This is a complete and accurate transcript of the oral history interview of Helen Irvin Sawyer (CN 256, #T4) in the Archives of the Billy Graham Center. No spoken words have been omitted, except for any non-English phrases which could not be understood by the transcribers. In very few cases words were to too unclear to be distinguished; in these cases "[unclear]" was inserted. Chinese place-names are spelled in the transcript in the old or new transliteration form according to how the speaker pronounced them. Thus, Peking may be used instead of Beijing, because that is how it was pronounced. Chinese terms and phrases which could be understood were spelled as they were pronounced, with some attempt made to identify an accepted transliterated form which corresponds to it. This is a transcription of spoken English, which of course follows a different rhythm and rule than written English.
... Three dots indicate an interruption or break in the train of thought within the sentence on the part of the speaker.
.... Four dots indicate what the transcriber believes to be the end of an incomplete sentence.
() Words in parentheses are asides made by the speaker.
[] Words in brackets are comments by the transcriber.
This transcription was made by Christopher Easley and Paul Ericksen, and completed in September 1990.
DIXON: This is an interview with Helen Sawyer by Stephanie Dixon for the Missionary Sources Collection of Wheaton College. This interview took place at 803 Irving, Wheaton, Illinois, on November 30th, at 1:00 pm. Mrs. Sawyer, last time we were talking about the...the different problems you had with the...the people in Laos. And I was just wondering if you could tell me a little bit now about your family life and how you brought your children up over there.
SAWYER: Okay. We have four daughters. Our oldest daughter was three and a half years old when we went to China. So her first years on the mission field were in west China. She didn't have any other American children in our town. She was the only white child there. And for a whole year, when we lived in west China, she only went outside of our mission compound twice because of her blonde hair and blue eyes. The Tibetan people and the Chinese people had hardly ever seen foreign children, and they would just mob her and want to touch her and bother her. And so [clears throat] it was really not very easy for us to take her out in crowds or out on the street in west China. But she had a Tibetan friend, a little girl, that used to come and play with her. One of the rules that we had is that she could never touch this little Tibetan girl in any way, because she...she had lice and she had such dirty hands. The Tibetan people never took baths because they lived up in the very high altitude, and they just used rancid butter on their skin. So she used to play with this little Tibetan girl and she had some Chinese friends that she played with. But we actually left China when she was five and a half, so she didn't have any schooling in China. But when we were evacuating from China, we sent to the States for an...a Calvert course [home school curriculum] because we didn't know where we were going to be in the next year or so. And we taught her (along with three other missionary children in south China for several months) the beginning of the Calvert course. And then when we went to...were transferred to Indochina as missionaries, we put her in school for missionaries' children in Dalat, Vietnam, when she was six. And she went to school there, first grade through junior and high school, in Dalat, Vietnam, as a student. Our second daughter was born in Vietnam, and she went up into Laos with us. The children were away at school for [pauses] six months...nine months of the year. They were home for three months, but they would go for about four and a half months, and we had a month vacation that we usually spent with them. And then after another four and a half months they came home, and their Christmas vacation was always their long vacation. The children came home from Dalat school during the Christmas season for their long vacation, because the climate was so much better during the Christmas season. It got the children home for holidays with their parents and also gave them a chance to be home during the [pauses] better season of the year. In the summers it was hot and rained a lot and children couldn't be out playing a lot anyway. So Christmas season was really nice for us because our children were always home. Our third daughter was also born in Vietnam, and we had just gone to Vietnam to stay for awhile when she was born, but we were missionaries in Laos. And then our youngest daughter was born in the States when we were on furlough. So we have four daughters. All of them went to school for missionaries' children. All of them were away from us most of their...most of the year. But our children at times were, I'm sure, very lonely. I think it was always harder on the parents than it was on the children to send them away. They never rebelled against going away to missionaries' children school. I think one of the reasons is that we did have an excellent staff of teachers and house parents at our Dalat school, who not only gave our children a good education, but gave them a lot of love and attention, which they need when they were away from their parents. And our children all, you know, used to complain about the rules and the food and things at Dalat school, but all of them today are very grateful for the experience of having grown up in a boarding school. It makes the young people mature a lot faster. When they came home to high school in...a senior in high school, and last years of college, I think they [pauses, clears throat] were a lot more mature than some other college students because they'd already experienced living in the dorms most of their life. And all of them have a...a real good attitude toward being away. That doesn't always happen with missionaries' children. Some find it really hard to adapt to life away from home. But for ours it was a good experience and as...as I said, I think it's because of our excellent staff at our school for missionaries' children.
DIXON: Did they have any schooling in the States?
SAWYER: When we came home...when we came home on furlough, for the one year of furlough, they always went to school here, like our.... For instance, our daughter, who is twenty-three years old, had her first grade in the States...in school when she was six years old. Then she went back to Vietnam and then she was in Malaysia, where the school was transferred after the close of Vietnam. She went to [pauses] school there, but came back to the States and had sixth grade in the States. And then she had one year of high school in the States, and finished up high school out there before she came back to Wheaton College as a student.
DIXON: Did...did the school in...in Vietnam prepare them well for...
SAWYER: Very well.
DIXON: ...learning here?
SAWYER: In fact, education-wise, the school was very, very good, and they keep up.... The teachers come back on furlough for further training, and also keep up their credentials. And the school is...has good accreditation.
DIXON: How did you feel about bringing them up in a foreign country?
SAWYER: A lot of that has to do with the attitude of the parents. I mean, our children really loved Laos. We never turned our...the care of our children over to nationals completely. We had national people helping in the home. But as far as bathing and feeding and caring for the children, bedtime, all those things, we kept that very much a part of our life...in our personal life. And in some ways, having the children in an isolated situation like this, you tend to become much closer as a family, makes the children more creative because they have to find things to do with their spare time. It also gives them a sense of the...the need. We used to let them share in the work and know what was going on in the work that we were doing. And also as they got older having some part in being in the villages, whatever work we were doing. For instance, we used to have a fair time when we passed out a lot of literature and set up a fair and sold books in our literature stand. Our girls used to go and do that with us during the fair time and they always appreciated the opportunity to do that. They felt a part of our work with us. [Sound of motor]
DIXON: What were the goals of...of the family members in your home?
SAWYER: As far as...that...around the house or...you mean, or in our...?
DIXON: Yeah. Any...anything like that, yeah.
SAWYER: Well, [clears throat] all missionaries are very, very busy. We had household help. We had nationals who helped us in all the things around the house, so that would free us for missionary work. When our children were home we tried to get them to share and assigned them things to do at the house, like household chores to help, so that we didn't have to have extra people working for us during the time the children were home. My husband traveled a lot, was in the villages when the children were younger. As they got older, he was home more because we were involved in teaching in the Bible school and also in literature work. And in that case he was home a lot more. So we...we had time for our family. I mean, I don't think the children felt neglected, even though we were very, very busy. And when the children were home from school I used to try to cut my schedule back. When they were gone and we had nobody with us, then I could work full time in missionary work. But when the children were home, there were times when we had to cut back. One of the difficult times for us was Christmas time because there...there were many different Christmas...Christmas programs in villages. And all the villages would postpone theirs until some missionary or national pastors could come and have something very special for them. So at Christmas time sometimes we were torn between family Christmas and family obligations and how much we should give to the villages. But in some cases where the children could go with us they enjoyed it even if it meant sleeping overnight in the village. But didn't always...as the girls got older we didn't force them to do this if they didn't really want to. But most of the time they wou...they would want to go to the villages, especially if it was...if there were feasts and programs and movies and...for the people and slides, and things like this, that were interesting for them. And they usually had enough reading materials, something to take along, so they didn't have to sit through long meetings. They...our children understood the language. They couldn't read and write it. And so sometimes in churches they would get bored during the sermon. But for the most part, they could understand anything anybody said to them or talk back to people or talk [unclear] with people.
DIXON: What kind of interactions would you have with other families, both missionary and national?
SAWYER: 'kay [clears throat. In the [pauses]...the last, oh say the last ten years that we were on the mission field, our...of necessity because of the war, our missionaries were moved more into centers. So we tended to have several missionary families living on one station, rather than missionaries living off in isolated places. Because of the war, it wasn't safe to do that. So we did have other missionary children living, for instance, in Vientiane, Laos. We had maybe three or four families living there and some had children the same age as ours, which made it very nice. And of course all of our social life was with the missionaries. As far as our own personal entertaining and having something to do, it was usually entertaining the other missionaries, having them over for games or parties or something like that. But we did also have a lot of national friends, and church friends who, you know, we invited to meals and to parties and programs at Christmas time, or when the children were home. And that was always an enjoyable time. Our children always loved to go to those.
DIXON: What...what did you teach your children about the United States, or how did you prepare them?
SAWYER: Well, I think that our children learned most about United States from reading American magazines and getting letters from home. We kept in touch with family and relatives very closely. We used to make tapes and send them back and forth to our [sound drops out momentarily], and also, as the children got older, to anyone of our immediate family who happened to be back in the States. And I think in that way the children felt close to their family and to friends at home. We also [pauses] prepared the children before they came on furlough, as far as schooling, and all...some of the adjustments they would have to make. I think one of the biggest adjustments they had when they came home from furlough was learning how to live together with us as a family, because they had been in a dormitory so much that usually our furloughs were really busy, happy times. So that wasn't a difficult thing for them. But, I think, in recent years the world has gotten so small that the children did not really miss being in America that much, because if we went to a larger city like Bangkok or Hong Kong, they had a little taste of what it was like in a metropolis, and they weren't as.... We didn't live in...we lived in the capital city of Vientiane, Laos, and our last years on the field, and even though that was a very small city, yet it was...had a lot of the [pauses] more modern conveniences and things that we had never had when we were missionaries up country in the isolated area.
DIXON: Looking back on it now, do you see anything that you would do differently?
SAWYER: No, I don't think.... I think, maybe sometimes we would have tried to [pauses] spend a little more time with our children. I think, if we had had [pauses] shorter terms on the mission fields.... Our early years, our first term, we stayed over five years, and we thought that that was a little bit long. And our second term we stayed over five years, and that was a long time because one of our daughters was home, and we didn't see her for five years. And I felt like that was a little too long. I think even to this day, she dreads goodbyes. And when we visit her she always says something about her...one of the memories that she has is always saying goodbye to people, you know. So I think with her, we felt like we had stayed too long that time. It was impossible for us to get home at the time because of work...work we were involved in. So, I think that missionaries need to keep in real close touch with their children when they are separated from them. And if at all possible have the children visit them once during their term, because the long four and five year terms are a long time to be separated from your children at any age without seeing him.
