အနွံ ၁၁
ကိးထီၣ်ယွၤလၢတၢ်ကိၢ်တၢ်ဂီၤ
စံးထီၣ်ပတြၢၤ ၅ဝ:၁၅ – ‘‘ဒီးလၢတၢ်ကိၢ်တၢ်ဂီၤအမုၢ်တနံၤန့ၣ်ကိးထီၣ်ယၤတက့ၢ်. ဒီးယကမၤပူၤဖျဲးနၤ, ဒီးနကမၤလၤကပီၤယၤလီၤ.’’
ကစၢ်ယွၤမၤတီအကလုၢ်ထီဘိဘၣ်ဆၣ်ပဝဲဒၣ်ပှၤကညီသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်ပသးဒ့ဒီထီဘိလၢပတၢ်ကွၢ်ဆၢၣ်မဲာ်အပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဖဲ ၂၀၁၉ လါဒံၣ်စဲဘၢၣ် ၂၅သီ, ယနီၢ်ကစၢ်ဃုာ်ဒီးပှၤမၤသကိးတၢ်ဖိခဲလၢာ် လၢ ခီၣ်လရၣ်ဒိၣ် အဖရံၣ်ကဲၣ်န် တၢ်ကရၢကရိ (Colorado African Organization), အတၢ်မၤတအိၣ်လၢၤ မ့ၢ်လၢ ပတၢ်ကရၢကရိ ဘၣ်တၢ်ကးတံာ်ဃာ်အီၤခီဖျိလၢတၢ်ဂ့ၢ်တနီၤအဃိ လီၤ. တၢ်ဆါလၢအမ့ၢ် COVID-19 စးထီၣ်စ့ၢ်ကီးအသးအဃိ တၢ်နးတၢ်ဖှီၣ်လီၤကထၢဝဲန့ၣ်လီၤ. ယစးထီၣ်မၤတၢ်လၢ တၢ်ကရၢကရိအဝဲန့ၣ် ဖဲ ၂၀၁၀ လၢယွၤအဘျုးအဖှိၣ်အဃိန့ၣ်လီၤ. တမ့ၢ်လၢယအတၢ်သ့တၢ်ဘၣ်, တၢ်ကူၣ်ဘၣ်ကူၣ်သ့အဃိ ဘၣ်. မ့မ့ၢ်တခီ မ့ၢ်ဒၣ်ယွၤဃုထၢယၤလၢ ယကဘၣ်မၤတၢ်မၤလၢယပှၤကလုာ်ဒီး ကလုာ်ဒူၣ်သ့ၣ်တဖၣ်အဂီၢ်န့ၣ် ယသ့ၣ်ညါယဲ လီၤတံၢ်လီၤဆဲးန့ၣ်လီၤ. မ့ၢ်အဂ့ၢ်ဒ်လဲၣ်န့ၣ်, ဖဲယဟဲတုၤ ဝ့ၢ်ဒဲဘၢၣ်, ခီၣ်လရၣ်ဒိၣ် ဖဲ ၂၀၀၈န့ၣ်, ယထီၣ်ဘၣ်ယဲ တၢ်ဖံးတၢ်မၤ အတၢ်သ့တၢ်ဘၣ် အတၢ်မၤလိ (Work Intensive Skills Camp) ဝံၤအလီၢ်ခံ ပဘၣ်လဲၤလီၤမၤလိတၢ် ခီဖျိပပိာ်ပှၤအခံဒ် အကဒုဒီးကွၢ်လိမၤလိတၢ် (Work Shadow) ၃သီ န့ၣ်လီၤ. ဘၣ်ဆၣ် မ့ၢ်လၢယၤဒီးယဟံၣ်ဖိဃီဖိပအိၣ်ဒီး တၢ်ဘၣ်ထံၣ်လိာ်သး လၢကသံၣ်သရၣ်အဃိ ယလဲၤဘၣ်ထဲခံသီန့ၣ်လီၤ. လၢတၢ်ခံသီအတီၢ်ပူၤ ယဟဲက့ၤဟီၣ်ယဲကိးမုၢ်ဟါဒဲးခီဖျိလၢ တၢ်မၤတဖၣ်န့ၣ် ယတၢ်အိၣ်မူဒီတစိၤညါ ယတမၤဘၣ်ယဲ နီတဘျီဘၣ်အဃိလီၤ. ဘၣ်ကၢလီၢ်ဖူ, ဘၣ်မၤကဆှဲကဆှီတၢ်ဟးလီၢ်, ဃုာ်ဒီးဒၢး အါအါဂီၢ်ဂီၢ်, မၤလၢအချ့ချ့လီၤ. တမၤဘၣ်ယဲဒ်န့ၣ်နီတဘျီဘၣ်. ဖဲယဟဲက့ၤဟီၣ်တဘျီလၢ်လၢ် ယဝၤတဲယၤ “နမၤမ့ၢ်တကဲ တလိၣ်နမၤဘၣ်.” ဖဲန့ၣ်ယစးထီၣ်ဃ့ကညးကစၢ်ယွၤလၢ, “ယွၤဧၢ, ယသ့ၣ်ညါလၢနဆိၣ်ဂ့ၤယၤထီဘိစးထီၣ်လၢယနီၢ်ဆံးခါ တုၤလီၤလၢခဲအံၤလီၤ. ယတမၤဘၣ်တၢ်မၤ ဃၢဃၢစုာ်စုာ်နီတဘျီဘၣ်. တၢ်မၤအဝဲအံၤယမၤတကဲဘၣ်. ဟ့ၣ်ဘၣ်ယၤတၢ်မၤလၢ အကြၢးဒီးယၤန့ၣ် မ့ၢ်ယတၢ်ဃ့ဝံသးစူၤနၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ယတၢ်ကူၣ်ဘၣ်ကူၣ်သ့မ့ၢ်တထီၣ်ဘးလၢထံကီၢ်အံၤအပတီၢ်ဘၣ်ဆၣ်ဟ့ၣ်ယၤ တၢ်မၤလၢ အကြၢးဒီးယၤတက့ၢ်.” ယဃ့ဘါထုကဖၣ်လၢမဲာ်ထံမဲာ်နိထီဘိအဃိ ယွၤဃုထၢန့ၢ်ယၤ ကျဲညီကဒၣ်လၢ ယကမၤဘၣ် တၢ်ဒ် ပှၤနဲၣ်ဒီးဟူးဂဲၤမၤစၢၤတၢ်လၢတၢ်တဝၢအပူၤ (Community Navigator) ဖဲ Colorado African Organization လီၤ. တလိၣ် ယဘၣ်လဲၤနုာ်လီၤ တၢ်သမံသမိး (Interview) ဒၣ်လဲာ်ဘၣ်. ပှၤလၢယတသ့ၣ်ညါထံၣ်ဘူနီတဘျီ လၢအမ့ၢ်ဝဲ ယတၢ်မၤ ခိၣ် (Supervisor) ဟဲဝဲလၢယဟံၣ်, မၤပှဲၤလံာ်လဲၢ်ခဲလၢာ်, ဒီးဟ့ၣ်ယၤတၢ်မၤလၢအမ့ၢ်ဝဲ (Community Navigator) န့ၣ်လီၤ. ဒ်ယတဲတ့ၢ်လၢထးအသိး ၂၀၁၉န့ၣ်, တၢ်မၤအဝဲန့ၣ်တအိၣ်လၢၤဘၣ်. တၢ်ဆါစ့ၢ်ကီးရၤလီၤအသးလီၤ. တၢ်ကိၢ်တၢ်ဂီၤဘၣ်ကဒီး ယၤလံ. ပှၤကိးဂၤဒဲးသ့ၣ်ညါလၢ ထံကီၢ်တဘ့ၣ်အံၤနတၢ်မၤမ့ၢ်တအိၣ်န့ၣ်ကီခဲဒိၣ်မးလီၤ. ဖဲန့ၣ်ယကိးထီၣ်ကစၢ်ယွၤအသီတဘျီ န့ၣ်လီၤ. တယံာ်ဘၣ်ဒီး ယနၢ်ဟူဘၣ်တၢ်ကစီၣ်လၢပှၤဘၣ်မူဘၣ်ဒါ လၢအမ့ၢ် Kate Garvin လီၤ. အဝဲတဲပှၤလၢ ကမၢပှၤသၢဂၤ လၢ Colorado African Organization ဟဲက့ၤမၤတၢ်လၢ ကၠိအကဟီၣ်ကဝီၤ (School Zone) န့ၣ်လီၤ. ဘၣ်ဆၣ် တၢ်တီၣ် ထီၣ်တၢ်မၤအဝဲန့ၣ်အဂီၢ် ပှၤလိၣ်ဘၣ်ဝဲလံာ်အုၣ်သးသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်ဃုာ်ဒီးခီလ့ၣ်ကၠိအလံာ်အုၣ်သးန့ၣ်လီၤ. ယခီလ့ၣ်ကၠိအလံာ်အုၣ်သး တအိၣ်ဘၣ်အဃိ Kate တဲယၤဘၣ်သ့ၣ်သ့ၣ်ယၤန့ၣ် ယကဘၣ်ဒိးစဲးလၢ ယကန့ၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်မၤဝဲအံၤအဂီၢ်, ဃုာ်ဒီးတၢ်နုာ်လီၤဒိး သမံသမိးယသးန့ၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်ကီတၢ်ခဲဘၣ်ယၤဒိၣ်မးန့ၣ်လီၤ. ကိးထီၣ်ကဒီးကစၢ်ယွၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. လၢခံကတၢၢ်ယွၤဒုးနဲၣ်ယၤလၢ ယလံာ်အုၣ်သး အိၣ်ဒံးတဘ့ၣ်လၢအမ့ၢ်ဝဲ ‘ကီၢ်ပယီၤ စီၤစုၤတၢ်မၤလိတၢ်ကူၣ်ဘၣ်ကူၣ်သ့ တၢ်တိာ်ကျဲၤ, ယိၤကီၢ်-၂’ (Burma Distance Education Project Thailand-2) န့ၣ်လီၤ. ယွၤအဘျုးအဖှိၣ်အတၢ်ဆိၣ်ဂ့ၤဆိၣ်ဝါအဃိ ယမၤန့ၢ်တၢ်မၤလၢအမ့ၢ် ပှၤရ့လိာ်မၤစၢၤဟံၣ်ဖိဃီဖိတဖၣ်လၢအဘၣ်ထွဲဒီးကလုာ်လီၤဆီတဖၣ် (Family Liaison for Special Populations) လီၤ. မ့ၢ်ဒၣ်ကစၢ်ယွၤသူယၤလၢယပှၤကလုာ် လၢအလိၣ်ဘၣ်ယၤအဂီၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်မၤလၢ ယမၤခဲအံၤစ့ၢ်ကီးယွၤမၤညီန့ၢ်ယၤ ဒီး ယဘၣ်တူၢ်လိာ်ယၤ ဖဲ၂၀၂၀, လါမ့ၤ ၆သီ လီၤ. စံးဘျုးဒီးတဲယွၤအဘျုးတလၢာ်လၢၤဘၣ်. ဆူညါစ့ၢ်ကီးကစံးဘျုးနၤလီၤ, ယွၤဧၢ.
သရၣ်မုၣ်ကပီၤထူ
ဒဲဘၢၣ်, ခီလရၣ်ဒိၣ်ကီၢ်စဲၣ်
တၢ်ဆိကမိၣ်ထံမၤဘၣ်ထွဲက့ၤတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါလၢပတၢ်အိၣ်မူ
ပှၤအါဂၤဖဲအဟဲတုၤလၢကီၢ်အမဲရကၤဆိအခါန့ၣ် အသဂၢၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်ကီတၢ်ခဲလၢတၢ်ဖံးတၢ်မၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ပှၤအိၣ်ဒီးတၢ်ကူၣ်ဘၣ် ကူၣ်သ့တဖၣ် ဖဲအဟဲတုၤလၢကီၢ်အမဲရကၤအခါ မ့ၢ်လၢပှၤတဟံးန့ၢ်အဒံၢ်ကရံၣ်, အလံာ်အုၣ်သးတဖၣ်အဃိ အလီၢ်အလၤ တဖၣ်တအိၣ်လၢၤ ဒီး အတုၤဘၣ်ဝဲတၢ်လီၤမၢ်ကထၢတဖၣ်အကထၢန့ၣ်လီၤ. ပဘၣ်မၤတၢ်မၤလၢပတမၤညီနုၢ်ဘၣ် ဒီး ပဘၣ်မၤ အီၤလၢပှၤလၢတကတိၤပကျိာ်အဃိ တၢ်ကိၢ်တၢ်ဂီၤ, တၢ်သူၣ်လီၤဘှံးသးလီၤဘှံးအိၣ်အါဒိၣ်မးန့ၣ်လီၤ. အနံၣ်တဖၣ် လဲၤပူၤကွံာ် ဝံၤဒီးပထံၣ်ဘၣ်လၢ ပပှၤကလုာ်အါတက့ၢ် အိၣ်ဒီးတၢ်ဖံးတၢ်မၤ, လုၢ်အီၣ်လုၢ်အီဘၣ်ဟံၣ်ဖိဃီဖိဂ့ၤဂ့ၤဘၣ်ဘၣ်လီၤ. အအံၤမ့ၢ်ဝဲယွၤအဘျုးအဖှိၣ်လူၤပိာ်ထွဲပခံဖဲပလဲၤတပူၤလၢ်လၢ်, ဒီး ပကိးထီၣ်ယွၤလၢတၢ်ကိၢ်တၢ်ဂီၤဒီးအဝဲစံးဆၢပှၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. တနံၤအံၤမ့ၢ်နအိၣ်ဒီးတၢ်ကိၢ်တၢ်ဂီၤတၢ်ဆီၣ်သနံးဘၣ်ဃးဒီးနတၢ်ဖံးတၢ်မၤဧါ. သ့ၣ်နီၣ်ကိးထီၣ်ယွၤလၢ တၢ်ကိၢ်တၢ်ဂီၤအပူၤ တက့ၢ်. အဝဲမ့ၢ်ပှၤလၢ အမၤပူၤဖျဲးပှၤဒီးမၤလၤမၤကပီၤပှၤလီၤ. မ့ၢ်နတၢ်ဖံးတၢ်မၤလဲၤအသးဘၣ်ဘျီးဘၣ်ဒါဧါ. သ့ၣ်နီၣ်ကိးထီၣ်ယွၤလၢတၢ်စံးဘျုးစံးဖှိၣ်န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်.
တၢ်ထုကဖၣ်လၢပှၤဖးတၢ်ဖိအဂီၢ်
ယွၤဧၢ, ဝံသးစူၤဆိၣ်ဂ့ၤဘၣ်နဖိတဂၤအံၤလၢအဖးဝဲတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါအံၤန့ၣ်တ က့ၢ်. နမ့ၢ်ကစၢ်လၢ အအဲၣ်ပှၤလၢတၢ်အဲၣ်အထူအယိာ်လီၤ. နမ့ၢ်ကစၢ်လၢအစံးဘၣ် ပှၤလၢပကဃ့တၢ်လၢနၤလီၤ. ဒီးဖဲပကိးထီၣ်နၤန့ၣ်နတဃၣ်ဒူၣ်ချၢနသးလၢပှၤ နီတဘျီဘၣ်. ဆိၣ်ဂ့ၤဘၣ်နဖိလၢ အဖးတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါအံၤဒ်သိး အဝဲကဃ့ တၢ်လၢနၤ ဒီး ကွၢ်ထီၣ်ဒၣ်ထဲနၤလၢအတၢ်လိၣ်ဘၣ် လၢကိးနံၤဒဲးတၢ်အိၣ်မူအပူၤ တက့ၢ်. မၤစၢၤအီၤ ဒ်သိးအတၢ်နာ်န့ၢ်နၤကဂၢၢ်ကျၢၤဝဲလၢနပူၤတက့ၢ်. ဖဲအဆိက မိၣ်ဝဲလၢ အနီၢ်ကစၢ် မ့ၢ်တၢ်ဂံၢ်စၢ်ဘါစၢ်ဒီးမၤတၢ်လၢအဂံၢ်အဘါတသ့ဘၣ်န့ၣ် ဒုးသ့ၣ်နီၣ်ထီၣ်အီၤ လၢနမ့ၢ်သ့တၢ်လၢာ်လၢအဂီၢ် ဒီးလၢယ့ၣ်ရှုးခရံာ်အစိကမီၤအဃိ အဝဲမၤတၢ်သ့ခဲလၢာ် လၢနပူၤလီၤန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. ဒုးဘူးထီၣ်အီၤဒီးနၤ တနံၤဘၣ်တနံၤ ဒ်ယံာ် ဒ်ဘူးထီၣ်အီၤလၢတၢ်ထုကဖၣ်ဒီးရ့ဒီးနၤကိးနံၤဒဲးတက့ၢ်. ဆိၣ်ဂ့ၤအီၤနီၢ်ခိ ဒီးနီၢ်သး အတၢ်လိၣ်ဘၣ်ခဲလၢာ်တက့ၢ်. လၢခရံာ်အမံၤယဃ့နၤလီၤ. အၤမ့ၣ်.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Week 11
IN MY DISTRESS I CALL TO THE LORD
Psalm 50:15 – “Call on me in the day of trouble. I will deliver you, and you will honor me.” (WEB)
God is the Lord who always keeps His promises, but as humans we always become distressed and shaken when we face challenges. On the 25th of December 2019, along with my colleagues from the Colorado African Organization (CAO), I lost my job as the organization was shut down for various reasons. By then the COVID-19 pandemic had begun to spread and the outbreak had pushed our situation to the edge. Beginning in 2010, I had the opportunity to work with CAO, only by God’s grace and not because of my own capability. Deep in my heart, I could