PITSANULOKE
Shortly after marriage the young couple were assigned with W. B. Toy, M.D., and family to open a new field at Pitsanuloke, some two hundred and fifty miles up the Meinam River. While Dr. Toy was to establish a hospital, funds for which were to be provided by the Board, Boon Itt was to open a school. Through the good offices of public officials he secured the temporary use of some government building.
Concerning this enterprise Dr. Eakin writes vividly:
“He began work in a small way, but he did it thoroughly. In a few months he had attracted attention of the government authorities. They began to send their sons to the school.... It was a slow process of growth but it was indigenous from the start. In this respect it was typical of all Boon Itt’s work. He tried to work with the Siamese people from the inside out, instead of following the common method of applying something foreign largely on the outside.
“It required rare self-sacrifice in Mr. Boon Itt to labour on, teaching the rudiments of learning in that little school when he felt that he was capable of doing a work that would loom larger in the public view.... But there was a subtler temptation in the opportunity to do a work that would make a greater show before the world. He had warm friends at home [America] who were rising in business and professional life. An appeal to them would have enabled him to make his school a more immediate and manifest success.... He felt the cost in his very soul, when he turned his back upon that temptation; but he decided that the slow indigenous work was the only way to secure permanence.
“The work has gone forward in Pitsanuloke since those days. A church has been organised there which promises well; but the present prosperity owes much to the patient digging and laying foundations out of sight, which was done by Mr. Boon Itt.”
After a time the government had use for the building and it became necessary to seek other quarters for the school. Boon Itt leased a new site of about ten acres on the west bank of the river adjacent to the barracks, at a nominal price. As the Board had no funds available for a building he personally secured subscriptions from local merchants and officials amounting to four thousand ticals (two thousand dollars), besides lumber and building materials. A plain but substantial two-story school building of teak wood was erected under his personal supervision and partly by the labour of his own hands.
The enrollment of the first year was forty boys, of whom twenty-six were boarders. The average attendance for that year was ninety-five per cent. In the competitive examinations later the boys of this school gained the highest standing over the boys of the government public school and the Royal Survey school. One of the notable features of his work was the influence he exerted over the young men personally. No doubt that influence in a measure was due to the manner of his religious teaching. He himself has described his method:
“As I have men who study Christianity I have to spend a good deal of time formulating what are the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. We can use phrases in the States and be understood.... Here it is de novo. I use no text-book. I do not know of any. I endeavour to analyse as honestly as I know how myself and use my experience as a guide—not as an infallible guide, but only as a working basis.”
This plan which he adopted was essentially the apostolic method. In our emphasis on the inspiration of the letters written by the apostles we are likely to overlook the fact that they are discussing spiritual truths out of their own lives; their epistles are “text books” written out of experience under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Boon Itt was following the same method so far as he could.
In addition to being superintendent of the school, he regularly conducted the Sabbath preaching service, worked in the Sunday school, and made a tour of exploration as far north as the Lao border. His wife had charge of a girls’ school which she had organised. Pitsanuloke was formally organised and recognised as a regular station in 1899.