| FEBC began broadcasting from Manila to the Hmong hill tribes as early as
1953. Listeners in one particular Laotian Hmong village in the mid 1950's were responsive
to the Christian messages, but being illiterate, had no idea how to communicate with the
Vientiane post office box given on the program. The chief of the village, therefore, sent
a delegation down several days' walk to the capital, to the main post office, where they
inquired if there were a religious man associated with a particular mail box. Postal
officials did not understand the request and referred them instead to an member of a
locally established religious hierarchy, who sent a representative back with the
delegation, several days' walk return trip to the mountains. However, when the chief asked
the representative to acquit himself in terms of his views, he was dissatisfied with the
result and declared that it was "not the same" as they had heard on the radio.
He therefore apologized to the representative and sent him on his way back down the
mountain. But the village was determined to make contact with the broadcaster. So again
a delegation went back, three days' walk, down the mountain to Vientiane, where they gave
more details to the postal officials, who then decided these people must be referring to a
foreigner who indeed had a mailbox. This missionary returned with the delegation, preached
the Gospel to the Chief and his men, and all accepted Christ. As is quite ordinary in
Hmong culture, the Chief "gave permission" to his village to become Christians,
every one. And is a common response to a Chief's suggestion, the whole village followed
suit.
In Western countries, where individualism and personal rights are the order of the day,
such an idea seems implausible. However, working in FEBC's programming department today
(from 1977 to the present) are second-generation Hmong who were in that very village as
young boys and girls when this story occurred, and who attest to the validity of that
decision and its impact on their village. This then, became a paradigm for future Hmong responses to radio
broadcasts, and an indication as to their validity.
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