mingalabar (hello) from myanmar. we have been here for just over one week & so far the country has passed my expectations.
this month is our first official ATL month, which stands for “ask the Lord.” what this means is we have no host, no official contact or honestly even a real plan for what we are going to do when we get into the country. rather, it is a chance for our team to turn our plans & expectations over to the Lord. we rely on him to bring us to meet the connections he wants us to work with this month.
i was not looking forward to this month. why would i “waste” my first days/week in a country trying to make connections when if i just had a host i could jump in from day one and begin to work? we only have three weeks here, might as well make the most of it. while i’m still struggling with this idea a bit, the connections we have started to make have shown me just how cool the Lord is.
a typical day in the life of team romcom is wake up around 8/8:15, grab a quick breakfast at our hostel, head to a local cafe or krispy kreme (yup there’s one within walking distance & its dangerous), catch up on how the previous day went for us & then dive into a bible study. we are reading two chapters a day & have gone through galatians & are in the midst of ephesians. this has honestly been one of my highlights each day. i have loved just coming together & studying God’s word together.
(galatians challenged me with the idea of am i living for man’s approval or am i living for Jesus? to live for Jesus is to not act hypocritically & try to uplift the law. rather, we need to live by faith & know we are free, sons/daughters, bought with the blood of Jesus. there is no need to fall back into legalism, but it’s time to love your neighbor as yourself.)
after our study we head out for whatever is happening that day. sometimes it’s english class or visiting the pagoda in town (pictures below) or grabbing lunch with a new friend or heading to samaritan’s purse to package medical supplies or preparing a message for a youth group or playing/singing at an open mic night or baking cookies for a valentine’s day event or going to prayer meetings or eating dinner with past racers we’ve connected with. we have had a whirlwind of a first week & have many more connections that we haven’t even put on the schedule yet. i am excited to see where these next two weeks take us.
join our team in prayer for clarity in our schedule for the month & for the Lord to continue blessing our team with connections! that’s all for now. thanks for reading & staying up to date on what’s happening in my life!
madeleine
here are three of the ten pictures i’ve taken so far. we went to the shwedagon pagoda here in yangon & while it was beautiful, it was odd to see so many buddhas & watch all the families coming together to worship (like we go to church). however, we ended up making some connections there that have led us to english classes & sharing the gospel with monks.
