From what we hear about the accident and what should have happened, it’s just a miracle that I am where I am.”
Danny Ray “Dray” Williams didn’t mean the place where he sat — a straight-backed chair in a Thailand hospital, just days after undergoing surgery to repair his fractured collarbone — though his wife, June, thinks his sitting up is a miracle, too.
What Williams meant was his “miraculous” health condition — on a steady climb ever since a serious vehicle accident near Thailand’s coast July 25 left him, two other Alabama Baptists and several others injured.
His missions team — 22 of whom were Alabama Baptists — was the first sent from the state to begin longterm rebuilding and food distribution in Thailand for those affected by the Dec. 26 tsunami.
Williams and the others were fleeing a much smaller tsunami caused by an earthquake when a vehicle hit the truck in which 10 members of the team were riding, ejecting several from its open bed.
At press time, all but Williams had returned safely to the United States. Williams remained hospitalized in Bangkok, Thailand. His collarbone was healing steadily, and though his head injury still caused him to experience some headaches and dizziness, doctors had concluded the injury would not require surgery.
Grateful for prayers
“A lot of prayers have gone up for me, and everyone has just been great, but I’m ready to get home,” Williams said.
June Williams said doctors could clear the couple any day now to fly back to Alabama. She has been with her husband in the Bangkok hospital since flying there on an emergency passport July 27.
She, too, said she’s ready to come home to their children, grandchildren and friends at Antioch Baptist Church, Jasper — and fly this time with the hope of a healing husband rather than the fear and confusion she took in tow on her trip over.
“Everyone here has been wonderfully helpful, but we’re itching to get home,” she said. “It’s been quite an ordeal.”
Dray Williams said he doesn’t remember much about what happened, but Beverly Jean Jordan sure does.
Jordan, a member of Glory Fellowship Baptist Church, Jasper, wasn’t ejected from the truck but fractured her arm in two places in the wreck. Fellow team members — unsure of the extent of her injuries — stabilized her on a board and put her in the back of a smaller pickup truck to make the drive to a local hospital.
Simultaneously other team members were stabilizing Dray Williams on a wooden sign, and Jordan’s husband, Stanley, who has first-response training and had already treated team members for minor cuts and scrapes during the course of the trip, told her that Dray Williams didn’t look good.
“He (Dray) looked so bad that we weren’t sure he would make it,” Jordan said. “It was a miracle none of us died. We were very, very blessed, very fortunate. God was watching over us.”
After surgery to repair her arm, Jordan returned with a half-cast to Khao Lak, the coastal town where teammates not injured in the accident had returned to finish the work they had started. “I really wanted to go back out and finish what I’d come for, but they wouldn’t let me out,” Jordan said with a laugh. The “work” ended up coming to Jordan instead — a greater miracle than they could have ever hoped for as they prepared for the missions effort, she said.
“The villagers thought we would be mad and upset (because of the accident), so they were amazed to see the team’s attitude and that they went back out to work again,” she said. “We just kept smiling and telling them it was OK.”
As a result, out of appreciation, hundreds of villagers came to shower the volunteers with flowers, cards and other gifts. So many came that Baptist workers pitched a tent outside for the crowds to gather under.
First-time chance to share
“We were told this was an area where we could not go out and initiate talking about Christ but could talk if they came to us and asked us,” Jordan said. “All those who came heard the gospel. They may not have known they were going to get it but they did.
“It was the first and only time they had been able to do that, all as a result of this accident,” she said. The one thing that really struck me was all the glory that God was getting.”
Tommy Puckett, disaster relief coordinator for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, said team members indicated to him that the trip was more than they could have ever imagined — even in the difficult times.
“The team members that I talked to said they felt like God definitely worked through the bad that happened, and only He could receive the praise for what took place,” Puckett said.
He is working to channel the returning team’s momentum into the preparations for the coming missions efforts, including the next construction team, scheduled to leave for Thailand Aug. 15.
And it isn’t taking much work to keep the excitement going. In fact, if it were up to Glenn Dickerson, a member of the team that just returned, he would turn around and go back himself. “It was a very emotional experience for us and for them (the Thai people), and we wouldn’t have any reservations about returning,” he said. “The blessings were all ours, and several on our team say they plan to go back.”
Dickerson and his wife, Mamie, members of Webb Baptist Church, near Dothan, are no strangers to what natural disasters can do. He retired four years ago, kicking off a string of disaster relief efforts for the couple from food distribution to construction, from hurricanes Charley to Ivan.
But nothing, he said, could have readied him for Thailand. “We weren’t prepared for the depth of the tragedy we saw, as far as what the people there had suffered,” Dickerson said. “But we were able to be of definite help to them, and that was a blessing to us.”
Recovering, ready to go
It’s a blessing even the injured say they wouldn’t have passed up. Jordan, who’s been on multiple missions trips, said she doesn’t intend to stop, adding that Dray Williams, a longtime friend of her and her husband, said he feels the same way.
The two are recovering slowly but surely, Jordan said. She is undergoing physical therapy for her arm, and Williams is healing and hoping to head home. Ken Northrop, a member of Northside Baptist Church, Jasper, also fractured some ribs in the accident but is steadily improving.
“I’m going to survive,” Jordan said with a laugh, “and I would go back if we had the chance. We were told we’d entered an area that isn’t even a quarter of 1 percent evangelical — Satan’s dark domain — and we got an opportunity to share that they had never had before.”
Share with others: