The Lion is on the move in Myanmar. As the Son of God breathes on the snow-covered hills of what was once called Burma, we can now begin to see lush green meadows crowned with the flowers of faith.

Shut off from the rest of the world for many years by a repressive military junta, the work our forefathers began has continued to grow beneath the fertile soils of persecution. Like the beleaguered soldiers of Valley Forge, they have survived the winter and they are ready for battle. With a little help from their friends across the sea, they will emerge victorious.

During the first two weeks of January 2013, I was went to Myanmar with some much-needed encouragement, teaching, and aid to the Kingdom workers preaching the Gospel, training pastors, and caring for fatherless children.

It was my great honor to travel the 8,500 miles around the world to Yangon to represent my brothers and sisters back home and support the work of national Pastor Naing Thang. There, in the coastal city which boasts a population of four million, 95% of which are Buddhists, Pastor Thang lives in a small ministry compound with his family. Living with him were fifteen orphaned children, six Bible school students, and two full-time staff members. The way they lived and worked together was very humbling to witness firsthand, and I was inspired by how much they were able to do with so little.

Watching them lovingly prepare meals for forty-two on the coals of a fire in their backyard filled my heart with gratitude for the goodness and God. Seeing the orphans living as a large happy family lifted me with joy and admiration.

“We have prayed for our brothers in America that God would allow them to come and teach us,” Pastor Thang said. “We feel like orphaned children ourselves, and we need a father to take care of us.”

From my time with them, I have come to see we have a lot to learn from them too.

It was a great honor to represent such good men and serve my brothers and sisters in Myanmar. In addition, to the many hours a day of teaching, I spent a great deal of time interviewing the dozen elders who traveled as far as six hundred miles across roadless jungles, rivers and, in the case of two Kachin State church leaders, through an active battlefield risking their lives. These elders, along with their families and all the families of their church, had been living in a refugee camp for more than a year since all their homes were destroyed by the war.

Hearing the stories of how God used Pastor Thang to bring them to Christ and prepare them for the posts at the 15 churches he established serving more than 3,300 people, was like reading from the pages of the Book of Acts.

Hearing how they did it, and keep doing it, without one of them having a car or motorcycle, only one of them having a phone, and with virtually no help, gives me faith and hope. Faith and hope in the power of the “One,” Pastor Thang is quick to remind anyone, “Who has all things.”

We have so much and seem to do so little with it. They have so little and do so very much with it.

Standing in the doorway of the dorm where their older orphans and Bible School students sleep and seeing ten metal framed bunk beds filling every inch of the tiny room, reminds me how God uses little things for his glory. Watching one guitar passed between several of these young men, I thought of the countless unplayed instruments no doubt filling closets and lying under dusty beds back home.

I thought to myself, “If they could do all this with what they have, what could they do with a little more?”

What a pleasure it has been since that fateful trip to become part of their work. While I was there, I thought of my friends and fellow elders back home and how their hearts would burn in love for their co-laborers if only they could know them.

I resolved to help make that happen for anyone who wanted to know.

I learned their names, their wives names, the number and ages of their children. Some of their wives had just given birth, and others had grown sons working with them in the ministry. One man was hurrahed for having nine children, another goaded for needing a wife. We talked and laughed together until my face hurt from smiling and laughing. My leg hurt from slapping it myself and being whacked by my exuberant new friends as we reveled in the goodness of God.

Next, I learned their church names and heard their conversion stories. Then I and asked them what they prayed for and wanted to see God do in their lives.

As I listened, I began to love them more. I have come to understand that their many stories, and a look into these hearts God has changed for his glory, are the great treasures I brought home from my trip. For me, this became discovered gold in a land often referred to in some way or another as golden.

My first Sunday home I shared the epistle that has been Pastor Thang’s life with our church. Their eyes were wide with amazement at the faithfulness of God in his life. At that time, our church had developed an annual tradition with a special focus on evangelism from January until Saint Patrick’s Day. On the weekend closest to that day we celebrate the life of the great evangelist who brought the Good News to the people of Ireland. We feast and dance and bring money we have worked all year to raise for the work of evangelism, and we call it Sons of Saint Patrick.

