An FBR Visit to Both of Washington’s Homes

23 February 2024

Dear friends,

We’re sending this from Burma but I wanted to share with you a visit we had in the fall of last year to Washington DC, as well as George Washington’s home at Mount Vernon, Virginia. We are inspired by both visits because of the people like George Washington who laid the foundations for America as well as people like congressmen and senators, who continue to work for freedom. The freedom is not just for Americans but for everyone and we thank God for this. Below is a writeup we did after our trip, in which we were able to share together and pray together and even ride horses together. 

Thank you so much for praying for us and for the meetings in Washington DC. We were blessed to be able to share about the situation in Burma, the Middle East, and Ukraine, with church leaders, as well as government leaders in the US, and even Ukrainian leaders. Our first meetings were with Senator Ted Cruz, and this was arranged by Anna Grace Stallings, Kyle Stallings’s amazing daughter. We had an opportunity twice to share with Senator Cruz about the situation that we saw and to thank him for all he’s doing. We also were able to pray together.

We also spent a lot of time in discussion and prayer with congressmen Pete Sessions and Brian Babin, and their staffs. It was a blessing to meet different church leaders from around the US and we had wonderful times of prayer together. On the first night, we were with old Ranger friends, the Legg family, who hosted Burma friends – Logan and his brothers whom we had helped rescue from Burma two years ago. Also there were old friends, soldiers, missionaries, and new friends too: Logan and his two brothers; retired SF Colonel Larry Redmon and wife, who have helped us and FBR so much; Sean Litton, the past Director of International Justice Mission and a man of justice all over the world; super businessman and advocate, Christian Pinkston, and his daughter, Sophie; Bailey’s parents, Stevie and Darius Brown; Mike, Natalie, and Gavin Legg; Christian Hickey from Ukraine; and Katia and Marina, also from Ukraine.

The following day we met with David Beasley, who is the former governor of South Carolina and former Director of the World Food Program and won a Nobel Peace Prize, along with Gavin Gramstad, who helped set a lot of this up. We met Congressman Mike McCaul, the chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, who is a very strong advocate for freedom in Ukraine and Burma, and other places around the world. The next day was meetings with friends from Burma, Chin advocates, and others.

There were meetings about Ukraine, hosted by our friend Pavel, who invited us to DC while we were in Ukraine. Here we also got to meet the head chaplain of Ukrainian forces and plan together our next steps for a FBR pastor and medic rotation to help the Ukrainian chaplains and troops on the front lines. At the same time we met a group of about 30 young people from Ukraine whose fathers – and, in some cases both mother and father – were killed by the Russians. They were visiting the US, and one girl in particular, named  Anastasia, became close to us, and we prayed and cried together.

We also were able to have a very productive meeting with the Burma NUG leadership in DC and plan how we can work together more in advocacy for the people of Burma.

Then, on the way out, we were invited to Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home, by Al Underwood. This is normally a place where thousands of people visit every day. However, on this day, a film called “American Miracle” was being filmed. This is a faith-filled story of George Washington done by Christian friends. They asked if Pete and I had time to be extras as a father and son survey team – Christopher Guest, who actually saved George Washington’s life twice. We got dressed up in full costume. I had a very small part, but best of all was we got to race horses up George Washington’s lawn – right up to his house. Absolutely not normally done! What a gift from God!

Thank you so much for praying for us, and we believe that the relationships made in Washington DC are already bearing fruit. We thank God! 

Thank you and God bless you,

Dave, family and FBR