I came from Burma, now called Myanmar. We knew that it was a dangerous journey because the government doesn’t want people to leave the country. On the border between Thailand and Myanmar we were caught by the soldiers while we were crossing a river. They were holding guns, and they told my mom and the other adults on the boat to get out of the boat and they were pointing guns. The soldiers were saying that their duty is to protect the border so they can’t let anyone escape. But then when they say me, my brother, and my sister. We were the only kids. We were young and we were small. And when they saw us, they let us go through, pass by. And they said, that if we can cross the river before anyone else sees, they will let us go. So I think God really answered our prayer.

When I started to hear about the refugee stories and the trials and the tribulations that these little kids went through, it really put a burden on my heart. The first time I went to Clarkston and I heard their stories about trying to run in the jungle and escaping from different types of soldiers that were trying to kill them, and the things that they witnessed through their own family members, and how they saw their houses burned down and how they just lived on their feet in the jungle and in the wild basically. No houses or anything. The burden on my heart was so great, I couldn’t sleep for like three nights. When I saw a lot of our kids that I went and met were sleeping on the floor and there were rats and roaches and they didn’t have a lot of food in their pantry. I felt like, you know, I’m only one person but I just prayed to God and asked Him that He would open the doors and as long as He opened them, I would walk through them.

Here in Clarkston, Georgia, the diversity is amazing for our refugee population. Time magazine calls it the most diversified square mile in the United States. Here we have 60 different countries represented with 120 different languages spoken here.

Clarkston is an area that was an Army base during the Second World War. After the war was over, of course, there was no need for the facilities there, but as the years went by the United Nations in conjunction with the United States State Department decided that it would be an ideal location to relocate refugees from overseas because there was cheap housing, albeit run down, available and there was public transportation available.”

So the living conditions here in Clarkston are really, really hard for a lot of the families. They come here and as you can see, sometimes we even forget that we’re in the United States, in America because there’s trash everywhere in the community. For example, there was a fire here and this has been over eight months ago and the building’s still here. For me, I wouldn’t want my little kid playing near that because if it falls down, obviously someone’s going to get hurt. But the refugee people, they’re people who don’t think they have a lot of entitlement. When you’re not born in a place, then you’re not going to speak up. They tend to get taken advantage of really easily. So here you find that the refugees tolerate a lot of stuff because they’re just thankful for being here.

This is where a lot of the gangs and the drugs come into play. If you’ve got some abandoned buildings, they’ll come in and they’ll sell drugs out of a building so we try to keep it clean. Because a lot of our kids actually live here and across the street and we don’t them to be involved because we want to keep them as safe as we can.

To relieve a lot of the pressures that the refugees face when they enter America, we gather furniture so they don’t have to sleep on the floor, mattresses. We get rice and beans. Just basic necessities that they have so they feel comfortable when they come here. Then we try to go and spend time with them and get to know them. And then after they stay approximately a year in an international school and learn a little bit of English, then we will look at taking them and trying to sponsor them for education in a private school. That way they have a really good foundation.