NEW TRIP PLANNED FOR FEBRUARY

Session of First Presbyterian Church of Rowlett has approved a new trip in February 2006 for Mission to Myanmar. A number of projects will be very close to completion by that time and we will hopefully be able to update this blog from Myanmar this trip.

The Burmese Psalter

All 312 selections have been translated into Burmese and we have already supplied JPGs for the tonic solfa notation. Thus during this February trip we hope to meet with a number of people who are fluent in both Burmese and English in order to smooth out the "metricizing" of the Psalter. It would be good if we had more people who were able to deal with both the Hebrew and Burmese, but the Burmese churches are a long way from having that capability and may not have it even in this generation. We probably will not be able to get to all 312 settings that have been translated, but if we can get to 100-150 by the end of my trip, then we will feel comfortable publishing this as an interim Psalter. We may recall that even the Reformed church at Geneva did not have the entire Psalter for many years after its founding.

Teaching at Reformed Bible Institute

It is my intention to teach a 3 semester hour course in the Pastoral Epistles during the time I am in Myanmar as well. This is made possible by the students concentrating on a single course while I am there. Thus in a period of three weeks we can teach for 4 to 5 hours per day five days a week and make the course material available to the students in a sort of "mini-mester." As an interesting "coincidence" the Aquila Project will be in Myanmar at the same time I am teaching the Pastoral Epistles to a group of (mostly) Baptist ministers there. Hopefully there will be some opportunity for "cross-pollinization" in our classes.

Additionally Dr. Thang Bwee, President of the Reformed Bible Institute has asked me to bring as many copies as possible of Louis Berkhof's Summary of Christian Doctrine published by Banner of Truth. There is an address below for anyone who would like to contribute to this. The books are about $6 each plus shipping. Or the books themselves could be sent to the same address.

The New Life Orphanage

Some of the readers of this blog know already what difficulty we had getting back from Tahan on the last trip (July 2005). During that trip the aircraft that was supposed to pick us up at the Kalemyo airport and return us to Yangon broke down during takeoff from Yangon. We were thus "stranded" in Tahan. However, some brothers were kind enough to take us to Kalewa where we caught a boat going down the Chindwin River to Monywa, where we rode first in the back of a pickup truck and then in an overcrowded bus to Mandalay.

Hopefully the trip to Tahan will not be quite so "eventful" this time, but we do hope to visit the orphanage in Tahan and help dedicate the new hostel to the glory of God. The NLO will use the new hostel not only for sleeping, but also for classrooms upstairs and a dining (messing) area downstairs. The reinforced concrete posts were already poured when I was there in July. The timbers have begun to arrive for the hostel and our carpenter is teaching the older boys how to plane the wood planks smooth.

Please begin praying for this trip. We are thankful for the prayers and generosity of the friends of this mission throughout the world.

Send contributions to:
Mission To Myanmar
c/o First Presbyterian Church
8210 Schrade Road
Rowlett, TX 75088