Spiritually Lonely

Love For Myanmar Ministries Update

Christ Centered, Servant Hearted, Myanmar Focused

“When a man is getting better, he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less.” C.S. Lewis

Some of us have had much practice with grief. Those dark times when our entire soul collapsed from the inability to comprehend why our loving God seemingly left us to handle our sorrow with our own courage. Those times when our anguish and confusion entangled us in a darkness that stilled our trust in God. Some of us couldn’t live through it without reckoning with our willingness to surrender our faith to a rebirth.

Imagine handling your trauma without the strength of God to rely upon. Imagine living in a culture which dismisses God. Imagine being governed by authorities who instill fear into those who even consider another religion. The military junta holds firmly the spiritual lever within Myanmar enforcing, pausing, or sanctioning the direction of religious thought.

Although many Myanmar people are poor and minimally educated, they have minds and hearts capable of reaching far beyond the spiritual confines of Buddhism. We have an ever growing network of house churches now totaling 34 with nearly 700 regular participants which is only faintly crossing the spiritual abyss of this country of over 50 million people. If handled attentively and compassionately, we can make our way across any spiritual barrier and reconstruct the fragments of hope within the Myanmar people. Just since the first of this year, we have shared the Gospel with over a 100 new villagers while providing over 500 Buddhist neighboring villagers with either food supplies or the funds to purchase their food needs from the local market.

The Myanmar people are profoundly spiritually lonely. They are enduring a variety of horrific physical cruelties because of the military coup; however, they are experiencing a much deeper spiritual punishment because their inherited religious culture and traditions have dampened the powers of expression of other religions by confiscating the people’s freedom of choice.

We have no intention of conceding to this cauldron of control, and pray you will consider financially supporting our house church planting ministry and the possibilities which lay hidden in the countless villages of Myanmar. Our gains thus far give evidence that God has prepared many villagers’ hearts with an awareness of the vagueness and uncertainty of Buddhism. They need your help to escape toward the unconditional love of our God.

Gary Watkins, LFM Co-founder

• Prayer Request: (Myanmar coup day 1,475)
  Please pray that the Lord leads our Myanmar house churches to grow in grace and knowledge during these dark times of persecution. And, that the love within our house churches may reach more of their Buddhist neighbors, and overcome any judgement in their hearts about Christianity.

1. The junta has ordered monasteries across the country to bar young men who have received military service summons from ordaining as Buddhist monks.
2. Four Mon resistance groups, the Mon Liberation Army, the Mon State Defense Force, the Mon State Revolutionary Force, and the Mon National Liberation Army – Anti-Dictatorship, recently announced that they were unifying to enhance military operations in Mon State. Mon ethnic armed groups operate in southeastern Burma’s Mon and Karen states, as well as the Tanintharyi Region.
3. The Ministry of Defense recently issued the People’s Military Service bylaw which includes a provision that a person who has received an order from the township organization for civil service is not allowed to travel abroad without the permission of the central organization. It is stipulated that if a person who is required to serve in the military service is a member of a political party, he or she shall be deemed to have resigned from the relevant party during the period of serving in the military service.
4. Junta authorities appear to be increasingly abducting young men on the street or during household inspections to boost the number of military conscripts, while families and activists say bribes are no longer enough to free them. Besides abductions, irregularities include the conscription of underage youth and others who are supposed to be exempt, such as the husbands of pregnant women and the sole caregivers of ailing parents. Very few young men are keen to serve in the widely despised military, and many have fled to foreign countries such as Thailand, or to areas controlled by armed resistance groups.
5. The junta began registering women for military service in Taunggyi City in southern Shan State for the first time. The junta is increasingly targeting women for conscription as the pool of young men decreases. Young people are at risk of abduction by junta soldiers in civilian clothes who are roaming the city.