DIXON: Thank you. I'd just like to ask you some questions now about the general...the...the life in Laos. And I...I thought I'd talk afterwards about the social life there. What kind of advancement opportunities are there for the people?
SAWYER: Okay. Laos was a landlocked country, a very [pauses]...perhaps the most primitive of the Indochina states. And because it did not have a lot of [pauses] opportunity to be connected with the outside world, it tended to be an isolated country. The only [pauses] goods and people that travel back and forth into Laos were people from Thailand. All our produce was sent in and a lot of products came into the country from Thailand. The people didn't travel a lot, and so they really [sound drops out: "didn't"?] know a lot about the outside world. But [clears throat] in Laos itself, there were a lot of Buddhist fairs and a lot of [pauses] school programs, and things like this for the young people, but not a lot of entertainment or social life for the...for most of the people. So their...their life tended to be very simple, and just.... The biggest thing of the year was a Buddhist fair when everybody came and.... Sometimes they would have movies or they would have special festivals in connection with the Buddhist temple. So actually there was not much social life as far as the people themselves were concerned.
DIXON: Were they able to advance in their job opportunity and that sort of thing?
SAWYER: There were no factories. There were no companies at all in Laos. So the people were mostly farmers and the only ones who really had a chance to advance were...would have been government officials whose children were able to go overseas to study at schools in France, only those who had money. There was very little that could be done for [pauses] the poor people of Laos without outside help, 'cause there wasn't any way they could earn money. Most of them just lived on whatever they could grow and whatever they could [pauses] plant and whatever they could raise on their farms. There were [pauses] some...well, like a few plastic places were they made some things, but almost everything was imported into Laos.
DIXON: Are their any racial or ethnic problems in the country?
SAWYER: Yes, there were three [clears throat]...there were three main groups in Laos. The Lao people, who were the ruling class of people. They lived in the lowlands. And then about half way up in the mountains, there was another group of people. And this same pattern carried throughout all of Laos. There were the Khamu tribal people. And then in the very tops of the mountains were the tribe that was called the Miao or the Hmong, and they had migrated from China some...maybe two or three thousand years ago. And there was a very distinct difference between the culture of these three groups. And they really [pauses] kept quite isolated from each other in the past. But in more recent years they did [pauses] bring a lot of the Hmong or Miao tribal people down into the city and they went to school and actually some of them did get into the government. But for the most part, the Lao people looked down upon the tribal people, and treated them that way. So that very few of the tribal villages had schools because the Lao people would not go into the schools to be teachers, go into the villages to be teachers in the village schools. And until these tribal people could get their own people into the town and be...and to receive an education, they didn't have opportunities for education. In fact, most of the tribal villages, the people were ill...illiterate.
DIXON: Are...were there any refugees coming into Laos? I mean, during...?
SAWYER: From North Vietnam there were refugees. And then back [pauses] when the French were fighting with the Vietnamese, and the Vietnamese were [pauses] fighting for their independence from France, there were a lot of refugees from North Vietnam who came into Laos. And then there were refugees [pauses]...a few from Cambodia that crossed into Laos. But for the most part, the people in Laos in the mountains that were affected by the war, fled into the cities, so we had large populations of tribal people in the cities because they'd been driven out of the mountains by war.
DIXON: What kind of adjustments did the...the refugees have to make and also the tribal people into the cities?
SAWYER: Well that has always been difficult because the tribal people [pauses] lived...when they lived in the mountains, they were very rural country people, and this was always difficult for them to come in cities, particularly because of the kind of clothes that they wore. They wore clothes from the mountains, and then they came into the cities. They were too hot, a lot of them got sick, had sores on them from the heat, (intense heat in the lowlands that they were not used to). And of course this has happened too, like so many refugees have gone into Thailand from Laos and had a long adjustment to climate there, because most of the hill tribespeople are used to a cool climate and being able to sleep at night. And then coming to the lowlands with a lot of hot weather and mosquitos, a lot of them have been [pauses]...gotten sick from just a change of climate.
DIXON: Did the people coming in from Vietnam, and other countries have cultural adjustments to make?
SAWYER: Yes, because they eat differently. They...they just have a lot of things that are...are not compatible with the Lao people. But I think for the most part they realize they're all in one country, and, you know, they make the adjustment.
DIXON: What is the status of women in Laos?
SAWYER: 'Kay. When you're talking about the Lao people, the.... Of course, the Lao are just like most Oriental people. The woman is not considered equal with her husband. But the Lao seem to respect women and give them more place in society than the tribal people, especially among the Hmong tribal people, who were formerly called the Miao or Meo tribal people who came out of China. These people are polygamists and take several wives. And usually if a man is very wealthy, he has several wives, mainly because he needs more wives to take work the fields and to take care of the animals and the pigs, and.... So in this Meo or Hmong culture, the woman in not very highly respected and for the most part, very few of the tribal girls were ever sent into school, and very few of them could read and write. And even today many many of the girls who come to the States are having a very difficult time because they are illiterate. And it's kind of true too of the Lao people, until...for many many years that women did not have any education. It's only in recent...you know, years...last twenty-five, thirty years that the women of Laos have been in school and studied.
