In this episode, Pastor Phil interviews international worker Angela Dawson. They discuss where Angela’s passion for missions came from and what ministry in Thailand looks like.
Intro
I’m Pastor Phil, Pastor of Missions at Providence Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, you’re listening to “Reaching The Nations,” a series dedicated to keeping the people of Providence connected with what the Lord is doing in the lives of missionaries and church planters we support around the world.
Phil
Hello Providence, welcome back to another episode of “Reaching The Nations,” and we have another special guest with us. Angela Dawson, who is one of our workers serving in Thailand. So welcome Angela.
Angela Dawson
Thank you. Good to be here.
Phil
And so let’s jump right in. You have been serving in Thailand for quite a while. And so this is your life. Tell us a little bit about how you were called to be a full-time worker, full-time missionary overseas.
Angela
My parents are believers and when I was young, I really was fascinated by the stories missionaries would tell when they came to my church. And when I was in eighth grade, I saw a play about Jim Elliot and who was a missionary in South America who was trying to reach the people group there. And the people group he was trying to reach ended up killing him and four other men. And he said, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” And that really stuck with me in eighth grade. I just really wrestled with the idea of being willing to serve the Lord and give my life for Him. And I was also, my heart just ached for the people in the world who had no gospel witness, who didn’t know anybody who knew Jesus.
They didn’t know Jesus. No one they knew knew Jesus. And so another story that really touched me was the story of a video called Ee-Taow about a missionary who went to Papua New Guinea. And he shared the gospel with a tribe there and the tribe, the whole tribe believed.
Phil
Wow.
Angela
And they started rejoicing, but then after they rejoiced, they started weeping and they said, “Why didn’t anyone come and tell us sooner? What about our families who have already died?” And so just that the burden of the lost of the world was why I decided to become a missionary.
Phil
Wow. That’s awesome. So tell us about your connection to Providence. How did you end up at Providence Church?
Angela
I was kind of new to the Southern Baptist world and I had started going to Southeastern. And so I decided I didn’t want to spend a lot of time looking for a church. And Providence was the first church I visited and Brian Frost was my Sunday school teacher. And I thought, wow, what a great Sunday school teacher. I didn’t realize he was on staff at Providence, but so that was my first step. And then the people in the Sunday school class really reached out to me and invited me to go to lunch with them. And so that was how I joined Providence.
Phil
That’s awesome. That’s great. Now who would have known that your Sunday school teacher years ago is now the senior pastor here at Providence.
Angela
I know.
Phil
And he’s a pretty good preacher too, so.
Angela
Yeah. He really is.
Phil
So you’re living in Thailand. Tell us how long you’ve been there. How did you end up there? Why did you choose Thailand? Tell us a little bit about that.
Angela
I’ve been in Thailand about, I guess a little over 12 years, total. I was here two years in 2006 to 2008. And then I came back in 2010. My heart was for people who lived in rural areas who had no access to the gospel. And I actually signed up to work in Laos. And when I was at our orientation preparing to come, I was told by leadership that they didn’t really have a way to get me into Laos. And so they decided to put me on the border of Laos in Thailand. So that’s how I ended up in Thailand. And I worked for the people group for a little while who live in both Laos and Thailand. And through various means, God’s moved me here to central Thailand, but I’m thankful to him that he put me in Thailand. It’s interesting how we have our own plan. The Lord’s plans are different.
Phil
Amen. So tell me a little bit about the spirituality in Thailand. What do they worship there? Are there a lot of Christians there? Tell us a little bit about that.
Angela
Thailand is primarily Buddhist and then in the South, there are a lot of Muslims as well, but one of the sayings in Thailand is, is to be Thai, is to be Buddhists. So they consider Buddhism as part of their nationality. So you see a lot of things about Buddhism on TV, how it’s a peaceful religion and everybody has peace who worship Buddha. But I see in reality that there is no peace and there’s a lot of fear of not being able to make enough merit to get to heaven or to have a better next life. There’s also a lot of animism here.
So there’s a lot of worship of spirits and most houses will have a house in front of them and they give offerings like food and drinks and dolls, like little figurines to the spirits to protect their house. And they’re afraid of ghosts and evil spirits. There’s a lot of trying to get to be good enough. And one of the sayings in Thailand that they learned in school is sin is sin, and merit is merit, and merit cannot take away sin. So they have no hope that they’re going to be able to get rid of the sin in their life.
Phil
Wow. And so you’re looking at Joshua Project lostness there. It says the total population is about 68 million and only about 0.6 evangelical. So there’s a great need in Thailand for workers such as yourself.
