By Courtney Prater, Missionary Intern to Myanmar

This is the week of the Water Festival (therefore every business is shut down all week…including the internet shop) Not much has happened these last couple days because all the kids have been at Vacation Bible School at the local Christian University (Eastern Bible Institute). I don’t mean to sound selfish nor dramatic….but….IT. HAS. BEEN. AWFUL. I am so bored and lonely without the kids! I don’t know what I will do when I go home without them. I miss them so much this week! The only positive thing about this whole situation is me learning the location of every country in Asia on a geography app on my ipad! Haha!

One thing that I haven’t mentioned happened earlier this week before VBS, I bought a basketball and a net. The kids loved it! (not as much as me however;) I tried to contain my excitement!

We could not find a rim however, so that was a bit of a downfall. But no worries- my little engineers cut the center of a fan out and cut some wire and hung it from a tree. All of the rules of basketball ever invented were broken at least 55 times; but we still had a good time.

I also taught them one of my favorite childhood card games – KIMPS. The point of the game is to use signs (such as winking at your partner) rather than words when you have 4 of a kind- so it definitely connected us on a different level of communication. We are communicating more though; it is still a struggle, but we manage to find ways of getting our simple points across.

Class has been going well too. Last week I taught them manners, kitchen and bathroom vocabulary, body parts, and taught them Simon (Courtney) says, and the hokey pokey! In the older class I had one of the kids be Simon and it was hilarious! I am not making fun of him, but he was talking so fast with a HEAVY accent of course. “Adam says sit down!” (It’s a “you had to be there” type of humor) I laughed so hard.

Lastly….Josiah ask me to give a message at devotions at the University this week. I think it went well. I just hope Josiah translated in a way that they could understand the message the way I wanted them too. I will never know! Haha But I trust him.

In summary the message was “Worry about nothing, Pray about everything and give thanks to God for everything he has given you” Philippians 4:6, and “Whatever is lovely, think of such things” Philippians 4:8.