What I Have Learned from Faa

After spending some extended time with Faa, here is my top ten list of things I have learned from her:

10. You don't have to be "powerful" to become powerful. Faa came from the hill tribes on the mountains of Thailand. As an Akha young girl, who lost her mother before the age of 13, and with an abusive father to boot, she was at the bottom of the totem poll, but this did not stop her from becoming the woman of influence she wanted to be. Today she is admired by one and all in her village and is offered as an example to the Akha world.

9. Real power comes from having faith in God. For the longest time in her life Faa had no one to talk to her. Her questions could only hit a silent wall and fall back to her. But then she discovered God through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and from then on she became unstoppable.

8. You don't need money to be happy. Faa is one of the happiest people I know and yet she is one of the most detached from money persons I know. She only notices money for a single reason: to help rescue children from suffering.

7. You only need the Bible to become wise. To hear Faa talk about some of the toughest decisions she has had to make, you would be tempted to think that she has a doctorate in conflict resolution or personal management. But you would be wrong -- for the greatest part of her life, Faa has only had the Bible and the wisdom she has acquired from reading and memorizing it.

6. The more you suffer the more you yearn to rescue those who are suffering. One of the reasons the church in the U.S. is drowning in a big pool of indifference is because people have it too easy here. Try being physically beaten for three years in High School because you refused to pray to a false god. Try going without food for days, being forced to live in squalid conditions and doing all kinds of menial jobs to survive and you will begin to understand Faa's passion for those who suffer.

5. Courage is NOT related to size. Faa is tiny and appears very fragile, but she is one of the most resourceful and fearless people I know. I have found myself at the other side of a disagreement with her and without going into details, let me just say: I didn't have a chance...

4. Poverty does not have to lead to corruption. Faa has on numerous occasions been offered tons of money to do things that are contrary to her convictions. To date she has refused every time even when she desperately needed the money or her life was in danger for refusing to take it.

3. Bitterness is never invincible. Faa's deep pain from her past has not driven her away from those she loves. Her reconciliation to her father, whom she loves deeply, is a tribute to the power of forgiveness that is only possible through Jesus Christ.

2. A cause always has names and faces. Even before Faa was able to articulate her vision in English, she could talk about the children she was already helping. She knows their names, their history, their aspiration, their desperation and she breathes and yearns to break the chains that have kept them from achieving their God-given potential in this world.

1. When you know God you can take on even the most vile industry in the world. Trying to rescue children from the sex trade industry in Thailand is a gigantic undertaking. But just like David Faa is bringing down some menacing giants, with God's help.

P.S. I am not ready to canonize Faa yet -- first you have to be dead (which will not happen in a long, long time, Lord willing) and then people have to pray to you and show incontrovertible evidence that their prayers have been answered. That is, if you are Catholic... So that's not happening any time soon. The point being, she is obviously not perfect, but I am casting my support with her and her cause because I believe in her calling and in the power of the God who called her for this work.

Pastor Ivanildo C. Trindade
ivanildo@vzw.blackberry.net