizing, Dr. Abraham trains missionaries to ask a person “permission if they will allow 30 minutes to one hour” of their time. At this, the humor can be heard in his voice when he says, “In Philippines they do not mind time.” Then, he personally likes to read the lesson on Heaven out loud slowly, so they can ask questions, and through it shares the five steps to salvation.
He says that in Thailand, the pastors “really appreciate” the material and are interested in translating it into the Thai language. It is “so simple and yet meaty when it comes to doctrine.”
The missionaries have a rigorous preparation period, with TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) training in the Philippines, then six months of language school in Bangkok before going out into a tribe or province with only themselves or their family for immersion in the language. Their language-learning period is shorter than it would be for those who know only English beforehand. As Dr. Vallega says, “Filipinos are ‘easy to catch’ the language.”
Most, if not all, of the missionaries lack needed support. Still, they go. “Even if [they have] only 500 dollars, they start in missions.”
Their commitment is both convicting and inspiring. It begs two questions:
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Are we as committed to following God’s call to reach the lost?
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Can we be part of this effective, alreadyinstituted work to reach Thailand?
