By Mark H. Hunter, Special to the Message
BATON ROUGE – The melody of the hymn drifting out the open windows of Parkview Baptist’s “old sanctuary” sounded familiar but the words were completely foreign.[img_assist|nid=7278|title=Worship|desc=Joseph Ki (left) and his wife Aye Myint, holding baby Li Hleih Ki, sing the hymn, “Have Thine Own Way, Lord,” during a recent service of the Myanmar Christian Fellowship meeting at Parkview Baptist Church.|link=none|align=right|width=100|height=68]
“Count your many blessings, see what God has done,” was being sung in the Kachin language by Burmese refugees who fled their Southeast Asia home of Myanmar because of religious persecution.
About two dozen men, women, teenaged boys and girls have been meeting at Parkview Baptist each Sunday afternoon since late January to worship in their own language. Not all the group’s members are Baptists, explained Nhkum Lama, one of the leaders, so they named their group the Myanmar Christian Fellowship.
“We are very glad we have a place to worship God and so we can have our children in Sunday School,” Lama said. “We are very thankful to Parkview Baptist.”
When Lama, 36, was seven years old he watched Myanmar soldiers shoot his father, he said. He and others from his village fled to Malaysia, where they lived until 1997, before coming to America. He finally arrived in Baton Rouge in June 2010, with his wife and three children, thanks to a Catholic Charities resettlement program.
Lama is a member of the Myanmar Baptist Convention and a sub-group, the Kachin Baptist Convention. Lama contacted the Baptist Association of Greater Baton Rouge and its then-director Rodrick Conerly in November 2010. Conerly made arrangements with Parkview Baptist for the worship space and a van for transportation.
“God used Roddy Conerly to bring them to us,” said Parkview’s senior pastor, Collin Wimberly. “They are brothers and sisters in Christ. They needed a place to meet and we have that place. They are persecuted believers!”
Lama and Lal Sum Thang, the group’s chairman, take turns preaching. During the recent service, Thang, 41, preached a stirring 30-minute sermon on the life of Moses. God used Moses’ mother to raise him to lead his people out of Egyptian bondage, he said in Kachin language as children tottered among the audience or slept in parent’s arms. God is also using you, he said to the mothers, to raise your children as Christians.
Myanmar is run by the military and Buddhism is the dominant religion with neither group showing any respect for Christianity, Thang said. Their journey to America began five years ago and they spent two years in Malaysia before making it here last year.
“They don’t want Christians,” Thang said. “They say it is a ‘western religion.’ They give us a lot of trouble. We cannot live in my village. We need to run away. The army comes and kills our animals or takes them for themselves.”
Thang said he grew up “a Gospel Baptist,” and learned about Jesus attending Sunday School with his siblings. “My father took us to church.”
Linda Chin, 23, arrived in Baton Rouge on Dec. 9, 2010, she said with a big smile, after living in a Malaysia refugee camp for three years. While many of the Baton Rouge refugees speak little English, Chin is fairly fluent.
“I was forced to attend military training and since my childhood I was forced to labor in the fields without pay,” Chin said. “We suffered. They even made us work on Christmas and Easter so we could not go to church.
“We didn’t have the freedom to worship God,” Chin said. “I never want to go back. We feel safe here. We feel our lives are safe here.”
Editor’s Note: The Myanmar Christian Fellowship needs a van. Parkview Baptist provides one van for services but the group needs another one for transportation to church from the apartment complex where many of the group live in north Baton Rouge and to transport them to shopping, work, etc., according to Nhkum Lama. Any church interested in helping them please contact Rev. Collin Wimberly at Parkview Baptist at 225-293-2820.