DIXON: Switching a little now to politics, what is the official government position on the mission work there?
SAWYER: Well, now that the communists have taken over, there are no missionaries allowed to work in Laos as missionaries. Before, when we were there, we worked with the Christian and Missionary Alliance. And when the Christian and Missionary Alliance went into Indochina [pauses], we were the only Protestant missionary society there. And at the time it was French Indochina and the French who were in charge of the country allowed the Alliance to come in and to work in many of the provinces of Indochina without any difficulty. In...in Laos itself through the years, we have not had problems as far as the government. They allowed us to work there freely. We always tried to comply with the government's wishes in any of our work. When we printed literature, we always gave them copies of it and submitted it to them for a permit to distribute it throughout the country, all this kind of thing. And although the...the Lao people were Buddhist and did not accept the religion very easily, the government did not oppose us. It wasn't until 1975, when the missionaries had to evacuate and the communists took over that Laos, you know, was closed to missionary work. But in the past, it was never closed to us. We were allowed to work there. That's not true of Cambodia. Cambodia had [pauses] one time a...a...a takeover of the government, you know, and all of the missionaries had to leave. That didn't happen in Laos. We were tolerated and were allowed to stay there and the people did not oppose us openly at all. But they also did not accept the religion very easily. They said the missionaries were there preaching the Gospel and it was fine for the tribal people who were animists who had [pauses] fear of evil spirits and this kind of thing. And they said they had a religion, Buddhist religion. The others didn't have a real religion. So this worked fine for them, but as far as the Lao people were concerned, they wanted to remain Buddhist. So, we didn't have a large church among the Lao people. We had some Lao Christians, but not large numbers of them.
DIXON: What has been the attitude of the people toward the government, the fighting, and the nationalists and communism, and the government changes, and....?
SAWYER: Well, of course, that's probably one of the reasons why communism was able to take over Indochina so easily is because there was so much graft and corruptness in the national government of Laos, and in fact of all the Indochina countries. You had only certain people who were...like the ruling class of people, and they were the rich and they had money for travel and education, and the poor people didn't have anything. And then during the war, the...it was the army colonels and the generals who had all the money, and the common soldier had very little. And, of course, the communists played on this aspect of there being a great gulf between the rich and the poor in Laos. And that's probably why the people let communism take over so easily. Of course after communism did take over and they remained there under the communists for three of four years, their eyes were opened to see really communism was, and that's why many of the Lao people have fled and come to the States.
DIXON: What are the attitudes of the people towards westernism and foreignism, imperialism?
SAWYER: It depends on the period of time that you're talking about. There have been times when in Laos and Thailand and all those countries, there's a lot of anti-western feeling and signs, "Get the Americans out of our country," and this kind of thing. But usually that was stirred up by communists [pauses] rebel groups that had made inroads into the government. For the most part, we really didn't have a lot of outright open opposition to our being in Laos itself. The people were more peaceful, kind of placent [sic] kind of people, not really anti-anything, not really for anything, but just living a simple life, letting everybody do what they want to do, not butting into anybody else's business kind of a life. And so they...they really didn't oppose us that much [pauses] being there.
DIXON: What is the attitude towards democracy and communism now?
SAWYER: Well, of course, the people that have fled by the thousands from Laos are [pauses] evidence that many, many of them don't go along with communism. And those who are back in Laos [pauses] have just had to go along with it and be...they've been brainwashed. But also they are tolerating it to save their own life. So for the most part the people in Laos (the average Laotian person) is not a communist. But his country has been taken over and so by...for that reason he has no choice in the matter, except to go along with them or else to flee from the country. So, I think that the average Lao person would prefer democracy, but he's had no choice. And [pauses] they have never, you know, really been against the democratic government. But the communists took over Laos so quickly and so easily and the people have just been caught there [pauses] and been made communists by the takeover.
DIXON: What is Laos' relationship with neighboring countries?
SAWYER: Well right now the country is...is closed, and there's very little traffic back and forth across the rivers except by a few people. The borders are watched very, very carefully. I guess their is some [pauses] rice and some oil and gasoline that goes in from Thailand to supply the government. But for the most part, their connections now are with North Vietnam and with [pauses] Russia itself. And there have even been a lot of Cubans reported to have been seen and...in Laos and Russians. So mostly North Vietnam is in control now of Laos, as far as the political scene.
DIXON: What kind of interactions are there with North Vietnam and Russia?
SAWYER: Well, what happens is that the North Vietnamese and the Russians go into Laos and take out their young men, take them to Hanoi and to Moscow for training and for education. And so they have a firm hand...firm control over what's going on in Laos today. There's communication back and forth all the time. That's where they get all [pauses]...their connection and information from the outside world. It's not on this side, where the Thai are, because anybody who goes that way is...you usually flee from the country. So it's...its' mostly a country that's dominated by the Vietnamese and Russians now.
DIXON: Does China have any influence?
SAWYER: China did, but not now. The Chinese were in the north of Laos, and there's not much love between the North Vietnamese and the Chinese, and so the North Vietnamese have got the upper hand, and China doesn't have much control with Laos.
DIXON: I'd like to ask you a little now about the religious aspect of life in Laos. What is the strength of Buddhism? I know it's different among the different tribes, but that and spirit worship, or other religions and philosophies that there might be?
