Pray for our friends in Myanmar.
I was supposed to be headed over there in a months time but the election has kyboshed that. Now our friends on the coast in Sittwe, are being pummelled by the cyclone. I wonder how long the government can keep this cyclone quiet? They managed to try very hard last time, even denying aid groups in.
Two words I’m not overly fond of at the moment. Postponed indefinitely. My trip to Myanmar has been postponed indefinitely by our friends in Myanmar. I understand and fully support the reason: it just is not safe. An election has finally been called for Myanmar. It is to take place in the fall, weeks before we were set to go. Myanmar doesn’t have a great track record with elections: the results are usually a foregone conclusion. The last one they held saw the military imprisoning the overwhelming winner Aung San Suu Kyi. Twenty-years later, she is still in house arrest and prohibited from running in this election.
Since then, Myanmar has had a few uprisings. The most recent one being the huge monks uprising in 2007. Accordingly, the government is pretty wary of letting people congregate at any time, especially not around the time of an election. Our friends are having a hard time getting the permit to hold the celebration we had intended to attend. They have decided that they do not think we would be as safe as we would like if we were to come in December and, even if we were safe, we would likely not be allowed to leave the city of Yangon. I don’t particularly want to fly halfway around the world to be confined to a big, busy city and miss out on the smaller places and other people who represent more of the real country.
Yes, the plan is still go go another time when the situation on the ground there is a little better. However as far as trips this fall go, it looks like I’m staying right here and will be continuing to pray for our friends and the rest of the people of Myanmar.
I may have mentioned before that I am going to Myanmar in November. If you missed that memo, here it is: I’m going to Myanmar in November. (For those still unsure, here is where Myanmar is. You may also know it as Burma.) I’ll be going with a group from the Anglican Diocese of BC as a part of our Partners in Mission Companion Diocese program. From the Island, a group of young people are going, and we’ll be taking part in the anniversary celebrations of their Anglican Young People’s Association.
One of the guys on our team has set up this skookum website; which is currently in the process of having info added to it. But when its all ready to go, it will be a fount of info and goodness! I might even post over there now and again. So check it out!
If you’re on the Island, we’ll be having a number of fund-raising activities in the months to come, and we’d love your support. If you’re not on the Island, we’d still love your support so drop me a line and I’ll let you know how you can get involved!
As you may or may not know, I have already got my next major excursion out of the country planned. While this should not come as too much of a surprise, where I am going may. I’m going with a group of young adults from the Anglican Diocese of British Columbia to Myanmar/Burma next year. We will be going as a part of the 50th anniversary celebrations of their Anglican young people’s association because our diocese has a partner relationship with theirs. As a part of this partnership, fifteen people from there are supposed to be coming to visit us this week. Unfortunately, due to the stupidity (? – sorry having a difficult time coming up with a better adjective than that) of our Canadian government, only four of the group has been issued visas to come. The other eleven are currently sitting in Thailand, waiting. For these people to come here is not an easy task, now our government has gone and made it more difficult. Pray for them.
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