Angela
Yeah. One thing that tends to really hit people when they come and visit is when they go to a temple and you see somebody kneeled before a statute, an idol and offer incense where they have idols of Buddha, but they also have idols of other gods that they kneel before. And you find that if you worship an idol, you never have enough because they’re never strong enough to take care of you. So you always are looking for the next big thing. And it’s really sad that there are so many people here who’ve never heard the gospel.
Phil
Yeah. Wow. Well, we’re grateful that you and your team are there. And so tell us a little bit about, so you’re single and, but you have a great ministry there with some girls. Tell us a little bit about how that came about and tell us a little bit about the girls.
Angela
Well, I’ve talked about this a little bit at the mission festival last year, but when God called me to come back to Thailand, the first two years coming here with, so I was so excited, but when I knew I was coming back, there was just the sadness of leaving the comfort of America and my church. I really was loving= being involved at Providence and leaving my group of friends and also the idea of not having the opportunity to meet people, to maybe get married in the future. My country leaders told me that if I came back career, that I would probably never be married. And that was really difficult for me to hear it caused a lot of tears and a lot of crying out to the Lord, but also He told us to count the cost before we commit to something. And I think He was giving me a blessing because He was allowing me to count the cost before I came, because I wouldn’t be angry at Him in the future because of not providing what I wanted.
So I came to Thailand and I was here quite a while before I moved to join the central Thai team. And when I was joining the team, there was a young girl who my team leader, Doug, had been working with doing after-school programs at our school and she had a horrible living situation. And her mother told Doug, “Can you just take my daughter? She’s such a burden to me.” And so she was going to live on our campus, but we didn’t really have a place for her. And she was in ninth grade. She was pretty young to be living by herself. So she couldn’t stay with Doug and Cheryl because of the way the culture would view that here. And so I told Doug that she could stay with me. And that opened the door to having an open house to young ladies who need a safe place to live.
Sadly, that girl ended up turning away from the Lord. But through that open house ministry, we’ve had Anne come to the Lord and I’ve been able to disciple several girls who are believers and young believers in their faith. And then also I have a girl living with me right now who’s not a believer, who I, pour the gospel under her life as much as possible.
Phil
Amen. How many girls are living with you currently?
Angela
I currently have four girls who consider my house their home. One of them is at university. So she’s not here at my house right now, but when she comes home, this is where she comes. And then I have three other girls. One is 24, 23 and the other two are seniors in high school.
Phil
That’s awesome. Just so the audience would know, how best can we be praying for the girls and for you?
Angela
So one of the girls who’s living with me, her name is Brame, and last January, her guardian died and she’s feeling pretty broken out that. Her family has a lot of brokenness and she doesn’t have a good relationship with her father. And so my house was a place of refuge for her. She’s in university, and she’s really struggling with her classes. She’s got a lot of pressure on her. My burden for her is, one that she would forgive her family, her father specifically, but also other people in her family who have hurt her and two, that she would put God first, instead of her studies first in her life. That she would see that He’s enough for her and that He will provide for her.
Noi is the older girl that’s living with me. I’m thankful to be able to minister to Noi, because she’s from Northeast Thailand, where I used to live. She was very immature in her faith when she came and it’s been fun to disciple her and watch her grow. She went from being extremely shy to sharing her faith boldly on mobile clinic, leading people to the Lord. And my prayer for her is that she would grow in discipline and that she would, she’s very attached to Korean men, like hip-hop guys and movie stars. And she’s pretty infatuated with them. So I just pray that she would not spend all her time on that and seek the Lord, make Him first in her life. And… Anne is a special girl for Providence.
Phil
Amen.
Angela
When I first met her she really was difficult to be around. Mean to other people. Doug has a story where she started just swearing and cussing and Doug got so over it. He just pushed her over, like pushed her down because she was just so horrible. And I felt like God specifically wanted me to show love to her, even though I wasn’t feeling the love at the time. And I invited her to come and have a sleepover at my house with some of those friends. And she just started staying here after that. And then Providence came and we had a camp and Anne came and you, Phil, were preaching about the prodigal son.
Phil
Amen.
Angela
And you had an example about a watch, with a watch, that God wanted to give His salvation as a free gift. So all you have to do is accept it. And you called Anne on stage and you handed her the watch. Her eyes got big, she was pretty shocked. She thought you would want the watch back after the sermon. And when you told her no, it was for her, she just couldn’t believe it. Later she told us that that morning she had told her friend, “I really need a watch. I don’t know how, but I’m going to do. I don’t have money to get a watch.” And then you gave her a watch. And she said, “That’s when I knew God knew me personally. He knew what I needed.” And so after years and years of sharing Christ with her, I think two or three years by then, that was the tipping point for her to believe.
