Christmas with the kids

I love Christmas!

The best part of Christmas is sharing "Christ" with others and this weekend, that's just what we got to do.
Miá and I got to help with a Christmas party for some local kids. We sang songs, acted out the Christmas story, played games, decorated ornaments and ate some good food.
The best part is, of course, the smiles on the kids faces and experiencing their thankfulness for such a small act of kindness.
I can't imagine any better way to celebrate the true meaning of Christmas...

On our way to the party with our friend and language teacher, KeKe

This is the outside of the church building where we had the party.

This is the church.

These were the first to arrive.
We would end up with about 45 kids total at the party.

These little girls are cousins and they came in matching dresses. So cute!

We taught praise songs with hand motions.

Miá taught them a song in Burmese - I'm so
proud of her language ability!

Words to a new Christmas song.

This is my friend reading them the
Christmas story in their language.

Now that's what I call an angel!

We dressed them up and they acted out the Christmas story.

A few "wise guys!"

We also played games.

Love this church's Christmas decorations!

Love their smiles while playing games.

Passing the marshmallow with chopsticks.
(They do this much better than I ever could.)

We decorated ornaments.

We decorated cookies too!

Then it's time for the presents! (Thanks to Lottie Moon!)

The best part was doing all of this with my precious baby girl.
Love getting to see my girls be the hands and feet of our Father.

Celebrating 200 years with Myanmar Baptists - The Judson Celebration

200 years ago, a man named Adoniram Judson left his home and family in America, boarded a vessel, crossing oceans and seas until he arrived on the Golden Shore of Burma.

His life overseas was not an easy one. He was brutalized and imprisoned. Many days he was hungry and without food. He experienced the death of not one, but two wives and several children as well. Yet he stayed in Burma throughout his life, never wavering from his mission of sharing the message of salvation with those who had never heard of the one true God.

Because of Judson’s devotion to Father, his faith and this mission, Burma was and will be forever changed.

The Light is here and it is growing!

This past weekend the people of Burma, now called Myanmar, along with the Myanmar Baptist Convention commemorated the life and influence of Adoniram Judson with a 200-year anniversary celebration. It was like nothing I have ever experienced in my life, neither here nor in America. People traveled from all over this country, some riding buses for five days over difficult terrain to get here. Some came from other countries to be here for this special event. And it was special.

Even up to about two years ago, this type of event would never have been allowed in this country. Also, there was no facility large enough to hold the magnitude of people who would be present for the event, so one had to be built. That also means special building permits and land permits and fund-raising that has taken years in the process.

Yet, with Him, all things are possible.

I’ve heard estimates of more than 50,000 people were in attendance throughout the weekend. They came. They sang praise. They worshiped. They fellowshipped. Most importantly, they heard the Good News. It was truly amazing.

And somehow in the planning of this event, this nobody from a small town in Mississippi on the other side of the world got invited to be a part of the program…

It had to have been more than two years ago now that one of my dear friends who lives and works in this country (who I had not yet met) was woken up in the middle of the night and felt burdened to write a song about Adoniram Judson. Inspired by his life’s work of translating the Good Book into Burmese and his life’s quest of enabling the people of Burma to come to know Father, a beautiful song called “Carry the Light” was the result.

She had just finished the song when the Johnson family arrived in this country and we soon discovered our mutual interest in music. Whenever we sang together, people always remarked how uniquely our voices blended with each other. (See my original blog post just a few months within arriving in this country about our singing together and how it was an answer to prayer – http://www.seepy1.com/2012/03/he-keeps-me-singing.html)

Over the last two years, we’ve had countless opportunities to sing together and it was at one of those occasions just two weeks ago when the coordinator for the Judson Celebration just happened to be in the audience. It was a few days after that service that he called and asked if we would sing “Carry the Light” at the big event.

I’m not sure if I can adequately express the honor it was to receive this invitation, and on the day we arrived and experienced first-hand just how big this event really was, well…. I was overwhelmed.

I have never seen so many people in one place in my entire life. Oh maybe at the Superdome in New Orleans, but this was that huge number of people all squished into one auditorium. There were people sitting on the floor in the aisles. People were sitting in other’s laps in the chairs. There were people crowding outside the doors and windows and all around the outside of the open-air building. Big screens were set-up for viewing downstairs in the basement of the auditorium and it was also overflowing.

There was a 200 member choir on the stage and they had just concluded singing “And the Glory” from Handel’s Messiah when it was our turn to take the stage.

“Stand up straight. Think about your breathing. Smile.” These were the thoughts running through my mind as we walked to the microphone. My singing partner intended to share the plan of salvation in the local language before we sang so I was mentally praying for her and using those moments to try to calm myself. I looked out into the congregation and saw a multitude of people representing every tribe of this country and different nations from around the world and every single face was smiling. Then the music began playing.

