"Pray for freedom."

This was the response of the Karen man who sat with his family in the Mae La refugee camp, when asked how The Church could pray for the persecuted of Burma. Visiting the camp was - good and unbearable and exciting and amazing and real. Yes, so very real. I have thought for so long work within a camp is what I felt most called to do, and it was strange to suddenly experience that moment. To see in the flesh what I have dreamed of for years. Less... dramatic I guess and more... tangible. These are very real people who have experienced more than any of us could ever know. And they were standing right in front of me. The camp, sitting a few kilometers from the border, is encased in barbed wire and gates - to protect, but really to contain the people within. The Mae La camp is home to roughly 50,000 refugees - mainly Karen who wait in hopes of someday being able to return to their homeland. Other camps house Karenni and Shan.In the camp, life continues more or less. There is a heaviness to the air; the heaviness of parents who have no idea where their children are, of wives who witnessed the murder of husbands, of children who watched in terror as their mothers were raped before their eyes. The heaviness is attached to a horror very, very real. It was because of this that I left with a very full heart. It did not have the affect on me that seeing poverty for the first time often has. I have seen poverty before. It was the knowledge that these people before me had experienced gross injustices; their lives shattered; their families murdered; their futures forever changed.

I visited an orphanage/children's hostel inside the camp - children who either have no parents or children whose parents are still on the run in Burma, and have sent them out to attend school in the refugee camps. There, I met a father who has been in hiding with his pregnant wife and two small children. They just came out of Burma a few months ago for his wife to deliver the baby (medical care in the jungle for those in hiding is non-existent) and because one of his daughters is very, very ill. The two girls, who appeared to be about 3, came and sat near me. "Are they twins?" I asked, unable to identify the sick one. No, the youngest is three. Sheetja, the sick one, is nearly seven. I stared in disbelief. Leukemia is eating away the very flesh of her body. The family has nowhere to stay, so is sleeping and eating at the children's hostel where they are trying to get Sheetja care before it is too late. Perhaps it is too late already. Sometimes, they are able to drive her into Mae Sot, where Dr. Cynthia's clinic for refugees and migrants (http://www.maetaoclinic.org) gives her blood transfusions. But she needs more than transfusions. The medicine she needs for leukemia is expensive and getting out of the camp to get the medical care is difficult if not impossible. The father, love and concern for his family gleaming from his eyes, is subdued. His daughter is dying. Once his wife delivers, he will return to Burma. Return to hiding. Hope that peace comes soon. Hope that he is making the best decision. None of his options are good.

We drove away from the camp in silence.