Third New Year

Yes, we celebrated the New Year for the third time while we were in Myanmar! Our first celebration was on January 1 in the Philippines, which means NOISE. Then the second time was in February when we celebrated Chinese New Year -- eating tikoy cakes given by kindhearted Chinese friends. And THEN, when we arrived in Myanmar, we found we would be celebrating New Year's Day one more time. Burmese New Year was April 17. It was preceded by four days of Water Festival.

Water Festival means that wherever you go, people throw water on you. Even on the short two-block walk between our guest house and the CCC office in Yangon, we got totally soaked every day by the neighborhood children. "Watering one another" was a new concept for us! But the children did it very sweetly, smiling all the while, so we couldn't get upset with them. We went downtown on the third day to see where teenagers water and get watered with much more intensity -- there they used water hoses!

During our time in Myanmar we grew used to seeing monks every morning as we walked to the office, three or four at a time collecting their daily food from Buddhist households. We were surprised on New Year's Day to see a long procession of monks near our guest house. We waited for them to pass, thinking it was a larger group this time, maybe 10 to 15 monks. But as we watched, more and more monks came down the street. We counted about 200 of them, from older monks in the front to small boys at the end of the line. The elderly monks were serious, but the little boys were giggling like boys anywhere would do.

During our time in Myanmar, James taught two weeks of classes to the CCC staff. He taught "Gospel of John" in the morning and "Servant Leadership" in the afternoon. The staff were so appreciative and we enjoyed the opportunity to serve them and get to know them better.

We also met with 18 of our 27 Myanmar alumni. This was a great encouragement to us, and to them as well. Some we met individually, in their homes or eating together, and twice we met as a large group. It was so much fun for us to see where they are now and how God is using them. I am so proud of their faithfulness, ministering in a context that is not easy at all.

A precious part of the trip was the opportunity to join the wedding of ISOT alumni Ye Htut Myo, whom we dearly love. It was so much fun to be part of the ceremony and to see God's goodness in providing Thein Thein, an excellent wife for Ye. I thought about Proverbs 31:10, which says, "An excellent wife, who can find? Her worth is far above rubies." Myanmar is famous for its rubies, so it seemed very appropriate to celebrate this gift of an excellent wife in the land of rubies.

We are very grateful to God for the privilege of going to visit our friends in Myanmar. It had been seven years since our last trip, and we vowed that we would not wait so long to return again. Mingalaba!