Brother Tom Thurman has heard at night as he tried to sleep the cries of the starving pleading for food. He has seen men with pitchforks every morning load up the dead from the streets — 1,200 a week — to dump the corpses outside the city.
The First Baptist Church of Columbia staff member has witnessed the effects of a 40-foot tsunami that dragged an estimated 350,000 to 500,000 people to their deaths in what National Geographic described as worst natural disaster of the 20th century.
Yet Thurman, 84, who served as a missionary to East Pakistan/Bangladesh for 35 years beginning in 1964, has also seen the hopefulness of a nation building itself up out of chaos. The man who described himself growing up as a “barefoot boy from Arm, Mississippi” shared the joy of resilient people who never gave up despite getting slapped down again and again by natural disaster, famine and civil war.
He has experienced Muslim fathers allowing their daughters to attend a Christian school because they trusted them.
He’s witnessed the gratefulness of people receiving ducks and goats that provide eggs and milk to support their families.
So amidst the terrible damage Tropical Storm Harvey is causing in Texas, Thurman’s perspective is helpful.
“How joyful we were to be there in a time of need,” he said of the 1970 cyclone in Bangladesh, where those hundreds of thousands perished. “We tried to go out and put down pumps. All the fish ponds had been filled with saltwater. The fish died; the cattle died; chickens died; the men died. And walking into a situation like that to do what you can, thinking of service and not of self.”
Thurman continued later, “The task, not being able to do much, not tackling the whole problem, but finding one person and doing something abou that, what a difference it made, and that’s what we learned as we stood beside these heroic, wonderful people of Bangladesh.”
Thurman, who shared his experiences with the Columbia Rotary Club Tuesday, encouraged members to live out its motto of “service above self” and to help others in the name of Christ.
“Just think what would happen if each of us would put service above self and take a drug addict, a person just out of jail, a family that’s lost its way and invest in one life,” he said.
No one can fix all of the problems in Houston, but all of us can do something to help. And even if we’re unable to travel there, we can make a difference in our community. In a troubled world, Thurman’s message is one we all need.
— Charlie Smith
