Sanda and Moe-moe

Amanda and Leona went to Burma for a week in mid-December and quickly morphed into Sanda and Moo-moo (you can see them in the picture to the left). Amanda and I had originally thought to travel through the country a bit, but Sanda and Moe-moe decided to spend their time in Yangon instead. And we're glad they did! Our short time in Burma was wonderful--especially because of all the very wonderful people we were able to meet.

Interesting place, Yangon—once considered the Golden City—the jewel of the Orient, but now it's fallen on hard times. The colonial buildings are stained and crumbling, the streets are paved with dirt and refuse, and the wind often carries the faint smell of garbage or sewage. The current government (which gained power through a military coup in 1962) has done very little for the people it claims to represent. Any attempts at protests tend to be brutally and violently suppressed. Despite this, everyone we met—from the kids working at the teashop to the director of one of the orphanages we visited—was amazing: hospitable, friendly, interesting, and helpful.

We tried to minimize the amount of our money that went to the government by staying at smaller family-run guesthouses, eating at small local restaurants, and avoiding some of the larger tourist attractions with higher entrance fees. We also tried to spread out our money by patronizing different restaurants and stores during our week in Yangon. Perhaps the overall amount of cash we had to spend wasn't that much (and of course some of it did end up in government coffers), but we were happier knowing that as much as possible the money we spent there was helping the locals and not supporting an inhumane and undemocratic regime.

At the first guesthouse we stayed in, we met Jacqueline, an amazing woman from Switzerland who was volunteering with an NGO in Yangon. She was an inspiration to us! She is retired and decided that she could afford to live a quiet life at home, or work as a volunteer overseas....so, she sold her house and her belongings and is now volunteering in SE Asia for several months before moving to Africa. Amazing! We tagged along with her on Saturday. She was going to a picnic with the three different orphanages she was working with (each one had about 25 kids). We were so thankful we were allowed to tag along! We sang songs, played games, did Bible skits, and had a really blessed time. It was interesting to see that several park visitors stop to listen to our singing or to watch the Bible skits—we even had one Buddhist monk and two young Buddhist nuns stop for awhile.

Much of our time in Myanmar was actually spent just on the outskirts of Yangon. There we visited a Bible College and another children's home. We helped out there by teaching English at the college for a few days. The students were great: very hard-working and attentive. They're also amazing singers! On the last day we taught, we asked them to teach us a song in Burmese. It was fun to be able to sing along with them—and I think they enjoyed turning the tables on us and correcting our pronunciation instead of the other way around!

The kids from the Children's Home were so much fun—as kids are everywhere. We had such a great time fellowshipping with them and with their director and Sunday School teacher on Sunday. As a special treat they all came to the Bible College for Sunday service (they don't usually because of the distances involved). We shared a short message aimed at the kids and also taught them the song “Down in My Heart,” which they loved! They were also amazing singers and sang several songs in Burmese as well. Then, just before leaving they came to the door of the pastor's house and sang Christmas carols for us. It was such a poignant moment and I think it is one of the highlights of our short visit to Myanmar.

The government is especially unfriendly to its citizens who aren't Buddhist as well as to anyone who has contact with outsiders (which is one reason the government infinitely worsened the effects of the cyclone by refusing foreign aid), but this isn't the front shown to visitors and we didn't directly witness or experience anything untoward. To the contrary our visit was very pleasant and enjoyable. We did, however, hear several firsthand reports from our Burmese brothers and sisters. Keep them in your prayers!