Learning to Be a Missionary in the Land of the Golden Pagoda

By Emilie Margaret Ballard

Learning to be a Missionary in a Foreign Land requires that a person not only learn the language of the country but also the culture and way of thinking of the people in that land. The author was blessed to have help and guidance in working with the ethnic Karens of Burma, then Thailand, and the Karens living in the USA. God used her to help in Christian Education, Women's Work, in preparation of language lessons, both for those needing to learn the language and for Karens illiterate in their own language.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546255048

Emilie Margaret Ballard

Born in Hyattsville, Maryland, in 1919, Emilie Margaret Ballard earned a BS in nursing and an MRE in missions at the Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary and served in the Army Nurse Corps during World War II. She served as a missionary to the Karens in Burma and Thailand for almost forty-one years, spent three years preparing karen language lessons and retired at Pilgrim Place retirement community in Claremont, California.

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2018 Emilie Margaret Ballard. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 08/16/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5462-5505-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-5504-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018909590

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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MEMOIRS OF EMILIE BALLARD

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If we live our whole lives in the USA, we tend to think and act according to the situations in this country. But if we go to Africa or Asia, we soon find that the people there look at life situations in an entirely different way. If we allow God to guide us, we will be led to use our talents, experiences, and lessons learned in ways enabling us to be a blessing to the people there that also glorify our Lord.

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God has blessed me richly throughout my long life. For some years I have thought that eventually I would write up my memoirs. That is why I saved all letters, manuscripts, and photos that might be useful when the time finally came to do so. I envisioned three or four volumes. Book I, about my family background, and my life and experiences during my first thirty-nine years of life, has already been published. It ended with my appointment as a missionary to work with the Karen people of Burma. Book II is about my work and experiences in Burma, now called Myanmar. Book III would be about my work and experiences in Thailand. Book 1V would be about my experiences since retirement. Of course, much depends on whether God chooses to let me live long enough to complete all of these or not.

I owe a great deal of gratitude to those who have made this second book possible. First, I thank Cecelia Thay for proofreading my manuscript and for making good photocopies of the many photos included in this manuscript. Then I am deeply grateful to the many Karen people now living here in Los Angeles and Orange Counties who have donated funds to pay for publishing this volume. I am grateful to my father for saving all of my letters to him from childhood on. I am also very grateful to my good friends, Cecelia Thay, Judy Wallace, Lenore Brashler, and Bryan Prerrero who have helped me with using the computer and printer. Without their help, I wouldn’t have been able to get the book written.

I have added two maps in order to make it easier for readers who are not familiar with places in Burma to understand where the various places spoken of are located. The first shows the major towns and districts indicated you will find the Bassein (Bas-seen) and Myaungmya (Meow-myah) Districts jutting into the water between the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. The scale is 1 to 800,000, so a quarter inch is 200,000 miles. Hence, many of the places mentioned in this document are too close to each other to show up on these maps. For example, Yedwin-yegan (Yay-dwin-yay-gahn) is just 4 miles from the west of Myaungmya (Meow-myah) as the crow flies and Toungwe (Tawn-gwe) is 1 1/2 miles farther on. Kem-mendine is north of that and is about 8 miles from Rangoon. So although they are too close together to show on these maps, you can get the idea in your mind as to where they are. The second map is a topographical map showing the highlands and lowlands, the rivers and the sea.

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LEARNING TO BE A MISSIONARY IN THE

LAND OF THE GOLDEN PAGODAS

FIRST TERM

I was commissioned as an American Baptist missionary to the Karens of Burma (now called Myanmar – properly pronounced Myan-mah) in September, 1947. However, I did not actually sail until the last week of December. During the waiting period several things happened.

Hazel Shank was the staff member responsible for new missionaries. She told me that since World War II most supplies in Burma were non-existent. Thus I would need to take out a five-year’s supply of clothing, toiletries, and household supplies. Since I lived in a suburb of Washington, DC, I made several trips into the city to buy clothes. Then my home church had a shower for me. They provided me with dishes, pots and pans, leware, linens, and other things I would need. Although Burma is in the tropics, it can be quite chilly in the cold season. Since I still had my army bedroll, I packed blankets into it. I bought a large foot locker and was able to pack most other things into it. I was also told to keep a two-day supply of clothing and toiletries in my carry-on luggage. Sometimes the freight didn’t arrive on the same ship the passengers did. I used my army back-pack bag for that.

During this time the nurses at the Prince George’s County Hospital went on strike. They wanted higher wages. During the negotiating period a call went out to any nurses in the county who could help at the hospital for the sake of the patients to come and help. I had not done real bedside nursing care since finishing nurses training. However, I thought that I could probably take temperature, pulse, and respiration all right. I volunteered, but was surprised to discover that thermometers had changed! I got the hang of it, but kept forgetting the three figures before I could write them down. Then I would have to take them once again, which was annoying to the patients. The rest of the bedside care was no problem for me. I helped there for two months until the strike ended.

(1) Trip to Burma (Myanmar)

I was scheduled to leave by ship from New York the 29th of December, 1947. Another new missionary, Miriam Robinson, would be travelling with me as far as Bombay, India. She was to work in northeast India. My father saw me off at the train station in Washington. It was a four-hour trip to New York City. At the dock I checked my