The stories we discovered in Southeast Asia in the country more well-known as Burma, have weaved their way into the fabric of our lives. To involve others we launched a ministry called Mission To Myanmar and fundraising platforms like Change Thru Change and Miles 4 Myanmar.

Since that time we keep telling those who want to know about men like Pastor Kee Noe working in Rakhine State in Myanmar. How he left his home in the mountains of Chin State to lead six churches in a dangerous land. How he gave all, living away from his family doing his best to care for these converts like the Good Shepherd without a place of his own to lay his head. How this little precious saint did this for years without a phone or even a way to travel, other than on foot or with a bicycle. This is until God blessed us to be able to buy him his own motorcycle and phone and provide the food he needed to continue his work. His life and so many other continue to challenge and inspire us.

We tell about a girl who came to Christ and wanted to show her gratitude to God for saving her. How she worked day and night for five years teaching and caring for the children at Pastor Thang’s home. Her only pay was the work itself. We love to tell others about the hopes and dreams of the Bible school students graduating from Reformation Theological Seminary of Yangon to start churches and pray God makes a way for them. We continue to ask all to join us in prayer for the constant stream of orphans being cared for at two orphanages we support there.

I knew that when others heard the story of how one church in Myanmar worked for three years to have a place they could meet for worship only to be stopped by the government and the story of another church whose roof blew off in a typhoon, they would want to encourage them and help if they could. What has come of these faith dreams has be a dream come true for our family and church.

Before I left Yangon after my first visit, which was for me a very sad day indeed, mixed with the joy and blessings waiting for me at home and the sorrow of not seeing my new friends’ faces for a long time, I asked them for a favor.

I asked them to send us more stories. I told them we wanted to share in their joys and sorrows. We wanted to know when they made converts, when babies were born, and when people were baptized. I also asked them to let us know what they prayed for and what they suffered so we could share in that as well.

Before I left for Myanmar the first time, several people sent money with me to meet needs as I encountered them. Those funds made it possible to do a great deal of good. Two new guitars, a Yamaha keyboard, a two-speaker sound system, a pedal sewing machine as well as a good start on a new roof for the orphanage in Rakhine State were the first fruits of tiny efforts.

Since that day together with our many partners we have raised nearly one million dollars; built at least five churches; built several orphanage buildings and a three-story ministry complex in Yangon serving the orphanage, RTS, and their nationwide outreach they call Foundation Church of Myanmar; purchased a four-wheel-drive truck and numerous motorcycles as well as funded more than one self-sufficiency effort. By God’s grace we have relieved disasters, supplied medical teams, graduated several classes, offered countless hours of training and teaching, and even conducted small evangelistic crusades in a country where it’s still a felony to make a convert to Jesus Christ.

In the Spring of 2020, after doing interviews for eight years and traveling deep into the jungles and native villages of these people, we published a book about the amazing life story of Pastor Naing Thang and the history of Christianity in Myanmar, a story that people will be telling and retelling for generations. The book is called Myanmar Gold.

Pray for us that God would grant us wisdom with the best way to love and care for our brothers and sisters in Myanmar.

A Little Burma/Myanmar Backstory

The first missionary to come to Burma and stay, was also the one of the first protestant missionaries sent from America to any foreign field. His name was Adoniram Judson. Pastor Naing Thang of Yangon is building on what Judson started.

In the summer of 1788 in a small colonial town, a minister and his wife were blessed with their firstborn son. Here, from this city of firsts, Malden, Massachusetts, the Kingdom of God would boast a greater first for the expansion of the Gospel on the golden shores of an exotic land.

By the grace of God, the supporters of this ministry are working in the Gospel field prepared by the toil and suffering this good man of God and being continued by Pastor Naing Thang. With your help, we can continue lending a hand to those bringing in the harvest.

Malden, Massachusetts, where Judson was born, was the first city among the New World colonies to print a code of law among the colonies, first to refuse to drink the British-taxed tea, and yet again first to petition the colonial government to withdraw from the British Empire. These Puritans, living on the banks of the Malden River would boast yet another first from this burgeoning family.

The Judson family named their son Adoniram.

