Refugees coming to Moscow!

This just in: the Sabbath House board voted today to approve the bringing of the three refugee families from Boise up to Moscow in the near future. The plan is to move them sometime in the month of June, after which time Sabbath House and local volunteers (including SRO members) will oversee their housing and furnishing needs, as well as helping them find employment, learn English, and gain other skills necessary to adjust to life in America.
The only difficulty will be the translation issue--the plan is to translate using a phone contact during meetings with the family at least in the near term; hopefully something better will become available soon.

Praise God for this opportunity to serve and pray that all would go smoothly.

Upcoming Benefit Dance

SRO had been hoping to pull together a benefit concert this term to raise several hundred dollars to provide anti-malarial medicines to church clinics in Northern Burma, but unfortunately impracticable this term. By the Lord's providence, however, another opportunity presented itself--the end-of-the-year swing dance organized by Ben Nieuwsma. Ben has agreed to let us advertise and run the swing dance as a Benefit Dance, charging $5 for admission, about $3 of which will be able to go to funding the medicines. The Dance will be this Saturday evening. Pray that the Lord blesses the event.

A Benefit Concert is still in the works, being planned for this Fall.

Pictures (finally)

I've finally got the pictures uploaded from the Boise trip. See them here:

Report on the Boise trip

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.

Update on Boise refugees

Things are moving along quickly with regard to the refugees in Boise. Brad Littlejohn, SRO's President, has been invited to accompany Rusty Olps of Sabbath House to Boise on Saturday the 19th to meet the refugee families and assess their needs. Pray for a safe trip and a productive conference.

Refugees in Boise

We've just learned from our friends at Christian Freedom International that three families of Karen Christian refugees recently arrived in Boise, Idaho. The Karen (pronounced "Kuh-renn") are a mostly Christian tribe from Burma that have been largely driven into refugee camps in Thailand through 50 years of war and oppression by the Burmese government. CFI has been working with this tribe for some time and is currently resettling a number of refugee families to Sault St. Marie, MI. One of the families in Boise--Htee Khu (see picture below), her aunt and uncle, and cousins--will be moving to Sault St. Marie in May. After recent conversations between CFI and Sabbath House, Sabbath House is hoping to resettle the remaining two families in Moscow next month. Pending an official decision from Sabbath House, SRO is making plans to assist these families in adjusting to their new homes. We are hopeful that the Lord will work everything out for this exciting ministry opportunity. Pray for each of the families, and that the Lord would prosper this work.

Htee Khu "Beth"--a Karen orphan whom Brad Littlejohn, our President, knew years ago while working at the Karen refugee school in Thailand, now living in Boise.