SAWYER: [Clears throat] The Lao people themselves were Buddhist and their life was centered around their Buddhist temple. In fact, the streets did not have a name, but you gave the name of the temple in which your [pauses] family was...in area in which your family was living. And every...every section of the bigger city and every area of a smaller town was divided up into Buddhist temples and people who lived around that Buddhist temple. And the Buddhists had priests living in the temple. So the people felt that if a Buddhist priest would come early in the morning to collect alms, (and they gave alms to the Buddhist priest), they would gain merit for the life to come. And...and a lot of their religion is based on good works, doing good, and [pauses] being assured of [pauses]...of a good life in reincarnation. So most of the [unidentified noise] Lao people were really closely knit together in their Buddhist worship. And they had temple festivals, as I said, and holidays that were very important in their culture. With the tribal people it was not this way. They were animists. They were not Buddhist. And they were spirit worshippers, sacrificing a...a cow when someone died, and using the [pauses] blood, much like the Old Testament sacrifices. They put blood over their doors of their houses to guard against the evil spirits. They had witch doctors who tried to appease the evil spirits. And so their whole religious philosophy was very, very different than the Lao. But of course, [pauses] some of the tribal people outside of the Miao, the Khamu tribe, for instance, were also spirit worshippers. But many of the tribal people became Christians, so we had the largest numbers of the tribal [pauses]...of Christians among the tribal people.
DIXON: How did the religious leaders accept Chritch...Christianity?
SAWYER: Well, of course, as far as the Lao people themselves were concerned, they tolerated us; they did not accept it. They [pauses] were not very...not very happy for us to [pauses] try to make a lot of converts among the Lao people. They didn't openly oppose us, but they would, you know, just kind of in a two-faced kind of way be very friendly to our face, but yet talk behind our back [pauses] that Buddhism was older than the Christian religion, Buddhism was the national religion of the country, that we should not be trying to make converts out of the Lao people, because they already had a religion and it was a good religion, the same as ours. So while they didn't actually do anything to throw us out of Laos, we never really felt that the Buddhist people wanted us to be there.
DIXON: Did the people feel satisfaction with Buddhism and animism?
SAWYER: [Pauses] As...as far as animism is concerned, the people immediately said that Christianity was a far better way, because they felt like [pauses] spirit worship was very hard for them. Sometimes they would sacrifice meat and cattle that they ought to having for food. They sacrificed to please spirits, which kept them poor all the time they said, because the [pauses] cows that they could use for food were used for sacrifice. And yet it was very expensive to be always making new sacrifices and paying a witch doctor to [pauses] appease the evil spirits. As far as the Buddhists are concerned, they were just [pauses] nonchalant in everything they did. They...they even followed their religion in that way. So you had very few really strong Buddhists who followed their own religion very closely. And they admitted that while they were [pauses] supposed to be [pauses] good moral upright people according to the Buddhist teachings, that none of them were able to keep the Buddhist teachings. And most of them will...will recognize that. Even today as we work with refugees, one of the things they tell us is that we knew what to do, how to do it by the teachings of Buddha, how to be a good person, but we never were able to because we had no power within ourselves. But the Buddhist teaching is that we do have power within yourself, and that you can pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and that you can be a good person if you want to be. But now, what they're finding out is that that is not true. And there has to be, you know, the power of Jesus Christ in the life to change your life. And I think that's one of the most important things that some of the refugee people are now seeing: that they've not been able to do that in...on their own, not been able to change on their own, that they've had to had help [pauses] through Christ.
DIXON: What are the difficulties of the people accepting the Gospel?
SAWYER: Well, one of the big things is that, especially in any family, if a young person would become a Christian, there was [pauses] persecution because the family, first of all, felt that they were [pauses] denying their own culture and their own race, and becoming an American if they accepted Christianity. They also worried because a young person would have a difficult time [pauses] becoming a Christian because of the parents and the grandparents who expected them to do certain things that would help the grandparents aft...in the life hereafter. And if they gave up their religion, then they would say, "Well, you know, who's gonna to pray for us? Who's gonna help us? Who's gonna to take offerings to the temple and do all of these things after we're gone to help us if our own children won't do it? There won't be anybody else to do it for us. And so that was.... One thing too is that the [pauses] young people in Laos were very, very subservient to the older people, and they were expected to take care of the older people, and to provide for them. And the older people expected a lot from them. So that's one of the reasons why it was hard sometimes for young people to really make that break with family and step out and become a Christian. Most of the time, people in Indochina, especially among the...the Lao and the tribal people in Laos came to Christ as a family. Once the family made up their mind they were all going to do it, like the father and mother and several older children, they decided they were going to become a Christian and they did it as a group, then it would work. But it was awfully difficult if only one made an isolated decision to become a Christian.
DIXON: Suppose the whole family did make a decision. How would they be accepted by the others then...other non-Christians [pauses] in the village?
SAWYER: Well, sometimes it's meant [pauses] that people have had to move out of the village, and go to another area where they...there were more Christians. If they were...for instance, the only one or two Christian [pause] families in a village, and if trouble came, like bad crops or there was a lot of sickness in the village, they often would blame it upon the one or two Christian families who were left there, and say that it was because of them [pauses] that things weren't going well and the evil spirits were unhappy. And so if they wouldn't agree to make an offering to the evil spirits, a lot of the times they had to leave the village. And they would do things to them like lot...not running water...use the [pauses] stagnant pools around the village to water their animals, to give water to their [pauses] cows or horses, you know. And because of this they sometimes forced the people out of the village.
