The Mountains of Thailand 
 

“How good and pleasant it is when brothers can live in together in unity!  It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron’s beard, down upon the collar of his robes.  It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion.  For there the Lord bestows his blessing, even life forevermore.”   Psalm 133

What an exciting outreach I have just returned from!   The Lord surely went before us and will be there following up after us!   Your many prayers for team unity, safety, translation and so many other prayers were answered.  We were blessed!  Let me tell you how our time in Thailand went . . .

After arriving in Chiang Mai on November 24^th , we rested up for two days -- which landed on their festival of lights – a three day affair in which they thank the river gods for allowing them to use the river and also send up blessing requests by lighting these huge – 4 and 6 ft lanterns and letting them go like balloons all over the city.  We lit one but had written on the rice paper lantern things about how great Jesus is!  It was beautiful to see all the lanterns in the sky and fireworks each night.  We prayed over Chiang Mai for them to know the Lord and that the people would send these lanterns up to Him when they realize that He is the only one who answers prayer and gives the gifts of forgiveness of sins and life everlasting.

Our First Challenge:

We headed for the Karen hill tribe villages with our guide and translators.  On the way, we hit our first challenge . . . the treacherous dirt roads on the steep mountains.  Most places there was not enough room to pass another truck and some of the team members were terrified that we would go over the edge which was very near our tires.  But our guide, Wright Dee said “It’s only ˝ a mile down!” with a grin, then he would sing or hum, trying to keep everyone calm until we had to cross over a bamboo and log bridge or go straight through the water!  We traveled with three trucks:  two loaded with supplies and luggage and a few people in cabs and one truck holding only people – six in the back holding on to bars above their heads on seats facing each other and 4 plus a baby in the cab.  There were just a couple of times I prayed very hard, but mostly I trusted God to keep us safe and enjoyed delightfully green scenery. 

Our Coordinator’s Vision:

Wright is himself Karen and very interested in evangelizing all of the Karen villages and helping them to live better.  He has worked in these villages for over 30 years and has begun building and opening youth hostels, with girl's and boy's dorms, for children who do not have schools in their villages.  He opens them in villages with schools and encourages the parents from neighboring villages to send their kids there to live for the week to get an education.  It is amazing how this is working and beginning to have an impact not only on the children, but on their families as well.  These kids sometimes come with very little in the way of clothes or warm things to sleep in – maybe one cotton blanket for nights that dropped down to 53 degrees while we were there.  I wondered how they stayed warm.  I’m not sure they do.  His vision is to see these youth hostiles in many more locations and to impact the children as well as their parents through what they learn living in a Christian environment.

We were out for 17 days going from village to village.  Sometimes we stayed a few days in a village, holding clinic there one day and going to another village the next day for a few hours.  Our students did a great job taking turns leading the clinics and rotating around from assessment, to pharmacy, to wound care, to vitals and even crowd control.   We saw lots of patients with worms, coughs, colds, stomach problems, cateracts, sore muscles and ear problems.  The students did basic health care teachings to have a more lasting effect.  The people were quite dirty as they didn’t seem to bathe too often so we gave out a lot of soap.  Later we heard that it was because the water was so cold which we can all attest to!   It was hard for us to take a bath some days as well.  All the villagers were patient as we took our time assessing them.  The young kids were very courageous when we cleaned their wounds and treated them.  One young girl was very brave as our team tried to get a deep thorn out of her foot – she tried so hard not to cry, but silent tears rolled down her face as she turned away in pain and shame – trying to hide it from us and the children looking on.  In the end, we could not get it out with our skills.  We prayed for her and the next day she was in much better spirits and less pain; we all are continuing to believe it will work itself out.

Every Person Has Value:

One of the villages that was not Christian was very welcoming of our team.  It was a small village that put the word out to other villages nearby that we were coming.  When we arrived, they cut long lengths of bamboo and set up a large tarp so we could work under it out of the sun.  It was amazing to see how quickly they could put up a structure from scratch!   One man brought his baby grand-daughter.  Her mom had died in childbirth and her father remarried but his new wife didn’t want the baby, so grandma and grandpa were taking care of her.  She was sick with a cold and fever, malnourished because she didn’t have mama’s milk and needed a bath and some clothes.  One of our translators, Mae, was herself nursing her baby girl who was about the same age.  She gave up her daughter’s dress and offered to take the baby and feed her until she could be weaned.  (This is not unheard of in their culture.  Mae is also Karen but lives much closer to Chiang Mai.)  The grandpa did not want to do this without checking with grandma in another village.  So, our girls took the baby, stripped her and washed her down, redressed her after treating her many swollen mosquito bites and gave her medicine to ease her pain and fever.  Another donated a hat for the baby and the whole village saw the value placed on this little girl as our team treated her like the little princess that she is – even giving her a new name “Gloria”.  In the end, grandpa kept her at his home.  I cannot say what will happen to her, but she was prayed over with many prayers and I believe she will live and be a light in that community.  

