Can a Mother forget her Child?

A little blessing in disguise happened today when Peter Nay, the Burmese man, could not make it to English class this morning and I was left with just Tulasi and Chandra from Bhutan. I adore Peter Nay, his wife and four children and have a blast with all of them. However, the Bhutanese needed special attention and the Lord knows our needs. Today I was able to spend 2 hours with just them. It actually is better to teach two people of  the same language then just one because there is a slight sense of competition and they start to correct and teach each other what they struggle with. It is really interesting to observe how Tulasi is stronger in memory but how Chandra is much stronger in correct pronunciation. I wish I could just bring you all into a typical class with me but I honestly do not even know what a typical class would be. For instance, today my class what held in a spare booth set up outside of the restrooms lol. Not ideal, but at least it was empty, we could claim it and be as loud and as we'd like.

I realize of course, that these detailed stories about people you do not know might seem quite monotonous, so I would like to give you a glimpse of Tulasi and Chandra through my eyes.

 

First we must start with the foundation, where they are from and why are they here. When I first started to write this blog, I thought I would just type in the country Bhutan and see what surfaced. One of the first things that popped up was an article titled "Bhutanese Refugees: The Story of the Forgotten People". If you want a more detailed and better written version of this history I would suggest you read this article, but I will just give a comprehensive description.

Bhutan is beneath China and over India and a little east of Nepal and has generated one of the highest numbers of refugees in the world in proportion to its population. In fact, over 105,000 Bhutanese have lived in Nepalese refugee camps for more than 15 years. A really condensed version of this tragedy shows how devastating the 80's were for the Lhotshampa people. The Lhotshampa people were an ethnic group of Bhutan making up a sixth of the population. Most were Bhutanese and some had immigration there from Nepal but regardless of what reality was, once the Government saw these people as a "threat" they took extreme measures to discriminate against this particular ethnic group by completely removing their language from the school systems, requiring them to change their ethnic clothing and even their religion. If they did not adhere to the new laws they were seen as "anti-nationalists" and therefore subject to imprisonment, torture, but ultimately expulsion. Think about it- all of a sudden you belong nowhere- no country is yours, no land is yours, you are literally a nomad overnight.

I could tell you heart wrenching stories of families losing everything they have worked for in the blink of an eye but that is not the point of this blog. I guess what I am trying to portray is the fact that this precious family is more than just an illiterate and strange couple who live in "our country" but they are survivors. They have experienced immense suffering and losses, endured refugee camps, and have finally reached freedom, well an opportunity to be free. I know they are technically free now that they are here in "The Land of the Free" but what is freedom without being able to communicate, or fill out forms, or even buy groceries? This is where I feel like I come in. I cannot get them their land back, or get their loved ones here, but I can try to be the heart of God that cries out "I WILL NOT FORGET YOU". I can try to teach them their ABC's and sing "Head and Shoulders" with them and I can laugh with them when we make silly mistakes. 

An article written about the Bhutanese labels them "Forgotten People" but Book of Life written to Tulasi, Chandra (and the rest) labels them "Sons and daughters" "Beloved" and says "Never Can a mother forget her nursing child? Can she feel no love for the child she has borne? But even if that were possible, I would not forget you! See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands." (Isaiah 49:15,16)

Jesus thank you for loving us even more than our earthly parents. Help us never forget that it is Your character to love- you are love- and there is no way we can earn it or squander it. *Amen*

(Actual names have been changed to preserve the privacy of the subjects)

Fruits of Labor (June 26th, 2013)

Today started off pretty similar to yesterday. I started out just offering the people I will be working with today to the Lord and recognizing that I need Jesus every step of the way. Wednesday mornings at World Relief start with a 30 minute prayer meeting. Sometimes there are plenty of the employees there and sometimes there is just me. I like both. I love hearing the case workers praying in Spanish, Burmese, and Ukrainian. I love hearing the American case workers praying fervently for the refugees we serve to find jobs, for God to open opportunities to get their other family members here, for the sick to be healed. It is a beautiful scene to see hearts still softened to the needs of others, no matter how redundant those issues seem. Compassion is something I have to fight to have, I know it may not seem that way, but I really struggle to feel for others day after day. It is crazy to me to see almost every single employee here really care about their "clients" (refugees) and are still not just moved to tears sometimes, but moved to prayer. I also like praying alone because I like to pull out a hunk of scripture and just pray that over the clients I work with and the workers here. Recently I have been hooked on Isaiah 42:1-7

Isaiah 42:1-8

Holman Christian Standard Bible

The Servant’s Mission

42 “This is My Servant; I strengthen Him,
this is My Chosen One; I delight in Him.
I have put My Spirit on Him;
He will bring justice^[a] to the nations.
² He will not cry out or shout
or make His voice heard in the streets.
³ He will not break a bruised reed,
and He will not put out a smoldering wick;
He will faithfully bring justice.
⁴ He will not grow weak or be discouraged
until He has established justice on earth.
The islands will wait for His instruction.”