feel the Lord had chosen me to work for my people and other groups who are in need. When I arrived in Denver, Colorado in 2008, after completing my “Work Intensive Skills Camp” course, I completed three days of work experience which involved working alongside the senior workers (work shadow) in a hotel. However, due to a family appointment with the doctor, I could only do work shadow for two days. On those two days, I cried every night as I had never worked that kind of hard labor. I had to make the beds, clean the toilets for many rooms, and work as fast as I could, which I had never done before. Seeing me cry every time I came home, my husband tried to comfort me and told me I didn’t have to do it if I didn’t want to. From that day on, I pleaded to God, “Dear God, I know You have blessed me since I was little, and I have never done hard labour like this in my life. I don’t think I can handle it. It is my plea that you will grant me a suitable job even though my education level won’t meet the standard of this country.” With tears and a humble heart, I prayed very hard, and God answered my prayer by providing me with a new job at the Colorado African Organization as a Community Navigator. I didn’t even have to do the interview. My supervisor, whom I had never seen before, came to my house, helped me fill in all the necessary documents and forms, and handed me the position of “Community Navigator.” Sadly, as I have mentioned above, since 2019 this organization couldn’t run anymore. The outbreak of the pandemic was a great threat, and my heart was troubled again. It is hard to survive if you don’t have a job in a country like this. Again, I called out to the Lord with all my heart and God heard my prayer. Soon after, Kate Gavin, the person in charge, contacted us and informed us that they needed three people from CAO to work in the school zone. However, to apply for that we needed certain certificates, which I didn’t have. So, Kate told me that in my situation, to get the job, I might need to do the exam and interview. This troubled me and again I called out to the Lord. Then, God reminded me