A Huge Prayer Request
I’ve told a number of you about the issues that are coming to a head in Thai refugee camps, but things are moving far faster than I expected.
To give you a bit of a background, the Thai military government (ruling as a result of the coup of a couple of months ago) likes the refugee camps even less than the previous government did. The upshot of this hostility, and the lobbying of various private organizations, is that it appears that thousands of refugees in a number of different camps are going to be resettled.
“Resettlement” is really nothing more than the opportunity of a lifetime for these people–it is a ticket to the United States or Canada, a chance to leave the utter desolation of the refugee camps and make a life for themselves. Though little is ever certain when this much bureacracy is involved, it appears that around 16,000 people in the Mae La camp alone will be given this opportunity.
Even more exciting for me, one third of the children in our orphanage are on that list. They will be part of the US’s unique Unaccompanied Refugee Minor program, which takes refugee children without close relatives and places them through the foster care systems of various states.
And there starts my work, and my prayer requests. We have a couple of goals over the next couple of months. First, of course, we would like to get all of our children on the URM resettlement list. Second, just bringing them over here would be useless, in the eternal sense, if we do not make sure they are placed in families that will encourage them to keep the faith.
And I am in way over my head. I’ve worked with bureacracy before, but there’s so much red tape on this situation that it looks like a tomato-colored mummy. I’ve written memos before, but I’ve never written anything for the Assistant Secretary of State–I don’t even know where to start.
If you would be kind enough, I would covet your prayers for me, Remember and the other organizations working on this, and the kids we’re working to help. We’re meeting with Ellen Sauerbrey at DOS in a couple of weeks; please pray for that meeting, and that her authority would “grease the rails” in our pursuits. And pray that the tangle of red tape would unravel just enough to allow us to bless these children both in this life and the next.