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By Jeff Dewsbury
WE FOUND out about the Karen after receiving an email requesting bunk beds for refugee families who were soon to arrive.
In a simple follow-up query, our family learned more than 100 men, women and children would be moving out of bamboo homes in refugee camps on the Thai/Burmese border, and coming to live within walking distance of our home in Langley.
What a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to suddenly have an entire community land on one's doorstep - a chance to be part of a cross-cultural experience, without worrying about passport hold ups and the side effects of anti-malaria drugs. There are now more than 200 Karen living in two blocks of downtown Langley - and more are on the way.
The determination of Burma's military junta to exterminate the Karen (and other minority groups, such as the Karenni, Mon, Shan, Chin and Arkan) knows no bounds. The details - which I won't go into here - are brutal in the extreme, and I sometimes wish I had never heard them. As in other manifestations of genocide throughout the world, the perpetrators are creative in their depravity.
In 1992, Burmese Major General Ket Sein publicly announced the government's intention to exterminate the Karen within one decade, adding that the only way to see one of these people in the future would be to go to a museum. Thankfully, this dictatorship has fallen far short of its goal.
When we arrive at our friends' apartment, their children greet us before we even make it to the front door - wrapping their arms around our sons Manny and Nick, and ushering them in. The unabashed display of affection is a profound blessing that we look forward to every time we visit.
I resist calling our relationship with the Karen anything other than friendship. Labeling it 'ministry' just doesn't seem accurate - or, to be honest, respectful. As friends, we don't have an agenda, or a vision statement - and we don't feel any pressure to measure success. We are part of each other's lives, and our country has become theirs.
As we watch our kids play with their Karen friends, my wife and I feel we have been adopted by them, not the other way around. It seems unfathomable that they might have been killed or enslaved in their homeland.
Admittedly, it's a pretty big step to knock on the door of a complete stranger - who doesn't speak your language, and has a different set of cultural cues and rules than you do; but I wish more families would do it.
The blessings that pour out of such a simple gesture are many. And, to be blunt, if we ignore the simple needs down the block, all our lofty talk about changing the world carries a resounding hollow tone.
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Within the grand story woven throughout the scriptures is the plight of the refugee. The wanderers, the displaced, those searching for peace, are integral to the message of God's hope and sovereignty.
Thus, the sentiment to find out where God is moving, then get on board (preached loudest, perhaps, by U2's Bono and his cohorts in our age) seems so appropriate, when a large group of refugees falls from the sky and sets up shop in the middle of one's town - turning it, in effect, into a biblical 'city of refuge.'
It's a message liberating in its simplicity. Yet, though there is a group of dedicated volunteers (from local Catholic and Protestant churches), there are still many Karen families who need a Canadian partner family to come alongside them. They need support, as they transition from their once simple lives to the complexities of Canadian society.
This Canada Day, our family celebrated a year no one could have predicted. When we made plans for the summer of 2007, we didn't have 'teach a newcomer how to change a lightbulb' or 'try to explain what junk mail is' on the list.
But this year, we were blessed by a long list of little surprises. We saw the faces of children swimming in a pool for the first time; and we had the privilege of worshipping beside believers who, not long ago, sang the same songs from clearings cut out of the jungle across the globe.
Though I wish, for their sake, the Karen had the chance to raise future generations in a peaceful, pastoral homeland in the historical 'rice bowl of Asia,' I'm still thankful God made us neighbours here in Langley.
To find out more about the Karen refugees in the Lower Mainland, visit: www.kareninitiative.com
August 2008
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