We had not had any pre-performance mike checks. We didn’t know if there were monitors or if the accompaniment track would play. It was simply a step in faith. And when we started singing, I knew there was sound coming out of my mouth, but I couldn’t hear anything. I couldn’t hear myself or my partner and I had no idea if we were blending or even singing in tune. My heart was beating so fast, my head began to swirl and I thought I might pass out.

“Just sing. Just keep singing,” I was thinking to myself. “Don’t think. Just sing.”

I knew it was over when I heard the applause. I tried to keep from shaking and crying as I walked off the steps of the stage. It was all a blur.

Throughout this whole experience, there has been this one thought in my mind. I keep picturing in my head the fig tree. See, a fig tree can be beautiful. It can even provide shade. But a fig tree’s purpose is to produce fruit.

Over and over in the days leading up to the Judson celebration and during the gathering I have been praying that something great would come out of this experience. I didn’t want the occasion of my friend and I singing this song to just be about us or about our musical ability. My honest prayer is that some kind of “fruit” would be the result.

In Mark, chapter 11, there is a story of J.C. condemning a fig tree and causing it to whither away. Since this fig tree had produced leaves, one would assume it had also produced fruit. But the tree was a hypocrite. It was only outwardly beautiful.

I don’t want to be like this fig tree, giving the appearance of something good because my name is in the program or because I’ve been seen on stage. My job here is not just to show my leaves; instead my desire is to produce fruit.

The attendees at the Judson Celebration came from all over. They heard the “Message” from countless speakers and singers and others, and now it is my prayer that they will take it back to their hometowns and tell everyone they meet. It could be the beginning of an explosion of “Light” breaking through the darkness of this country.

The message is so simple. Carry the “Light.” Share the Good News. Believe in Him.

It’s the same message Adoniram Judson first brought to this beautiful country so many years ago. And Adoniram’s sacrifice was not in vain.

I wonder what he would’ve thought if he could’ve seen all those people in his beloved country proclaiming their faith in God.

It surely gives me hope for our days ahead.

We cannot rest in the fact that the Good Work has started. It’s just the beginning and there is so much left to be done.

Judson planted the proverbial fig tree. It has been watered and pruned over the years by the countless sacrifices of those who have given their lives to the cause. And now, with Father’s prompting and provision, we watch and wait for the fruit.

Everywhere the girls went, people were asking to have their picture made with them. They felt like celebrities.

This is the choir performing just before us.

This is us in the wings right before we walked on stage.

This picture is just the front, top, center section. I wish I would've taken more pictures to better show the number of people there...

Some of the people outside and you can sorta get an idea of the two floors of the main building on the left.

P.S. I realized you don't see CJ in any of these pictures and I should explain. He was preaching earlier that morning somewhere else, but he arrived at the Judson celebration just before my friend and I went on stage. I was so thankful to have him there!

“The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” – Luke 10:2

The key to answered prayer

Sharing my own personal study this morning...
These are purely my ideas and what I felt God was teaching me today.

In Matthew 8:1-4 there is a man with leprosy who approaches Jesus and says, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” This man believes that Jesus has the power to heal him and he petitions Jesus for that healing. Jesus replies, “I am willing. Be clean.” In this way, Jesus answers the leper’s prayers.
In Mark 5:25-34 the woman with the issue of bleeding also desires to be healed. She decides to herself that if she could just get close enough to Jesus to touch His robe then she would be healed and that’s what she did. She didn’t ask. She didn’t make a scene. She touched His robe and because of her faith, she was healed.

I think the leper’s story represents our need to pray to God and ask for whatever petitions we have. If the Lord is willing, He will answer them.
Yet in the woman’s story, I see that she had faith great enough for her prayers to be answered. She didn’t even have to ask. (Of course the Lord already knows our needs.)

This is a little bit of a conflict for me.
I’ve always known that my spiritual gift is faith and I’ve drawn on that gift many times for myself and others.
Yet I’ve also always felt strongly that it’s important to pray to God about our requests and needs and wants.

In the Bible, there are many stories about Jesus healing people. He does it in all different ways. In some situations, He’s asked. In some situations, He merely speaks words and the person is healed. In some situations, He doesn’t even go to the person who is sick. He just commands it and it’s done. (See Matthew 8:5-13 The Faith of the Centurion) The only similarity in all these stories that I can see, is that for every person who was healed by Jesus, they had to first have faith.

[In Acts 3:1-10 Peter heals a beggar who didn’t ask for healing and had no faith prior to his healing. But yet the Holy Spirit healed the man through Peter. This is because of Peter's faith.]