This boy, whose name means, “My Lord is exalted,” would glorify the name of the Lord by being among the first protestant missionaries sent from the New World and first to translate the Bible into the Burmese language. His Bible, is the same Bible still in use there today.

The agonizing story of this man’s suffering in his work in Burma can only be endured knowing the glory of what his work accomplished. Sewing the lives of two wives and six children into the soil of this endeavor, he fulfilled the words of a passionate vow, a vow he made in a letter when questioned by those who sent him on his mission.

By the end of his first six years, only one man had turned from idols to Christ. The people back home were beginning to wonder.

When Judson received a letter from the Mission Board in America questioning the fruit of his ministry, he answered, "The prospects are as bright as the promise of God." By this time he had lost two sons, one stillborn in a storm during the five month journey to Rangoon and another to a fever at age two. "I will not leave Burma," he declared, "until the cross is planted here forever!"

Soon after this declaration was made, Judson was imprisoned by the Burmese government who was now at war with England. He was tortured nearly two years and almost lost many years of translation work he had written on dried palm leaves.

God preserved his life and work through his wife as she worked to free him, sneak provisions to his cell, and continue his translation work.

His agonizing story stands as one of the most trying stories of a missionary for the cause of Christ and is told in the book To the Golden Shore by Courtney Anderson.

In the end, he died at sea and was buried at sea in the Bay of Bengal like his firstborn son, but not until he had done what he had set out to do. When he left the world, Judson left behind more than seventy established churches and many trained pastors and translators to continue his work.

The Chin People

Excerpt from Myanmar Gold:

It was easy to see that the road to Burma’s revival was going to be rough, but at least now there was a road. Following the road that the Judsons cut into Burma, thirty-nine years later yet another American couple pushed deeper into Burma’s interior, becoming the first missionaries in the Chin hills. As you can see, the body of Christ in America and His church in Burma have been vitally connected since their beginnings. Arthur Carson, of Columbus Junction, Iowa, came to Burma to join his fiancé, Laura Hardin, in July of 1886. They had met studying to enter the ministry and were soon engaged. Laura, who was from Nebraska, felt prompted to give herself to the difficult work of the church, perhaps in China, she thought. When she shared her heart with the Women’s Baptist Foreign Missionary Society, they told her there was a great need to find women willing to serve in Burma. “I will go where I am needed most,” Laura said, as the women of the missionary society shared more of what they had heard. Three years before her fiancé came to Burma, Laura went on ahead to begin the tedious task of learning the Burmese language. She worked as a teacher in the river city of Bassein.

In the fall of 1889 after he finished his degree, Arthur immediately set sail across the Atlantic. Upon his arrival in Burma, the young couple immediately married and started their work in Bassein (now called Pathein), the capital city of the Ayeyarwady Region. Ten grueling years later, with only one short furlough and now two baby boys, the happy and hard-working couple volunteered to try to become the first known missionaries to the Chin people. Time and again they met Chin men and women in the cities and heard of their many unreached mountain communities and their deplorable poverty. Despite countless trials, they were able to make the six-hundred-mile journey up the Pathein River by steamship to the Irrawaddy River and then, over land, deeper still north to the ancient city of Hakha. When they arrived there, in the capital of Chin State on February 15, 1899, they became the first missionaries dedicated to evangelizing the Chin. Just after their arrival, confronted on all sides by overwhelming scenes, Laura told her husband that she would go anywhere in the world he wanted to serve, but she would not stay there. These people disgusted her sensibilities, she said, and left her hopeless. She wept bitterly, begging her husband to take her away, despairing over the wretched condition of these people. With some strong urging from her husband and the Holy Spirit, she not only stayed, but outlived him and continued his work for an additional twelve years. Together with her husband, she had labored translating the book of Matthew into the Chin language. After his death from a ruptured appendix with no doctor to treat him, she pressed on to complete Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts, as well as a book of Christian hymns for the Chin to sing. She also gave them the first Chin dictionary as she continued establishing new schools. The work these two young people started is credited with Christianizing nearly ninety percent of the Chin. Some have been bold enough to call these two who willingly poured themselves out as an offering to their Lord, “the apostles to the Chin.” Even with all they were able to accomplish, it’s doubtful they would ever have accepted such a lofty title as this. Like so many other pioneers of the faith, their work was lonely, very difficult, and seemingly fruitless for the first six years. It was that long before they saw their first convert. The Carson’s missionary story can be read in the book, Pioneer Trails, Trials and Triumphs, which was written by Laura after she was forced to return home to America in 1920. (Foundations of Grace republished it in April of 2020.)

Laura remarried and thankfully lived to the ripe old age of eighty-three to tell her story. Their example stands as an incredible lesson in faithful perseverance.

Pastor Naing Thang is a fruit of Judson’s work. The Gospel reached his small village in Mindat Township in Chin State years before he was born. He was raised by his parents with the knowledge of Christ.

Living in one of the most remote places on earth, Pastor Naing Thang said he was quickened by the power of God even as a child.

“I looked up one day while taking a walk at the ripe fields ready to harvest and I felt God speak to my heart,” he said, remembering that day. “The words of Matthew came to me, ‘The harvest is plenteous and the laborers are few.’”

Barely out of grade school, Pastor Thang fleeced God to see if he had indeed called him to preach His word.

There was a place he would go, about three miles away from his village, to pray and mediate on God’s word. His fleece would be a very hard thing. “I wanted my people to start new with the things of God. I wanted all of us to leave our village and move to the beautiful place where I prayed and spent time with God.”

Pastor Thang’s fleece was that when he shared this with the villagers, they would agree to leave their homes and all work together to build a new village where they could live for the glory of God.

He knew this was a very hard thing to ask and that he was just a boy, but believed if God was with him, He could cause them to listen to him and make the move. At first, when he shared his dream with them, they laughed and told him his idea was crazy. But he kept asking.

“Finally, when they didn’t listen, I became discouraged and began to wonder myself if God had spoken,” he said. “But then, something amazing began to happen. The people began to pack up their things and move to the new village site.”

Hearing his story brings to mind the words God spoke to Jeremiah at his calling:

Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak. Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord. Then the Lord put forth his hand, and touched my mouth. And the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth. See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant. (Jeremiah 1:7-10)

From that day forward Pastor Thang’s story is filled with evidence of the strong hand of God. God provided for his needs and gave him people willing to hear the message of Christ in many places far from his home. Like Adoniram Judson before him, Pastor Thang first traveled hundreds of miles from his village to the big city of Rangoon (now called Yangon). From there he traveled each year to Rakhine State, back home to Chin State, and up to Kachin State. Many received his message, and he began forming them into churches.

At one point as he taught in a home in Yangon, government officials told him that they would kill him if he did not stop preaching. They also said they would bring a great deal of trouble to those who came to listen, if he did preach.

Loving the people, Pastor Thang said he did not want the people he had been teaching to suffer, he agreed to quit.

“As I lay in my bed,” Pastor Thang remembered, “I felt like I was smothering, like I would die if I laid there. I thought to myself, ‘If I am going to die if I stay here and not preach and die if I preach, I’d rather die preaching.’”

When Pastor Thang told the authorities he would be preaching again they warned him that they would kill him. He told them he understood and if they wanted to kill him they could do so now, before he started preaching again. They thought he had gone mad and drove him from their office.

But, when he began teaching again, they sent a man to stop him. While he was teaching one evening, a man stood up and stabbed him with a spike and drove it into his chest.

Pulling open the collar of his shirt and leaning down he showed the triangle shaped scar in his chest.

He also showed the two-foot long spike used by the man which one of the men there that day had saved.

This and many other stories fill the pages of Pastor Thang’s life of ministry. He is thankful for the work of Judson and how his hard work has made his work easier.

When Adoniram Judson died at age 61, after giving nearly four decades to Burma, his son Edward summed up a great truth as he spoke about his father: “Suffering and success go together. If you are succeeding without suffering, it is because others before you have suffered; if you are suffering without succeeding, it is that others after you may succeed.”

Judson probably illustrated this truth as much as any man who ever lived. May we help him continue his work in Myanmar by helping Pastor Naing Thang in his work in the fertile soils of Myanmar.

To hear the full story read Myanmar Gold.