It ain't Half Hot Mum!

Yesterday the rain stopped but it was still a bit cloudy. Today we had the first day of blazing sunshine that is supposed to be normal for this time of year.

At the morning worship time we sang Still, with alternate verses in Karen and English, with Flook leading the Karen language singing. Later in the day we gave Flook one of the recorders we’d brought to say thank you.

We had a lively time of worship, and then Jay went to help Susanna with the teenagers. In previous days they'd been planning a video and today they shot it. It should raise a lot of laughs when it's shown, but we are sworn to secrecy as to its content.

After lunch we went to the hall to practice some songs with two of the teenage girls who will be joining us up front tomorrow. Jay was updating the blog for yesterday so he missed the team photo, but never mind.

Dinner was a sumptuous picnic of spare ribs, chicken, corn bread, pasta and salad. Jay's ankles raised some eyebrows with the nurses on the Partners staff. They diagnosed an allergic reaction to the bites and gave him antihistamines and ibuprofen to take down the swelling. Please pray into this. Sarah says it shouldn't jeopardise the trip to Mae Sot but it does make it harder for him to walk. Everyone else says their bodies are holding up well, but don't stop praying!

The evening meeting was a introductory talk by Steve, the founder of Partners, and another talk by Dave, the head of Free Burma Rangers. Steve talked about a trip he had made inside Burma to interview people who had been forced from their homes by the army and were living on the run. The technical term is "internally displaced people" or just IDPs. That's what they're called when they're treated as statistics. But Steve told us about one eight-year-old boy he'd met in a camp on that visit. He seemed a cocky lad who swaggered into the room with a catapult in his back pocket. But then he told his story: He'd been growing up with his parents and sister when his father discovered the Burma army were building a road throuigh the jungle that would find their village. So he packed up the family and they hid in a gorge and lived foraging in the jungle for food, growing what they could. The road was built, the village found and burned, and many villagers were killed. The family were safe until an army patrol found their gorge and a soldier tossed in a grenade. The father threw himself on it, sacrificing up his life to save his wife and children. This happened in front of the little boy, his mother and sister. A few days later he was out foraging with his sister and they returned to the camp to find their mother, unable to cope any more, had hanged herself. A little while later the little girl also died of disease so the boy sought out relatives in another IDP camp and found an uncle whose wife had been killed, and he took him in. He was still living there when Steve, who has an eight-year-old daughter himself, arrived and asked the camp elders if he could talk to some of the children who felt able to share their stories. These are the kind of people that Partners exists to help. They can't help everyone, but they do what they can, and the people in that camp were living off rice supplied by Partners.

Dave's talk was next. He is a tough-looking, wiry man who is ex-US Special Forces, and who founded the Free Burma Rangers. They have to work outside the law because they cross into Burma. They do relief work, run health clinics, shepherd IDPs to safety and even run things like children's sports days and holiday clubs. Anything that can bring a touch of normality and happiness into these lives. Dave gave several hair-raising accounts of situations he and his people have been in, which probably shouldn't be shared with the Internet. But his main point is that, in his words: "Even if the Burma army kills some of us, Jesus is in control."

All through the retreat the intensely serious has been thrown together with the very silly. When you work for an organisation dealing with life and death situations you need some light relief and a bit of silliness is good for the soul. This evening it was "bring and share your plant". In keeping with the gardening theme of the retreat people had been asked to grow a plant and bring it in its pot. They were asked to describe it, and say what it's significance was. Someone bought a chilli plant to show us to be hot for Jesus - you get the idea. Some were serious, others were silly, even a bit rude! But a good time was had by all, and it was the relief we all needed after Steve's and Dave's talks.

The retreat finishes tomorrow afternoon and everyone in Partners will be going back to work in their respective places. We've decided to stay on one more night at Horizon rather than go back to Chiang Mai before we head off to Mae Sot on Monday.