⁵ This is what God, Yahweh, says—
who created the heavens and stretched them out,
who spread out the earth and what comes from it,
who gives breath to the people on it
and life^[b] to those who walk on it—
⁶ “I, Yahweh, have called You
for a righteous purpose,^[c]
and I will hold You by Your hand.
I will keep You and appoint You
to be a covenant for the people
and a light to the nations,
⁷ in order to open blind eyes,
to bring out prisoners from the dungeon,
and those sitting in darkness from the prison house.

Today as my Pandora started blasting All Sons and Daughters I began praying this out verse by verse, name by name, situation by situation. I was pleasantly interrupted by a lovely volunteer named Shannon who sat with me the remanding 20 minutes. We quickly discovered we both love the Middle East and she is interested in learning Arabic! I was elated; I rarely meet woman my age who are even the slightest bit interested in the Middle East.

Once I found a room available for my 3 English students, Peter Wah from Burma, Tulasi and his wife Chandra from Bhutan, I began to pull out my delicious props. Today I thought we could take a break from filling out forms and writing names and do something a little more fun...like eat! I brought an angle food cake, apples, mango, watermelon, zucchini, bell pepper, garlic and yogurt.

We of course started with the cake but it was kind of a misunderstanding. I waved hello to Tulasi and Chandra and they just followed me into the room where I was preparing the food. I was trying to tell him that I did not need them yet and that they could continue to clean our building but neither understood me or my gestures so I just made the best of my situation and we ate some cake. It was really funny to see their reaction to the cake. Tulasi was smacking so loud it sounded like a camel and Chandra did not make much noise bbut when I walked by the water station she was chugging a cup of water as fast as she could. I do not think they were impressed but I could not help but giggle.

When I had all my students together I started with apples and I cut and served them (they ate every part of the apple #hardcore), then the watermelon (which they all love), then the mango. They did a great job with the fruits and ate them all willingly. Then we moved to the zucchini bell pepper and garlic. I tried to bring things they would know and I think it was successful. They all knew the fruits and veggies and all cooked them in their own way. Peter Wah was very animated when he was showing me how he cooked the garlic and we all had a good laugh at it. The foods we ate turned into charades of what animals we ate and what animals were culturally unacceptable (like pigs and cows fro the Bhutanese who have lived in Nepal for a majority half of their lives). It then lead to looking at pictures on the internet of food which was a blast and hilarious. I looked up pictures of Nepali food which Chandra and Tulasi loved teaching me about and looked up pictures of fruit that were completely foreign to them like kiwi. One fruit chart I pulled up was cartoon and all the fruits and veggies had faces (like Veggie Tales). Through out this lesson I was asking them "do you like this" "do you like that" and they were answering yes and no. Peter Wah said yes to almost everything I pointed at but when we got to this animated fruit chart he looked really confused and kind of disgusted. I kept asking him if he liked this and I would point at something and he would reply "no no- no good" and then I would point at the apple and he would say "don't like' and finally I said "what do you mean you don't like- I just cut up all of these fruits fro you and you ate them all!". He finally pointed to the eyes and mouth on the fruits and said "no good- no like- don't eat that". I about fell out of my chair laughing. Of course he would not eat an apple or watermelon with a face. This was probably his first experience with cartoons or cartoon fruit at least. Tulasi also branched out a little bit and took a stab at drawing a picture of an animal that he ate. The picture was hilarious and I wish I would have gotten a picture but after making the animal noises I realized he was talking about a goat!

After the fruits and vegetable lesson we started with the alphabet. to my surprise and delight al three of them had their alphabet memorized! Trying to communicate that the letters of the alphabet made sounds was hard. I was trying to get them to sound out words but they would only repeat the letters for the most part. But at the very end of our two hour lesson Peter Wah read his first word! "Pam"! That name never sounded so sweet. I think I may have freaked them out a little bit because I almost jumped out of my chair when I heard him say it. Tulasi and Chandra did not read their first word but their victory was concurring the letter "F" and coming really close to being able to make the "eff" sound. I literally put my finger on Chandra lip to shove it under her teeth but we were laughing so hard it was impossible.

