Stories from the Steeple

UPDATE #3

Dear Friends and Family,

We flew to Chaing Mai in a plane full of European tourists. I can understand why. It is a beautiful city at the edge of the mountains of northern Thailand . From here people go elephant trekking, white water rafting, and exploring in glorious National Parks. Someday I would love to return to do all that. For now, our tourist activity was limited to visits to the night market at the end of the day. It is a wonderland of crafts, jewelry, fabrics, and everything else from the bizarre to the mundane, at dirt cheap prices. But we saw things the tourists never see. Every day for the last three days we rode in vans from one ministry project to another. From AIDS prevention to preparing pastors for the ethnic villagers in the hills, training medical teams who enter the conflict zones of Burma to care for the Karen hiding in the jungles, and caring for AIDS orphans. Our missionaries here, and the other Christian workers we met, are brilliant, creative and amazingly effective in initiating projects that are then carried out by the local people.

One story will have to suffice. Our first evening in the night market a small group of us were eating dinner in an open air restaurant. Suddenly a tiny girl, no more than 6 was peering over the edge of the table. We gave her a piece of bread. Then she held up the flower necklaces she was selling. We bought one, and wondered about her story. No adult was in sight. Before the night was out we had seen easily a dozen of these little flower sellers. The next morning we visited ABC missionary Kim Brown and her four health related projects. One is House of Blessing, a preschool for ethnic minority children who live in a nearby slum. She said “These children are selling flowers all night in the night market and never go to school. After we enroll them in our day care and work with the families for a few months, most of them are no longer selling flowers. These darling children sang for us and crushed us with hugs. After 3 years of preschool, they have learned Thai and are ready to enter 1st grade. Doug notified us of the assassination of a Karen leader in the town of Mae Sot , where we will be spending the next few nights. Surely that is the Myanmar military’s retaliation for the earlier killing of the Karen leader defected to their side. We are in no danger. In spite of this hit, the Burma military is not free to roam the streets of Mae Sot in Thailand , and westerners are not a target. We leave momentarily for a 6 hour drive to the Mae La camp.

Grace and peace, Carol