I’m not sure I’ll write an update every week, but in these early days it feels important to keep you up to date with what’s going on here. It seems so much happens in a week:
- spiritual warfare.
- new buildings.
- big bills.
- new students.
- blue sky.
- church.
I was chatting with my friend Wilma about how I am not a good disciplinarian. And one of our staff asked me, “do you think the rules are working?” - to which I smartassly replied “what rules?”. My life - and JDS - is a fine balance between Lord of the Flies and controlled chaos. And this week as we faced mounting and obvious spiritual attacks, I wrestle with thoughts like, “am I supposed to discipline a student who is under spiritual attack and breaks a rule?” I expressed it to Wilma that when the students act like idiots I am not good at enforcing discipline. She was quick to reply, “that’s because you are also an idiot half of the time.” She’s not wrong.
There was a deep down place that actually felt reassured by the spiritual attacks that were taking place on campus this last week. Surface level was not reassured, happy, confident or in control - but if I was really honest with myself there was a place in me that was going “phew…. We must be on the right track if the devil is attacking us this obviously.”
I had students acting out in ways that were totally out of character. One student got angry at me, stormed away, and then disappeared into the jungle. Later I went and found him and he broke down crying and said “I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what was going on.” Another student woke up in the middle of the night and the voice in his head told him to pack up all his stuff and leave. So in the pouring rain and his only light was from the flame of his lighter, he left. We went and found him in the morning and he couldn’t explain why he wanted to leave. Others have reported having nightmares, when they never have nightmares, and some think our land is possessed. We have been praying - and recruiting prayer warriors to pray alongside us - and seems to be clearing the air. But I suspect the devil, who overplayed his hand, is pulling back to attack us from another angle. No time to let our guard down.
But we also had beautiful moments of success here. We have a “no shame” rule here. When someone breaks a rule, makes a mistake, or just totally screws up, they stand in front of the class, “confess their sins”, say sorry, and receive forgiveness from the class and staff. Three times this week students did this. In a shame-based culture, that’s a big deal.
We have work groups here on campus and everyday the students have to work in their assigned group. One group is foraging for food (food is our biggest expense right now) but the students in this group go out into the jungle and find bamboo shoots, roots, leaves, banana trees, and anything else that’s edible. If it can flavour or substitute a meal, it helps us in long run. The second group is the cooking group, they’re up at 5:00am every morning cooking rice and whatever’s on the menu for the day. Group 3 is on firewood duty. Chopping, sawing and gathering wood for the cooking group is a never ending job. And the fourth group is on camp work, filling the water filter, cleaning the toilets, refilling hot water thermos’, and sweeping the grounds.
I’ve got to talk about church for a minute here because it’s been a surprising highlight of my week. Isn’t it supposed to be that way?
Burma has a very heavy religious fog that hangs over the church here. It’s the kind of thing like, “if you’re not reading from the old King James, it doesn’t count.” You can imagine how thrilled I am about things like that… we decided to start church over again. I told the students to take everything they’ve ever known or experienced about church, devotions, or Sunday school, and throw it out. We started with a tarp on ground. If we want a building we will need to see what the Bible says about that. In our first week we had no praying, no music, no offering, nothing. Anytime we want to add something to our service, we are going to look at the Bible and see what it says about it. We are going to understand why we do things, why church has certain things, and understand our place in it. It’s been really beautiful.
In the first week we talked about the creation story and how God’s seventh day rest, was man’s first day - we start from a place of resting with God. We just wanted to lay the groundwork for a rest day. Yesterday we added music.
I asked the students to list some things that usually make up a church service. They listed, pastoral prayers, offering (aka “taking my money”), music, sermons, communion, sleeping (one student says he goes to church so he can sleep). When asked what their favourite part of church was most said music, but one student said, “when it ends” haha.
So we decided to add music and worship to our church service. We looked at exodus 15 and Psalm 150. We brought up an air band who played the trumpet and guitar and piano as we read Psalm 150. Then we took a quiet minute to reflect on the last week, God has been good to us. There was a lot of hard things, but also a lot of redemption and goodness. We can give back to God the best he’s given us. Our students know 3 worship songs right now, and after I finished talking, they stood together and belted them out.
On Saturday evenings the staff are responsible for cooking dinner for the students. It was funny, all afternoon the students were cooking “back up” meals in case we foreigners didn’t know how to cook. We decided to make a tea-leaf salad and spaghetti with tomato and beef sauce. Saturday dinner we call “family dinner”. It’s usually more expensive, but it’s a really fun time to sit together, laugh about the week that is coming to an end, and just be a family. One student had four helpings of spaghetti…
We’ve got a classroom, with no desk, and an office. The girls dorm is half way built and the cooking house covers the cooking fires and about 3 people. Some of our (expensive) rice got soaked in a big storm, and Zadok, Claire, and Steve sat for an hour separating damp rice from good rice.
We had karaoke night last night - just something fun to end the week with.
Some random things:
- the boys love the .22 rifle and have been hunting birds. They keep handing the dead bleeding birds over to me, as if I am supposed to know what to do with it.
- just over the mountain is our neighbours- I’ll write more on this another time because it’s really heavy on my heart. Our neighbours are 3000 IDPs who have all fled from the war.
- there is a boarding school in the IDP camp that we have become friends with. Last week we were invited to share the gospel story with them. This week we played a football match against them. ⚽️ we lost 2-1 but it was great to build relationships with them.
- We have 5 new students on their way to JDS. They are facing some of the worst flooding in 50 years. They should arrive in the next couple days.
One final note, we need your help. This is the point where I attempt to motivate you to give financially to JDS. We have huge needs. I paid our food bill this past week and then forecasted a budget going forward. To date, God has provided enough funds in my bank account to keep this ship afloat for another four months. The remaining 5 months will be a good lesson in prayer and relying on God. I would just like to ask that you pray, really, right now, ask God if giving to JDS is something that’s in the cards for you. I don’t want you to give to JDS if it’s not God led. You give to God, He gives to us.
Thank you for being with us on this journey.
We’ll get a new TV episode out soon and a podcast episode out this week.
Bless you. Love you.
Ds
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