Blog Two from Myanmar: Bago - June 8-14, 2009

What a week that was. Perhaps the most intense week of the entire trek, week two began with a rest day. Following Monday, the day of rest, we sat out very early (but not quite as early as we had planned) for Bago, a city of 250,000 about 2 hours away. Now to describe the transportation. We used Zeke’s car on the treacherous Myanmar roads. Once one leaves Yangon, there is a sort of a highway that extends to Bago. It is about as wide as an interstate in the US except that the median is replaced by a row of trees. If there were any lines it could probably hold 8 lanes, so it is very wide, and not in the best of shape (there are pot holes everywhere. They told me that sober people swerve all over the road to miss the pot holes. Its the drunk people in Myanmar that drive straight and ruin their cars). As for how the people of Myanmar use the road, it is understood that a place on the road is not given—it must be won. So as we weaved in and out of the way of tour buses and trucks with full loads of people in the back, and around pot holes and cows with the windows rolled down, I remembered my love of road trips.

After arriving windblown and weary from all the jerking about, we immediately started assessing the preschool of Christ Methodist Church in Bago, a church in the Chinese district (more on Myanmar Methodist Polity in a later post for those who care). The assessment consisted of interviewing the principal and around four teachers as well as completing a checklist of various items we found to be essential for a preschool of this sort including hygiene, discipline, and labeling. Then we went to a Methodist church and World Vision supported boarding house. Later, we watched pirated movies and slept.

The next day I met a most intriguing woman. She is 23. Her name is Lei Bo Mu, and she is the pastor of two different congregations which used to be the same church. Both of these churches meet in houses and both of them make her job as a young clergywoman less than easy. I was actually impressed with her courage and completely flabbergasted (yeah, I just used that word. Deal.) at how very “American” I thought her problems sounded. How many times have you you heard the following story before:

The pastor wants to reach out to one or more marginalized groups (youth, young adults, the poor, etc.), but can’t because of opposition in the church. The older people in the church, who have attended the church for their whole life, can’t seem to let go of the idea of the church as it was 30 or 40 years ago and do not seem to see that the church is dying of old age around them.

This seems to be a typical model of the death of a church in the United States, and it even reaches as far as rural Myanmar. Which leads me to one of the themes which emerged in my trip—The impact of the US and more broadly of the West reaches deep into the furthest reaches of every country on this planet whether we like it or not. We need to take that influence seriously. I heard Lady Gaga and saw posters of Avril Lavigne in the middle of nowhere Myanmar—do you think they even realize. All any of the villagers wanted to know about was Obama and what I thought of him. I thought I was just voting—no biggie—, but I was wrong.

Throughout the week I saw so many giant golden Buddha statues that I could not believe that the poor were continuing to donate everything they had to the pagodas. The French definitely would have protested and killed someone by now. I learned about Buddhist culture and I experienced the love of God that the Christians in Bago have. I preached about unity in a tiny church on Sunday morning and I later spoke briefly on the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives at a Youth Rally.

Coming up next post: Cyclone Nargis villages

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