The trip to Boise by Rusty Olps, Sabbath House board member, and I (Brad--I'll go ahead and speak in first person for this post) was a resounding success. Htee Khu (Beth) remembered me very well (much better than I remembered her, I must admit), and warmly greeted us. We were introduced to her aunt, uncle, and cousins, who, with her, are relocating to a new Karen community in Sault St. Marie, Michigan. She then took us next door to meet three families which are hoping to be able to relocate to Moscow (she had wisely assembled them from their apartments scattered around Boise so we could meet them all at once). They were very friendly and eager to meet us, though they spoke only a few words of English. One family had six kids--an 11-year old girl and then 5 boys aged seven and under (these had a rather violent streak and enjoyed swarming all over me and taking turns pretending to choke me); another had two toddler girls, and the third had one toddler boy and another on the way, as well as a young adult brother of the father who was with them. They had all been brought in by different agencies within the past couple months and were all from Mae La refugee camp in Thailand, a massive refugee camp for displaced Karen villagers, and they are all Christians. Rusty interviewed them and made copies of their paperwork to take back for the Sabbath House board to consider. The refugee aid organizations that have brought them in have taken no steps to aid them in becoming integrated in a local church community (nor have any of the churches in their area reached out), and have not helped them in finding jobs, which they are eager to do, but are finding difficult, given their inability to speak English. Their financial support will dry up soon and leave them destitute, so Sabbath House hopes to be able to resettle them up here as soon as possible. However, nothing is definite until the board of Sabbath House meets this week.
Pray that it will be feasible for Sabbath House to assist them, in which case SRO volunteers will have many opportunities to pitch in and show Christian love to them. Pray that God would meet their immediate needs, and would enable Sabbath House to find a translator and all the other things that will be necessary for relocating them here. Thank God for arranging everything so providentially so far, and for such a productive trip on such short notice.
I will post photos and video on photobucket soon, and link to them from here. For now, though, I will share a picture of my favorite kid, a little guy who seemed obsessed with tortilla chips and kept refilling the front of his shirt with a load of them the entire time.
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