Finishing Up at the City Star

The Old Testament Intro course has only a few days left. We will work on Thursday and Friday (October 9 & 10) and then administer final exam on Monday (October 13). We still have a way to go -- general intro is complete and we are about to finish up the wisdom books tomorrow AM. Hopefully we will able to get to the prophets as well, but as Thang Bwee pointed out earlier -- it is better to understand the material than merely to cover it. The students have been much "livelier" this year than in years past. It is a real treat to be teaching students who are participating in the class and seem to care about the material.

Reformed Ministers' Fellowship

Pastor Cheah of the ERCS has planned a convocation for Friday night for the reformed sem that ERCS and PRCM are developing. Rev. den Hartog will be bringing the exhortation. They have allowed me a few minutes to speak about the future of the ESL school. They hope to "kick off" the ministers' fellowship at the same meeting. This will allow a regular opportunity for all the reformed ministers in the Yangon area to meet together for encouragement and possibly even delivering papers and undertaking mutual projects. It is a joy to see this finally coming to pass as well.

First Pass Finished on Psalter

After just over a year, we have finished the first pass translation of the Comprehensive Psalter (i.e. the 1650 Scottish Psalter divided into 312 Psalm settings) into the Falam language. Hopefully we can get some volunteers to do the digitizing for us between now and next spring and then bring it back for a second pass with a broader committee consisting of several reformed denominations. Then we can "clean it up" for any difficulties of language, decide if we need to standardize on various terms, and hopefully by that time Tha Nei Sum will also have finished making the tunes ready in Tonic Sol-Fa format. This is another exciting development, and one we hope several of the reformed denoms will help us complete next spring.

D-day (Departure Day) Approaching
I think we dread doing the necessary packing, but are looking forward to our return to the US. This has been an extraordinarily long trip with a lot more sickness than in past trips. Up to Monday I had been fine, though Debby & Matt both had bouts of travellers' stomach and Debby somehow got "acute tendonitis" from sleeping wrong until she could not sleep from the pain. We took her to the hospital Friday, where she received some excellent treatment. But finally on Monday I managed to get some heat stroke. It had me pretty well sidelined Monday evening, but by Tuesday I was back up and didn't have to miss any school from it. Now we are getting ready to come home and really looking forward to it. We have two days of teaching, one day of preaching, one day of exams, and a convocation left. There may even be some time left for packing as well.

RB