For the month of December, we got the opportunity to serve the Free Burma Rangers. The Free Burma Rangers are a relief group that serves displaced people from the Burmese Civil War. Although we did not get to do any relief missions, we were able to serve the organization from their base of operations.
Throughout our time with FBR, we were ministering to the rangers and their staff. We spent about a month with them doing projects around their campuses, joining them in bible studies, participating in their trainings, and helping with their day VBS. It honestly became a complete circle of us ministering and serving them, and they minister to us.
FBR blessed us by letting us join their training. We got trained in navigation and tourniquet usage. It was a lot of fun. For the final task of the navigation training, we paired up and raced to navigate through a series of points on a map. My partner Joel and I won. During the tourniquet training , we were taught how to apply a tourniquet and popper carrying techniques to remove someone from a dangerous situation. We did a “Live” scenario where we had to get people out of a “battle zone” while getting shot at with airsoft rifles and fireworks. It was wild.
The Lord was teaching me a lot through that month in what it looks like to give grace to the people around me. It was the first time our team had to live on our own and do everything by ourselves. For a lot of the guys on my team, it was the first time they had ever been on their own outside of their house and had to take responsibility. It was challenging as people learned how to live outside of their homes for the first time. It left me with a lot of anger and harbored feelings towards some of the people on my team. Read my next blog for the continuation of this story!!!
In Thailand, one of the most important things God taught me was how to be more intentional about asking him to see things the way he does. We went into the red district of Thailand, and this is where a lot of the prostitutes are and a lot of bars and inappropriate activities. A large group of us went to minister to the people there.And to evangelize The whole time I was on my guard, Trying to protect myself and the people around me and what happened was, I became apathetic. I didn’t see the people around me that I needed Christ. I became blind to the people around me to the drunkard on the street, to the homeless person, to the person who needed healing, to the women whose eyes where filled with pain because selling herself was how she made money for her villiage. During that time one of my friends made a comment about being bold and I realized I wasn’t taking Advantage of any of the time that I could be using to pray, that I could be using to see people and I started to sing the song (as a prayer) that goes along the lines of give me your eyes for just one second give me your eyes, so I can see, give me your eyes for the broken hearted, give me your love for humanity. I pray for the Lord to give me his eyes and heart for these people. And he did even just a little bit, and I was moved almost to tears as I looked around me and I saw all the pain. I saw all the loneliness. I saw all the hurt. I was so moved because I knew how much the father loved them. I knew this wasn’t in his design for people. These are the types of things that people in these countries are going through. It truly broke my heart. The only thing we really could do was pray for those people. We’ve got some really cool opportunities to share Jesus with them, but a lot of them we’re uninterested. So, I charge you with this to be in constant prayer for the people around you to take every opportunity. You have to evangelize to advance the Kingdom of God. Pray for opportunities to plant seeds and pray that seeds will fall on good soil. Intercede on behalf of the broken hearted.
Thank you, guys, for reading my blog. I hope this encourages you to help build the Kingdom in this way. Through prayer through petition through interceding, by planting seeds and reaping harvest through evangelizing. Don’t be stagnant in your faith or the way that you see people.
