OH I wish you were all here so that instead of looking through a glass very darkly you too could see the warfare that is Christianity in Southeast Asia. Daily I meet Christian soldiers: a former citizen of a Christian commune and a Bob Marley fan who just weeks ago ran away on foot through jungle from the Vietnamese government; a single, forty-year-old German woman who has lived in Myanmar (Burma) since 2001, spreading the Gospel and love in a country that kills you for either one; two German doctors who today were, with foreheads scrunched and hands holding their chins, speculating on how much medicine they could pack in their cargo bags without looking suspicious and being detected by the Burmese police; a scraggly, grey-haired man who wears a lanyard around his neck that holds Christian tracts in the Thai language and has been kicked out of China more than thrice.
They're like people from the Bible. Faith in action.
Today I compiled a report on the current situation in Myanmar to send to the team leaders of faithful efforts in Myanmar, who will then forward it along to both missionaries here and Christians elsewhere in an effort to mobilize informed and pinpointed prayer. I've tried to paste it into a blog entry, but the formatting errs and loses text. If you'd like me to email it to you, leave a comment with your email address. For now, browse this site when you feel like some direction for your prayer time: http://www.irrawaddy.org. Asia is wrecked right now, and Myanmar has received the worst of it. Let's not have ours be a generation that 'does not mourn when we hear a dirge' (Matthew 11: 16-17). 150,000 people have thus far died, and the Red Cross estimates 2.5 million have been affected. That's 83 times the population of Owasso, Oklahoma, my hometown.
Tomorrow morning I leave for a mountaintop village to live a week with the family of the Bob Marley-loving Christian soldier I mentioned above. I'll mainly help with logging trees and building a house, but if I'm lucky might also get to gather tea leaves and teach an English lesson or two. He works with a people group who have since he first immigrated with Christianity to their village turned to the Lord quickly and in great number. Must be the Bob Marley t-shirts and his acoustic guitar that makes them see the Light. Tim, do me and this Christian soldier a favor, and next Sunday throw up "Redemption Song" to lead FCC's offering call. Ah ha! I'll sing via Skype.
Should return the 26th or so of May to Chiang Mai but then will fly off to Hanoi, Vietnam on the 28th for a two-week prayer journey trekking by land across Vietnam and Laos.
"How long shall they kill our prophets, While we stand aside and look?
Some say its just a part of it: We've got to fulfil de book.
Won't you help to sing, These songs of freedom? -
'Cause all I ever have: Redemption songs."
With love,
js
1 comment:
It makes me happy that he is a Bob Marley fan. :)
Forward that info to me, please. You know my email address. Thank you much.
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