This is pretty much just that: our weekend, in photos. Please excuse the number of poor quality photos taken from an old iPhone. I was capturing the moment and quality was thrown out window more times than I realized!
We kicked off our Friday night with a community movie night! We had a friends’ projector this week, so we announced we’d be playing a movie, with Burmese subtitles at 6pm on Friday. The kids were home from school all day on a holiday and were checking in every few minutes to see if we were still waiting until 6. They were excited!
We watched Despicable Me–a kid-friendly choice that seemed pretty safe. Stephen also found a website that had Burmese subtitles he could upload into the movie we already owned on iTunes. (I know, he’s a genius!) It also has quite a bit of physical and slap-stick humor, so even those that can’t read or understand any of it were in for a good time.
And that worked out well, because the subtitles just didn’t exist for certain parts of the movie.
On Saturday, I spent most of the day preparing for another dinner & movie night. A friend of ours recently had knee surgery and is out of commission for a few weeks, so we have hosted a movie night the past two Saturdays to get her out of the house and bring people together for dinner and some fun. This week we had about 17 people planning to come eat lasagna, salad, & bread.
Thankfully, I had some helpers. Yaminoo chopped all of the tomatoes for the sauce…and only managed to catch her finger once 🙁
Lay Tah Oo wanted to help chop vegetables for Kayak, so he took a butter knife to some cucumbers. He would usually cut two, give one to Kayak, and then sit back to eat the other himself.
We also squeezed in a few games of Memory while things were baking or cooking, and Stephen oh-so-generously let Lay Tah Oo try out his cymbals.
…And then we fed seventeen people dinner and watched Dan In Real Life, with no photos to capture it.
We then went off to church, and for the first week, had some visitors join us!
We are really praying for this–that they will want to keep coming with us, that more will want to come. We are particularly praying for interested in the teenagers and adults; while we love bringing the kids, that is a lot of kids for us to keep up with!
There was a little mix-up, and we weren’t sure Jor Gee, the six-year-old boy, had permission to come. We had him wait at our home while we went to check with his mom, and he was in tears. She had said yes, so we went back to get him. As we were sitting in the service, his older sister Yedi, on the far left, said to me, “Yaminoo, Nyein Nyein, Yedi, Kelli, & Stephen–Jesus–happy! Jor Gee–no Jesus–sad. Yes Jesus–happy!”
That, in a very simple form–is my prayer! I pray that they see the joy and love in the Church, and ache to return with us week after week! We are really praying for this amazing opportunity for our neighbors to hear truth so clearly communicated in their language, and in some ways, for them to get a glimpse into why we do what we do!
Our Burmese church service was followed by an English home church, and then a walk to the Sunday market. Just a kilometer or so from our house we can purchase some vegetables and gifts while we pass nearly everyone in the neighborhood and stop by the little stalls of many more.
And then we were off to take two women to a pregnancy & childbirth class being offered in town about 7pm. Another small charity is offering a twelve-week course for expectant mothers and leaders in the community. Two women have been regularly attending, and a couple others have visited. They also receive a bag of fresh vegetables to take home each week!
Thankful today is a Sabbath Monday for us!