Some dear friends of ours were kicked off their land this month. Oo Beh Kyaw & Thida are some of our favorites, in the most I-don’t-have-favorites sort of way, because how can you not be so grateful for such a great family? More often than not, they are the light at the end of this neighborhood tunnel, giving us hope that Jesus is making things grow.

They previously lived across from us, but they were kicked off that land two years ago. They moved to land next to the kids’ school, about 500m down the road. When Stephen was picking them up for bible study a two weeks ago, they told him the sad news of having to move. We offered to help in any way we could and that we’d follow up.

We have asked a few times since then, and it seemed like everything was covered. They said they had a new house planned on the same school property, they would just need to rebuild, and the land rental might be more expensive. It was still affordable, not too far from us, and seemed hopeful.

In the middle of this I had come down with a horrible eye infection that left me looking like Hitch and left me in bed for three days unable to see. We are also rolling out new Flour & Flowers recipes, schedules, and such; which all takes multiple trips to the store, multiple baking experiments, and multiple “meetings” with the women. Oh, and we made too many trips to the hospital this week, and we’re both running on empty.

When I saw Thida, on Thursday, it was in passing. I asked her how they were, and she said they were fine. I asked if they had a new place, and she said they did. When I asked where she said to come by and she’d show us. I assured her I would on Friday; I had bread to bake on Thursday.

I remembered this late in the day on Friday, and we made our way over last night. Their house is gone; it’s an empty plot of land. It felt just like two years ago, seeing the place that held so many people, memories, and smiles, left as a just an empty piece of land and loads of trash.

It’s amazing what power people can have over others. It’s amazing how revolutionary the cycles are. It’s heartbreaking to simply watch them go round.

We found their family gathered around another hut nearby where the old one stood. I’ve seen the look on their faces before: defeat, hopelessness, questions, timidity. Smallness. They look so small when they are fearful and helpless and unsure. I miss the confident, smart look on Chit Ne Oo’s face after school. Or Thida’s determined business smile, compared to the smile like she’s just seen her favorite person–though many of us make the list.

All of their belongings were gathered around the house in baskets and bins, they were eating around a simple table outside. We learned that since they didn’t all fit in the house–their family alone numbered nine, there isn’t enough floor space even–the parents are sleeping outside on the table.

My friends are sleeping outside on a table. 

Not under the stars in a dreamy camping weekend, but on a table, in the middle of a trashy hut community, where they will eat the next day. Because they are homeless.

And the rain starts, well…I was hoping soon. We were hoping for rain on Monday, after many weeks of melting temperatures. Now I’m sure I could sweat a few more weeks if it keeps them dry.

Honestly, we didn’t know what to say. We told them we are sorry. We asked them about options. And ultimately, we told them to come to our house tomorrow at 5– mostly just to give us some time to talk about what we can do and how.

That can really put a damper on your Friday night.

So we cooked dinner together and talked about options. Everything from finding someone to help them start a business to splitting their rent on a new place they can’t afford to having them move in with us temporarily. We talked about who we could write and who we could call; we called and we wrote.

Now we’re waiting. I guess for our meeting at 5pm, for friends to write back. Really, we’re waiting on a miracle again.

It’s so complicated, you see. We could give them money to help, because no matter what you say, we have it. We have money and access to money in ways they can’t comprehend. We could let them move into our yard or into our house; how would we share a bathroom with 12 people? How would we cook? Practically speaking, can we handle it? But if we don’t or “can’t”–how selfish is that?

But if we do, what road does that lead us down? How many more will move in? How many more will ask for money?

It is one family in desperate need this week, but it is many families in desperate need many times a year. This isn’t new. This is just the next revolution of the cycle.

Honestly, can I just tell you this: it so different when the people you want to serve and show Jesus become your friends. It just changes. We are trying so hard to think of the repercussions, the effects, the long term plan; but all I can think of is that she is like my mother here. Thida is like my mother here. She checks on us when we are sick and send food for us constantly. Her children are like my sisters and brothers. We love them.

They can’t sleep under the stars. They can’t be homeless.

I can’t swim laps in the pool every day and sleep in my air conditioning and enjoy a cup of coffee while they are homeless and scared. They can’t co-exist.

We work so hard to make this life livable. Really, we do. We work so hard to know our limits and help each other find our extremes. If one of us is drowning–even for a minute or for an unexplainable reason–the other has to step in. We tag team when I can’t handle so-and-so’s pushiness and Stephen can’t handle the pool of blood forming on our floor. We have to think about when to say yes and when to say no. We work equally as hard to protect our Sabbath as to enjoy it. We escape and sit over cups of coffee to breathe and evaluate the next step on long days.

