We’ve officially made it to our third country!
We arrived in Myanmar last Saturday morning after a ~20ish hour bus ride from Chiang Mai, Thiland. The week leading up to our travel day to Myanmar was our halfway debrief, so we were able to spend 4-5 days resting and reunited as a squad. Our mentors and coaches from the US flew out to have one-on-ones, teachings, and team debriefs throughout the week with us. Other than that, we were able to spend our time doing whatever we liked. As a squad activity we also went to Sticky Falls, a national park in Thailand where the rocks under the water falls are “sticky” so you can climb up them. It was a lot of fun and great to spend an afternoon with the entire squad again.
For our fifth month of the Race, we are living in a hostel in Yangon, the biggest city in Myanmar. Our hostel is clean (which is always great!) but very crowded with seven of us living in one room and one shower for everyone on our floor, but we are happy to have beds again this month! Yangon itself feels like most other cities around the world as it’s loud, confusing, smelly, dirty, not many English speakers, and full of crazy drivers. It’s honestly your average city, except most of the men wear skirts because it’s the traditional Burmese clothing.
Our ministry this month is not in the city. We live in a hostel in Yangon because there aren’t many options closer to our ministry host, so we commute every day on the bus. We leave our hostel around 6:40am to take the 7:00 bus outside the city. In the mornings it takes us about an hour to get there, and then we have about a 15-20 minute walk to our host. This month we are working at an independent children’s home run by a man, VT Samuel, and his wife Elizabth. VT Samuel and Elizabeth have four of their own children, plus 15 others who live with them full time. These children are orphans and/or come from homes that are either broken, can’t afford to care for them, or don’t have education opportunities. VT Samuel and Elizabeth are able to provide a place to live, food, education, tutoring, and the gospel to all of thier kids through their ministry. They have one other adult family member who helps them run the home, however none of them work. VT Samuel quit teaching part time at the local Bible college because he couldn’t teach and care for the children at the same time. They have some produce they live off, but their main source of income comes through offerings that the community gives and VT Samuel’s connections. They are Christians and devote much of their time to discipling their kids as well as providing for them, but Myanmar is primarily a Buddhist culture and Christianity is not well known or accepted. In both Thailand and Myanmar, following Jesus means abandoning Buddhism that most are raised in. So when people do choose the gospel over Buddhism, they are typically excommunicated from their families, communities, and culture. It’s a very big deal.
Poverty is common in Myanmar for a variety of reasons, and so the home and education that VT Samuel and Elizabeth provide is essential to ending that cycle. My team and I are honored to work with them this month as we teach English and play with the kids. Our students are wonderful– very polite and attentive and sweet. They are teaching us about self-discipline more than we could have imagined. They start their day at 6:00am, and from 6-7 they finish any studying/homework from the day before, from 7-8 they eat breakfast, at 8:00 we come and teach/play games until 10:30 when they eat lunch and get ready for school at 11:00. From 11:00-12:30 we usually try to talk/worship/pray with our hosts, learn about their lives, enjoy their company, etc., until we help them cook lunch for us around 12/12:30. After that, if there aren’t any projects that VT Samuel and Elizabeth need help with, we head back to the city. Because of traffic in the afternoon the bus usually takes 2 hours to get back home. Originally, we were asked to stay until 5 to teach again when the kids come home from school at 3, however, our mentor Kacie had us leave at 4 because she didn’t want us getting home after dark. Our schedule changed again when we found out there was nothing for us to do in-between classes and it wasn’t worth us staying there for so long to teach for less than an hour. Tomorrow is our first day on the most recent schedule change, and as much as we love our new ministry we are excited to no longer have 13 hour ministry days! Outside of ministry we also have team time, devotionals, meals, grocery shopping, and just normal life things that were difficult to get done when we were at ministry all day, so we are very grateful for our new schedule.
When I first found out we were teaching English for the fifth month in a row, I was really disappointed and honestly kind of angry. The videos and emails I got from Adventures in Missions when I first signed up for the Race were filled with photos of people from all over the world in the most beautiful places on Earth with captions like “feed the hungry, heal the sick, bring rest to the weary, give to the poor,” etc., and I have done none of that. I have only taught English for five months straight and I was beginning to fear that’s all I would do for nine months. I have been so close to so many amazing opportunities that I felt like I was missing out on because all I was doing was teaching English that I didn’t even know if my students would remember a week after I left. In Thailand we weren’t even allowed to do anything related to the gospel because we were teaching at a Buddhist school. I went into this month with low expectations and praying for the Lord to give me his heart for this ministry and the children because I didn’t have one for it myself. The first few days at a new ministry in a new city are always rough and we never really have a plan other than to be flexible, but I have enjoyed it much more than I ever would’ve thought. It will still be difficult and teaching English is still something I don’t particularly enjoy, but in this country I can better see the prospects of what these kids can become because they are educated and because they want to learn. They have had difficult lives but they already understand what it means to live above their circumstances. They are young and driven and understand the importance of ending their family’s poverty cycles and to spread the gospel, so what better people are there to change their country?
As always, thank you for following along and continuing to invest in what the Lord is doing overseas. You mean the world to me!
Love, e
