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PASTOR GENERAL'S
REPoRT
TO THE MINISTRY OF THE
WORLDWIDE CHURCH OF GOD
VOL.4, N0.5
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA
PASTOR GENERAL SPEAKS AT
HONG KONG AND BANGKOK
by Herbert
w.
Armstrong
In Flight, January 31, Bangkok--Manila
FEBRUARY 1, 1982
I will bring you up to date on the present trip so far.
Sabbath,
January 23, I spoke to the brethren at the regular Sabbath service in Hono
lulu. There was a nice increase in membership since I last spoke there a
year before.
Sunday, the 24th, we flew on to Hong Kong, crossing the international
dateline. Suddenly it was Monday. It was Chinese New Year in Hong Kong.
All businesses and shops were closed. Wednesday evening I spoke about an
hour and 20 minutes to about 200 readers of The PLAIN TRUTH. There seems to
be a real interest there and apparently God has people there He is calling.
I left David Hulme there to purchase time, if possible, on television
and/or radio in Hong Kong. If we are successful in obtaining a good time on
the air there, I feel sure we shall have a new church in Hong Kong within a
year. We already have about three members there.
Thursday we flew down around the southern tip of Viet Nam and over to
Bangkok. Friday we flew north to Chiang
Mai.
I was
met
at
the
airport by
the mayor and other officials, and they supplied a car to a local hotel. At
the hotel the king's mountain jeep van was waiting to take me, with Aaron
Dean, my personal aide, and the Abbot PhraThepsopon of the Buddhist
religion (a rank similar to cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church) up to the
king's northern palace atop the mountain. There I had a fourth personal
visit with King Bhumibol. The Abbot had arranged the meeting by telephone
from Los Angeles, after visiting me in my home in Pasadena. The Abbot had
been much impressed by the splendid performance of students and graduates
from Ambassador College, serving in the refugee program to the north of
Chiang Mai at the Thailand border.
These Ambassador men and women have
certainly let their light shine in Thailand that people there have seen and
warmed up enthusiastically from their good works.
In Hong Kong the newspaper headlines were filled with serious bad news
and evil in that part of the world. The Thursday morning Bangkok newspaper
headlines were filled with the news in big front-page headlines, of
serious
drug smuggling from surrounding nations across the Thai borders, in order
secretly to smuggle such drugs as opium and heroin out of Bangkok ports to
other parts of the world.
When I talked with the king, he had a new worry. Some ten years ago,
when I first talked with him for about an hour and a half, he pleaded with
me to help him.
At that time his hill tribes, illiterate nomads, had