DIXON: Would Christians be persecuted by the government?
SAWYER: No, not necessarily as far as we know. Unless there was some isolated case were there were government officials who just hated, you know, Christianity. But as a whole, the government didn't persecute the Christians.
DIXON: I'd like to ask you a little bit about the health there. Can you tell me what the general health would be?
SAWYER: Okay. I would say that nine tenths of the people in Laos and in years gone by have been [pauses]...suffer from malnutrition. [Pauses] Many of them did not have enough of the proper food, proper diet. There was a lot of sickness. Mostly...the most families among the tribal people would maybe have seven to nine children and only raise about two, because of the mortality rate was very high. There was...there were very few good hospitals, a few French doctors, hardly any Lao trained doctors, some Thai doctors who came over but often took advantage of the people charging high prices, and exhorbant [sic] costs for medicine, which made it impossible for the average person to get a lot of medical help. In our early days of missionary work, we spent a lot of time in medical work. Even though we weren't trained as doctors and...and nurses, we learned to use the simple cures for sore eyes [pauses], small injuries to people, just malaria, and fevers and ear aches and tummy aches, and those kind of things that we could treat. We did an awful lot of this in the...both in the villages and in the town people came to us.
DIXON: What would the medical practices and the traditions of the people?
SAWYER: For the most part there were no doctors and no medicine. Among the tribespeople in the hills, they used opium a lot to cure diseases. It was used as medicine and as a result, a lot of them became addicted to medicine, I mean to opium, because they didn't have medicine. [Pauses] There were some Chinese drugs and Chinese drugstores in the town. The people would go in and...and buy those. There were city hospitals in all of the larger towns. Not very good hospitals and not very highly trained medical people, because Laos just didn't have any.
DIXON: Could...could they afford to come for good medical help?
SAWYER: No. So, most of the hospitals were no...they didn't charge for them to stay in the hospitals. They were government hospitals. But, they could afford to come, but the average person in the village didn't want to come into town to the hospital, because it meant if a child was sick the mother had to come in and stay in the hospital with the child. They had to cook their own food. Food wasn't prepared for them. Unless in isolated cases where there was some child on a particular kind of particular food or diet that the mother couldn't prepare. But for the most part, the [pauses, clicks tongue] tribal people especially just would hardly ever come to town and go into the hospital unless we really worked with them and forced them almost to do that.
DIXON: I'd like to ask you a little bit about education there now. Can you describe the schools, say that nationals would have?
SAWYER: Okay. The schools in Laos were [pauses] set up much like the French system. Grades one through six and then [pauses]...then they went into a French lycee or French high school, which went up through grade thirteen. But [pauses] the average student in Laos did not go past the first six grades, because there would be like, maybe a 150 taking examinations to get into the lycee and then being accepted. So very few of the people in Laos had more than a sixth grade education. And there were never enough schools, never enough. At first all the education was in French and...with a little bit of Lao. Then as the years passed and the French left Laos, they began to use some English courses, but continued to use the French textbooks. And then as the [pauses]...toward the time when the communists took over, there was more and more being done in Lao. And of course, now that communists have taken over, we understand that there are no French or English courses taught at all. It's all in pure Lao. And [pauses] there are no...there was no work done among the tribal people as far as schools in their villages, because the government wouldn't allow us to teach the ethnic people in their own language. They had to be taught in Lao. So whatever we did for them, we taught them the Lao language, how to read and write and how to use it, because that was the national language of their own country in that [unclear word].
DIXON: How...did the government...what was the attitude toward education and the mission schools?
SAWYER: We had only one [pauses] school and that was a school to train pastors in Laos. So we didn't have any Christian day schools. That was one of the things the national Church wanted to do in the future was to have a Christian day school. But outside of just children, meeting and teaching tribal people to read and write the Lao language on a very sort of primitive level, we did not have Christian day schools.
DIXON: What was the attitude of people towards learning?
SAWYER: Most, especially the tribespeople, really wanted to have an education. The Lao weren't as [pauses] energetic and ambitious as the tribespeople, especially the Meo or the Hmong. But they themselves were very, very eager for an education, and came into the classrooms in the city, studying with other Lao students. And even though it was a second language for them, they would also make better grades than the Lao themselves. They have a Chinese background and are very intelligent people, and they have done very well, even here in the States, as they have become adjusted to life in the States.
DIXON: What kind of things did they learn in school?
SAWYER: How to read and write in their own language, which is a Sanskript [sic] kind of base. It's not...not characters and it's not Romanization, but it's a [pauses] script. So they had reading and writing, and history of Laos, and history of...of the world, and that kind of thing. They did have some science and technology in later years, but not nearly advanced as some of the other countries.
DIXON: Can you tell me a little bit about [pause] the economy now? What was its basis?
SAWYER: Well...in...when the French were there, it was based on the French, you know, money system. But in more recent years it was [pauses]...I guess the money, I don't even...I don't even know where the backing for the money was. But [pauses] the money in Laos was not very strong, not very good, not worth a lot, and the exchange changed a lot, changed rapidly. And there were times when, you know [pauses] there was a lot of black market trading of U.S. dollars for Laotian money. And during those days things became very expensive and the economy was very, very hard. But now, of course, they have a completely communist system. Communists run the country.
