God or satan

Love For Myanmar Ministries Update

Christ Centered, Servant Hearted, Myanmar Focused

“You’re the only Bible some people are ever going to read. They’re going to literally form an opinion about God based on what they think of you.”
Pastor Greg Laurie

Countless schools and educational facilities in Myanmar have been damaged, destroyed, and even occupied by junta forces. Because of the presence of the military in those areas, fear is overwhelming as students are more concerned about considering escape routes than learning. Children need safe places to learn.

The education system in Myanmar continues to worsen. The longer the junta is in power, more children will be deprived of a meaningful education. As it stands now, at least a generation of children will be deprived of the opportunity for a meaningful education.

With an eye to what is at the heart of a well-grounded education, namely confidence in its truth and relevance, we intend to instill hope into the future of the Myanmar children in rural villages and poor urban neighborhoods, many who have been traumatized by the military coup. Be looking for details regarding our education program in future updates, and how you can help with its implementation.

• Prayer Request: Please pray that our Myanmar ministry colleagues know the Lord values them, and He alone is in control of their destiny. He has placed them in the very spot they are to influence others by being examples of faith and love. Their words, conversations, and actions are providing strength and encouragement to the lives they are touching.

Ministry thought

“The life of every living thing is in his hand, as well as the breath of all humanity.” Job 12:10

None of us are the same person we were as a child. Our bodies, minds, and souls have experienced a series of transformations. I doubt few of us knew what was on the other side of those various transformations. We suffered through some of them. We surrendered to others. We collided with some while others facilitated an investigation; such as with spirituality.

Each of us has a certain capacity for change, a certain capacity for faith, and a certain capacity for independence. Our questions about spiritual truth and meaning draw from these capacities in a search for inner harmony and an eventual conversion to something beyond ourselves.

Spirituality appears to exist in some interior chamber of our soul, a private place inaccessible to others except God and Satan. Most of us have an urge to know our purpose, to understand the meaning of our lives. It is with which one, God or Satan, we spend the most time who eventually directs our lives. At some point, we have to stand in defense of our choice regarding from whom, God or Satan, we will accept guidance to shape our days. Some of us proceed through life ignoring the fact we don’t have the inner strength to lift ourselves out of what we ultimately recognize as wrong. Of course, others devise creative ways to escape personal responsibility for their shortcomings. How dare anyone try to invade our set of values! And then, there are those of us who have to hit the bottom in order to gain a perspective on just how insignificant we are without God.

Perhaps one of you has endured the anguish of a directionless, meaningless life as long as you can. Don’t try to retrace your steps. Look for the outstretched arms of our loving God whose embrace will never unclasp!

Gary Watkins, LFM Co-founder

Myanmar coup day 1,300: click on article titles for complete stories

“If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, stay warm, and be well fed,’ but you don’t give them what the body needs, what good is it?” James 2:15-16

