06/04/2026
This is Pastor Maung Maung 's story.
The names, dates and townships have been changed to protect the Pastor and his church
Who I Am
My name is Maung Maung. I am a pastor with Judson Church Myanmar. I have a wife, 2 sons, and a daughters. I love them very much. I live in -------- Township, in the hills of Chin State. Here in Chin State, many people believe in Jesus Christ. Because of this faith, we have become a people that others want to silence.
I want to share what happened to me. Not because I want people to look at me, but because God was with me in a very dark place, and I believe the world must know what is happening to Christians in my country of Myanmar.
The Day Everything Changed
February 10, 2026 - this day I will never forget for all my life.
I was very happy that morning. I was traveling to Yangon city to attend a conference for pastors. For a long time, I had been waiting for this conference. Also, I had just passed my promotion examination, and I was soon going to be ordained as a pastor at a higher level. Everything felt like it was moving forward in a good direction - toward more ministry, more service, more of what God had called me to do.
My children were with me on this journey. They sat beside me on the bus to Yangon. Young children, innocent children. Their being there felt like a small blessing from God before what I thought would be a very good week.
We did not arrive to Yangon.
Somewhere on the road, the bus we were on was stopped by soldiers. They were a recruitment team of Myanmar's military junta. They said to me that it was only a short examination - just a small stop, nothing serious. I did not believe them because this is a frequent situation in Myanmar.
But they took my children also. My children - they had done nothing wrong. They were only sitting on a bus with their father. When the soldiers took them, I saw fear on their faces. That fear - I still see it when I close my eyes. A father should protect his children. I could not protect them that day. This is a pain that stays inside me.
When we arrived at the examination office, I understood very quickly that I had been lied to. The officer told me I was not there for an examination. I was being conscripted into the military. I must attend military training.
I begged him. I told him I am a pastor. I told him my whole life is for serving God and serving people. I told him my children were with me. I begged him like a man with nothing left to offer except his words.
He did not listen. I was taken. My children stayed in their custody.
Thanks be to God - after a week, my children were released. They were allowed to go home.
But I was not allowed to go. I am asking every parent who reads this to think about that moment. My children were free - and yes, I thanked God with my whole heart for this. But then the gate of the training camp closed behind me, and I had to live each day knowing my children had traveled home without their father. That they had been frightened. That they had seen soldiers take their father away. That every morning they woke up and wondered - will he come back?
I felt relief for them and grief for myself at the same time. For a father, these two feelings cannot be separated so easily.
Inside the Training Camp
What happened next was the most difficult time of my whole life.
More than 750 people - most of them ordinary civilians taken by force, just like me - were all living together inside a fenced area. We could not go anywhere. There was a complete curfew. No freedom, no privacy, very little dignity. Food was not enough. Water was difficult to have. Everything that a normal free person has every day - it was all taken away.
Every day we trained from 5:30 in the morning until 3:30 in the afternoon. Outside, always outside, in the hot sun and in the heavy rain. No shelter. No exception for anyone. The rules were very strict, and if you could not follow the rules, they beat you. If your body was too tired to continue, they beat you. Punishment came quickly and without mercy.
I am a pastor. My hands hold a Bible, not a weapon. My body was not made for this kind of training. I did not think I could survive it. But I thank God - I really, truly thank God - that He gave me strength through His grace. It was not my own strength. I want to be very clear about this. It was His.
Worshipping in Darkness
Among all the 750 men in that camp, I was the only Christian - or one of very few. Almost all the others were Buddhist. The instructors saw this difference and they did not like it. They ordered me to worship the same as everyone else, to put away my faith, to become like the others. I could not do this.
But also I could not fight against them openly. So I worshipped Jesus in my heart, quietly, secretly. In the private place inside me that no soldier could enter, I prayed to the One who I knew had not left me - even there, even in that fenced compound, even in that darkness.
I thought about my family every day. My wife. My son. My daughters. My children who had been pulled from a bus and frightened by soldiers on a road that should have been safe. I thought about Sunday worship, about singing together, about eating together at home. And I cried. I am not ashamed to say this - I cried many times. My heart was very full of sorrow and longing.
I had been walking toward ordination. I had been preparing for more ministry. And then suddenly I was in a military compound, with no Bible in my hand, no congregation to serve, not allowed to even speak the name of Jesus out loud. It felt - this is the only way I can say it - like I had walked from the light into complete darkness.
I want to say clearly - I did not hate the soldiers. This is true. But I had always known in my spirit that military life was not the path God had for me. To be forced into it by lies, while my children watched from that stopped bus, was a deep wound in my soul.
I was in that camp for Seventy-five days. Seventy-five days training in the sun and the rain. Seventy-five days praying silently while others around me did not know Jesus. Seventy-five days missing my children, my church family, my calling. Seventy-five days asking God - will I ever go home? And also - Seventy-five days of the living God staying with me.
I must say this carefully, because I am not speaking in a general way or using nice words just because they sound good. I am speaking as a witness. Jesus was present with me in that camp. When there was nobody to pray with me, He prayed with me. When I could not say His name with my mouth, He heard me say it in my heart. When my body had nothing left, Someone gave me more.
I did not come through Seventy-five days by my own power. I know this is true.
The Miracle of Release
Day and night I prayed for a miracle for the impossible to become possible, then I heard news that I was to be discharged. Not only did the impossible happen, but God did something that no one could have expected. One of my instructors - a man who is part of the system that had captured me - he came to me and spoke words that I did not expect to hear from such a man. He said that the God I worship had intervened miraculously. He had seen something he could not explain with his own understanding. He said that God had moved.
I thought of the verse in Proverbs - that the LORD can turn even the heart of a king. And here was this instructor, speaking to me about my God.
While I was inside the camp suffering, other people were outside working and praying very hard for me, people I cannot name - these people did what necessary for my release. This was not a simple thing. To move a military government that does not want to release people - this requires patience and courage and God's help. They gave me a formal document of release from the National Military Service. I walked out of that compound as a free man.
All glory to Him in the Highest, forever and ever and ever!!!
What This Means
My story - it is not a special or unusual story. This is the most painful thing I must say.
The military junta of Myanmar is doing this to many people. They stop buses. They take people from the road. They force ordinary civilians into military service. They want to silence everyone who has a voice, everyone who leads a community, everyone who holds their people together in faith and dignity. The ethnic regions - Chin State, Kachin State, and others - these places carry a very heavy burden of this persecution. Pastors, teachers, community leaders - we have been taken.
I was taken from a bus. My children were taken with me.
Even now that I am home, the fear does not fully leave me. The junta is still there. Their hands are still reaching. People who speak truth, people who lead communities, people who carry the moral voice of their people - we are still in danger. There is no journey that feels completely safe. There is no ordinary day that feels completely peaceful.
And to stop a bus and take children - this shows the world what kind of regime this is. There is no innocence they will respect. There is no line they will not cross.
But they cannot take what I carry inside me.
I carry the testimony of a God who is present inside military compounds. Who hears the quiet prayers of one Christian man among 750 people who do not know Him. Who moves through government documents and bureaucratic offices and the hearts of military instructors. Who kept one pastor standing and faithful for seventy-five days in a place designed to break him. Who protected frightened children pulled from a bus far from home and brought them back safely to their mother.
I was supposed to go to a pastors' conference. Instead, God took me through a fire. And when I came out the other side, everything that was not gold had burned away - and what remained was only trust in the One who holds all things in His hands.
Pastor Maung Maung
