A haggard Jeff Trotter emerges from our 12-hour boat ride up Myanmar’s Chindwin River

After 24 hours of sitting on four airplanes coupled with 14 hours of sitting in airports, I’ve been dreading what I knew awaited us in Myanmar—more travel. At least we were blessed with two days to recover in Yangon, Myanmar’s former capital and largest city, before we started another grueling two-day journey.

But we really didn’t get much time to rest in Yangon. We hit the ground running, hosting a two-day conference on foster care, as we continue to work to change Myanmar’s “orphanage culture” and see children placed where they belong—in families. While our British friend Mick Pease, director of Substitute Families for Abandoned Children, taught each day, I met with many of the orphanage directors whose Christian orphanages Heaven’s Family helps each month through our child sponsorship program. We are working with them to make their orphanages smaller and self-sufficient—like families— and I was greatly encouraged by their progress. We’re sending most all of our orphanage directors to a six-day intensive business school in January, after which we’re offering them one-year loans of up to $2,500 to start profitable small businesses (like raising pigs or chickens), something we’ve already helped a number of them do. It was fun to listen to their business plans and see their excitement about becoming self-sufficient.

Our two non-travel days quickly passed, and we took a one-hour flight to Mandalay to board a crowded river boat at 4AM the next morning. Our team of five had reserved a “private room” that turned out to be nothing more than four walls, a floor, and a ceiling four-feet above that floor. Entrance was gained by crawling through one of two windows on either side. If all five of us would have cooperated, there would have been just enough room for all five of us to lie down.

Directly underneath our cubicle was an LCD screen from which Burmese movies blared up through the floor and into the main cabin below us, where a few hundred Burmese people and all that they were carrying were crowded onto tiny benches. For the next 12 hours we passed the time watching river life in the many primitive villages we passed along the shores of the Chindwin River. (I did work on an e-teaching until my neck gave out.)

Team member Bruce Harris passing time in one corner of our cubicl

Upon disembarkation, we only had a two-hour drive to Kalaymyo, where we are now. Today, however, we’ve got a 10- to 12-hour drive ahead of us on rugged roads into Chin State. Our destination is Hakha, Chin State’s capital, where we’ll conduct another foster care conference and a 3-day evangelistic crusade.

Below are a few photos of river life. Thanks for your prayers. — David

As we made our way up the river, occasional “river taxis” like this one would ferry folks from shore-line villages to our boat, which would slow down for a few seconds while the new passengers jumped onboard

The edge of one of many shore-line villages

Our boat’s perpetually-flushing squatty-potty

A typical river boat

A daily river bath (everyone bathes with their clothes on)

Floating bamboo to a downstream market

I wondered what the future held for this family that was floating down the river on a tiny log raft, propelled only by the slow-moving current