This faith is not just hoping that God will answer our prayers, but it’s based on a fundamental belief that God has the power to answer any prayer if He is willing. But therein lies our problem.
I think because we have seen or experienced so much evil and tragedy in the world, we don’t always believe that He is willing to answer our prayers. How could God allow bad things to happen to good people, right? And that’s where our faith falters.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve lost sight of God’s loving-kindness.
Are there any examples in the Bible of Jesus denying healing to someone who sought it from Him? (The answer is no.)

The bleeding woman was healed without any prior petitions. Her faith was such that she believed she could draw on His power to be healed. She had no doubts as to whether or not Jesus was willing to heal her. She only had to walk closely with Jesus - not just close, but so close as to touch the hem of his robe - to have her prayers answered.

Am I walking that closely with Him? Is my faith strong enough that I believe Jesus is truly willing to answer my prayers whatever they might be?
It’s not until I believe He IS willing that then my prayers will be answered.
I must believe that God wants what’s best for me.

Matthew 7:9-11 - “Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him!”

Matthew7:7-8 - “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”

It's why I do what I do

So many times I sit down at my computer with the intention of writing something for the blog. My goal is to post once a week, but you can easily see how short I’ve fallen of that plan.

I want to write to tell you of all the amazing things going on in this city… but I can’t. If you know anything about me, you understand why that is so difficult.

I’ve spent my whole life writing about the world around me, and sharing everything I can think of with anyone who will listen. But for my family’s security and for the protection of the people I work with, for now I have to just ponder those things in my heart.

So then I try to write about the general experience of living overseas, but then I think to myself, “Who cares?!?” and so I don’t write anything. After all, I’m accustomed to writing for an audience. I’m not just writing for myself. (I do that in my journal.) I want to write to move, motivate and mobilize my friends at home. I want to give you something to contemplate that might change your way of thinking. But then I end up writing something stupid like how much I love salad.

Ugh!

I just feel so out of touch with civilization. The latest technology, who won the big game, what movies are playing and what new music is out – all these things we just are not aware of anymore.

It’s been two years now that we have been living in a foreign country, and I could not have fathomed how drastically different our lives would be.

We have a saying here that goes, “The days drag on but the years are flying by.”

It’s so true. Sometimes the days here feel so long – it’s because it takes us so much more time just to accomplish a simple task. We sit in traffic. We can’t easily communicate. There’s no quick running here and there to do this or that. Yet we have blinked and two years have passed by.

I guess that could be true of life no matter where you live.

My kids are growing up. Our hair is grayer or gone. Life is moving by and the Message just feels so much more urgent.

Maybe that’s why I’m having trouble writing.

I see the lost and dying all around me and I can’t just make jokes to cover it up.

Tonight I sat with a group of friends, discussing the Word and why it’s important to share His love with others. These people had huge smiles on their faces. They were leaning forward in their chairs. They were soaking up the Good News like a dry sponge thirsty for water, and I knew that the Spirit was there.

When we began talking with Father, I was holding back tears. He’s just so good.

And that message is the most important.

More than anything else I could say.

He’s good.

He loves.

He gives.

Why don’t I talk about that more?

Why don’t you?

I guess more than anything I could say about the last two years is that I’ve drawn closer to Him. Maybe that’s why He brought me here – to eliminate the distractions that take my eyes off Him, to provide peace, to restore my joy. But then that’s all about me, isn’t it? And I don’t think that’s it.

It’s not about me.

It’s about Him.

It doesn’t mean I won’t continue posting pictures on Facebook of my favorite foods. It doesn’t mean I’m going to stop sharing about all the ignorant and humorous mistakes I make in my attempt to assimilate into this Southeast Asian culture.

I’m sure I’ll still blog about living overseas and this crazy adventure we call life.

I just pray that in everything I do, He is the reason for it all.

Food Fumble

I’d like to talk for a few minutes about food.

I come from the South where food is important.

Just the thought of old-fashioned, southern, country-cooking makes my mouth water.

I grew up watching my mother and grandmothers cook.

Some of my favorite memories of my childhood are sitting on the counter in my Granny’s kitchen watching her roll out the dough for her famous biscuits. I can still picture her in that red and white striped apron, always in a church dress and pearls no matter what time of the day or what day of the week you saw her. She inevitably had some flour dusted on her cheek and she would be humming a hymn as she floated about her kitchen. It was intoxicating to watch.

Many years later when I was an adult, although I aspired to be like my fore-mothers in the kitchen, I just didn’t have the time.

Saturday morning was pretty much the only time I had in the week to whip out my pots and pans that, for the most part, sat unused.

