A people of prayer and achievement

THUNGPRAU, Thailand — A quarter of a century among the Pwo Karen people is evidently not enough to dim the astonishment of an outsider at their capacity for prayer. Gerda Meinusch, a German missionary serving with the Thailand Baptist Missionary Fellowship, has now been working with the Pwo Karen in the area of Thungprau for 25 years.

“I am amazed by these people,” she says. “They are so faithful in prayer! A person may come to visit only once, yet they will continue to pray for that person for a considerable time afterwards. After tonight, they will pray for you also.”

Thungprau church is a rural Pwo Karen church near Mae Sariang, in the mountains of northern Thailand. The small church building where I spoke to Ms Meinusch slowly filled for its midweek Bible study. The people, who had done a day’s work in the fields, came in and sat on mats on the floor. The old women came first, dressed in their traditional tribal clothing of red cloth, head coverings and brightly coloured bead necklaces. Families with small children came next, followed by the young women, dressed in T-shirts and tracksuit trousers. Each had a Bible in their Pwo Karen language and a shy smile for good measure.

Learned to read

Deekang, a young mother, learned to read before there were any reading classes. It took her four years to teach herself, little by little, asking members of her family, “What does this say? What does that say?”

Before the New Testament was translated into Pwo Karen, the people only had pamphlets, Portions and Selections of Scripture, and stories from the Old Testament in a small book. Deekang now is a leader in the church and teaches in nearby Klong Pe village. If someone is sick, she is the one who goes to pray for them first. She has now been a Christian for 20 years.

Smile

Waweh’s smile was not only on her lips but in her eyes, a smile that seemed to come from deep within her. She is a young mother, too. As the sixth child in her family, she was not allowed to go to school, as her older siblings had done.

Yet when she became a Christian her desire to read the Word for herself was so strong that, with the aid of the church reading classes, she learnt to read Pwo Karen in two years. Now she is a teacher. She had a hunger to know for herself what was in the Bible.