Phil
Praise.
Angela
And she’s been strong in her faith ever since. It’s been really fun to watch her grow. She’s had a lot of persecution this year at school, from other girls and boys in her class. And it’s been hard to watch her go through that, but it’s been really fun to see her use the Bible, to see how she’s to respond to that persecution. Her heart, her nature is to be very mean and rough and to reply negatively to that. And then God’s changing her nature. That’s been fun. You can pray for her and falling away from the Lord and have really like fallen and fallen and hard. So you can pray that they turn back to God. And then you can also pray that she’s really struggling about her future. She’s a senior and she doesn’t know what to do. She has limited options because finances and also because her school is not a very strong academic school. So she has limited options because of that as well. But we’re trying to walk them through that. So you can pray for her there.
The final girl who’s living with me, her name is Earn and it’s spelled E-A-R-N. It’s hard to say for Westerners. She moved in with me in April to work as a nanny. It was going to just be for a month before school started back and then… Sorry, it was May.
And then school started back up and she moved back home and she was home for about a week and a half. And Anne called me from the school and said, “Can Earn come over tonight?” And I said sure. And Earn came in the door that night from school and her eyes are puffy and red and she’d been crying. And so I asked her what was going on. And she said her stepmother had threatened to kill her if she didn’t leave the house. And so we weren’t sure what to make of this. So I talked to with some of my Thai partners and and then I sat down again with Earn and just got the whole story. She said her stepmother is crazy. And she got a new idol in the house. And since she got the new idol, she’s been even more crazy. And she, she talks to the idol, for it on the radio, and she takes medicine or psych medicine.
I don’t know what, but she told Earn that she was going to kill her with the knife. And she said, “I don’t care if I go to jail, you’ll be dead.” So it was… We figured that, that this is a pretty serious situation. So we, myself and a couple other Thai ladies, went to visit the family. And we talked to them and said, “I’m willing to take Earn in, but you guys have to give permission.” And they wrote out both her father, who I didn’t think I’d have a problem with, and her stepmother. So I was wondering what she would do. They both wrote out that they would like her to stay with me and signed the piece of paper. So she’s been with me since then. She’s reading her Bible. She’s participating in church. She just has a barrier up to the gospel right now. And I’m not sure, what it’s going to take to bring that down, but I would really appreciate prayers for her because she needs the Lord.
Phil
Absolutely. Well, Angela, that… It’s so amazing how God is using you and these girls being right there in your house and you being able to minister. And obviously it makes you very emotional when you talk about them, but it’s your ministry. It’s your opportunity to pour into… I mean, you’re literally their mother. And so you’re giving them an opportunity to live in a Christian home, but also have a godly mother influence. So we’re grateful for that.
Angela
When I committed to the Lord that I would come to the field single, I thought I was giving up the idea of having a family. And now these girls, they do call me mom. Actually, that’s my nickname. So all the kids at the school, they call me mom. And He provides a family that I wouldn’t be able to have.
Phil
Absolutely.
Angela
By the goodness of God and how He…
Phil
That’s so good. Yeah. Well, this has been great. Angela. We’re grateful for the work that’s going on in Thailand, in Bangkla. And we’re praying that the rest of your team will get there soon amidst COVID. And so we’ll continue to pray for Brame and Noi and Anne and Earn. And so thank you for joining us this morning. If you’re interested in connecting with Angela, you can email me at pray.org. [email protected] And I will get you her information to get on her newsletter and know how to pray for her on a consistent basis. And so just contact us if you want to get more information about that, or if you’re feeling called to the nations. As Angela mentioned earlier, we would love to talk to you about the opportunities to go and serve in a place like Thailand, even join a church planting team there or somewhere else in the world.
And so let me close our time in prayer. Father, thank you for Angela. Thank you for your calling on her life. Thank you for her obedience to take up the cross and follow you. She has denied herself in many ways, but she has experienced great joy and peace and, and ministry because of it. And the blessings that have come from ministering to these girls, we’re grateful for. And so we do pray for Brame and Noi and Anne and Earn, Lord. We pray that you would continue to use Brame and Noi and Anne in their sphere of influence. Lord, just gird them up, strengthen them. Lord, pray for Angela as she ministers to them. We pray for Earn’s salvation. We pray that your… The gospel that has been presented to her, that has been lived out before her, Lord, would change the course of her life. And so we ask that you would do what you only can do and a miracle in her heart.
And so we pray for Angela, that you would sustain her and encourage her. And we’re just grateful that we get to be a part of the ministry there in Thailand through her. And so we pray all this in Christ’s name. Amen.