A Serious Situation:

At one of the clinics I was doing financial paperwork for the team, while the others worked at their various stations.  Occasionally I was called on to help out with something and at one point, one of the students, Glenn, was helping a man with a baby boy whose fever was extremely high.  The child was quite sick with pneumonia.  I worked with Glenn to get his fever down and saw how just a little bit of knowledge and the right medicine can help save a life.  Many of the villagers were looking on from various areas around the room and even through the windows.  Although we couldn’t speak their language, they knew something serious was going on and some of them could hear our translator.  It was a bit tense for awhile, but the fever finally broke and all were relieved.  The little boy then devoured a few crackers and some water that we offered him.  We told the father how important it was to get him to a hospital and make sure he gets treatment before the fever began again.  He said his problem was that he was not a legal Karen in Thailand – he did not have a hospital card for free treatment and just the 6-hour travel to the hospital alone was out of his means – he would need hospital fees, meds and food too.  The local pastor spoke to him and it was thought that the child’s grandmother, who had a hospital card, would take him.  Some money was donated to the pastor and many of us prayed for him.  In the end, we don’t really know if that is what happened with this boy.  Sometimes we ran into problems when the immediate need was met -- the villagers just expected all was fine.  There wasn’t a continuing sense of urgency that we would have in Western countries. 

A Special Night:

There was one special remote village called Mokokey that we stayed only one night in.  This village was Christian.  These families had moved up from a lower village when they began to accept the Lord and wanted to be away from the bad influences of the other families -- mostly drug abuse as they grew opium for income and used it too.  The pastor there encouraged them to find alternative things to make a living from and now they have been there quite a few years.  After clinic they held a church service which the whole village came out for.  As the sun set, our team was honored with a delicious meal served on a tarp placed in the center of the village with one lone fluorescent light powered by battery.  When the meal was cleared, the villagers joined us, we exchanged cordialities and the pastor began the service.  They sang song and we sang songs, then we gave two testimonies that were powerful, heard their story and ended by singing again!  This took some time with all the translation -- the wind was blowing and the chill of the night set in but hardly anyone left early!  Our leader felt the Lord told them that they would be a light on a hill and that many people would come to their village to know God and many of them would go out and be missionaries for the Lord.  It felt like an anointed time of encouragement the Lord set aside just for them.  In the end, we exchanged prayers of blessing.  It was a night to remember.

A Funny Story:

One evening at the last village we stayed in, an elderly Karen man came into the house we were staying at and indicated that he wanted to see what was in my cosmetic bag.  I was a little taken back, but figured it didn’t hurt.  So we began to look each item over one by one pantomiming what they were used for.  First the shampoo, then the facial scrub, then the mirror which had two faces – normal and magnified.  He just kept looking at his own face in it.  I led him to a window where the light was better and he began to caress his chin that had a couple of long hairs on it.  Next, we looked at the toothbrush, toothpaste and dental floss.  I took a strand of dental floss and gave him one too -- mainly to make sure he didn’t grab my toothbrush and begin using it!  He was fascinated by this and used it in the many large gaps in his teeth.  Later in the day, I heard our male student say how exasperating it was that some old man took his razor and used it on their chin.  I had to laugh and tell him what happened earlier.  I don’t know if this man had ever seen a mirror or dental floss.  They live quite simply and their houses are mainly for sleeping and storage of food items.  They hang their clothes on bamboo poles under the house and dry them on fences and the like. 

God is Good!

These are just a few stories from the rich experience God gave us.  It was the best outreach I’ve ever been on and I thank God for allowing me to be a part of it.  I’m not saying it was the easiest outreach, as our housing, food and sanitation were lacking measured by Western standards, but it was worth the inconveniences to serve a people so unwanted by both Myanmar (where they came from) and Thailand too.  It made me realize how hard their lives are and how I couldn’t have lived there much longer lacking certain food essentials and going at our pace.  Being in remote mountains, it is difficult to obtain things like medicines, warm clothes, blankets or even cooking oil and when someone on a cell phone asks “Can you hear me now?”, the answer is “NO!”  (Which was a problem for us when one of our translators ended up having a mini stroke and all the other translators were back in Chiang Mai to help another team. . . but God came through.)  Most can not afford to travel to the larger villages and don’t really have the money to buy much anyway.  So when we asked the village ladies to bring us their weaving, they gladly came with it and sold many things to us.  It was a privilege to be able to purchase their local outfits and handiwork knowing the money went straight to them and how desperately they needed it.  Continue to pray for the Karen to come to know Jesus and to begin to live knowing they are each precious individuals that God created.  God is surely at work in the Karen villages. 

I was blessed to go and be sent out.  I hope you were blessed to be a part of this mission as well.  Thank you for serving the Lord through our hands and feet in Cambodia and Thailand while training our 9 students for more practical work in the medical field.  It has been a pleasure! 

“… He sent them ahead of Him in pairs to every town and place where He Himself was about to go.  He told them: “The harvest is abundant, but the workers are few.  Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest. . . When you enter any town and they welcome you, eat the things set before you.  Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near you.’”

--- Luke 10: 1, 2 & 9

More photos from the mountains of Thailand: Thailand 2007

For the story on our Jungle Camp in Cambodia:   Cambodia

 
 
Our class:

From the top L to R:  me, Damaris (Switzerland), Jessica (US), Ann (staff),

Second row L to R:  Carolyn (staff), Nancy (US), Tiffany (Samoa), Mary (US - wife of Glenn)

Third row L to R: Glenn and Tommy (US – Tommy is Glenn & Mary’s son), Margaret (USA), Steph (Honduras), Cindy & Tom (US), Jenni (US), Jodi (Canada), Sherina (Canada) and Friedhelm, our school leader (Germany).