DIXON: What was the effect of the war on the economy?
SAWYER: Well, of course, it made things very expensive, and harder to get. And as a result it was...you know, it was just difficult during the years of war in Laos.
DIXON: Is there any industry and commerce?
SAWYER: No, very little industry and just very little commerce really, outside of rice going back and forth, vegetables from Thailand. I don't think there's much at all in the way of factories or industry in Laos. I don't know about today but in the past there never have been.
DIXON: What has been the impact of any foreign aid or investment in Laos?
SAWYER: Well, the [pauses, unidentified noise]...the United States government went into Laos during the years of the war to try to help Laos become a more independent country and to set up [pauses] better roads, build airports, and sent a lot of farm experts in from Washington, and that really helped the country. And if it hadn't fallen to the communists, I think the country would have really progressed and been far better off, because they were building dams and irrigation systems and trying to really help the people become a country that could feed its own people. And of course, they...that...all that stopped in '75 when the Americans pulled out.
DIXON: What...what's been the effect of the urban growth on the people in the hills?
SAWYER: Well, because the [pauses]...because the people in the hills have come into the city, okay? they have gotten more and more education. And in a sense it's really helped the people in the villages too, because there have been teachers among the tribal people who've gone back to villages and taught the tribal people. And because of the [pauses] con...roads being changed and more access to the cities, the tribal people actually prospered and their standard of living came up, too. But I don't know if that is...hasn't changed. Now I think the tribal people are pretty much isolated in the mountains again now, because of the communist takeover. They don't want to get down into the cities and be seen there. Our...so...the...and in a sense they are very isolated, very much cut off now from the rest of...of Laos, those people who live in the mountains.
DIXON: I'd like to switch now, if I can, to your departure from Laos. You left in 1975. What exactly were the circumstances [sound of large object being dragged] of your leaving?
SAWYER: When [pauses]...when Vietnam and Cambodia fell, we knew that Laos would have a difficult time withstanding against communism, because about a year and a half before that, the government of Laos decided to become an independent neutral country, and they invited the communists from Laos in the north to come into the government and be apart of the government. So about...for about a year and a half before we left, we had what we'd call a three pronged government. A neutralist, the rightists and the communists were working together in every office throughout the country. But after...after communism took over [sound of rubbing vinyl furniture covering] in Laos, I mean in Vietnam and Cambodia, then Laos just fell completely to the communists. They just took the upper hand there to control the government. They weren't fighting, but they were doing a lot of propaganda, and doing a lot of [pauses] talking against Americans at that time. And one of the things they did was stage strikes [pauses] or demonstrations in front of a lot of American places. And we had a Christian bookstore and a bookroom and World Vision organization was operating right on the same street with us. And they staged some demonstrations and strikes there in front of the World Vision office, and then said we were all a part of that. And so they were threatening to take people hostage to get demands for money and things like this that they wanted to carry on in the office, whereas organizations were starting to pull out because of the communist takeover. And to make a long story short, they just, you know, began to threaten Americans. And with us it was more...more or less threats that if you don't do what we say we will [pauses] take you hostage. And the director of World Vision at that time had left the country, and some of the people in the World Vision office had continued to receive their salary while those who were on strike did not. And they thought the money was coming through our mission office to those people. And as a result of that they made several threats on our lives. So we decided that while all these things were going, on we would just go across the river into Thailand and stay for a short time. We actually didn't [pauses, sound of rubbing vinyl furniture covering] ever get back to Laos. We...we evacuated without taking anything, except just our suitcases. We thought maybe the situation would clear up a bit and we could go back and pack and get out peacefully. We actually got out peacefully but we had to leave everything behind. We lost everything.
DIXON: So you...how long were you in Thailand [then] and what did you do while you were there?
SAWYER: Okay. We only stayed in Thailand a few months. There wasn't much we could do. We were...we were expected home on furlough in July and we evacuated in April. So as soon as school was out and our daughter was finished school, we came back to the States. And then we...while we were in the States, after several months we began to hear about all of the refugees coming into Thailand. And my husband went to Thailand for four months to work in the refugee camps and kind of set up a...a...a ministry there that missionaries could have as the camps began to open. And then he came back to the States, and we had a very busy time here then receiving refugees who came from Laos. Mostly at that time it was the Meo tribespeople who came first. So we were here working with them for about another year. Looked like the program was going to taper off. A lot of the [snapping sound] Meo tribes people had come and were getting settled, and doing pretty well here in the States, so we took an assignment and went to Hong Kong for four years. It was after we came back from Hong Kong that we realized there were so many Lao people, and there were no Christian church leaders among them here in the States, you know.
DIXON: What did you do in Hong Kong then?
SAWYER: My husband was in our mission office in administra...administration work, and in [pauses] business, keeping accounts, keeping office work. I taught in a [ongoing unidentified noise] Christian high school and also taught English at our Alliance Bible seminary there, while I was there...
DIXON: [Unclear phrase]
SAWYER: ...in English.
DIXON: And what kind of people were you teaching?
SAWYER: Chinese.
DIXON: Chinese students.
