I’m writing from Peter and Cavelle’s condo in Bangkok, hours from our Thailand departure.  I’ve been a bit more thoughtful in these final days, contemplating the situation in Burma, wondering about the future.  If you don’t mind, I’d like to share these thoughts with you.

I’ve learned that that the first major wave of refugees to cross the border came in 1984.  Approximately 10,000 came to Thailand at that time.  Refugees came as early as 1975 (13 years after the military coup), but it wasn’t until my Grade 8-9 year at M.E.I. in Abbotsford that families fled to Thailand en masse anticipating a short stay.  The first humanitarian agencies to help were Christian groups – this is often the case worldwide.  And they only helped with rice…because that is all the refugees thought they needed.

Yet here we sit in 2010 with about 500,000 Burmese IDP (internally displaced people) having fled their homes but still living somewhere inside Burma, while another 150,000 have fled to refugee camps on the Thai side.  That doesn’t include the 70,000 in Mae Sot, or the thousands more who live in other towns and cities, in this apparently temporary situation.  25 years of temporary…

Last week was an emotional week.  We visited 40 schools to say goodbye.   We also said goodbye to our Karen neighbours across the street.  We hope little two-year old Nao Mai will somehow understand why we left.  We will travel 17 hours to the other side of the world, a part of the world that has been largely unaware of the crisis in Burma. In fact, before we came here, we had no idea either.  I could almost find Burma on a map and while I knew about humanitarian crises in Africa, Eastern Europe, and parts of Central America, Burma was non-existent to me.

But not anymore…

Something has happened to me.  Like individuals throughout the centuries who have come face to face with injustice, I have become a witness.  As a witness, it has become my obligation to share the stories and to keep the flame of knowledge alive, so that injustice cannot continue to prevail and so that people with the ability to help cannot plead ignorance any longer.

What has inspired me this year is the amazing compassion I’ve witnessed from those who have heard the story…people like YOU!  As I write this 28th blog update, I marvel that you helped send us here, and that you’ve tracked with us, prayed for us, visited us, sent money for our family and for projects, and created awareness in your own settings.  You’ve become witnesses as well!  11 months after our arrival, 1000’s of children and their families are drinking clean water, preschool children are receiving a better education, boarding house children have heard the life-giving message of God’s love for them, and orphans are slowly working through a process of becoming officially and legally recognized.  Their lives will never be the same because we worked together.  Whether here in Mae Sot or 17 hours away, together we helped make a difference.  The flame has gotten brighter.

And so I have hope.  I dream of a  free Burma and and wait for political change.  Sooner or later, when the refugee camps and the streets of Mae Sot empty and the children of Burma resettle in their own country, they will be more ready and able to lead their nation back to freedom.  You have helped ensure the survival of Burma.

Thank-you for all that you did.  On behalf of the little baby we brought to the Mae Tao clinic last week…on behalf of the students at Hsa Mu Htaw who gave a dazzling traditional Burmese dance performance to our family and visitors…on behalf of New Light’s headmaster, his wife, and their two little girls who keep handing me their stuffed animals to hold and kiss…on behalf of the 50 preschool students Ellie was able to teach this year at Hle Bee…thank-you.  You’ve helped so many people.

As most of you know, we will continue to work with Imagine Thailand 50% of the time…from West Kelowna. Let us continue to work together in the months and years to come.  Let us keep the flame burning until it is a light that the whole world can see.

Many of you will remember our very first blog entry in Mae Sot.  We focused on Kwe Ka Baung school which was situated in stifling quarters right in the town center market area of Mae Sot.   420 students, including 135 boarding school students, were jam-packed into a three-level townhouse complex.  Throughout the year, we brought many visitors to the school so that together we could perhaps find a way to move these students to a new location.  Additionally, we took the children on field trips to give them a break from their concrete  jungle.  Finally, with a number of NGO’s working together in Mae Sot and through the generosity of people around the world, Kwe Baung has moved!

As of June 1st, they began school at a beautiful location in the countryside.   Interestingly, the new site was originally the location of a guesthouse with a number of cabins.  These cabins are now occupied by students and teachers.   The parking stalls at the main guesthouse building are being used as classrooms.  The school has electricity!  The students are climbing trees, playing in the field, sitting in the shade, and enjoying the cool breeze blowing over the land.   Two temporary school buildings have been set up.

One Grade 10 girl who has lived at Kwe Ka Baung for 10 years, told us that she loved the new school property so much.  She especially likes the “silence.”  Honesty, there was so much noise with students talking in classes, that her comment seemed a bit strange.  However, she went on to talk about the classrooms at the old site with no dividers and the students listening to music loudly on their ghetto blasters in such close quarters.  At the new school, there is so much room for everyone. She loves the large playing area as well.

As is to be expected, the new site offers many opportunities for individuals and groups to fund small and large projects and to come and work on specific projects as well.  Here are some interesting facts:

• Presently, there is no drinking water source.  They are negotiating with the surrounding village to put in a pipeline and are also considering digging a deep well.  Until then, they are transporting drinking water to the school from outside sources.  Imagine Thailand will be there to install the new water system when everything is in place.
• They have a huge field that includes a dirtbike track.  In my opinion, since most students don’t own dirt bikes, the field could be more appropriately transformed into a soccer field.
• Students are eating meals without tables and chairs at the present time!
• The cabins could use some renovations!
• Many of the bathrooms in the cabins don’t work.  Students have to leave their cabins at night to use the newly built outhouses.
• There is no fence around the school and so students are taking nightwatch shifts to make sure that everyone and everything is safe.

Sometimes we share the sad stories but we forget to share the conclusion of the stories.  And so we share this exciting story of Kwe Ka Baung with you.  It is a new beginning and Imagine Thailand looks forward to investing more time and money into the development of this flourishing school. Kwe Ka Baung is one of the schools where our life camps will take place in the future.  On a personal note, we are grateful that a number of men from our home church in Canada came together to form a group that is paying the rent for Kwe Ka Baung for one year.  Thanks a lot guys!  I wish all of you could see the new school.  Your donation is totally worth it!

PS.  A video of the new campus is in its production phase!  Stay tuned!

In Grade 3 at Glenwood Elementary, our class performed a play for the parents of our school.  Charlotte’s Web, a literary classic, was our teacher’s selection that year.  We actually auditioned for the roles and I remember wanting to be the farmer, Fern’s father.   Maybe I thought the responsibility of running a farm or having to make the tough decision about what to do with Wilbur appealed to me.  I don’t remember.  And so I learned my lines well and acted out an excerpt from the play in front of a very eager group of about 25 Grade 3 judges in Miss Vander Paw’s classroom.  Apparently, the class thought I performed well, too, and so to my joy and the chagrin of one or two other candidates, I was chosen to play the role of the farmer.

The story of Charlotte’s Web is a fascinating one because on the one hand, we like bacon and pork chops and on the other hand, many of us also think pigs are cute. I just finished lunch and ate macaroni with bacon pieces in it.  Absolutely delicious. I have also seen pictures of my wife as a teenager feeding a baby bottle to a baby pig.  Charlotte’s Web fills us with tension and joy all at the same time.  Charlotte’s Web is the first story in my childhood (that would be the 70’s) in which a pig who was specifically bred to become somebody’s lunch, defies the odds and becomes a pet instead.  The pig’s name is Wilbur.  Because of an ingenious spider named Charlotte, he is no longer viewed as a piece of meat but as an important part of the family.  For those of us who have acted in the play, read the book, or seen the movie, we feel guilty about eating pork for about a day or two and then our guilty thoughts are buried deep beneath the smell and taste of barbecued pork chops, dished out alongside dad’s German potato salad.

Who knew that about 30 years later, I would grow up, get married, and move with my wife and our four children to Mae Sot, Thailand, to work with Burmese migrants who have fled across the border to avoid the political turmoil and the extreme poverty.  And who knew that just yesterday I would become part of a story that had too many connections to my Grade 3 play for me to ignore.

At lunch yesterday with our staff (at a restaurant that serves beef, pork, chicken, and fish incidentally…) I was listening to one of our Burmese employees talk about a Burmese school with a boarding house where she had volunteered recently as a nurse.  She was telling us that no wild animal is safe on the school property because it will wind up on the dinner plate if caught.  She pointed out that this particular school does not have a rat infestation problem because well, the rats have all been caught by human rat traps and cooked over the fire.  My North American sensibilities caught up with me immediately and I cringed.  Why rats?  Our employee simply stated that the high school students rarely get meat and so they resort to eating these diseased rodents.  We’d do the same in North America if we had to.  The students get vegetables and rice but it is not enough and so desperation sets in. If that’s not bad enough, there was another twist to the story.

