Country Two was special because we had the opportunity to be friends with an organization called Free the Oppressed. I called it the white people colony because many of the people there were from America, Canada, or Europe. Because we were near Burma, Lee suggested we watch the documentary “Free Burma Rangers” (2020) which told us more about the Burmese refugees that have been the true focal point of Southeast Asia. The documentary went over Dave Eubank in 1997 after going into the Burman jungle with a bunch of medical supplies and faith that, with prayer and guidance, he would find people who needed help. And his prayers were answered quite quickly as he happened to cross paths with a medic named Ilya and the militia he was traveling with. They were on their way to help the fleeing people, and Dave had just what they needed. And so the seed was planted for FBR. It grew into a training camp in the middle of the jungle that trained the ethnic people of Burma to be expert videographers, leaders, and medics, and through the gospel also being shared by Dave and many others, countless people have been saved. It also talked about the places they have been to in Iraq. Their videographers have been an amazing turning point in the war bringing light to the war crimes and injustices in Burma.
Getting here, we realized how widespread the Burma conflict was as we had been teaching Rohingya refugees in Malaysia, which we kind of knew were from Burma, but it hit us spending time with more Burmese refugees.
Anyways, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we would work out at the Free the Oppressed foundation, and sometimes, there would be extra challenges for game and glory. There were two such challenges. One would be to run up Doi Suthep to the temple in under an hour and forty minutes which Carter made it up in sixty-eight minutes. The second challenge was to hike up the monks’ trail 3 times in under 8 hours. We, of course, didn’t complete that. Half of our group got lost, making a wrong turn on the hike. Zach, however, did the hike in five and a half hours, speeding past us with ease.
Ok, now we can get to the plot. It so happened that our food packaging included two persimmons. One of which was eaten by Carter, and the other persimmon, which I was going to eat if he didn’t. I did not end up eating it because the next day, we received word that Patrick the Persimmon had been kidnapped and was now being held hostage by the terrorist group known as the Drunken Noodles. We had a week to either give in to the terrorists’ demands and pay the cash equivalent of 5815$ USD or infiltrate the Drunken Noodles base and save Patrick ourselves. Being the noble MOGS we had to save our dear Patrick. After all, we couldn’t have an ISIS monkey eat him! (The ISIS monkey will probably have to be explained later) Anyways, the day before the infiltration, we were briefed on some field medicine, navigating a map, and how to carry people. The medical acronym we learned is MARCH and it goes like this. Massive hemorrhaging, airways, respiratory, circulatory, and head trauma. We did many carries, and my practice buddy was Caleb, which was very fun because he is a six-foot behemoth. But soon, our training was over, and destiny loomed over us.
We arose early in the morning at a lovely 4 AM and hopped in Zach’s g-wagon. The timing was perfect because the moon had set, and so there would be 3 hours of darkness to get across the lake, past some of the DN operatives, and into the search zone. As we were dropped off, we immediately saw the lights of a motorcycle down the road, so we leaped into the thick grass on the side of the road. Lee and Christian, apparently not knowing there was a ditch on the side of the road, ran gung-ho straight off the edge and fell to the bottom. We were off to a great start!
Getting our bearings, I pulled out the map, and after a little confusion on where to go, we headed down the road as sneakily as possible. Reaching the first pond on the property, we dropped down and searched until we finally found the cached boat. I initially assumed that this was the second pond, but after a few passes from the searchlight on the DN g-wagon, we discovered that it was not the first lake and It was the lake. If we went over the very small hill that was the road, we would see the second lake. So we finally decided that we needed to pick up the boat and take it over to the other lake.
By the time we brought it over to The second lake, the dawn light was starting to brighten up the surroundings, quickly putting everything onto the boat. Most of the guys just started running into the water and pulling the boat and the cargo along while I, with the map, decided to stay on the canoe, as well as Carter, who also decided to stay on the boat because he was taking care of the luggage. This was okay for a little while even though balance was kind of an issue, but about halfway through, we realized that the boat was sinking. The other problem was that the g-wagon came back and saw us stranded like ducks in the middle of the lake. After they passed, I gave my flashlight and map to Carter, thinking that it would be safe, but the map fell into the water and fell apart. We both ended up ditching the boat and focusing on getting the sinking boat to the other side. Reaching the other side we quickly hid in some tree cover. Drones started flying overhead in the light so we hunkered down and waited for a break in the drones. Whilst hiding, we were given a new map by Zach, who “cached” it right by us by setting it in the grass.
