I went to Myanmar (Burma)

I am sorry but this is a ridiculously long blog, but a lot has happened lately, so I hope that it is not too long for you to enjoy.

It has been one week since my last blog (well plus two days now that I had to take a break to finish it), and a little bit more than that since I started teaching at the KKBBSC (read the last blog to find out what that means) and I have still not taught at the camp office yet, although I have finally been able to speak with them. So I will be teaching at the office Monday-Thursday, at 6-8pm (3-5am on the same day in Vancouver), starting next week. Teaching at the KKBBSC hasn't been that bad so far, but considering English, especially grammar and all the other boring parts, was my least favourite subject in school, and that is exactly what I am teaching now, lets just say I grin and bear it. The students on the other hand, are much less reluctant to participate in the activities than students in Canada are, specifically when it comes to singing. The Karen love to sing, they sing all the time, even when I am teaching vocabulary, so I thought that I would teach them worship songs in English. It has gone quite well, considering the songs that I have taught them have become favourites in the school already. I taught them a couple songs that I had memorized, considering I don't have any of my music here, which were "I'm Trading my Sorrows" and "Days of Elijah". Lah Htee, had lent me a music book which has 20-30 songs in it with the chords, so I taught them another song out of that book, which was "How Great is Our God". I think that singing is their preferred way of learning English. Anyways... enough about school.

On Friday I left the camp, and went to Mae Sot (sometimes spelled Maesod if you are trying to Google it) to do my laundry, and to get some supplies. So Sean and I received a ride from Dr. Simon, to Sean's house (he rents from a mission organization in the USA), and that night we dropped our clothes off at the laundry mat, and then had some Western food (no rice) at Krua Canadian Steakhouse and Grill (its called something like that). After we picked up our laundry, we went back to his house and basically did nothing for the rest of the evening. Oh yeah, they think that dryers are a waste of money so you still have to hang dry everything. The next day we spent shopping, buying all of the supplies that we had come into town for, and caught the last line bus, or song tao in Thai, back to the camp at 4:30. We were supposed to be back earlier because on Sunday, the next day, we were going to a Christian thanksgiving/funeral ceremony in Burma (to honour the former general and leader of the Karen and to thank God for the previous year), and they might of been leaving on Saturday to go. When we were in Mae Sot, we had called back to the camp to make sure Lah Htee and the others hadn't left yet, and since Dr. Simon hadn't seen Lah Htee in a while he told us that they must of left already. When we got back to the camp with our laundry and newly bought belongings we were greeted by Lah Htee himself, which brought the confusion to and end.

On Sunday we got up at 6:30 am to wait until 9:00am for our ride to Burma. When it finally arrived, all 18 of us (making 19 with the driver) piled into a small pick-up and we headed north for about an hour to where the thanksgiving ceremony was being held. We had to park the truck and walk about a half a km to the Thai-Burmese border river, and then cross by boat into Burma. Once on the other side, we walked by a group of armed Karen soldiers and then we climbed up the dirt path, past another group of soldiers to an open field, that has a backdrop of jungle mountains. At the top, where the path comes out, if you turn to the right, that is where the late general lays, and to the left about 200 meters, is where the funeral service was being held. Straight ahead about 150 meters is a grouping of raised huts, where some of the villagers live, and where we ate lunch and supper. So we went to the service, which was in Karen, but almost the whole thing was translated into English as well. After we participated in the first part of the service (there was about 200-300 people there, mostly Karen but from all over the world as well), the thanksgiving part, we ducked out early to go and have lunch, well they continued with telling stories about the general in Karen only.

After lunch someone came and told us that our river back into Burma and visit with some of the villagers, and couple of students went with them, where as I decided to to take a nap in the hut. driver had already left and had taken other people back to the camp, but that he would be back. This gave us the opportunity to take some pictures of the village, some soldiers and the burial hut of the former general (he is buried above ground and his casket is surround in cement). After the photo op, we crossed back over the river to find out that we missed our ride already, but that he would return for us, which meant another two hours of waiting. It wasn't that bad because some nearby Thai farmers let us sit in their hut while we waited. Most of the students decided to stay by the road, while a handful of others accepted the decision. Sean and Lah Htee choose to cross the After a 30-40 min power nap, I got up and crossed back over the river to see what Sean and Lah Htee were up to. This is where we had supper, and I couldn't have been over there for more than 20 min when we decided to go back to Thailand to wait for our ride to come (so a total of 30 min, with walking and crossing the river both ways). When we got back, the students told us that we had already missed our ride, and that he wasn't coming back this time, so we where going to have to get a ride with someone else. So in a hour and ten minutes at most, our driver had gone to Mae La, come back to the border crossing, and left again. So what did we do? You guessed it, we waited some more. Finally an empty truck came that was going the right way, after 5 hours of waiting. The funny thing was, that the driver didn't really know how to drive too well beyond steering, and he wasn't that good at it either. For example, he would be changing into 5th gear at about 45km/h, and he wasn't to sure how to get it into 4x4 wheel drive either. Needless to say it made for a long trip, considering we topped out at 70km/h, it doubled the length of time to get back, not including stops, of which we made two. The first stop was to get some gas, but the driver happened to know some of the guys that worked there and sat around talking for a couple of minutes, which was fine except for the fact that we had just waited 5 hrs for this ride and he was driving slow. So yeah I was getting a little impatient.