On the school grounds, there lives a dog.  I know this dog because I have visited this school often and have participated in meetings and celebration events and I have seen him…and heard him.  When the student body sings, he howls.  And not just a little bit.  He howls alongside in his tenor voice for entire songs.  It seems that he has forgotten his place as a dog and feels he is part of the family.

In fact, he’s so much part of the school family that my employee stood before the student body a few months ago and instructed the students that while it was okay to eat the rats that sneak across the school property, the dog is absolutely off-limits.  They may not eat the dog.  In fact, she threatened them that if they ate the dog, she would quit volunteering as a nurse at their school. I could almost hear the words “humble” and “radiant” in the distance.  And so his life has been spared…at least thus far.   I’m not sure he knows his good fortune but perhaps one day, as miraculously as the relationship between Wilbur and Charlotte, he will be able to look my employee in the face and say “Thank-you for saving my life.  You are my Charlotte.”

What makes this story a bit uncomfortable is that in the original story, Wilbur was one of many pigs that could be served up for dinner.  At this school boarding house, the dog was the only convenient meat available.  The next option was rats.  It would be like eating Templeton, the overweight and selfish singing rat in the same story.  What a tasty treat he would be after he returned from the smorgasbord at the fair.   While I am indeed grateful that the canine is safe I cannot help but wonder “Well, what can the students eat instead?”  Surely, we are not satisfied that the dog is safe and that rats are a better option.  We are brought face to face with the mind-numbing logic of poverty.  “We’ll eat whatever we can to stay alive.”  My mind screams out “The dog should not have to be defended and the rats should be used for slingshot practice.” “Where’s the beef, the pork, the chicken, and the fish?”  At this point, there is no solution.  Little money and few donors.  The dog remains a pet for the moment and the rats are sautéed.

If Charlotte’s Web had been written in Mae Sot with this particular school as a backdrop, I’m wondering if  Fern’s father would have bowed to her wishes to keep Wilbur alive.  I’m thinking that Fern wouldn’t have fought so hard herself.  The other option was eating Templeton.  Unfortunately, neither choice would have made a satisfying ending.  But is there really any other option…

I am fourteen.

I’ve just spent a year in a poverty stricken area.

It is impossible to come out the same.

Being in Thailand for one year, working with and loving the Burmese refugees here, has shown me what state my world is in. Having grown up in Canada, one of the richest countries in the world, I didn’t really know what people here lived like. I’d never seen what it looked like to live in a refugee camp. I didn’t know what it was like to live in a country that you don’t belong to. I had no idea how horribly, people just like me, were being treated. It shook my world to see how good I really had it.

While being here in Thailand, I have got to experience things that most people my age haven’t had the chance to. For example, I got the chance to be a teacher, at fourteen, for a preschool class every week. It was totally amazing to hold a little kid in your arms and know that you just made their day by doing the simple task of loving them through Jesus.

Also, I got to live in a refugee camp for a few days. It was incredibly heart wrenching to see the hopelessness of that place. And yet the people were so loving and accepting and beautiful. I couldn’t believe how strong they were; how much they had faced as a nation and as individual people.

I’ve also been able to get to know my family in a deeper way. This year, we’ve been closer than ever before. We do school together, we eat every meal together, we share rooms, and we work and serve together. It was hard at first to get used to being with each other 24/7 but in the end, I know every single person in my family in a way that is so much better than in Canada.

Another opportunity I had while being in Thailand was experiencing and immersing myself in someone else’s ‘world’. I tried their foods, I started speaking a bit of their language, and I even started to adopt their culture a little. Staying in Canada never would have showed me how beautifully unique God made us all or stretched me to live differently and see my world with new eyes.

Although I had many homesick and frustrating days, God called us here and helped me through it all. All in all I am so happy that God gave me this opportunity to show his love to some of the people who need it so desperately.  Living here has challenged me to use the gifts God has given me in incredible ways for Him. I’ve been able to develop my strengths, work through my weaknesses and love God more for it. I wouldn’t trade this year for anything.

Thanks, God!

Last week, our family, along with Colleen Saddler, Lisa Issler (from West Kelowna), an 8-person team from the USA, and a couple of our Mae Sot staff travelled 6 hours south, to a refugee camp.  The traveling was difficult.  The narrow, mountainous roads were some of the most curvy we’ve ever driven.  Most of us felt sick at one point or another and all had a tint of green upon arrival!

