United Kingdom, India, Texas and Burma: months 5, 6 and 7….
If those places sound odd to you that’s because we have never visited them… However, the experience we get from each new country has been characterized by those we have met, and the last three months we have met some wonderful foreigners who reside in a country not of their own.
In Japan while the rest of our squad was wearing Kimonos and eating sushi with chop sticks, my team was sitting by the fire, drinking tea and discussing anthropology with this guy and his son:
Michael Shakleton, a “cheeky” fellow from Great Britain, was inspired to use his large house as a retreat center and place of rest for missionaries passing through. He had some awesome ideas for the place and our team got to help make most of them come true.
In Malaysia we found ourselves surrounded by a cute, young, interracial couple from Texas and an Indian family of 5.
Our Indian friend is a true man of Christ who’s vision is to show the people of his Malaysian city the one true God. He and his wife run a secular kindergarten next to where we stayed and due to the closed nature of this country, he helped us find some pretty creative ways to share what we believe during the month.
Native to the Lone Star State, Michael and Leslie found their way to Malaysia guided by a vision from God, and now they help spread the love of Christ with their Indian counterparts. They are expecting a baby boy in March so we had the privledge of throwing them a baby shower. It was so nice sharing life with this other young married couple while at this ministry.
Next, I met up with all the other men on our squad in Mae Sot, Thailand near the Burmese border for ten days of what is commonly referred to as “Manistry.” There we worked with Outpoor Ministries who owns a bike shop and restaurant that helps supplement other ministries that help the local Burmese.
One of those ministries is a house called New Jerusalem where a man named Joshua, who was born in Burma but now lives in Mae Sot, runs a home full of roughly 20 displaced youth from the war torn country. So in Thailand we loved on street kids, gardened, crafted jewelry and did other such manly things. We also visited an area on the border called No Mans Land where nearly three hundred men, women and children live in a trashy overgrown river bottom between the two countries. In this place anything goes. Trafficking of drugs, alcohol, pornography, men, women, and children is too common. Most of No Mans Land’s inhabitants are criminals who dare not leave but the Thai police choose to ignore them and their activities as they are often paid off to look the other way. As we walked along the sidewalk looking down into such poverty and sin you could literally feel the evil permeating from the grass huts and wooden boats used to ferry their Burmese victims across.
Although the book of Hebrews never mentions a Brit living in Japan, Texans and Indians in Malaysia, or a Burmese couple discipling youth in Thailand, I think we can all agree these are truly men and women of faith advancing the Kingdom of Heaven just like Abraham.
Hebrews 11:9 By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.
