Our stories

Hungry for "the food of angels"

MuMu and Baw Paw, her nephew, told me that there are nine Burmese Anglican families in their neighborhood who have been waiting and longing to receive "the food of angels." I told them that Christ the King is less than eight miles from their apartment complex. We arranged for me to come back at 9:30 on Sunday morning so MuMu and her family could follow me in their minivan to Church. On Sunday, three minivans and a car full of their Anglican Karen neighbors followed me in convoy to Church. There were six rows of children in Sunday School as Tasha Jones read them the story of the Wise Men finding the Baby Jesus in Bethlehem. And there were thirty-two people added to our congregation who came forward reverently and joyfully to receive what they had missed for years ever since they moved from refugee camps on the Thai-Burmese border to this country where today at last they had found an Anglican congregation - their first Eucharist in months, maybe years. We welcomed them as sisters and brothers in Christ as we joyfully shared worship, fellowship and food with each other. All the school-going children speak English, as do many of the young adults. And their parents are keen to practice speaking the English they have been learning in adult ESL classes with us.

We are following up this first visit so that our Karen visitors become regular members of our growing multiethnic, international Eucharistic fellowship. Most of them shop at their nearby Wal-Mart on Lawrenceville Highway, and Christ the King is a few miles on the same road so we're easy to find. What a start to 2009! I wonder how many of us who have unfettered access to the Blessed Sacrament hunger and thirst for this precious spiritual food and drink as our new Anglican Karen sisters and brothers have done for months - and now at last are filled with what they have so fervently longed for.

  |    |   Share