The camp has an occupancy of over 10,000 people…moms, dads, teenagers, children, babies, and seniors.  People like you and me…except without a country.  For those of you who have seen pictures and news footage of refugee camps (most likely in Africa), the camps in Thailand are more civiilzed.  These camps are the longest running camps in the world and so people have settled in.  Bamboo homes, markets, churches, and schools are all a part of this stateless community of people.  Most are from the Karen ethnic group and have escaped the mass persecution of the Burmese military regime.

Our purpose in being there was to help run a teen camp.  Three hundred students between 12 – 22 years of age filled a dirt floor auditorium much like an old-style church camp in a rural town. A group of pastors from the surrounding area who ran the camp rivaled the creativity and energy of any group of North American youth pastors.  The picture below shows some of the craziness! The camp was incredibly organized, the teens were musically talented with musical specials and performances on a continual basis.  Their earnestness was demonstrated as the students took notes 0n everything that was taught.

Derek was one of the main session speakers and besides speaking in the camp, he spoke a number of times in the churches of the camp.  Irislee also received an opportunity to speak at the Sunday morning 7:00 am Women’s service at one of the churches! As a team, we led the songs and stories for the younger teens in one of the breakout groups and led games for the entire camp on one particular day.

We were billeted in two homes.  We slept on bamboo floors, on bamboo mats and ate Karen food everyday for breakfast (incredibly delicious!). Lunch and supper, served by the camp staff was yummy too!  Incredible hospitality.

Here are some important lessons we learned:

1. The missions work of Adoniram Judson in the early 1800’s to Burma has carried on 200 years later.  The majority of the Karen ethnic group are Christians and their faith can be credited to his pioneering and sacrificial work.  We saw it first hand everyday.

2. People are the same wherever you go.  While dreams and goals may differ because of available opportunity, everyone wants security, a place to live, and a chance to earn enough money to survive and accomplish their dreams.  Education is important to all.   It was so easy to have an us-them kind of mentality when I lived in Canada.  Not so easy anymore…

3. The camp reminds me of a very large cage.  There is some employment available… people can work for NGO’s or for Thai landowners who own farms outside the camp. Some relatives outside the camp send money in and so people can start small businesses.  Children go to school.  However, there is no escaping the fact, that the camp has a gate, there is barbed wire and there are fences all around the camp.  There are food rations and foreign groups are needed to give aid and offer programs.  The Karen are stateless and they are waiting, waiting, waiting…either to resettle in a third country or for Burma to have freedom and democracy.  One the last day, we met a young adult who is resettling to America this month. Amazingly, she will be only 40 minutes drive from our American team that were with us for the camp.  Coincidence?  I think not.  Another girl will head to North Carolina in October to live with her Karen grandparents who are waiting for her.  If Burma doesn’t change, most people in this refugee camp will die of old age, stateless and uprooted from their homes. There is room to move, but the camp is still a cage.

4. These people have not given up.  They carry on their long-standing traditions, they are full of life and energy, they are thankful, and they are preparing themselves for the future by educating their young. Always looking for more resources to do the job better. Computers, better school buildings, vocational training centers, etc. They are an example to those of us who quit too easily when life gets tough.

As a way of thanking the camp for hosting us, we decided to learn the camp theme song in the Karen language and sing it for them at the closing ceremony.  It was written by one of their teachers and is one of the most beautiful songs we’ve heard. What made it even more special was the words themselves.  It took hours, for our Karen staff to teach us, but was so worth it.  These words express the desires of the 300 teens who attended the camp. The song is much more beautiful sung in the Karen language, but the English translation is…

When you are young, give yourself to Jesus.

We must do the duties that Jesus gives to us.

Let us hold hands and work hard for Jesus.

Peacefully, we will do this.

Along with a hauntingly beautiful melody, this song could easily be a hit all over the world.

Back in Mae Sot, our camp experiences continue to fill our thoughts.  Olivia and Hannah didn’t want to leave the camp because they loved the “camping out” experience so much.  I’m sure they would feel differently if they knew they could never leave.  However, the cultural richness of the Karen people, their ability to smile, laugh, and engage life fully in spite of difficult circumstances, the memory of the crazy pastors, and general feeling that even though the Karen people are not free, they continue to learn and grow and develop as individuals and as a community, has left a permanent impression on our hearts and minds.  Again, like in so many situations this year, we came to teach and we have left having learned more than we have taught.