Nate and Maam Beckman have been serving in Thailand for many years. They talk about growing up, coming to know Christ, and entering missionary service today.
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Episode Transcript
Chris Harper: Welcome to Harvest Time. My name is Chris Harper, and our host on this program is Pastor Gary Walton, the lead pastor of Harvest Baptist Church. Every week, we spend these twenty five minutes together telling you the stories of our church by interviewing our members and other friends of the ministry. We have two services at Harvest Baptist Church every week, the first at 08:45AM, the second at 10:45AM Sunday. We have Japanese and Korean translation available during the 10:45AM service, and that’s also when we livestream at hbcguam.org. hbcguam.org.
This week, we’re back in our series, Encounters with Jesus. Let’s begin today’s Harvest Time by welcoming Pastor Gary Walton. Hi, pastor.
Gary Walton: Hey. Hafa adai, Chris. We’ve been starting the fall season, just in the Gospels and talking about these encounters with Jesus. In Hebrews, the writer of Hebrews says that, Jesus is the express image of the Father. He is the perfect representation of who God the Father is in human form.
So whenever somebody says something to me like, I don’t understand God, or I have a hard time understanding this piece, I always want to encourage them, go back to the Gospels, read about Jesus. When you read about Jesus, I’m just confident that you’re going to walk away from that reading with this compelling vision of who Jesus is and what he was like and how he cared for people. And when you get that, you’re going to understand who the Father is in all of his representation. And so this fall, we’ve just been now for a few weeks, very simply going through some of these encounters with Jesus, his interactions with people, because this is the Gospel. It’s not just his birth, it’s not just his death.
Those are critical pieces of the Gospels, but the Gospels is in the details of how he lived and his call for us to be like him. And so we really enjoyed that. Looking forward this Sunday to being back in the Gospels again talking about Jesus and how He cared for people as He lived here on this earth. And in addition to inviting you this Sunday for that, you’ll also get a chance to meet some people that are here as our guests in Harvest Time. I want to welcome Nate and Maam Beckman.
Welcome to Harvest Time.
Nate Beckman: Thank you.
Maam Beckman: Thank you.
Gary Walton: So glad to have you here and actually have you back. Nate and Maam have been missionaries sent out from Harvest since
Nate Beckman: 2011 probably.
Gary Walton: In ’11, something like that. They are serving the Lord in Thailand. We’ll get a chance to hear a little bit of that story and the connection for them and planting a church and trying to share the Gospel, trying to fulfill what Jesus said, you know, go and make disciples among all the nations. And so God has called you there to Thailand and you’ve been there for how many years now, Nate?
Nate Beckman: Twenty two together. Maam’s been there a little longer, her being Thai. Man. But together 22.
Gary Walton: Maam grew up in Thailand. Well, I want to ask you about all that in a minute, but maam, us about your family. Many people at Harvest know you, but those on the radio kind of out there may not know your family. So you have some children?
Maam Beckman: Yes, I have three lovely children. Now two are older, out of the house. Two, they’re living in America. One are getting my oldest. She’s been saving up money for working, part time, saving up for two years, and now she finally went to college.
Gary Walton: Great.
Maam Beckman: Yes, she’s excited. And my second, he’s saving money right He’s 19. He’s 19, yes.
Gary Walton: Were they both born in Thailand?
Maam Beckman: They were. Yes, they all.
Gary Walton: Okay, born in Thailand, grew up there.
Nate Beckman: Yes, that’s correct.
Gary Walton: Now state side, probably around some family there.
Nate Beckman: Yes, I have a sister in Iowa and we have a my dad is in Ohio, so each of them are around family, which is Yeah.
Gary Walton: Okay. I’m sure a big transition for them.
Nate Beckman: Huge. Very big. Yeah, this time of just working a job has been helpful for them.
Gary Walton: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Then you say, Naya is still with you, right?
Maam Beckman: Yes. Naya. She is nine years old. Yes.
Gary Walton: Okay. Yes. That’s great. Nate is part of the pastoral team at Pinklao Baptist Church in the city of Bangkok, the large Which city of if I have my stats right, the church began in 2009. Is that right?
Nate Beckman: That’s correct. We opened the doors for ministry in the Pinklao area of Bangkok, the Western Side Bangkok in 2009.
Gary Walton: Okay. And God’s been blessing that church and seeing people come to Christ and disciples.
Nate Beckman: Yes, yes. Over the years it’s been slow one by one. Sure. But little by little people have come our way.
