This morning (Sunday), our team attended a church service at the missionary training center started by a good friend and missionary supported through our National Missionary Program. Before I spoke to the student body and other gathered believers, I did a survey to find out how many languages were spoken among them. And I asked each person who spoke a unique language to teach me how to say “I love you” in his or her language. When I was done, we had tallied fifteen ways to say “I love you,” and none bore any resemblance to any other. That was from a group of about thirty people! They sang all their worship songs in English at the service, however, just for us. Our team members short messages were translated into Burmese, which everyone could understand (except us).

After the service we briefly visited a mountain-perch Buddhist temple that overlooks the city. It was so grievous to our hearts to witness kneeling people praying before silent idols. Our national missionary host wanted us to have a taste of the challenges that he faces every day.

From there we hurried back for lunch and then made the one-hour drive back to the airport, from which we flew back to Yangon. We arrived just in time to make a final dinner appointment with one of our beloved orphanage directors and his family.

Tomorrow we begin our long journey home with a morning flight to Bangkok, Thailand, where we will stay overnight, and then on the next day to Tokyo and North America. Those will be relatively uneventful days by comparison to the last two weeks, so I’m going to sign off with this blog entry. Thanks for joining me on this trip via our blog. I hope that next year you can join us in person! Don’t forget to look at today’s photos below. — David

Philip Barker shares at Sunday church

A close up of our national missionary’s cute son

And a close up of our their beautiful daughter

A part of the Buddhist temple we visited

A Christian minority—team member Stephen Servant

A local woman in the Sunday market place