Saturday in Chiang Mai (Friday night back home)

We leave in about 10 minutes on a 6 hour van trek to Mae Sot, the nearest small city to the Mae La refugee camp. We're planning on actually going to the camp itself tonight for a short time, and then spending most of tomorrow and Monday there. I'm so looking forward to this! (Well, not the van ride, exactly, but you do what you have to do.)

Unfortunately, I don't have enough time to go into great detail about yesterday--it was a day crowded with wonderful conversations. We began by visiting the House of Love (sorry--we didn't do it on Valentine's Day as rumor had led me to believe) and the House of Blessing which is a daycare center for children from the slums of Chiang Mai. The children--between the ages of about 4 and 8--sang for us and just absolutely loved having their pictures taken. I can't wait to share the photos and video with you! It was especially moving to those of us who had gone to the night market a few nights before and had a little girl--maybe 6 years old--approach us to sell us flowers. Parents force their children to beg or sell flowers in the markets all night and sometimes most of the day as well. For some families, it's to help put food on the table. For other families, they realize that they can often get as much as 1000 baht (about $30) out of a foriegner so they send their children out in order to buy motorcycles or TVs. But I vividly remembered that little girl, the sadness and exhaustion on her face, and how hungrily she ate the bit of bread one of our group members gave her--and compared that with the bright, clean, happy, excited children in the day care center. House of Blessings is doing amazing work!

We went from there to the McGilvary seminary to meet with Lamont Brown and hear about the seminary's programs and student life; then to the Thailand Karen Baptist Convention offices to meet Sunny, the general secretary of TKBC; then to the Free Burma Rangers office. I can't say more about those now due to lack of time but will try to fill in details later.

You may have read the news reports that there was an assassination of a Karen National Union leader by the Burmese Army in Mae Sot, the town we're heading to now. Several of us have gotten worried phone calls and emails from our family members--you need to know that we're perfectly safe. None of us is worried about what may happen to us--we're simply continually praying for the situation in Burma. Please join us in those prayers!

Time to go get in the van and get ready for the long haul...sigh...