Suffering Shapes Faith

Love For Myanmar Ministries Update

Christ Centered, Servant Hearted, Myanmar Focused

“You will have suffering in this world. Be courageous! I have conquered the world.” John 16:33

We now have three education or learning centers: Mawlamyine in Mon State (83 students with 58 Buddhists), Mandalay Division (25 students with 20 Buddhists), and Tanintharyi Division (20 students with 12 Buddhists). These educational efforts span from tutoring children who attend the government schools but need extra help, to separately teaching elementary through highschoolers of children whose parents do not want their children in the government school system. We have also recently supported the establishment of an Accelerated Christian Education or ACE school with 13 students in Yangon.

We have thirty house churches with a total of 578 members being overseen by six Fellowship Coordinators.

We have had 20 youths depart from our homes in Yangon in an effort to avoid serving in the junta’s military. Some are living temporarily in a safe area where we have helped build huts and provide survival supplies while they prepare for their journeys out of the country. Our National Director’s daughter who is eligible to serve in the junta’s military is trying to enroll in a college preparatory school in Bangkok. However, the junta is denying passage for eligible men and women as they are desperate to fill vacancies which have resulted from casualties as well as desertions in losing battles . Your prayers would be appreciated for all of these youth who have no desire to be recruited into the junta’s military to battle against their own people.

The Buddhist extremist group called Ma Ba Tha, forced us to move our Sunday School class for leprosy villagers’ children in Mawlamyine from the community center we helped renovate. However, the children are now being transported from the leprosy village to one of our house churches.

• Prayer Request: Please pray that as the faith of the Myanmar Christians is tested by this coup and its hostilities, they will realize that sometimes we are led into difficult circumstances in order that we may grow spiritually and be drawn closer to God. It is not that God has forsaken them. He is always there with them.

Ministry thought

“The vessel of faith journeys on soft waters. Belief rides on the wings of waiting.” Max Lucado

Non-believers want certainty, not unexpected suffering, and faith in the Divine appears to be nothing more than another mystery, an exercise bankrupt of compassion and relevance to their daily struggles. Non-believers renounce the world of faith for the discomfort it produces within their souls, the anxiety within their hearts, and the fantasy within their minds. Unbelievers seem to consider faith as some sort of phenomenon which leads to imaginary results that Christians allow to needlessly deform their realities. Further, to their thinking, faith condemns you to waiting and waiting and waiting often with no relief from their suffering and no answers to their prayers. What is the point of opening your soul to Divine forces that are ultimately beyond your control and understanding?

What is not understood is that faith is shaped from suffering. Most are powerfully motivated by a drive towards earthly happiness with no awareness of how pain can constructively shape their eternity. For most, faith is a foolish stretch of the mind which commits you to rebelling against reason by following a God who, without explanation, allows suffering into your life. I have read countless times that before a trial comes into our lives, it has first passed through the hands of God. The inference being that our suffering has a God-anointed purpose. The fact is a growing number of people simply do not accept that suffering has a meaningful purpose in God’s plan for their lives.

Christians try not to lose hold of the belief that there is meaning behind their suffering, but in the throes of our agony, you can think you will never reach that spiritual port of refuge. Suffering doesn’t obey our voices, and stripped of control, we become disoriented, wandering helplessly looking for a passage out of our sorrow. If allowed, God can bring us through the cruel reality of our all-consuming grief, and help us learn how to feel and proceed with life again.

It is the voice of God that can guide us across those empty spaces created by traumatic events. You or someone close to you may be suffering right now, trying to absorb the pain and move forward in the privacy of your own heart. I encourage you to not solely rely on your own strength of will, and expand the boundary of your faith in God. It is faith which will close the sometimes distressing distance between you and God. You do not want to miss what God has planned for you!

Gary Watkins, LFM Co-founder

Myanmar coup day 1,286: click on article titles for complete stories

“The sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” Romans 8:18

• “Democratic transition”: China supports a plan by Myanmar’s junta to hold fresh elections and return the conflict-torn country to a “democratic transition”, Beijing’s foreign minister said last week. The junta has promised to hold fresh elections but has repeatedly delayed a timetable for polls as it struggles to crush opposition to its coup. Last year the junta banned Suu Kyi’s widely popular National League for Democracy party that won a landslide in 2020 elections.
• Myanmar schools: The junta trumpets free education but in reality hidden costs at schools, corruption among officials and discriminatory treatment are pushing many poor children to drop out. While inflation rages, junta spending on education is falling. The Federation of Basic Education Worker Unions has stated that between 350,000 and 400,000 children have switched to resistance-run schools accredited by the National Unity Government, appointed by lawmakers ousted in the coup. Hundreds of thousands more children are believed to be in parallel ethnic education systems, but a larger number appear to have quit education entirely.
• Sagaing region: Myanmar junta forces raided a string of villages in central Myanmar sending some 10,000 fleeing from their homes. About 150 junta soldiers in a convoy of vehicles raided at least nine villages in Kanbalu township.
• Deportees: Junta authorities have forcibly recruited nearly six dozen Myanmar nationals repatriated by Thailand after serving time in the country’s Ranong Prison. The junta is desperate to shore up its dwindling ranks amid mounting losses to rebel groups and mass surrenders.
• Kachin Independence Army (KIA): The Kachin Independence Army (KIA) says it captured the last junta base near the southern Kachin State town of Momauk on Monday, giving it full control of the township bordering China. Last week, they also took control of two major hilltop bases near Hpakant, a jade-mining centre that has been a major source of revenue for Myanmar’s military leaders.
• Fuel shortage: In recent days some residents in the commercial hub Yangon have been queuing overnight outside petrol stations in the hope of obtaining fuel for vehicles. The shortage also affects businesses and hospitals that rely on generators for power during frequent electricity blackouts in the city of some eight million. The junta’s official exchange rate is 2,100 kyat to the dollar but on the black market a greenback fetches around 6,500 kyat.

TIDBITS

1. Aung San Suu Kyi: The second auction of Aung San Suu Kyi’s lakeside villa in Yangon’s Bahan Township did not receive any bids. The starting bid was set at $46 million. The famed address is where she spent 15 years under house arrest. She has been held incommunicado since her arrest during the military coup on Feb. 1, 2021.
2. Internally Displaced Persons: Junta officials are investigating Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) who have relocated to Yangon from conflict-affected areas of the country. Immigration officers and ward administrators have been reportedly taking photos of the IDPs and sending them to township offices and military bases for further investigation.
3. US & NUG: While the Chinese government was meeting with junta officials on August 14-15, the United States had their own meeting with the junta’s opposition, the National Unity Government (NUG) to discuss aid issues. The acting NUG president held an online meeting with Tom Sullivan, Department of State Counsellor, and Michael Schiffer, Assistant Administrator at the United States Agency for International Development.
4. Military service: The junta will soon begin conscripting women to serve in the army in Hopong Township, southern Shan State. The junta announced that there would be four national rounds of conscription with 5,000 people conscripted each round, meaning that 20,000 Myanmar youths will be conscripted into the junta army every year.
5. Monsoon: Since the end of June, torrential monsoon rains and overflow of various rivers have submerged several states and regions, exacerbating already severe humanitarian needs. Countrywide, an estimated 3 million people are internally displaced, with many of the newly displaced living without proper shelter amid the monsoon season.
6. The value of the Burmese kyat has fallen so much that it reached more than seven thousand (7,000) kyats to one American dollar this week. On the day of the coup, February 1, 2021, the exchange rate was 1,330 kyats to one U.S. dollar!