Myanmar 15-10-06

We had a great day of sharing with the students and pastors here in Myanmar today. they are so attentive, hanging on every word.

Our host is Dr Ram. He is a single man, about 30, from Chin Province, which is in the North-East, bordering Bangladesh and India. He spent several years in the Philippines training to fulfil his vision which is to train people to plant churches across Myanmar. He founded the Myanmar Christian Institute in 2004. Many of his friends told him he could not do this without foreign support or sponsors, but Ram has gone ahead in faith. he teaches people how to plant house churches, because this is a method which allows churches to grow without cost. Myanmar is one of the poorest countries in Asia and so they cannot afford fancy buildings.

At the moment there are 55 students with 10 volunteer lecturers at MCI, and they have lessons on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday each week. The classes are held in Ram's home as the government does not give permission for new premises for Christian purposes. We really thank God for someone of such great vision and commitment.

We continued teaching today on the apostolic church, and God's desire for relationship as the basis for church rather than institutional christianity. We opened the sessions up for small group discussion and then questions and comments, and that was a very fruitful time indeed. So many thoughtful comments and questions showing that this issue is on so many people's hearts.

We were able to get to an internet connection at lunchtime, at the office of the Myanmar Evangelical Graduate School of Theology, which is where we've been having the conference. It was nice to be in communication with the world briefly, even though it was a dial-up connection running at about 28 kb/s. Carrier pigeons might have been faster! Anyway, I got to post to the blog and Michael was able to send off the all-important email to our travel agent in Brisbane. Because of time differences we are hoping that by the time we wake up on Monday morning, she will have some news for us about changing our flights home. He has asked that she phone us at the hotel with any news. I didn't send any emails as I was aware that we were under a bit of time pressure and I wanted to make sure Michael had plenty of time to send his messages off.

One of the lovely features of Asia is that there are no noise pollution laws. The hotel is on a busy street, and while traffic noise is minimal other noises are not. We have two competing groups broadcasting over very large and loud speakers. One group plays music while the other group seems to be associated with a bunch of Buddhist monks who spend their days spruiking for donations from people in the street, at the bus stop and in the shops. Even as I write this, I can hear the clanking of the coins in their metal pots. This group seems to play a mixture of music and some kind of preaching that always commences with what sounds like "Hello! Hello!" as if they are testing if the P.A. is working. All of this starts early in the morning and continues to midnight. My mum and dad would just love it!

The hotel is in view of the pagoda which is the biggest in the world. It is covered in gold leaf and looks quite spectacular.

The weather here is somewhat cooler than India, which is just as well as tomorrow we will be at Dr Ram's place and there is no air-conditioning. It seems to be high twenties to low thirties in the day time, with a daily shower in the afternoon. It's very pleasant weather, although the overcast conditions in the afternoons make it seem quite dark from as early as 4 o'clock.

I have taken a few photos here, but feel I shouldn't post them over the unreliable internet connections. Perhaps we will have more chances when we get to Singapore, whenever that might be. If anyone wants to try to phone us you can try us at the hotel- +95 1542881. Tuesday, I think we may be available pretty well all day except for say, 10 am to 2 pm. The time here is 3 1/2 hours behind NSW time so that would be 1.30 to 5.30 pm. Of course, by the time we get to another internet connection we could well be in Singapore!

Well, God bless you all.

Keith