One of the most fascinating people I’ve met over the past year is Steve Gumaer. Steve is the founder and President of Partners Relief & Development, which provides emergency relief for millions of misplaced people. That’s a fancy of way of saying he and his team work in war zones.
Think about that for a moment. They work in war zones. To help people who are victims of the war — the lost, orphaned, homeless, hungry, cold, grieving, and sometimes tortured people who find themselves surrounded by chaos. Into this walks Steve and his team.
When Steve agreed to be a guest blogger for me, I was eager to hear why he applies his theology to this sense of calling — this passion — to serve the vulnerable. Steve lives something we might call “applied theology” because all of his work is meant to reflect the love of God. For this I am thankful, and inspired.
Here is what he sent me:
Rose Mu
The most important theological and leadership lesson I have learned came from a widow named Rose in a squalid refugee camp surrounded by loss and sadness in 1994. In her shack a bright light shone and it was transforming.
Rose Mu was a widow living in Sho Klo Refugee camp. Sitting on her bamboo floor drinking weak tea from a dented tin cup in October 1994, Rose told us her story of a life of wealth, comfort, and privilege in the city of Yangon. Graduating from university to become a teacher, her husband was a veterinarian, then a mid-life sense of calling to serve refugees along the Thai-Myanmar Border. Sadly she was arrested and incarcerated for 9 months of suffering and sexual violence. Then the death of her husband, and finally her struggles while raising two children in a refugee camp without the support of a husband.
She was a study in contrast. Her joyful presence could be heard anywhere near the bamboo shack where she lived because she was always laughing with her friends, neighbors, or a passersby. She ran an alternative school for children who didn’t fit into the standard refugee camp system and ministered to the families who were most often recovering from the trauma of war. From the first meeting we were intrigued with this fluent English speaking force of nature who overcame so much grief and suffering to become a visible source of love, community, and transformation among a refugee population in desperate need of hope.
On one of our first visits to the refugee camp, Rose Mu told my wife and I about the four year old orphan child that was sleeping on her floor, who was brought to her the night before. She described how pro-democracy soldiers found this little girl hiding in some bushes outside of the village she was born to, a village that was attacked and vacated in the face of advancing Burma Army troops. She was the only known survivor of that attack and was carried by resistance soldiers to Sho Klo camp, then to Rose Mu’s house, where she was asked to be the child’s foster mother.
Rose Mu said yes.
She looked up at my wife and I, pausing her story, and asked if we would help children like her who get separated or lost when their villages are attacked, leaving them unaccompanied or orphaned. My wife and I exchanged a look and turned to Rose.
We said yes.
Within four years we were helping provide care for over 1,200 children in 8 refugee camps and that turned into 3 programs addressing the needs of internally displaced children in war zones where violence or politics prevent the reach of aid. This year our team of 60 members helped approximately 4 million people, families who were on the run from the Myanmar regime, Turkish armed forces, ISIS, and the Free Syrian Army to name a few.
Rose Mu was a leader. She had no uniform, badge, ordination, credentials, or wealth. She led from her guts, focused on vulnerable people, and found her calling: to care for children marginalized by the same war that caused her to suffer and lose her husband, wealth, and country.
What was her genius? Her whole life ethos was based on the Golden Rule. She believed that doing for others what she would want others to do for her was the key to faithfulness to God and peace on earth. She made her decisions, dealt with her challenges, and forged a path through life with the Golden Rule as her guiding principle. She was a lot like Jesus.
She is the most important mentor I have had. I’ve been fortunate to have many good mentors and theological teachers. But no one touched my heart or expanded my understanding like Rose Mu.