Monday we checked out of the guest house to head to Bur-ma. I still didn’t feel much better, especially since I only had a couple hours of sleep. To make the trip more interesting, it was the first day of Songkran. Songkran is the New Years celebrated by Thailand, Bur-ma and maybe Cambodia. The way they celebrate Songkran is drink lots of beer and have a three day long water fight, because this also happens to be the hottest time of the year…so it works. So we’ll be riding in the back of the truck and then Ray would stop the truck and we’d be ambushed by people with hoses and buckets of water on the side of the road. It’s hard to describe because something like this would never happen in the States, but there are literally groups of people waiting on the side of the road to ambush people riding by, with buckets of water and hoses.
So anyway…we get to the border crossing, soaking wet, and began walking across the bridge to Bur-ma and it was amazing how different it was on the other side of the river. It felt eerily like Haiti… same desperation and oppression. We all loaded in tuk-tuk’s once we crossed the border and came to a church to worship and pray with the people. Even though I was still very sick and out of it, we had a great time of worship with the Bur-mese Christians. We were going to do some prayer for the nation after worship, but we were told there was a spy for the government sitting in the back, taking notes. So we thought it wise to leave after worship was done.
For those of you back home who don’t know what really goes on in Bur-ma, let me shed some light on the situation for you. It’s pretty easy to get in the border and it’s comparatively safe. But once you go about 5 kilos into the country you come to another border station. To get any further into the country you must have a visa, which is very, very difficult to get. Once you get past there is where the true Bur-ma is. Entire villages can be burned if the government deems it necessary. The children are put in its child army and the women are used as sex objects. Bur-ma is at war with its own people. It keeps its fighting away from the border because it tries to keep its inner war a secret. I was by my ministry contact that the carnage shown in Rambo 4 tones down the true carnage of what really happens in Bur-ma.
So anyway, that night my fever broke…praise God! God taught me a lot during that time of sickness, I want to share it with you all but I still need to process it first. The next day we celebrated Songkran at a river and ate some good friend chicken and sticky rice. This is the same river that now is the home for my glasses. And then we came to the village that will be our home for the next 4 or 5 days. Yesterday we went to a village where there were a bunch of youth and we played some music for them and played some games. Quite honestly, though, the highlight of the day was driving through a river to get to the village. No, we didn’t cross the river. The river was our road…we had to bump some water buffalo out of our way!
So far it’s been the worst and the best month. I know it’s hard to understand. But please continue to keep my in your prayers as well as the guys. Oh and for those of you wondering when I’ll get the mess that is my Flickr account setup. I’m making that my objective during our next debrief.