Gary Walton: Okay. And you’ve been there officially as missionaries since 2003, so going on more than twenty years now.
Nate Beckman: Yes, yep, and this is coming up on, yeah, twenty two, twenty three years, just, yeah. Okay. Wow, time flies.
Gary Walton: I know. I know. You must have been so young when you went there. I’m sure about that.
Nate Beckman: I just graduated from youth group and straight out of the mission field.
Gary Walton: That’s fantastic. Pastor Nate is here as our Spirit Week speaker in HCA, Harvest Christian Academy. Each fall, we have a special week, which is full of a lot of fun and kind of team building stuff among our, particularly our junior high and high school. But a lot of the focus is a chance to, be able to just talk about the Bible and talk about the Gospel with our students. And so he’s here to lead that, speak into their lives, and I know we’re burdened for that, been praying for that for a while.
Let’s back up a little bit. Tell us about your story. Where did you grow up? How did you become a follower of Jesus?
Nate Beckman: Okay.
I grew up in the state of Iowa. Before Iowa, actually my dad going to Bible college was the thing that sort of grounded our family, and my dad was involved in nuclear safety when I was very young, and from the time I was born until the time I was four years old, we lived in four different states. My dad, when I was four years old, committed to ministry. He believed God was calling him to be a missionary, so he moved to the state of Iowa to go to a small Bible college called Faith Baptist Bible College. While there, my dad being I’m the youngest of three, he was a married student, had three kids, but he also wanted to have his kids in Christian school, so I grew up in a Christian school in the Des Moines area, and my dad having a family and trying to balance having a family and supporting them but also being involved in Bible college.
He went to Bible college for seven years. Took a year off to pay off his debt and then joined Baptist Mid-missions and was on deputation for three and a half years. So that time of preparation when God called my parents to ministry, to actually being prepared to go to the mission field, I was at the end of my sophomore year of high school. Wow. I’d gone to Christian school from the time of first grade through my sophomore year, and I knew every answer.
I had every right belief out there, but it never was personal to me. Even growing up in Christian school, going to Awana, all of those things, it was never personal to me. We went off to the mission field for my junior year of high school, and it was while I was on the mission field my junior year of high school doing my homeschool Bible study or my homeschool Bible class for a grade. I did a study on the fruit of the Spirit, and then as I went through each one of those, what we call the fruit of the Spirit, the question at the end of the study showed this is what the biblical definition of love is, self sacrifice, what God has done for man, and those things. The question was do you have this in your life?
And no one my parents weren’t looking over my shoulder, making me do devotions maybe like they had in the past, so I answered maybe for the first time in my life honestly, and question was do you have? And there was a box to check, yes or no, and I checked no, and I kept having to check no after each one of these studies, and at the end I start to realize to myself, I ask myself, if you don’t have any of this stuff, how do you know you’re saved? And then I answered my own question, Well, if you don’t have the fruit of God living inside you, maybe you’re not God’s. I had become very, very sick with hepatitis during that time as well. I was very, very sick, so for the first time in my life, death was not just something of a theory, that happens to older people.
It was close by. So the combination of me studying the Word of God for the first time ever on my own in my life and realizing I wasn’t truly saved myself being very, very ill. I was scared to death to go to sleep at night for fear I would not wake up, but maybe if I did wake, if I died, I would go to hell. So one night I woke my dad up about three in the morning. I said, I can’t take this anymore, dad.
This is where I’m at, what do I do? And that night we got on our knees and I accepted Christ as my savior as 16 year old missionary kid having grown up in the church, in Christian school all my life.
Gary Walton: Nate, do you remember did things change for you? Did you sense something?
Nate Beckman: Oh yes. Drastically. Like so, I had never been this super terrible kid to begin with, but the drastic transformation took place in my heart where my thoughts and my desires changed from night to day. I knew, in my mind having grown up and going to Christian camp and chapel at Christian school, I knew all the answers, but in my mind I thought, Nate, you’re saved, you’re just not dedicated. And then once I realized what I was truly missing was I wasn’t saved, God did not live inside me.
And then when I trust in Christ as my Savior, my thoughts and my desires changed where I, from that point on, I just wanted to live for God. It’s never been perfect, but the desire to live for God changed at the moment that I trusted Christ as my Savior.
Gary Walton: Yeah, it’s fascinating. I mean, that transformation of what I want, you know, happened so immediately, the direction you’re heading. Maam, your spiritual story, you grew up in Thailand, right?
Maam Beckman: Yes. I was born there and grew up there. And when I was six years old, my dad died in a car accident.