SAWYER: Students, yeah. But they all...a lot of Chinese in Hong Kong speak English and also take English courses, so what I did was teach, I mean I taught English.
DIXON: I see. And since then now you've been working with the refugees here. [Sound of flushing toilet in background] What kind of [pauses]...what do they come over expecting?
SAWYER: Oh. Well most of the refugees just don't know [laughs]. They're just wanting to get out of, you know, the country that they've lived in because of the communist takeover, and wanting freedom and a new life in America. I don't think a lot of them realized what they were getting into when they came to our complicated way of society. That's been the hardest adjustment for them to make is [pauses] where they've lived in a climate where, and...whe...which was...they were outdoors a lot. They've lived in a...a situation where if they didn't have money they could plant a garden and raise a few chickens and feed themselves. They could cut bamboo from the forest and build a house. And here they...you know, they found out that if you don't have a job you can't eat, you can't [pauses] pay your rent, and you can't do anything...or unless you have a car, and they didn't know how to drive a car, and so they have all of these complicated things that they have to learn. Suddenly it makes it them very frustrated and difficult for them.
DIXON: What kind of adaptations have they had to make then?
SAWYER: Well some of them have been terrific adaptations. From the very mountains of Laos to a down..., you know, to an apartment where you go up five or six floors in the middle of Chicago. I mean it...they've never lived like that in such crowded conditions. And most of them come here and they're very poor, and so life for them in the beginning is very, very hard. And the greatest frustration, too, is that they don't know enough English to be able to get into schools and into good jobs in the beginning.
DIXON: Are...how many of them are Christians?
SAWYER: Well, if you're talking about the hill tribespeople that have come, there are about nine thousand Christians among them now, scattered throughout the United States. (Just in our organization alone, I'm talking about.) And about forty some odd churches with over twenty pastors here working among them. If you're talking about the Lao people, who've come now since about 1980 to the States, you're talking about people who are just beginning to come to Christ. And so we have churches that number twenty, thirty, and forty people in them in about six points here in Illinois, in Peoria, in South Holland, Illinois, here in Lombard, and in [pauses] Peoria. And then we have some in Rockford, Illinois, [unidentified noise in background] and in Elgin. We also have some in [pauses]...in Wisconsin, in Milwaukee. And of course, there are other areas where there are large concentrations of people, too, that we haven't even touched as far as evangelism and church planting. But these are the areas where we're mainly working in.
DIXON: For those who aren't Christians, what is their attitude towards Christianity here?
SAWYER: Well, if they're really a strong Buddhist, they're...they're just like they were in Laos. They're not interested. They think that they don't need Christianity and they don't really want it. But there are a lot of people who are seeing that it's the Christians who've shown them love by bringing them here and helping them. And a lot of them have been won to Christ just through that very thing.
DIXON: What are...what is the attitude of Americans, in general, towards the refugees?
SAWYER: There are a lot of people who have done a lot of things for refugees, and have worked very hard and have sacrificed to help refugees. There are another [pauses]...there are a lot of people who feel they shouldn't be here in the first place, that America had no reason...no...we're not right in bringing them in. There are some who just tolerate their being here and some who are completely oblivious to their being here. There are a lot of churches who have great missionary pledges and are very missionary-minded but don't see the refugees right here at their own door. So part of our work is not only to be caring for the refugees and evangelism and trying to st...plant churches, but also to alert people here in our churches as to what's going on among the refugees, and trying to get them involved in helping them. Because all the refugees who are here need some personal care and help from our American people.
DIXON: Is the Christian and Missionary Alliance very active with the refugees?
SAWYER: Yes, we are. We're working with Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, and Hmong refugees.
DIXON: I'd just like to close with a few questions. [Unidentified noise] What is the attitude of America today towards the country of Laos?
SAWYER: Well, I think that some people are concerned. But for the most part I think it's like when China closed. You just sort of forget about the fact that it's there and we don't have a lot of relationship with Indochina. We don't get a lot of news coming out of Laos and these countries. So [pauses] for the most part I think we forget about those people who are there.
DIXON: What is the...do you know what the attitude of the nationals is towards [pauses] mission work today? I mean non-existent, but do you hear anything?
SAWYER: There are some relief organizations who have tried to get into Laos and have contact with the existing church there in the way of...you couldn't go in as a missionary [pauses] except for some kind of relief work, or some kind of aid to the country. The people who are still there are very poor. Some word drips out from some of them that the church is still in existence, but the church is very, very poor. The pastors are being watched all the time, and they're not really allowed freedom there. There's a communist who sits in all of their services, and those who are [pauses] in the church have to...are very subservient to the communist government. I mean, they can't do anything they want to do. But the church is still in existence there.
DIXON: What are the expectations, then, for the country from Christians?
SAWYER: I doubt, unless there is a complete turnover, the whole situation in Indochina that there'll be any missionary work. But we're praying and hoping that the same thing that happened in China will happen there: that the church will just grow and become stronger than it ever was before, in spite of the fact that foreign missionaries are not there. There are still nationals [unidentified noise] there who can witness, and be a help to there own people. They do lack literature and Bibles and materials, and there's no way at the present where these things can be sent in to them. But we're hoping that some day in the future they'll be able to get the Bible in [pauses]...more Bibles into the country.
DIXON: Well, thank you very much Mrs. Sawyer.
SAWYER: Okay.
END OF TAPE