About

My calling

What do you do when you’re an expat freelance journalist living in Hong Kong who has just been discharged from hospital after three and a half months following ‘minor’ brain surgery to discover that; your landlord has evicted you; the government and two credit card companies are after you for non-payment of bills; you’ve got no work; half of your old friends have emigrated and you realise you no longer know most of the people attending your church on Sunday morning?

In my case, I decided to become a missionary, to be the hands and feet of Christ, to be His witness in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth [Acts 1:8].

After three months as a volunteer at Nehemiah Boys Home, a home for street children run by Christ for Asia in Cebu City in the Philippines I was convicted of my calling and began looking for a longer placement. In the end, I joined a solidarity team from Christian Solidarity Worldwide Hong Kong that was going to northern Thailand, near the border with Burma to visit members of the Karen ethnic minority in refugee camps along the border.

Kawthoolei, the Karen homeland in southern Burma has been the site of a violent civil war as Burma’s military junta tries to suppress Karen claims for an autonomous state. In the camps in Thailand, you hear stories of forced labour, rape, murder and torture being committed on a massive scale.

Despite over 50 years of armed struggle against seemingly impossible odds, the mainly Christian Karen remain faithful to the point of risking their lives to help others. I was really struck by a sign above the pulpit in a small church in a village we visited on the Burmese side of the border. It was a verse of scripture, Revelation 2:10, “be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.” (KJV)

Suddenly, my own level of faith and commitment to serving seemed very small. However, what was even more shocking was realizing upon returning to Hong Kong that hardly anyone there knew about the 100,000 refugees in Thailand or the estimated one million plus Internally Displaced Persons on the run in the jungle inside Burma.

And, this is happening today, a few hours drive from Chiang Mai!

Email me: shane@shaneabrahams.com