Oh, I loved to cook. In fact I had shelves and shelves of cookbooks – some were gifts, but my favorite ones were the books bought at garage sales. I had a few that belonged to the infamous Mary Francis Watts and I loved reading her notes in the margin for how to adjust a recipe a smidge here or there or which recipes her children and grandchildren preferred. 

Prior to moving overseas, I was a little nervous because I knew that one of my main responsibilities would be cooking for our family. I had heard rumors that the only way to buy chicken here was still clucking and I would have to literally kill the chicken, pluck it, etc. Thankfully it’s not as bad as that.

But it is different.

Living in a third-world country, you’ll not find a Walmart or a Winn Dixie anywhere. In our country there’s not a single, American fast food chain. There’s just no semblance of Western culture to be found and trying to cook the food my husband and children are used to from the States is quite a challenge.

There’s no processed or pre-packaged foods, and while it is surely much healthier pretty much everything has to be made from scratch. For instance, if a recipe calls for sour cream, I have to make that using real cream and vinegar or lemon juice. (Same thing for buttermilk.)

We do live above a small grocery store where we can buy meat and rice and coffee among other items, which is very convenient. I remember, though, when my parents visited earlier this year, my mom could not even walk into the store without getting nauseous. The sights and smells do take a little while to get used to.

But as the country where we live has slowly begun to open up after American embargoes were lifted, we’re actually now beginning to see imported items arrive from time to time.

We’re able to get Campbell’s cream of chicken and mushroom soups pretty regularly. We can get canned tomato sauce and if you’re willing to drive downtown, there’s a place that sells canned diced tomatoes. That same place has started to carry a few kinds of potato chips as well. Our store downstairs almost always has peanut butter and there’s a store down the street that has pickles. The thing is, you just never know what items the store will have so it’s really difficult to plan in advance. Oh and all those imported items are super expensive. I was at an import store downtown last week that had a single can of blueberries – you can’t buy fresh blueberries in this country because they don’t grow them – and it was $13 for the single can! Can you imagine paying $13 for a can of blueberries?!?!

Needless to say, there are a lot of food items we’ve just learned to live without.

That’s why now when we go to a store and we see an item that we’ve not seen in over two years since we were last in America almost, we get so excited.

And that’s the main point of this story.

Last week, I stopped in the import grocery store and they had real lettuce. Can you feel how excited I was?

I love all kinds of salads, love them! But here we just can’t get good lettuce. Every now and then we’ll get this small viney looking leaf thing that they call lettuce, but it’s just not the same. And we have to go through like five stages of cleaning raw vegetables here because of the water situation, etc. Can I just simplify by saying it’s a real pain?

That’s why when I saw this imported lettuce I got sooooo excited. I was singing in the store, making up my own words to a song, “They’ve got lettuce, oh yes they do. I’m gonna eat a salad. How ‘bout you?”

Later that night we went out to a restaurant to celebrate a friend’s birthday and then the next morning we had to go downtown to take Zoë to the orthodontist, but after that, I planned to come home and make myself a big salad. I think I may have even dreamed about eating salad the night before. Is that sad or what?!?

Finally we got home that day and I started preparing my salad. I had to make some ranch dressing from scratch of course, but it was so worth it. I just knew this was going to be awesome.

When I finally had everything ready, I noticed in my dressing recipe it said it was best to let the dressing sit in the fridge for 30 minutes to set up before eating, so again I waited.

I was dancing around the house. So happy and all for a salad. Silly, huh?

Well, the time finally came and I prepared my big bowl and sat down to eat. I got that first big bite, put it in my mouth and….

…immediately spit it back out.

Yuck!

It was disgusting!

“CJ come try this!” I screamed from the other room.

He came and took a bite.

“That’s not lettuce,” he replied nonchalantly before the snicker appeared on his face.

“Wh-what is that?!?” I demanded.

“Tastes like some funky kind of cabbage,” he said, barely able to control his laughter.

I was just completely deflated.

Over lettuce.

Or cabbage or whatever it was.

I’m sure if my grandmother would’ve been here, she probably would’ve made something amazing with that “lettuce” but I just tossed it in the garbage.

I have really enjoyed having more time to cook and I love trying out new recipes. I especially love the smiles on my girls faces when I am able to make something that they say “is as good as Granny makes!”

As for tonight, I’m making meatloaf, mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli. I already went to the store and bought the ingredients and the beef. Well, at least I think it’s beef…. J you can never be too sure, huh?

The next time you walk into your local grocery store and you’re surrounded by colorful boxes of cereal and aisles full of delicious breads and cheese of every kind to be found in the dairy section, I want you to think of those living around the world who don’t have those same options and say a little prayer.

Surely heaven will be a place, not just of milk and honey, but of bright green salads and ranch dressing!