Seeing the drones were switching, we booked it across a road, through a nice ladies’ lawn, and down another road that eventually revealed a draw to the side, which seemed like the place to follow looking at the map. Walking up the watershed, I found the spot where I thought we should start looking, and we split into our alpha and beta teams with individuals fifty feet apart. Our first area sweep came up dry and we received a message from the Rabid Ramen. We had allies in this fight willing to help us with information but also militarily if we got Patrick. They informed us that new Intel confirmed that the hostages were not in the original location but rather about 200 meters east.
This new zone was a rock-filled creek bed with steep leafy walls. After exploring the creek area for about 10 minutes I hear screams of help near Caleb. I, the heroic, thought three things: ambush, there was a hurt civilian that got stuck wandering through the forest, and “hey, that’s not Patrick”. I ran over, and when I was rounding the corner of the rock, the explosions began. Fireworks rained down. Caleb had found not Patrick but two hostages with some familiar faces. Under our noses without us knowing, Emery and Naty had been recruited to make the escape more real and scary. Evan, the med guy shadowing us with Zach, yelled out, “One has both her legs blown off and the other has head trauma!” As I rounded the corner, Caleb got the first med kit and got to work. I didn’t have a med kit on me, so I quickly started viewing my surroundings and going over where we needed to go to get to the extraction point. I found a large knife and some cloth lying near the little cave where we found the girls, and I quickly picked it up. Brandon, by then, had arrived and brought a med kit to tourniquet Naty’s other leg. We quickly picked up the girls and started taking them downstream to the soccer field where the Rabid Ramen helicopter would be waiting for us.
Carrying them down the terraced and rocky creek bed for a while with fireworks still going crazy I let Christian carry Natty as I had the great plan of making a bambulance, which is a big piece of bamboo holding up a hammock, because we had bought a hammock and I had a better tool to get bamboo with. This was only to my detriment, firstly because there weren’t really any usable pieces and secondly because Zach’s voice rang out saying I had been shot in the calf. This made everything so much better because I got a nice leg bracelet, practiced for my acting career, and got married everywhere. Things had gone to chaos because Zach knew I was the navigator, and he had closed off information to the rest of the team. Luckily, they were smart enough to continue the course of going downstream through a bit of my sputtered words. Evan told me that I fell unconscious and couldn’t talk anymore. On the way, a few fireworks exploded super close, and there was a lot of shrapnel everywhere. Christian and Brandon also fell while holding me, and after a while, Christian was told he was shot and they had to carry him as well. Lee took over carrying me the second half trying a few different carry techniques.
We finally reach the soccer field and the key to our escape, a clearing seen just above the walls of the creek. Caleb was the only one strong enough to drag anyone up the steep slope, but we crossed the edge pe, people screaming and all. Carter radioed some airstrikes le, adding to Zach shooting a kid named LJ point blank with some sort of firework-esque gun, followed by some flawless acting by LJ in which he flew up in the air and fell doweling. The uninjured dragged the injured to the other end of the field and we had done it! We had saved… ell. I don’t know what happened to Patrick out of persimmon but damsels were saved, so I guess it could have been worse with no hostages and a lot of retreats. Gretchen had come as well, and we all together went to this awesome restaurant called Stories and shared our points of view. It was all quite a fun experience. Before we left, though, we decided to set a firework off in the water, and that was not a good idea because shrapnel hit my cheek, which was surprisingly the worst of the hundreds of fireworks lobbed at us.
Rushing forward to Albania I would love to share a quick story about ministry.
One day we drove around to two villages up in the mountains to share the gospel, play soccer, and give some kids Christmas child boxes. In between two villages, we ran across a shepherd tending to his flock, and Florie, our host, pulled over and started preaching the gospel of the good shepherd to him. We didn’t understand what he was saying because he was speaking Albanian, of course; while interceding for this encounter, I could tell the shepherd enjoyed talking to people as he probably hadn’t been around people for a while. This shepherd hadn’t heard about Jesus before, and he was quite interested e, especially when Ava shared Psalms 23 with him. We gave him an Albanian New Testament, and he even said he wanted to accept Jesus into his life! Florie walked him through that, and we all prayed for him, and then we had to go.
But wow! Amazing things are happening and I am enjoying them all. I hope you all have a pleasant day and my God bless you all as you go into this week! Goodbye, ladies and gentlemen.
