Reaching Out to Refugees
Ray and I meet many heroes and heroines at homeschool conventions. One of the heroines I met at the St. Louis convention last weekend encouraged me with stories of her family’s full-time ministry to Burmese refugees living in Kansas City. Johanna spoke with love and compassion about these precious people who have fled to America because of persecution of believers in their homeland. She said that Burmese refugees long to be back home, but they simply cannot be home because they are not safe.
When I wondered about how these people in a Buddhist country came to believe in our Savior, Johanna told me that they are descendants of people whom Adoniram Judson taught in the first half of the 1800s. Judson was an American missionary who not only taught the Burmese people, but also translated the Bible into Burmese and wrote a Burmese dictionary still in use today.
Johanna is grateful that her children are growing up with constant contact with these refugees. What powerful lessons they are learning in their unique homeschooling circumstances.
One of the refugees Johanna and her family know is a student at a local community college. This young woman asked for help with a need they didn’t expect. She said that some of the American students at her college don’t know Jesus. She wanted help so that she would know the English words to use to teach them.
Oh, give thanks to the Lord, call upon His name;
Make known His deeds among the peoples.
Psalm 105:1
And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying,
“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.
Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father
and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all that I commanded you;
and lo, I am with you always,
even to the end of the age.”
Matthew 28:18-20