that I still have a qualification from when I studied in the program of “Burma Distance Education Project Thailand -2.” In the end, by the grace of God, I got the job as a Family Liaison for Special Populations. I was appointed on the 6th of May, 2020. God has definitely opened the right doors for me to get this position, and He is using me to help our people in need. I can never stop praising and thanking God.
May my soul thank you continually, my Lord.
Thramu Kapaw Htoo
Denver, Colorado
REFLECT
Those who first arrived in America faced extremely difficult challenges related to employment. Even if we have advanced degrees from our native country, those are not recognized. As a result, we have to take on jobs that are less skilled and desirable. This is an experience of losses on top of tragic losses experienced by new refugees. We have to work jobs that we are not used to. Not speaking someone else’s language gives us high anxiety and stress. But, after years have gone by, we see that our people are holding down jobs and providing for their families well. This is the grace of God following us wherever we go. In our distress, we call to the Lord and He answers us.
At this moment, are you feeling burdened by job-related stress?
Remember to call the Lord in your distress. He is the God who will rescue you and honor you.
Is your job going well? Remember to call the Lord and thank Him.
PRAYER FOR THE READER
Dear God, please bless Your children reading this devotional. You are the God that loves us everlastingly. You are the God who tells us to make our requests known to You. When we call upon You, You never turn Your back on us. Teach your children to submit their requests to You and look to You as their only source of help for their daily needs. Help them to firmly place their faith in You. When they feel weak and inadequate, help them to remember they can do all things through Christ Who gives them strength. Pull them closer to You each day. Draw them to a fellowship with You daily in prayer. Pour out Your blessings to fulfill their needs in body, mind, and spirit. In Jesus’ Name I pray. Amen.