I asked her if she wanted to hear more about Jesus and she said, "Yes."

Myanmar Gospel Music Festival 2012

 

This is a friend of mine.  Her younger brother was the landlord of the house that we rented last year.  They are believers and we have been able to do a few ministry things together throughout the past year.  On Thursday morning we received a call and Naun Naun was wondering if Nelly and I could do some interpreting for an event that she was helping with. 

We hadn't done any interpreting before, but said we would try.

 Nelly and I waiting to begin.

 When we arrived we were so amazed to see so many people.  There were over 20,000 people who attended each of the 4 nights.

Our job was to interpret for the ministry teams from Taiwan and Indonesia.  The prayer teams would pray for the people and those who felt they had healing would come forward and share their stories with us.  We would then interpret these stories to the ministry teams so that they could choose those they wanted to share testimonies.

This job was a bit of a challenge, because for the testimonies they wanted verifiable stories.  So we had to question and check and question and check...

There was one boy who had his hearing restored.  At first his story seemed untrue because of an interpretation misunderstanding.  He had been able to hear when he was young but because of a wrong medicine being put in his ears he hadn't been able to hear at all for the past 3 years.

The first interpretation communicated was that he couldn't hear since he was 3 years old and so when the doctor checked him and he could speak well, his story seemed untrue.  But after further questioning I caught on that it was the last three years, not since he was three...and so it made sense that he could speak because he lost his hearing when he was 14 and could already speak well.

I want to share with you my favorite story about a 6 year old girl named Shwe Ke.  Shwe Ke has HIV and both her parents have already passed away.  She has no other family to care for her so an non-relative is caring for her.  They are Buddhist and yet they still came to this event with hope in their hearts.

When Shwe Ke was prayed for she said that the hurting of her face and glads was gone and that she knew she would be in heaven one day with no sickness.

I asked her if she wanted to hear more about Jesus and she said, "Yes."

Thankfully that night another friend, Zin Mar, had come along.  She isn't able to do interpreting, so she was watching our bags.  She is a trained children's minister, so God had brought along the perfect person to minister to Shwe Ke!

Zin Mar was free and able to spend time explaining about Jesus and salvation and Shwe Ke understood and believed!! 

I praise God for sending along this friend who had the time and ability to share with Shwe Ke better than I could have on my own. 

God truly knows and prepares the best!! 

October Update

 

 This month we have been working hard on writing our ABC's.  Now Nate, Shane and Fred can trace from A to Z by themselves.  Jonathan has a harder time with the fine motor skills, he can do most of the letters but needs my help for only a few now.

Chris is not yet 3 and has a hard time sitting very long.  He can now do from A to L by himself if I'm there to keep him on task.  It is amazing what a little praise after finishing each letter can do...just means I have to be there to praise him for each letter.

Mary will be 2 in about two weeks.  She loves writing time.  She will trace some of the letters on her own, but mostly just likes to draw.  We write her name together and talk about the letters.  She already knows most of her letters by sight.  At first we had a little trouble with her not wanting to stop writing and give me her pen.  But I have found that if I ask her to put the pens away for me, she is so excited and then it accomplishes our clean up task.

 

Fred has picked up the ABC's very quickly.  He went from only knowing the F for his name to being able to trace all the ABC's correctly in only two or three times helping him.

  

Shane was able to write most of his capital and lowercase ABC's when he came to school.  He still loves to practice alongside the other children.

This next month I am going to have the children start writing a second of each letter next to the traced one.  I'm sure it will be difficult like their first day tracing, but it is amazing teaching children and to see how quickly they catch on and learn things.

 

I mentioned last month about some of the boys being pretty active.  I am happy to be able to say that the children are now able to sit when I ask them.  They can now study for about an hour.  Of course they aren't sitting the whole time.  We do little songs, dances and games in between, but when I ask them to sit they do until the next chance to wiggle.  Of course this is not 100% of the time, but a good 80%.  

I'm so happy with how much they are learning and excited to see at the end of the year what these kids will be able to say and do. 

 In school we do also teach Myanmar.  This is the Myanmar alphabet.  

I'm getting a good practice each day on the Myanmar basics as well.

 This is Chris and the other day he dumped out the tub of nuts and bolts and used two of them as his drumsticks and the tub was his drum.  

It was so cute to watch him drumming away.

I love the imaginations that children have!!

 Here are Chris and Mary.  At times the activities that the older boys are doing are a little wild for them.   

So we get out this animal puzzle and work on it together.

 

 One of the biggest hits at school this last month was a car that I made from a washing machine box.

I had made it before school started and tried using it when we had only Fred and Jonathan, but they had no interest in it at that time.  

All they wanted to do was dump out and scatter all the toys they could find.

It is fun to see how much they have already grown and learned. They have learned how to play with one thing and then clean up. And they can play together now and talk about what they are imagining.  

The kids have taken numerous imaginary trips to the zoo in this car...

 Here Shane is driving.  He drives the most out of all the children.

In fact, outside of school he is almost always driving.  Our TV remote becomes a steering wheel and just about anything else he can imagine looks like a steering wheel or handle bars for a motorcycle.

I am so thankful for the opportunity that God has given me to teach these children!

May God bless all of you who are supporting us in your prayers and giving!