Life inside Burmese Refugee Camp in Northern Thailand

I remember when I woke up in a Burmese refugee camp on the very most northern tip of Thailand. As we slept in an elevated hutlike structure overnight a person on our team who was sleeping next to me had a huge tarantula size spider of some sorts crawl on her face in the middle of the night. Refugees in the camp lived off of 80% bamboo. Yes, I mean 80% of their entire diet was bamboo because they were literally starving to death. The #1 biggest grievance in one of the orphanages we visited inside the camp was stomach problems due to unclean drinking water. People showered outside in the open using stream water. You might say these people were "destitute."

Countless numbers of people had had their spouse murdered or lost their father, mother, spouse or children while fleeing through the jungle unawares whether they were still alive or not. I held two little girls in my arms about the age of 7 and 9 or so. One of their parents had been murdered and the other got displaced from them in the jungle. There they were, left with no mom, no dad, knowing one parent was dead for sure and perhaps the other they would never see again. I couldn't speak their Tibeto-Burman language so I just held the kids in my arms at the time and prayed for them wishing I could comfort them in any way possible. I'll never forget looking into their eyes wishing I could take all their pain away, wishing I could adopt them or give them a better life or just somehow alleviate their suffering. I felt totally powerless. The needs of the people were immeasurable in magnitude and I felt like I had so little to give.

Despite the condition these precious people were in it amazed me what they did every single morning without fail. At 5 AM they would all assemble together every single morning in a communal bamboo hut to worship and praise and express pure gratitude and exaltation to who they believed in, their Heavenly Father through Jesus Christ. The adoration, the celebration, the zealous, most exuberant display of love towards their Creator God. They were excited, thrilled, in great glee and divine comfort they sang and prayed and thanked the Most High God and sang and prayed again. They did this every single day before the sun even came up.

What mesmerizes me is how we who have so much in the material sense, smartphones, gadgets, this thing that thing, food that we can pick or choose even if it's just between a can of beans or a can of soup at least we can choose something... How many examples can I give? Needless to say... Yet how often do we choose to ignore the Most High God with our lives? The idols that we have in our lives because we love the pleasures of this world more than the One who blessed us with every good thing. Why can't we humble ourselves and give gratitude to who truly deserves it no matter how miserable or depressing we may see our lives to be? Perhaps the answer to true freedom, true joy, true fulfillment isn't in how many things we have that the world can count but instead how much love and faith and hope we have in the Creator of the universe who gave us life.

#innovation #creativity #motivation #personaldevelopment #education #travel #inspiration