Gary Walton: Mhmm.
Maam Beckman: And that my I’m the oldest, so my mom was for were forced to raise three of us, and then she moved us into her hometown. And then everything changed completely. The surrounding, the language, I didn’t know the language. I went to a new school and life
Gary Walton: There’s different languages in different parts of Yes. Thailand,
Nate Beckman: Different dialects. Dialects.
Maam Beckman: Okay. So
Gary Walton: This is outside of Bangkok, right?
Maam Beckman: Yes.
Nate Beckman: Okay.
Maam Beckman: Yes. Outside, completely outside of Bangkok. So I grew up in that environment. So no direction, pretty much like turned me into introvert. And then when I was growing up as a Buddhist, you pretty much, your dad died, you know, you’re not even middle class.
So you think in Buddhist view, you have a bad karma. So pretty much you just felt sorry for yourself, okay, maybe this life I’ll try better, you know, to collect karma, to go to do, like, to the temple and chants and learning all that Buddhism way to make you, you have a better life next life. So that’s always in the back of my mind. And then when I was 11 years old, right next to my friend’s house, there were a sign teaching free English at the missionary’s house. So I walked in there and wanting to learn English and then they offer Bible as well.
So I sat there and listened every Saturday Bible story from Genesis and not really understand a lot because it’s so foreign to me, you know, to really understand what is this going on. It’s just totally different from my own religion. So I just sit and listen. But just the song that I like, Jesus Loved Me speaks to my heart. It’s Is Easier to Understand and then This is My Father’s World and talks about God Creator, you know, and sent Jesus Christ to die on my sin.
And then it start after I went there and just had a little bit of knowledge about God and then my, I finished sixth grade, my mom told me that she doesn’t have money to send me to junior high. So during that year, I and again sit on my own thinking through my life, you know, bad karma. My mom couldn’t say, I’m going to be the stupid kids in the world, you know, in my And then I cried and cried and cried. Tired of crying. So one day I was like, yeah, I remember those place, the church, you know, the place.
I need that place. I need to go to that place again. So I look for, I’m looking for a church because the missionary, they moved out. So I had no contact. Then I grabbed a bike and ride around about a town of 60 people.
Nate Beckman: About 60,000 people. She got on her bike and decided she’s going to find where this church is in the town of 60,000 people.
Maam Beckman: Yes, not knowing if they remember me or I’m the kids who doesn’t even say hi to people because I was so shy and everything. Was introvert. And then found the church and took me probably a month to be able to walk in there and say hi because I would go there, stand in front of the church and then go home because I was so scared. And anyway, I don’t remember, maybe God just pushed me to walk in there with my suspicious, like, you know, thing that, okay, I’m here learning English again.
But after I went in there and I went there almost every day, hang out because I had nothing to do. Through that, I get to see the Christian love on my own because I’m learning, because I grew up all by myself, no dad, no mom around, so I have to really be careful when I’m walking into this new people are like real or not. Or is this fake, you know, a
Nate Beckman: brainwash you.
Maam Beckman: Yeah, brainwash, that’s the word. But all I see is this love, you know, they don’t pressure me to anything and then they’re just real. So I keep me going to that church almost a year and then the
Gary Walton: How old are you now?
Maam Beckman: At that time I was still 11.
Gary Walton: 11?
Maam Beckman: Yeah. Okay. 12. I’m sorry, 12. So I graduated.
So at 12 years old and then toward the end of the year, they have an evangelistic meeting. After one of the three days meeting, the missionary came and explained the whole gospel to me that Jesus saved me. All I grew up is you have to do good for yourself and Buddha told me his final word is, no one can help you. You have to help yourself.’ That was his preaching pretty much. And then here Jesus, the missionary chair that Jesus come die on the cross to save you from your sin.
And I choose if these two religions are making their way to their own heaven. Christ is He helped me to get, you know, to heaven. Buddha, He doesn’t help me to get to His heaven or His nirvana. He’s just a good example, He said. So here I am on my, like, you know, hopeless.
Okay, I’m a sinner. What else can I do? So I accepted Jesus Christ. I choose. I was the first one who accepted Christ in my family.
Nate Beckman: She was 12 years old.
Gary Walton: Wow. Maam, it’s so amazing to think about God’s plan for your life, the connection right next door originally, but then after that, I mean, God puts that desire in your life to search, to ride your bike all around that town looking again for either, these people that cared for me or this truth that you as an 11, 12 year old you knew that you needed. How powerful is that?
