On trip to Myanmar

Nov. 26

I don’t know if we are going to have internet access in Kalaymyo, but apparently we are going to have it the whole time in Yangon.

There’s not much to tell yet. We got to Bangkok on Saturday night after leaving Friday morning. There was no Friday night, however. We left at 8 in the morning to Washington DC, which is an hour ahead of us. From there we flew west, so we crossed about six time zones, going back six hours, before we hit the international date line. At that point, what was Friday afternoon suddenly became Saturday afternoon. Think of it as daylight savings time on steroids.

You don’t fly due west, as you may think. The world is a sphere, and apparently it’s good to fly above land rather that water, so from DC we flew Northwest, eventually heading due west only when we were at the northern edge of Canada. Because it’s late November, and we were flying up near the arctic circle, it got dark even though it was only two or three in the afternoon local time. We then flew across Alaska, zipped over a very small portion of the Pacific south of the Bering strait, and then followed the Russian coast down to Japan.

We landed in Tokyo at about 4 pm on Friday turned Saturday afternoon. Then we jumped on a plane for a seven hour flight to Bangkok, Thailand, crossing Vietnam and part of China (I think) in the process. We did amazingly well being in the air 23 hours in a 26 hour period that all occurred on one day (though which day it was changed in the middle of the afternoon). Chasah got motion sickness the last several hours of the Bangkok flight, but Becky, David’s wife, had Dramamine for her to take.

We stayed overnight Saturday night at a hotel called Convenient Resort. Our plane didn’t leave until noon, so we had a little time to walk in the morning. Our hotel seemed to be in the middle of a wilderness but on the edge of a city. A multi-level highway passed behind the hotel, but it was separated from us by a very large field with grasses some ten feet tall. The field wasn’t dry, but looked like a marsh, with a green, powdery algae floating in the spots where you could see the water. Meanwhile, in front of the hotel was a similar field, but dryer, and the city was on the other side of it. I couldn’t see the city, just the tops of buildings over the tall grasses.

It was amazing watching the hotel staff in the morning. Due to jet lag, I was downstairs before 5 a.m. There were about five people asleep on stairs and in chairs in the hallway. In fact, I passed the first one I saw on the second floor stairs. He was in a sitting position with his head in his hands, elbows on his knees, but he was obviously asleep, because he didn’t look up when I walked past him.

When those same people had to load us up for the trip back to the airport, that was the amazing part. They were trying to get 15 people and 45 bags into one van and two cars. They did it. Maybe someone took pictures. There’s no explaining it.

The flight to Yangon, Myanmar yesterday (Sunday) was short. Friends of David picked us up in a bus. They drive strangely in this country. In every other country I’ve been in, if you drive on the left side of the road, the steering wheel is on the right side of the car (Like Britain, Kenya, India, and Japan). If you drive on the right side, then the steering wheel is on the left (like the US, mainland Europe, and Ethiopia). Here, however, they drive on the right side, like the US, but the steering wheel is also on the right side, like England. Thus, the passenger side of the vehicle is in the middle of the street. So, when they picked us up at the airport, they didn’t load the bus through the door, which opened in the middle of the street, but they handed the bags up through the driver’s side rear window. There were a lot of bags. We took pictures of Matthew, a 15-year-old on this trip, sitting on them with his head pressed sideways against the tall ceiling of the bus.

The hotel here is beautiful. The city has lots of areas of vegetation. There are trees everywhere. I’m looking out the hotel window at some really massive shade trees. It’s not the trunk that’s so big, but the really wide spread of the top of the tree.

Today we’re going to visit three orphanages. We’re really looking forward to it.

Oh, the money. The exchange rate is 1275 to one dollar. I don’t know the name of their money yet. It sounds something like Chen, but it’s not that, I don’t think. I can’t read the letters on the money. There biggest bill is a 1,000 bill, so when you exchange a hundred dollars you get a big wad of cash. Even a $20 that I exchanged yesterday gave me a whole handful of bills.

Ok, now the spiritual stuff.

David told me about a guy he had met at an orphanage here. He asked him how the orphanage got started. The man said, “I got a good job making $25 per month, so I thought I should do something with all that money. I thought I’d better start an orphanage or something.”

I heard that story around 6:15 this morning. Around 5:30 this morning I was reading Mark, and I found the passage that says, “It is difficult to enter the kingdom of God.” Now, the next sentence is that it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, but the first sentence didn’t mention rich people. It just says it’s difficult to enter the kingdom of heaven. 1 Peter 4:18 says something similar, that it is only with difficulty that the righteous are saved.

When I heard the story about the guy with $25/month who felt compelled by his sudden “riches” to start an orphanage, I wonder whether people like me have any hope of going to heaven. I’ll bet he never checked on the price of a TV or motorcycle before he started the orphanage.

Oh, well. I quit worrying about going to heaven years ago. If that happens, it will only be because God has an inordinate amount of mercy. I think I’ll be happy just to be a part of helping real men of God like that orphanage guy do good. It is simply amazing how much work there’s available to do around the world. When you see the needs, it’s very clear that the difference between giving a child a fish and teaching him to fish is a huge and important one. It can be very important to feed people, but it may be even more important to put in wells and irrigation and provide training.

In fact, looking at people’s houses in Kenya, India, and other places has really made it clear why Jesus spoke of God providing food and clothing without ever mentioning shelter. Shelter’s pretty important in places where it snows, and shade can be important in places like Tennessee. However, in America we really overestimate shelter. People live quite happily in all sorts of homes, both with and without doors, and almost none of them in other places are all sealed up like ours are. If they do have a home that happens to have walls and a roof with no large holes in them, they leave a gap between the walls and roof so the air can move. I suspect we were made to live outdoors, breathing moving air.

Well, I love all of you. I’m told we’re going to meet more incredibly wonderful people today that we’re going to fall in love with. I think it’s possible that Americans are the grumpiest people on earth, though Europeans probably compete with us. Money and happiness are truly not much related to one another. There’s a bumper sticker I’ve read that says, “Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy the things that make you happy.” That’s pure hogs’ wallow. The best things in life can’t be bought with money. May our children, who get to grow up with both village life and surrounded by American extravagance, prove to all America the truth of that.

Great grace be with you.

Oh, everyone’s doing well and healthy. Chashaq and Chasah, new to Asia, are loving it. I walked to a 7-11—yes, a real 7-11—in Bangkok with Chashaq, and he bought a big gulp there with a few bhat that he had gotten as change when he paid for internet at the Convenient Resort. Elisabeth, David’s daughter, was there with us. It was fun. Ratatouille was available with Thai subtitles on DVD in that 7-11, but it was 169 bhat, and I didn’t have any to buy it with. Sorry, kids. Besides, if I’d have bought it, I’d have probably felt so guilty today after hearing about the orphanage guy that I’d have been depressed the whole rest of the trip.

I’m not depressed, though, I’m thrilled to be alive, to know y’all, to be a part of this trip, to be with the friends I’m traveling with, and to know that we are learning how to live our the life of Christ in a world of great needs while living in a country of great deception.

Love,

Shammah