
DATE: Sunday, September 28, 1997            TAG: 9709270145

SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON   PAGE: 06   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: COVER STORY 

SOURCE: BY MARK YOUNG, STAFF WRITER 
                                            LENGTH:  127 lines

A FAR CALLING WAKEFIELD NATIVE GINNY BELLANY HAS RETURNED TO THE U.S AFTER SPENDING ALMOST 10 YEARS AS A MISSIONARY IN RURAL THAILAND.

IT'S A LONG way from the peanut fields of Wakefield to the rice paddies of Srisaket Province in Thailand, but for missionary Ginny Bellamy, 52, the two are inseparable.

They are woven together in the tapestry of her spirit as beloved places were she grew.

As a child Bellamy was the middle of five daughters born to a rural couple. The farm was contracted to sharecroppers, while the family lived in the house and the father worked in the heating and air-conditioning business.

Their Wakefield farmhouse, like the huts of the Thai villages where Bellamy would serve many years later, had no running water or indoor toilets.

Perhaps it was that early rural life that helped her accept the challenges of life in the primitive culture of northern Thailand, Bellamy said.

Bellamy went to Thailand in 1987 as a missionary with Food for the Hungry ministries, an international Christian organization, with more than 700 staff members in developing countries from Peru to Bangladesh.

The ministry began in 1971 in the refugee camps in Cambodia, and its efforts focus largely on helping rural residents improve their living conditions through learning the most effective farming methods. At its heart, the ministry shares the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

While the ministry provides training and funds for special projects, the missionaries - like Bellamy - must raise the funds for their own food, clothing and shelter.

Bellamy's funding for her 9 1/2 years in Thailand came from friends she made while living in Kempsville for nine years and working with GSH Escrow and Title, and members of her home church, Kempsville Presbyterian.

Srisaket Province, where Bellamy was assigned, is on a tropical plateau. Its inhabitants are Thai citizens of the Lao and Northern Khmer people groups, ethnically the same as their neighbors in Laos and Cambodia.

During her time working in 15 villages near the Cambodian border, Bellamy recruited some of the Thai Christians to staff the ministry's efforts in the villages.

In the midst of the Northern Khmer people's archaic living conditions, modern technology is encroaching. It is not uncommon to see a television antenna sticking out of an old thatched roof in the villages, said Bellamy. Almost all homes have television, she said.

Though water buffalo plow the fields, villagers travel to nearby destinations via little red motor scooters. There is no telephone service in the village and no running water in the houses. but electricity is nearly universal.

While Bellamy spent her first seven years in management and support, her last 2 1/2 years were spent living in a crude, two-story shack in Khok Talok, one of the villages where she worked.

Most houses, like Bellamy's, are slapped together from roughly cut wooden planks, and have windows without glass. Bellamy's one-burner, bottled-gas stove was one of five in a village of 62 dwellings.

She got her drinking water from huge, round concrete jars with covers, which were filled with rainwater.

``What we tried to do was help the villagers develop their own resources,'' said Bellamy. To that end, their projects aimed at helping villagers get the tools to make improvements themselves, instead of creating dependency on foreigncontributions.

Their projects included helping villages create permanent wells for their water source. Food for the Hungry paid for cement liners for the wells that villagers dug for themselves.

Another initiative helped transport rice farmers to another village to study what Bellamy describes as an ``integrated farming'' system. A rice farmer showed off the ponds dug in order to raise fish for food. At the edges of the ponds he'd planted fruit trees and vegetables that could thrive on the abundant water. The bran from the rice grown in nearby fields was used to feed pigs whose waste was used to feed proto-plankton, which in turn fed the fish.

Bellamy also taught English to interested villagers and monks from a nearby Buddhist monastery.

Growth of the Christian faith in Thailand has been hard to achieve, Bellamy said. Currently only about one half of 1 percent of the population of Thailand is Christian.

Though nominally Buddhist, the beliefs of the people are most strongly influenced by native animism, Bellamy explained.

From a huge scrapbook she keeps, Bellamy showed a photo of a ``sacred'' tree. The huge tree is believed by villagers to contain a spirit. Offerings to stay in the good graces of the tree spirit are made at a nearby ``spirit house.''

Superstition is extremely strong in village life. If a malady befalls a villager, he is likely to consult a medical doctor and the local mawphii, or ``spirit doctor,'' Bellamy said.

Sometimes a spirit doctor is sought out to curse an enemy. Bellamy tells the story of the aunt of her co-worker Phaka, who fell ill suddenly. After consulting a mawphii, a charm was placed under the steps of the woman's home, but not before the ``curse'' had apparently done its damage. The woman eventually died, Bellamy said.

One difficulty in missionary work, Bellamy said, is that some missionaries have not adapted to the Thai culture. Pastors use Western elements such as the white wedding gown and the march down the aisle, instead of native Thai dress and customs. It's this ``Western baggage'' Bellamy said, that keeps Christianity from growing.

``If you clothe the Gospel in Thai forms and traditions, that will speak to their hearts, you'll see growth,'' she said.

As for her work, the former Kempsville resident said there was a greater reason she was able to stay put despite the tropical heat, bloodthirsty mosquitoes and the unusual diet, which included sour red ants.

God wanted her to be there, she said.

Bellamy has returned to the United States because she said she felt God leading her in a new direction.

``I have felt increasingly in the last year that I was supposed to be here for a season, she said.

While she stays in Kempsville's Parliament Village with friends, and visits Franklin where her mother now lives, Bellamy waits patiently for God's next calling on her life. ILLUSTRATION: Photos courtesy of GINNY BELLAMY

Although water buffalo are used to plow fields, most homes have

electricity and televisions.

the leaves that Thai villager Khun Yai - which translates as

``grandmother'' - cuts off palm fronds will earn her about 15 cents

a pound. The buyers use them to make brooms.

The water supply for Ginny Bellamy's village came from containers

that were filled during the rain seaon.

Missionary Ginny Bellamy also taught English to interested Thai

villagers and monks from a nearby Buddhist monastery.

Photos including color cover by PHILIP HOLMAN

Ginny Bellamy