But all those efforts: the membership to the local pool, the coffee cups, the gate that closes when we really need the space; they are useless if we can’t actually help the neighbors make this life livable, for them as well. They aren’t asking for a pool to swim laps in and a fancy latte.

They are asking for a house. They are asking for enough floor space to sleep. They are asking for a safe place to live and work and raise a family.

So now that is on my list, too. Today I need the space to swim, but I also need a place for them to live, whatever that may cost us. I can tell myself not to over-commit or stretch ourselves too thin; the word boundaries is echoing hauntingly in my head. But so are their faces.

I never knew how dangerous it was to really fall in love with people.

We’re having a community meeting tonight at 7pm.

Thus, at 9am this morning, we made rounds around the community to tell everyone. It was like sending one hundred telegrams to all your friends. By your own hand.

Email, texting, Facebook, FaceTime: it’s amazing how much we can communicate worldwide with our friends and family. We wish them happy birthday, see photos of growing kids, discuss daily goings-on, and laugh at the same YouTube video. And yet, I must visit my neighbors one by one to invite them to my house tonight.

So we started attending a Burmese church a little over a month ago. We have known the pastor & his wife through Partners, and they both work in a community similar to ours about ten minutes out of town. They have started a church there among a group of migrant & factory workers.

It seemed a great fit for us for a lot of reasons, the only challenge being that it is entirely in Burmese. That’s two, sometimes three, hours of entirely Burmese speaking & thinking.

We only understand some of it, but we can follow along with the singing, catch bits and pieces of the sermon, and we can learn. We are always learning.

The very first week we were there, they surprised us at the end of the service by calling us up to share a little about ourselves, in Burmese, with no preparation.

I stumbled out some words about where we live among migrant workers, they aren’t Christian, but we want to love them and tell them about Jesus. It was incredibly jumbled, horrible grammatically, and just ridiculous. I ended with a broken sentence of, “We want to love!”

I was thankful it was over.  And I didn’t mention it because it went so horribly.

This week, one of the guys in church came over to me excited. He joyfully showed me that he had taken video of us taking, particularly of me jumbling it all up. I told him it was such bad Burmese, I cannot speak! He (falsely) praised how good it was and assured me he’d post it on Facebook.

Well, lovely. Hoping he can’t find my name!

I was sitting in church last week and feeling overwhelmed. As I thought through my list for the week, the coming month, and the goals for the year, I realized something: they are all beyond me. They all, each and every one, require significant miracles.

To name a few:

We’re still learning language to understand this church service and communicate more with all our friends. We’re still studying daily. We are learning daily. And there is still so much to learn.

We are managing a business to sell products to an expat community, while communication is limited, my business experience is zilch, and were working with illegals and running the risks involved therein. We are also trying to really know these people and do life with them, so we are also dealing with debts and savings, domestic situations, child-rearing, and deep-seated poverty week in and week out. Oh, and I have to drive a car for three to four hours every Friday, while communicating in multiple languages and trying to maintain relationships with both the Burmese workers with me and the expat homes we are visiting. I then go back to home to sort the finances of it all, which is just the most complicated way to split about $30. This entire practice every Friday is beyond me each and every week, and a complete miracle when it is done successfully.

We’re sharing the gospel with this community every Thursday. We are often shouting above the noise and trying to ignore one child hanging on our legs, another playing magnets despite warnings, and yet another eating Mama noodles impossibly loud. We want them to hear this and know this, but we can’t make them. We can get them here. We can speak truth. We can help truth be translated. And while even this is a monstrous task each week, it is stil left in the hands of He who makes things grow.

Stephen is building a drum set to begin a recording project to hopefully create worship music translated into multiple languages. Building anything in this country is a product of many hours, multiple failures, and intense heat. Meanwhile, he is motivated by this huge dream that is far beyond him, but has to start somewhere.

And then we have our side projects, which we know are so good and yet take precious time. We are working with a local organization that provides green energy all along the border to provide a video this month and recreate two websites. Stephen is creating a database for an amazing woman in town that serves hundreds of migrants around our area, places just like our neighborhood. He’s helping her and two local staff move from notebooks containing ten years of chaotic notes to a syncing system on iPads, which is no small task. I am doing research on the side for a local political organization to help teach leaders headed into political dialogues. It’s all bigger than us.

Recent events in Mae Sot have caused to us to begin to ask how long we can be here doing this without getting into trouble ourselves. We have had to question each trip out and about and each police check. This makes us ask what is next: do we stay here? Do we attempt to move into Burma with some of our friends here? What would that entail–financially, with visas, work, and such? Do we go back to America? What would we do there? Do we want children? Where would we want to have them? And perhaps at the root of it all, how long do we want to do this?  As this moves from a season in Mae Sot, to well, a longer season–what does this mean for the still longer season of our lives? Yet again, so many questions and so many prayers, and so many things beyond us.