Yes, today has been a blessed day already and I am only half way though. Right now I am eating my tuna fish salad (that the foreign case workers are teasing me about) and waiting for my roommate to pick me up and accompany me to teach the other refugees in their home!

_________________________________________________________________________________

Today has officially come to a close and I could not help but finish this blog. Soon after I ended the first half my roommate and I drove to a Burmese apartment and taught English to a mother with 4 children. They all are basically illiterate but are doing such a great job learning English. The children are picking it up really fast! I brought over the remaining fruits and veggies and went through the process of teaching the verbs "to like, cut, cook, and eat". They did such a great job! I could not help but be so proud of every single one of them. The mother is one of the most patient woman I have ever met. She just so sweetly and shyly allows her chunky and demanding 1 year old to crawl over her and play with her face and sit on the table and whatever else he feels. It is really cute to see some of her emotions surface finally. We are finding things to laugh about and today I had the pleasure of watching her playfully hold and kiss her 1 year old. I have always known she loves him, but today I got to see that look mothers get in their eyes when they are just delighted to have their baby close to them. I do wish I could find a way to explain to her how to store food properly. There is a huge bug and roach infestation. It seems like there are most and more roaches every time I come over. The kitchen is just crawling, and today I checked out the fridge and to my dismay the bugs have infiltrated almost every item in the fridge. One of the problems could be the over flowing amount of trash which is mostly just left over peels and food. I just cannot figure out a way to communication kitchen sanitation with her because I do not speak even a fragment of her language and know little about her culture. I was encouraged by the home hygiene of the other Burmese woman I visited in the same complex. Her name is Sara and I had the blessing of being with her when she gave birth to her precious baby boy "Ring Loon". He is already 7 pounds and 11 ounces! That is almost a pound he has put on since he was born. We chatted with as little words as possible and she showed me her Burmese Bible. I tried showing her my favorite verse and realized a few moments ago that I gave her the wrong reference! ...Typical... But she was healing great and her place was super clean and organized. I was happy to be able to pray over her and Ring Loon again.

 

We then drove to a Congolese woman about my age to help her build her reading skills. We read a children's book about Joseph and the coat of many colors. She did pretty good but it was all in past tense so that was kind of hard to work through. it was so cool though because she, her husband, my roommate and I just all sat and talked for about an hour after the reading ended. I learned a lot about their family of three and a lot about Africa. As we talked about our lives, families, and countries, we talked about fears like hippo's, snakes and alligators and I showed them pictures I found on my smart phone to correlate what we were talking about. She almost threw my phone when I pulled up a hippo! We talked about very humorous and different practices like marriage. Sanga (her husband) proudly proclaimed that he had to buy 12 cows and 3 cases of beer to her father in order to marry her! I made him repeat his story a few times to make sure that I was getting it right and when he found out that in America the groom not only pays nothing for his bride, but the parents actually spend money, he could not believe it. We all had a good laugh about that topic but the giggles faded away as they started sharing stories about how genocide ripped through their villages. Sanga's mother and father both dies by getting their arms cut off and then their head, and later on in his life his first wife and 3 children were brutally murdered by a conflicting ethnic group. Sanga's wife nonchalantly gestured what they did to pregnant woman, which I do not plan on exposing, and I could not help but thank God internally for saving this family. She really has worked her way into my heart and at the end of our time together she playfully leaned into me and said "I love you". It was the first time a refugee has told me that and I tried not to expose how excited those three words made me. I love her too, and the rest of them. I love the smell of the potatoes she makes her children, the sound of the Bhutanese couple ordering each other around, the way Peter Wah shouts "TEACHA" at me whenever he has a question, I love his wife's sweet and gentle smile she gets whenever I complement her memory, I love watching the children laugh at me when I clumsily stumble through Karen words they teach me, I love hugging the Sudanese women and side kissing her cold cheeks. I just love them, and I feel so blessed to be apart of their precious lives.

Lord I am in awe of your goodness. Thank you. 

Familiar Strangers (June 24, 2013)

Today is unlike "normal" days that I typically have at World Relief. To be honest I could not tell you what a "normal" day looks like here, but I love that about this internship. This weekend the engine blew in my car and got towed to Daytona. This means that not only do I not have my English material I have been collecting for over a month, but I am not able to drive to my 4 homes I teach English in. I know I cannot control this and I should not feel guilty, but after taking a week off teaching because of having family in town, and now not having a vehicle... I feel really bad. This morning however, after I was dropped off here by a gracious best friend, I gathered together what I could and started teaching English to my 3 faithful students who show up every morning to clean World Relief for community service hours.

The Karen Flag

These students consist of a Burmese man named Peter Nay, and a Bhutanese couple, Chandra and Tulasi Koirala. Peter Nay has a tiny amount of education behind him and recognizes about 75% of the alphabet and can count to 10 in English. He is literate in his dialect of Burma (Karen) but has a serious hand tremor and therefore writing is difficult for him. The Bhutanese couple is 100% illiterate in their spoken language of Nepali, in their Bhutanese language, and in English. This has made writing very difficult to teach because they have never had to practice such foreign exercises. As of now, they know basic body parts, and a few phrases (good morning, how are you, good, thank you) and can almost say all the days of the week in order. I am trying to work on things they really need to know like "First Name, Middle Name, Last Name" "Address, City, State, Zip code". Peter Nay can now successfully fill out a form by himself with correct spelling, Tulasi is getting better at handwriting and is improving in writing the correct information in the correct places, and Chandra is getting better at copying letters and still getting a grip on spacing letters and words and writing on the lines in the appropriate places. I find myself getting frustrated not at my students, but at the lack of ability to communicate with my students where they need improvement. Lucky a young man from Bhutan helped translate corrections in writing for a few minutes. I could not be more proud of them though. I really enjoy every day at the end of class trying to ask them questions about their life.

Today we struggled through a fragmented conversation about things they liked to cook or eat. It was really interesting to see the differences in the foods they liked or did not like, and even funnier to combine a mixture of gestures, noises and pictures to describe animals, and produce they eat. The Burmese man for instance eats pork and beef, but the Bhutanese couple only eats poultry. They both eat fruits like watermelon and bananas, but the Chandra and Tulasi eat mangoes and Peter Nay does not. I know I these conversations are about as surface as you could get, but in a way we feel pretty connected to each other and almost a sense of victory when we are able to understand the points others are trying to make. It feels like we were familiar strangers, but I feel like we are now crossing the border into friends who just come from different worlds. If we can collectively laugh at least one time every English class, I consider it a success.

After English, I was informed about an Ethiopian family who needs some minor health education on sanitation and hygiene. The main issue I will deal with immediately is a case of "Ringworms". This is actually a fungus that is spread through the surface of skin and hair. I am not quite sure how I will go about treating and education this family affected by ringworm because they do not speak English and I certainly do not speak Amharic, but my goal today is to research methods of treatment and simply ways to explain (though pictures) what this is, how it spreads and how to prevent reoccurrences. I also am becoming more experienced with Social Security Income (SSI) and the different processes people have to go through in order to prove disability. Because I am the Health Intern I have been able to help, along with an interpreter, asses and document a bomb victim’s physical and mental wellness. At first I felt sympathy for the man who was a victim of the car bombing, but after filling out form after form of what his injuries affect- I feel much more then sympathy. Literally every single task, whether socially, mentally, or physically has been massively affected since the explosion. I knew the physical struggles he would suffer due to his amputation, and artificial eye, but I never really considered how his mental ability to cope was hindered, or fine motor skills like shaving or cooking would be affected. Even though it broke my heart, I really did enjoy filling out the copious and redundant forms. I liked being able to affectively articulate the pain and symptoms of his physical issues. I have also been really encouraged to see SSI respond positively to the ways I have communicated his physical condition.

Now, after gobbling down my left over Thai food, I am attempting to organize the next few days, figure out how to make up on lost hours due to my recent vacation, and start writing up health biographies on the families I visit…I love my internship.

  Isaiah 52 "This is My Servant; I strengthen Him, [this is] My Chosen One; I delight in Him. I have put My Spirit on Him; He will bring justice to the nations. He will not cry out or shout...He will faithfully bring justice. He will not grow weak or be discouraged until He has established justice on earth."
Jesus please strengthen me this week. I pray I can delight in my work here at world relief and find joy in every task you put before me. I pray I will not grow weak or discouraged because of my present situation. Give me endurance in these confusing and challenging seasons. I pray my joy never becomes contingent on my circumstances and I remember your character and your promises. *Amen* 


(Actual names have been changed for privacy purposes)