I don’t feel as though I had an experience of Thailand during my month in Mae Sot. This is not a bad thing though, instead I got a month of ministry which felt as though I was working in Burma; Burmese language, food from Burmese vendors, ministering with Burmese refugees, and praying about the plights of the people who refer to their home country as Myanmar.
I had studied the conflict in Burma in both high school and college, and had even worked on coat drives to support Karen (the tribe who resides across the border from this part of Thailand) refugees who would regularly arrive in the snowy Minnesota winter. I recall a social justice event where a woman gave me a phone number of a young Burmese refugee asking me to call him, to mentor him, and to give him friendship and a rare beyond surface level welcome to the United States. I never made the call, something that has occasionally been on my mind as a regret the last few years.
Now here I am. I am with the people, seeing their lives and getting a brief glimpse of the reality that I had been grasping at through an abstracted lens. Even as I write this now I am looking out my window at Burma, just a stone throw away.
This month we lived above Famous Ray’s Bicycle Shop and Burger Restaurant in the border town of Mae Sot. Outpour Ministries is involved in many wonderful projects and the ones I was involved with in particular were; teaching English and building relationships with ten young adult refugees who live and work at a children’s home, praying at “No-Man’s-Land” and in the Muslim communities, visiting Buddhist homes and discussing the Gospel, and preparing for a large event at the end of the month we would be hosting across the border. I could go at length about how I enjoy the flow of conversations during evangelization with Buddhists, how their pursuit of truth naturally orientates them toward the gospel, and how the cultural challenges of wives needing the permission of their husband to convert mixed with a cultural norm of Buddhism serves as a challenge in this place.
But this is a blog about the border and my two hours in Burma, and so we will bring our focus there. When we biked to the border for the first time, we were greeted by the reality of “No-Man’s-Land.” This space is a shanty town which exists in the sandbar/river lowlands between the cement and barbed wire of Thailand and the far Burmese banks of the river. All along the border there are stands on stilts allowing them to sell illegal goods into Thailand from international territory. With no government or legal work, this is the reality available to these people. Burma produces an estimated 80% of the world’s meth and this section of river has the highest level of human trafficking of anywhere in Thailand.
We spent several mornings at the border. We prayed, we talked, we did some chalk art, and we built relationships as we watched boat after boat carry people “illegally” between the two countries. We prepared to give away enough food to feed everyone in no man’s land. We networked to get their involvement in the event we were hosting in Burma.
Then one day a Thai man was caught by a Burmese spy selling arms and security went up and things became a little more intense. We brought refreshments for the soldiers. Al Qaeda produced a video saying they had not forgotten about the Muslims of Myanmar (Burma). We prayed for peace. Five jihadist style improvised bombs were found in the town of Myawaddy, just across the bridge from us. Our team was already meeting to worship at 1:30 each afternoon, but in the face of these events we increased our fervor.
The Burma event had already been rescheduled but now was at risk of getting cancelled. Ray decided to move it to the Thai side, in a village directly on the river looking into Burma. We were sad we were not going to be entering the country, but were content knowing that the decision was prayer felt and the best decision for all parties involved. The event went amazingly with hundreds in attendance. We did the food giveaway in the no-man’s-land in such a way that no Westerners were visible and had more fantastic results which opened doors for more nutritional and medical assistance in the future. I continued my work with the refugees and loved not only teaching them English but also using our friendship as a means to train them how to act in several skits to share the Gospel. All was well.
Then we got a call. Ray thought the conditions were right, we were going into Burma the next morning. It was a controlled visit. Three hours long, a set church we would be working at, and we would have a Myanmar contact with us the whole time.
We crossed in, waiting in long lines, but a line which moved noticeably faster than others on the crowded border. We drove through Myawaddy and eyed the sites of this place. Was it so different from the Thailand I was learning to know on the other side or is that just my head playing games? This was the magical far away land that had always been spoken of in such dark hushed tones, words layered under very real labels like junta and oppressive.
We reached the church. It had been attacked by a failed suicide bombing only five years earlier. A World Race team was at the church and spared when that event occurred. We laid hands on the leadership of the church, some of whom had been up the entire night before praying safety over our journey into their homeland.
We worshiped, prayed, and spoke truth, but at 2PM, an hour before we were scheduled to leave we all felt a change. The worship leaders switched sets. I began to walk about as I prayed. Others shifted. We did not know it, but our schedule did not match His, at 2PM we had accomplished all we were ordained to do there that day. Our contact rushed up to the front and told us we needed to go. Jason continued sharing what he had received in prayer and the contact returned again with great urgency and told us we needed to go now.
Only ten minutes down the road a battle between the Karen and Burmese armies had started.
We reached the border before it could be closed and like that my time inside Burma was over. Going up river to a remote village the next week we moved in the aquatic space between the two nations. There had been teams who could not travel in this space because of RPG attacks. We heard a landmine go off. The week after we left the conflict had escalated and you could hear the fighting from the Thai side resulting in the border being fully closed.
There may be great spiritual revelation in my experiences, but its profundity and understanding are presently outside my conscious grip. I think it is a glimpse of a larger picture, a reflection of both my vocation and all of our responsibility to look at the world and to shape it in love to represent true justice and the purest forms of peace. For now though I leave it here with you.
Continue praying for the people of Burma. For those in the refugee camps which are rumored to be closing in the next year, for those who have found asylum elsewhere such as my friends in Thailand, for my students from Myanmar who I am working with currently in Cambodia, for all those who live in the country and face the cycle of violence each day, for the Myanmar refugees who I am already scheduled to meet with and speak to come Malaysia in November.
I am currently only $1,200 from fully funding my year of missions work. Please consider helping to fully fund me as I go into my last month.