Nate Beckman: Yes, very powerful.
Gary Walton: Wow. So tell me, maybe both of you, tell me about your story together. How did you, you know, and then how did God lead you back to Thailand in the roles that you have?
Nate Beckman: Yeah, so I went to college for four years to study ministry, and in my mind I thought I was surrendered to God because I was willing to be involved in my mind. I told the Lord I’d be willing to be a youth pastor or involved in Christian camping, and I had some experience with camping and recruiting for the college I went to and that, but after I graduated, no full time opportunities came my way. So I thought in my own mind, I interpreted it, okay, God’s freeing me from this ministry thing. I’ll just go work a job and make money and live the life that maybe I want to live. And after a couple years of just working a job being absolutely miserable, I was making decent money, but I was miserable.
I remember, this was a long time ago, Christmas of 1996 at the time. My my home church had two morning services. It was the Sunday before Christmas my parents had gone to the early service at that time in my life. There was no way I was waking up to go to an early service. I went to the late service, but it was the Sunday before Christmas, so the church was especially packed.
The songs are known, so it was especially loud. I sat in the back row. All my friends that I normally sat with were with their families, so I was by myself. I was miserable. The second song we stand up to sing, I got up and I walked out of church the Sunday before Christmas.
Gary Walton: Wow.
Nate Beckman: And I went home, get home, my parents noticed that this is something
Gary Walton: You’re that early?
Nate Beckman: Yes, my mom says, Nate, was church done early? And I said, and I couldn’t even get the words out my mouth, just started crying, my mom felt terrible, and for the next three, four hours, we just sat and talked about life, and I came to the conclusion through my parents’ counsel and just being honest with myself in a way that I hadn’t been for the last couple years, I wasn’t truly totally surrendered to God, and at that day I said, Lord, I’ll go anywhere, I’ll do anything you want me to do, just let me wake up in the morning and be happy with the job I have. And God, just shortly thereafter, a couple months later, opened up an opportunity to take a survey trip to Thailand, and through that survey trip I met missionaries who were teaching English as an evangelistic tool, and I went there thinking there’s no way I’m gonna be a pastor, never. But I saw what they did and I thought, I can do that. I could teach English and have Bible studies with people.
I could do that, and then have opportunities to preach here and, okay, yeah, I can do that. And God used that to start working in my own heart. Maam and I met the very first day I was there. I thought she was a really nice girl, but at that point in my life, I was more concerned about finding God’s will than finding a wife, so I didn’t go there with any idea whatsoever of meeting some girl from another land who’s gonna be my wife. I went, the Lord worked in my heart from survey trip, it wasn’t three more months before I was back in Thailand as a short term missionary.
Gary Walton: Wow.
Nate Beckman: I quit my job, and I was back there with that same missionary couple that I’d met because they’d opened the opportunity to say, Anytime you wanna come back, you can work in our ministry. Okay, went back, worked in our ministry. Maam and I worked together every day, and she avoided me like the plague.
Gary Walton: What years was this?
Nate Beckman: This was ‘ninety eight. This was the Spring of 1998. I went there my first time of survey in the winter, or excuse me, November 1997. We worked together every day, but she was so focused on ministry, I was so impressed with that, that here’s a girl that she doesn’t need to flirt with a guy or anything like that, and I wasn’t there to look for a girl, I was there to really find God’s will, but I was extremely impressed with her. And so I went back to, after that short term trip, went back to The States, but she was still in my mind and my heart a little bit, and so I asked permission from the missionaries if I could start writing her letters and they gave me permission.
So we started writing letters. We tell our kids they will never get married or do the relationships the way we did it because it involved overseas and this was before internet and before all that.
Gary Walton: You were actually putting letters in the mail.
Nate Beckman: I was, as well as like the once a week, like $5 a minute phone call.
Gary Walton: Very expensive.
Nate Beckman: Yes, it was a totally different era. And that was our every Friday I would call her and so that’s how through our engagement, before we were married, we’d spent time together as an actual couple, maybe a month. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, but we were past this let’s date for fun type of thing. This is more serious, and she was very serious too. She had committed herself to being, at that time, being in ministry in Thailand.
Gary Walton: Wow, so maam, from the 2012 until this time, God just kept growing you in your faith you were committed. It wasn’t, you met Nate and then you were talking about it. You were really committed to ministry.
