Grief and Comfort in a Monsoon

11 June 2021
Karen State, Burma

Dear friends,

Thank you for helping us pray with and help people. Yesterday we were with the family of a man named Saw Pah Kee Bu, who was recently killed by a Burma Army mortar attack here in the Ye Mu Plaw area of northern Karen State, Burma. The family was staying in a small hut they built under a towering bamboo grove on the other side of a mountain after fleeing the village where their home was attacked. As the wife told the story she and her children began to cry and so did we. She poured her heart out as a heavy rain began. We stood in the rain and listened with tears coming down our faces.

Saw Pah Kee Bu’s wife tells their story as her oldest daughter cries.

After she finished the story of her husband’s death, our whole team sang a blessing song to the family, which made us cry even more. But the bond of love between us grew and grew. The family is Catholic and we prayed together that Jesus would comfort them and thanked God together that we would all see Saw Pah Kee Bu again in heaven. We were all also able to help with funds to help the family because now there is no father to work the fields. It is your help that enables us to do that.

Just before we walked to meet this family we had stopped in a small shop in the jungle where every one of the new team members had bought much appreciated food and snacks. In the jungle when you’ve been walking for days with just some rice to eat it is amazing how happy people get when they come to even a small store with a couple pieces of candy or something sweet. Everyone was so excited as they loaded their pockets with whatever they could buy.

We then waded across the stream and across flooded rice fields to the family’s house. When we arrived and listened to the stories, many of the team began to cry and each person took out the precious snacks they had just bought and began to give these to the family. They also took their own personal money out of their pockets and began to put it in the hands of the family members. The outpouring of love, of everything they had that was immediately precious to them was very moving. Suddenly money, food, nice things to eat weren’t as important as giving love to this family. We sang, cried, shared and prayed with them in the rain.

The greatest thing God gives us is His love and thank you so much for helping us to share it. We are very weak and sinful people and we are always amazed and grateful that God gives us chances over and over again to step out of our selfishness and help others. This is the example God gave us when he sent his son Jesus to live and die for us and to rise again. Here the Burma Army is bigger than any one of us but it is not bigger than all of us and it’s not bigger than God. So we join together and call others to join in love, to ask forgiveness for our own sins, to reach out and serve in the ways God leads each of us.

Here in Burma, we want to be part of building a just, free and reconciled country. We believe that despite the odds this is what’s happening and we thank you that you enable us to be part of it and you are just as much a part of it as we are. 

We love you! God bless you in Jesus’ name.

Dave, family and FBR

FBR team sings for the family

Eubank family with Saw Pah Kee Bu’s family.

Saw Pah Kee Bu was killed and his house destroyed on 8 April 2021

Prayer table in Saw Pah Kee Bu’s house