Since my freshman year I have been tutoring a Karen refugee family that lives in Chapel Hill. There are about 7 or 8 in their family who live in a two room apartment. Needless to say, it’s pretty crammed and extremely simplistic. The living room has a single mat on the ground and the walls are covered with posters of the continents, Buddha, a Buddha shrine, and Thailand forestry.
They are from Myanmar, former Burma. However, many have spent the majority of their lives in the refugee camps in Thailand, across the border. This is the case of the family I know.
There are three children and to make matters more interesting, one of them is an aunt to the others (intermarrying is common in their culture). Pee See is the oldest at 22 years old. Last Spring Pee See became the first in her family to graduate from high school and she now attends Durham Tech Community College in hopes of one day becoming a nurse and returning to her country to help her people there. In addition to trying to juggle a college course load in a language she is still attempting to learn, Pee See works until late at night Sunday through Thursday at one of our dining halls on campus in order that she can help pay the rent for her family to live in the apartment and for her tuition.
Kyaw Shar Aye is next. He is thirteen years old and very much searching to try to fit in with the mold that our culture has set and he feels the pressure to conform to that standard. He is extremely talented. An athlete, musician and he does very well in school.
Asusu is the little baby of the family. She is 5 years old and already becoming a product of American culture. She loves to share her hips and sing decade old pop songs like “I’m a Barbie girl in a Barbie world” (just up my avenue, right?) in her broken English.
I love each of them so dearly and long for them to truly know Jesus. Please be praying for the gospel to become clearer than day to them and that they would understand its exclusivity since they now claim to believe in both Buddha and Jesus.
In light of the Lord’s command to go out into the nations preaching his name, He has chosen to bring the nations to our doorstep and now we must act by reaching the nations, which are now our neighbors.