• Wa State: It is an autonomous self-governing polity in Myanmar. It is de facto independent from the rest of the country and has its own political system, administrative divisions and army. The United Wa State Army, the largest and most powerful of Myanmar’s many ethnic armed groups with an estimated 30,000 soldiers, has been moving hundreds of its soldiers into new positions across the central part of Shan State, in the country’s east next to China, Laos and Thailand. Tucked away in the rugged hills of the eastern part of Shan State, it controls two enclaves on the Chinese and Thai borders over an area greater than that of Belgium, running them much like an independent state for the ethnic minority Wa. The U.S. Treasury Department called the group “the largest and most powerful drug trafficking organization in Southeast Asia.”
• Rohingya: An ethnic Muslim minority, Rohingya have long faced violence and persecution in their native Myanmar, where they are not legally recognized as citizens. For decades, many who fled wound up inside the dozens of camps in Cox’s Bazar – a city on the coast of Bangladesh. Today, more than 1 million Rohingya live inside these tightly packed camps of tarps and bamboo. The camps in Cox’s Bazar are overrun by gangs. Several of these have been abducting Rohingya refugees and smuggling them back across the border forcing them to fight in the war raging inside Myanmar.
• 2025 Election: The military junta in Myanmar has announced that the 2025 general election will be held in phases rather than on a single day. This information was shared during a meeting between the junta’s election commission and various political parties on August 24. The election commission plans to conduct the election in different phases, depending on the security situation in various regions. Currently, there are 49 political parties registered to compete in the junta’s planned election, including 9 national parties and 40 regional parties.
• Journalists: A military court in Myanmar has jailed a journalist for life and sentenced another to 20 years in prison after convicting them under a counter terrorism law. They were sentenced after being denied the right to legal defense and not being allowed to speak in court. Myanmar’s military junta has waged a sweeping and bloody campaign against dissent, including targeting independent journalists. Myanmar is now one of the world’s biggest jailers of journalists with 62 detained, second only to China, according to the Paris-based campaign group Reporters Without Borders.
• Myanmar youth: The Myanmar junta is arresting young people in Magway Region and sending them directly to the front lines without any training. These youths are arrested after having their phones or National Registration Cards checked by junta soldiers. Phones are checked on the streets. If anything suspicious is found on their phones people are detained.

TIDBITS

1. Mandalay region: Thabeikkyin Town in Mandalay Region’s Thabeikkyin Township was captured and many weapons were seized on 25 August 2024, by National Unity Government (NUG- anti-junta) commanded people’s defense forces (PDFs). In taking the town, the PDFs captured a Lieutenant Colonel. They also seized 18,669 rounds of ammunition, 42 grenades, 36 rocket-propelled grenades, three jammers and other military equipment. Thabeikkyin Town had been host to the junta’s Basic Military Training Depot 2 (BMTD-2) and three junta battalions as well as about 130 police officers and members of the junta-aligned Pyu Saw Htee militia.
2. Central bank: It is learned from the junta’s Central Bank of Myanmar that they authorized private banks and junta-backed financial services platforms to pay monthly salaries to government staff from 34 ministries in Yangon, Mandalay and Naypyitaw in digital currency. It is believed that the Military Council was implementing the digital currency and digital payment system urgently so they would not need to
   print all the required money as well as tighten and control the cash flows and cash payments in the territories they recently lost to ethnic armed groups.
3. Deportations: Thailand has detained and deported over 144,000 Myanmar citizens over the past three months. Many more young Myanmar citizens have arrived in Thailand this year because of a junta conscription law that came into effect in April. Deported people are being forcibly recruited by the Myanmar junta upon re-entry.
4. Recruits: Restaurant owners have been ordered to provide one staff member each month for military service. Restaurant owners were called to a meeting at an administrative office and told to provide one person per shop each month. If they can’t, they must pay 5.5 million kyats (about $1,000) per person. Residents have claimed that young men have been abducted from their homes by military recruiters.
5. Aircraft sales: French aircraft are critical for the junta’s military to transport troops, arms and supplies for combat, as it continues to commit crimes against humanity, Justice for Myanmar reveals in its most recent investigation. The report exposes a global network of companies that allowed Myanmar’s military to acquire, operate and service at least 10 French-manufactured turbo aircraft despite a ban on their sale to Myanmar’s military. The aircraft are manufactured by France-based Avions de Transport Regional, which is owned by Airbus and Rome-headquartered Leonardo, an aerospace company. The fuselages and tails are made in Italy, the wings in France and the engines are supplied by Pratt & Whitney Canada.
6. Shan State: The Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) announced on Aug. 30 that 270 members of the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) have registered to join its administration in Lashio. “We warmly welcome the CDM members,” the MNDAA stated. Health services have resumed in Lashio, which came under MNDAA control on Aug. 3.
7. Passports: The Myanmar Passport Issuing Authority Office issued an announcement on August 29 stating that passport fees will be increased. Over two million people have left the country since the coup. Over 70,000 people left the country in 2022, nearly one million in 2023 and over 700,000 this year up to the end of July.