Well this is where everything got a little more exciting than I had bargained for. After about a half an hour back on the road, we got stopped at a Thai military check point, and the Thai's told him to pull ahead and park the truck. The driver got out and I couldn't really see much of what happened, as we sat and waited for another 40 min, a little more patient, and a little more tense this time. Lah Thee sat beside me in the front seat, and had his head leaning out the driver side window to hear what they were saying. He can understand Thai, and every once and a while he would tell me things, but wouldn't acknowledge my questions, like "he has inconsistent answers", "they tied him up", "they beat him", and finally "they are going to kill him by slitting his throat". So meanwhile, I am thinking that Lah Htee is talking about our driver, but he is talking about another man that the Thai's arrested before we got there. The other man, had been giving inconsistent answers to the Thai's, but I don't know how much they really knew, because the reason that our truck got pulled over was because the Thai's knew our driver and wanted him to translate Thai to Karen, so they could question the man. This makes me wonder if the young man even knew what they were saying, and how exactly they determined he was giving inconsistent answers ("Where are you from?", he replies,"Banana." Again they ask, "Where are you from?", with a reply of, "Purple". So then the Thai's think he is grabbed the large sword that happened to be sitting beside giving inconsistent answers, because that makes sense). Anyways, because he had giving inconsistent answers, they had bound him, then beat him, and they were about to kill him when we pulled up. The funny thing was, that about 5 min or so before we had been pulled over, I had this vision (or just I imagined it and it was coincidence that it was related to what happened, if you don't believe in them), that I was driving in the jungle at night by myself, and was going down hill, when at the bottom of the hill, I saw 4-5 fully armored demons (I know it was pretty messed) standing across the road. At about 15-20 meters away, I parked my truck, and got out. By the time I closed the door of the truck I was already fully armored, and then I charged the group of demons. After fighting with them for a couple of minutes, and when I had clearly defeated them, they just disappeared. Then I got back in the truck and keep on driving. As I was pondering this seemingly strange vision, that I thought that I had made up from scratch, we then got pulled over. So the vision, combined with me thinking that our driver was the one being bound and beaten, I was praying pretty hard at this point, and not being able to see what was going on didn't help much. Anyways... after our driver had translated for 40 minutes or so, the Thai's loaded their prisoner into the back of our pick-up and sent us on our way. A couple of km down the road, we pulled over to undo the man's bindings, and when we got to camp, we handed him over to the Karen authorities, so that they could find a place for him in Mae La. So even when you have to wait 5 hours for a ride, don't get so grumpy and impatient that you don't allow God to use you. I mean if we had come earlier, when we were suppose to, then our driver probably wouldn't have been at the check point when he had (he actually lives north of the border crossing and he kindly drove us south when he was almost home), and the load of praying Christians wouldn't have been in his truck, and that young man would probably be dead. Well after 5 hours of waiting and almost 3 hours on the road, we finally made it back to the camp after a very eventful day. Of course the fun couldn't end there, as I was up all night with gastro-intestinal problems, with the occasional trip to the toilet, which I am sure you all wanted to hear about. I think it must have been some of the food that we had in Burma. When Sean came to wake me up on Monday morning, I told him my little sob story about being sick and not getting any sleep. So I skipped breakfast and intended on sleeping for the rest of the day, but then God told me to get out of bed and that I was tougher than how I was acting (basically He told me to stop being such a pansy, but in a much nicer way than that). Of course He was right and I lost the argument (man arguing with your Maker never works out in your favour), so I go up and prepared for my class, and I taught it and none of my students knew any different. Well by this point God had healed my indigestion, but I was still quite tired, so I had a nap after my class. Oh yeah, I taught the class the song "How Great is Our God", by Chris Tomlin (or at least I think it is him).

In the last two days I haven't done anything special, except teach my students a couple of songs ("Here I am to Worship", and "Shout to the North"), so I think I will just finish by adding some pics. Oh and if you wouldn't mind praying for me while I am here, that would be great. I have been having a tough time hearing and seeing God here, even though He has been here before I got here and He is still here now. It feels like I am totally alone in the midst of all these people, and that there are too many distractions to get focused again. I know it is just silly, but back in Abbotsford it was alot easier to be on fire for God, especially when everyone else wanted to be to, and they were seeking Him out all (well at least the majority) of the time. Here everybody are Baptist (which I do not have a problem with at all, just trouble relating to my Karen bros and sisters), and then there is the whole language thing (even with those who can speak English pretty fluently, must be the Canadian accent), and of course there is the completely different culture of the Karen. Well to say it in short, I feel out of place, and disconnected from God and the church even though they both surround me. It's like I am reaching out and grapping thin air when what I was reaching for is just inches away from tips of my fingers.

Pics (Top to Bottom): a Burmese mountain, Thai sand, and an international border river; a group of Karen rebel soldiers at the bottom of the hill on the Burmese side of the river; a Karen soldier outpost at the top of the hill, and yeah that guy has an RPG on his back; a Karen soldier, guarding the burial site of the late general; two Karen soldiers, one with a machine gun, and another with a RPG, I got my picture taken with him, but on another camera; Lae Htee holding a Karen National Union flag out (they don't actually have their own country yet); various decorations and whatever else you call them above the burial site of the late general, with a pic of Him in the center; the stage on which the ceremony was held; the cemented-in casket of the late Snr. Gen. Saw Bo Mya; close-up of the pic of the general; the bright sun over the jungle; the approach to the generals burial grounds; looking at Thailand from across the river; looking at Burma from the other side.