Sunday with catholic charities, burmese, and foil boats

Yesterday was quite an interesting day. We were still recovering from Jane's surprise graduation party on Saturday, still had guests staying with us, and apparently Isaac showed up sometime during the night... Then we had special guests speaking at our worship gathering too.

A friend from church works for Catholic Charities in Fort Wayne, and she has the unique privilege of being the one to pick up Burmese refugees at the airport and help them get settled here. It is an amazing ministry, and we are quite honored to have someone serving in this capacity among us. So, I asked her if she thought someone from her work might be willing to come and share a little bit about the Burmese struggle, and why they are coming to Fort Wayne, and what's it's like for them. There have been a few minor issues relating to the Burmese refugee population recently, and I think many people simply do not understand why they are even here. They don't understand the civil war taking place in Burma, nor the fact that most of these people did not choose to come here (as immigrants), but had no other choice but to come here (as refugees). They truly are aliens among us - people without a home.

So I was excited for Robin and her co-worker, Karen, to come and share with us. She also said one of the refugees was going to come as well. I had no idea he was such a well-known person though. Myo Myint is actually the subject of an HBO film that will be coming out later this year, and has traveled the world to speak about the Burmese plight. Though he did talk a little beyond our normal gathering time, I think most people were quite taken with this one-armed, one-legged man telling of his imprisonment, beatings, and the strong hope that he still has in spite of it all. He had quite a slide show and history lesson on Burma.

I am not absolutely positive, but I think John Gevers is producing this documentary, which is apparently being called 'Yearning to Breathe Free.' There is a clip on his blog HERE. You can see the rest of his blog HERE. At any rate, I feel it was quite an honor for us to have Robin, Karen, Myo and his mother with us yesterday.

For those of you wondering why I would let people from a Catholic agency speak in a Protestant church... Well, the way I see it, if someone is doing the work of the church, in the name of Jesus, then we're all on the same side. So more power to 'em.

To top things off we had another Third Sunday Supper last night, and Drew Carrie organized a Mayday foil-boat-sinking contest. We made boats out of aluminum foil and weighted them down with pennies to see whose could stay afloat the longest. I actually won a prize for having the wimpiest boat - it sunk with only 36 pennies. Our niece, Laura, won for holding 140 pennies. It was quite fun; and we had a pretty good crowd for a change. A nice day, but I am ready to be done with this allergy/cough/sinus thing.

Peace out; and in.