So I was overwhelmed, to say the least.

We chatted over Skype with one of our strategic mentors this week. He was discussing our goals and vision with us, saying this is right where we want to be: where we need God to carry it out.

There is a deep-seated pessimism in me–that perhaps might be growing since we arrived in this lovely town– and my thought was this: but what if he doesn’t?

If it all depends on Him showing up and he chooses not to–which as the sovereign God he is, I believe he can–what then? Then it’s just us, floating in this random little border town, failing at this entire list and then some.

Erwin McManus wrote a book and often spoke on “The Barbaric Way” of faith. He shared the idea that we had made Christianity safe and weren’t willing to risk for Christ. We have one of these talks on our iPhones, and I listen to it often enough and have mentioned it here many a time. One of the passages he considers is Matthew 11, where John writes to Jesus from prison and asks, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”  Jesus replies to the disciples, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”

McManus says and emphasizes it this way, “[John asks,] If Jesus was the One, why wasn’t he helping him out? Where was Jesus for him? Why wasn’t Jesus coming to rescue him? …If he was following God and doing God’s will and if he was the forerunner to the Messiah, where was the Messiah for him? And Jesus sends back a report to his disciples…Jesus sends back this amazing resume, right? The blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised, & the good news is preached to the poor. Now that’s pretty spectacular, but there’s nothing there that John didn’t know. And then Jesus adds this odd statement, ‘Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.’ How many people do you know that fall away from God because God’s doing too much? … What Jesus was saying to John was, ‘This is what I’m doing. I have the power, the authority, the capacity, and I’m doing it. I’m making the blind see, the lame walk, lepers cleansed. I’m raising the dead, but John, you are going die.’”

I’ve wondered this often about our lives here. For one, I have wondered if we are going to die here. I have also wondered if we will just never be the same–if I will forever struggle with depression or nightmares or fears because of what I’ve seen and experienced. What if Jesus were to say of our time in this community, The lame walk, the blind see, the dead are raised, but Kelli, for you this is going to be a hard road. It is going to hurt you.

I started wondering this years ago and praying through this. I’m selfish enough that it wasn’t a quick agreement. But God is also good enough and has given us a deep love for this community, so that I came to accept this possibility. What if I am ruined for the sake of these friends knowing Christ?

But if I think any further, this suddenly becomes not the sacrificial way, but the ideal.

God is sovereign. He is great and He is good in a way I cannot comprehend. So what if he is also saying, The lame walk, the blind see, the dead are raised–and I am good; but your friends, they are going to die.

Because this could also be true. There are stories of His goodness all around the world, and what if they aren’t in my neighborhood? Does that change the character of God?

I know I need to say no to that. But this is where I am faltering. It is obvious that there are miracles God chooses to perform and miracles he chooses not to: from one healed of cancer to another whose life is ended to soon; from the person who prays for a parking spot and receives it, while another prays for a friends soul and is left wanting; from unspeakably cruel murders by ISIS to me asking for my neighborhood to know the love of Jesus.

There are times he chooses to answer and there are times he doesn’t. What if my life is where he doesn’t? And really, what is actually far scarier for me–what if my neighbors’ lives are where he chooses not to answer these prayers?

In so many ways, he has already come for me. He has shown me his love in more ways than I can comprehend. He has given me miracles and spoken truth to me. And while he may be silent now or for the rest of my life even, he has shown himself.

What if this is all he is going to show to my neighbors? What if this is their chance? What if our prayers for them are the ones that go unanswered?

The first thing I realize is that this doesn’t really change anything for me. I love and follow God because of who He is, not because I understand him.

It doesn’t change my life here, because I am called to be here by the God I’ve chosen to serve. But it does make it harder to reconcile the pain and suffering. It makes me pray and beg for Him to be present here and to show up in all these miracles: may language come, so they can know the truth. May business succeed, so they can see the Father’s love and care for their every need. May they hear the truth, so they can be changed by it. May drum sets work and songs be translated, so they may worship His name. May we serve others in Mae Sot, so they may all see the body of Christ working together in unity. And may God lead us and direct us every step of the way, for His kingdom and not our plans.

I find myself praying big prayers, weeping for Him to hear them, and hoping, hoping, hoping.

Psalm 86:1-13
Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me, for I am poor & needy. Preserve my life, for I am godly; save your servant, who trusts in you–you are my God. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for to you do I cry all the day. Gladden the soul of your servant, for to you, O Lord, do I lift up my soul. For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you. Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer; listen to my plea for grace. In the day of my trouble I call upon you, for you answer me. There is none like you among the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like yours. All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord, and shall glorify your name. For you are great and do wondrous things; you alone are God. Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name. I give thanks to you, O Lord, my God, with my whole heart, and I will glorify your name forever. For great is your steadfast love toward me; you have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol.