Into the Mountains with the Karen

After the grief of Christmas, the new-year break was a mercy. Philip celebrated the foster boys' birthdays together — two turning sixteen that year, two others fourteen — taking each to choose a new shirt and trousers and sharing an ice-cream cake they had to blow out fast before it melted. A YWAM group, accompanied by Mark from Hawaii, came to help with the water supply at Ieang's house and built a low wall beneath it to keep the dogs out.

Then came a long-promised journey. A teacher from the mountains, Chawaliet, had invited Philip three years earlier, and now Philip closed his eyes to all the island work and made the trip — taking the two oldest boys, Wud and Tine, along for the cultural exposure. It was a bus ride and then a five-hour drive into remote Karen country near the Myanmar border: pristine forest, the tallest bamboo he had ever seen, and a village so different from the Moken's — houses set far apart, spotlessly clean, each with its own vegetable garden and fruit trees.

They were welcomed with a house to sleep in and piles of blankets against the sixteen-degree mountain cold, watched Karen children and teenagers tell stories through traditional dance, and taught an English class in which the boys helped out. The community opened its heart, sending them home with more than they had brought — rice, bundles of vegetables, gifts pressed on them by families who apologised for having little to give. The boys were deeply moved. They told Philip they wanted to help these people come to know the Lord, and wished the Moken could be like the Karen — who accepted them at once, and never once thought less of them for not being like themselves.