Maam Beckman: Actually, from when I was 12 years old. So and then after I grew up at church, you know, I got baptized and grew into teenagers, joined the church, and the Lord is always challenging me, kind of like calling me, but I’m too scared. My excuse is I’m an introvert person. I don’t like to speak and teach and talk to people. I know how your missionary’s wife, how they work, know, you have to be that type A personality.
And I was like, no, no Lord, you know, don’t send me. But in the back of my mind is whenever I’m willing, that’s all. The pastor when they asked me to teach Sunday school kids, okay, I will do it, but I don’t know how, you know, and the Lord just give me the ability. When he asked me, would you drive for to pick up the church? Okay, I’m willing to.
So I learned to drive and just be part of the ministry. And then the Lord just keep putting more burden to me to see the Thai people, to see my own family because after I got saved, I start praying for my mom, my sister, my brother and my sister that they will know the Lord. So I pray for them and the Lord just put more burden. And then when I finished high school, thanks that the church people help support me to help me go finish high school. But after I finished high school, I kind of like work around town a little bit, fighting the Lord’s calling me for a couple years, not surrender, completely surrender.
But after two years at camp, I said, okay, Lord, whatever. So I dedicate my life. At that time dedicating mean I’m going to move out of my hometown to Bangkok to go to Bible work and support myself. No fun for me. I support myself and then go to Bible school, small Bible school for four years.
So at that point, I’m pretty focused already, so to do what the Lord would have me to do.
Gary Walton: It’s fantastic. It’s amazing to see God bring you guys together. And now, you know, twenty plus years together.
Nate Beckman: Yep. Twenty five years of marriage this year.
Gary Walton: Yes. Twenty five years of Yes. Congratulations to Thank you you. Then ministry at Pinklao Baptist Church and really impacting all across Thailand. We just have a minute here, but tell us about the Gospel transforming lives through Pinklao Baptist Church and across there.
Nate Beckman: God’s been very good to us. We started out Pinklao Baptist Church. We specifically, on purpose, chose an area of Bangkok after our study and research that had no gospel witness at all. We wanted to go to an area that had nothing, no gospel witness, no churches of any kind of denomination. That’s Pinklao when we first started.
We didn’t know a soul. Our first four months of having Bible studies and church on Sundays, no one came, zero. That was 2009. And one by one, literally, God brought people our way through prison ministry, through English ministry, through word-of-mouth and all these things. And in 2014, established Pinklao Baptist Church with 24 adults who signed that charter, committing themselves to be members of Pinklao Baptist Church, and little by little, one by one, some through some of the exciting ones.
Every salvation decision, especially one that bears fruit, is exciting, But some of the most transformational visible ones are ones that have taken place at our prison ministry, where one particular young man, people know him well in our church, his name is Gunn, made a profession of faith in our prison ministry, which isn’t necessarily unusual, but unusual about his story, he was telling us he believed in Jesus, and we were taking a wait and see attitude because there’s lots of decisions like this in prison, and when they leave the prison, we never see them again. But with his case, his own fellow prisoners who were not believers themselves would come and say, What did you do to Gunn? And I said, I have no idea what you’re talking about, and he said, they were saying, He doesn’t swear anymore. He just quit joining our group when we’re making fun of other people or we’re telling bad stories and we’re telling he doesn’t join in anymore, and that’s when we realized, okay, this guy’s serious. He got out of prison for three or four years.
He kept saying he wanted to be involved in ministry and wanted to study the Bible, and we kept putting him off saying, show yourself faithful first, show yourself faithful. After about three, four years of that, finally we said, Okay, we’ll send you to Bible College. He went to Bible College for four years, just graduated a year ago preparing for ministry. Amen. Yeah.
It’s pretty awesome.
Gary Walton: Gospel transforms us.
Nate Beckman: It absolutely does.
Gary Walton: Yeah, radical transformation. Well, we’re so glad that you’re here. It’s been nine years, I think, since you’ve been on Guam and been at Harvest. So glad to have you back here. Thank you.
Been personal friends with Nate and Maam for a number of years now. I’m really thankful for that friendship.
Nate Beckman: Yep. We are as well.
Gary Walton: We’re thankful to be partners together with you in the ministry, praying for your continued burden ministry that God would bless all across the land of Thailand. Thank you.
Chris Harper: And thank you for listening to Harvest Time. Of course, at this point in the program, we always wanna personally invite you again to services at Harvest Baptist Church, Sunday morning, 08:45AM, 10:45AM, Japanese and Korean translation during the 10:45AM service, and that’s also the service we broadcast live here on 88.1 FM and khmg.org. We hope to see you this Sunday. Thanks again for listening to Harvest Time.