Mission Trip Day 1: Mengalaba Myanmar

The faithful day came where I was brewing mixed feelings of anticipation and apprehension. It was like one of those war movies, where the hero struggled greater to overcome the difficulty of saying "goodbye" to loved ones more than the fear of imminent death at war ... such was the anguish which I wrestled with within my heart.

At the airport, I kissed my loved ones liked it would be my last before entering the embarkation gates. With the rush of a last call, we hurried through the checks and quickly boarded the plane.

Seriously, I thought that the budget flight experience was altogether quite pleasant with the drinks, meals, newspaper and all ... I enjoyed the 3.5 hours journey with the occasional chat with pastor sitting next to me.

I brought along my cheapo 128MB MP3 player filled to the brim with Pastor Benny Ho's messages, which served to be highly theraputic and was an excellent relaxant as I caught some forty winks with his message on Romans 1 to 8.

Myanmar was 1.5 hours behind Singapore's time zone, and I arrived at about 4:00pm at Yangon (5:30pm Singapore time). There was a little hiccup at the customs first with pastor's video cam and next my bag load of new sunglasses. Praise and glory to God, I was let off with a stern warning while pastor was retained for further questioning for almost an hour while we all waited (I was praying hard in my heart). Thank God, we eventualy left the airport at about 6:00pm and was pleasantly ushered to a nice and posh hotel, the Grand Plaza Park Royal Hotel.

Having prayed with Hong Jin to cleanse the room, I too had some physical cleansing with a good hot shower.

Reeling in freshness from the hot shower, I spent the rest of the early evening penning down the day's actions and my thoughts. I was also struggling to tackle the day's devotion, in preparation of sharing my devotion.

I actually wanted to learn about the Myanmar language very badly, and God was most gracious, having arranged me to sit beside the brother who drove us around. U Maung Maung Oo gave me the necessary basics of the language through the rest of dinner.

Dinner was pretty good but I wasn't paying as much attention to the food as I was to the new found joy and fascination of a language discovery. The Burmese language rocks big time man !!!

Back in the hotel, pastor gave a debrief and lead us in a short devotion in the night, which gave me encouragement to handle the next day's devotion sharing. Prior to the trip, I didn't know that I was to share before a group of 120 seminary students ??? *Gulp* After fnding out, boy was I completely perturbed, not kids we're talking here but 120 seminary students we're talking about ... and not IT but about God's Words ... mind blowing by my usual standards ... May God have mercy on me ...

But I was going to sleep and let God handle the next day, I have had an eventful day and was deeply thankful already. I could only say, mission trip ROCKS !!!