It was my birthday

June 19, Sunday was my fifth birthday celebration here in Mae Sai. Like the previous celebrations, I was not expecting any fanfare at all. Narlin prepared fruit macaroni and JIllian baked bread and cookies. A simple celebration spent with the family was what really I was looking forward to every year.

It was also Father's day and Pastor Maung asked me to preach that Sunday morning. It was the day when the church appreciated and honored the fathers in the congregation. Unlike most of the churches here, our church actually has almost equal if not equal men to women attendance. The fathers were asked to stand up and were given gifts.

However, our Pastor made a big fuss about my birthday. He prayed with the congregation and requested them to sing the birthday song. As far as I can remember, this was the first time that the church prayed for me during my birthday. After the service, we had lunch at the church as we had customarily doing. While we were enjoying the lunch fellowship, somebody put the birthday cake on the table and once again everybody sang “happy birthday.”

I truly enjoyed the day. I thanked the church for making that day very special. Ultimately, I thank the Lord for another year he has given to me.

Yesterday was my birthday!

Yesterday was my birthday. We didn't do something special to celebrate but work. My wife worked at the Day Care Center until late at night and I had to sit with her until the work was over. I had been preparing my lectures for next week class. I think it is a good idea to have some kind of PowerPoint presentation. I will be teaching in English and somebody will interpret for me in Burmese. I don't really like using PowerPoint but there were times that it is extremely helpful. And a lecture that needs to be translated is one of those cases.

Over at Levellers, Michael share some information about two great men who share their birthday with me.

19 June 1623 was the birthday of Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), the French mathematician, physicist, and Christian philosopher. Pascal was an apologist for Christianity to the skeptical French “philosophes.

19 June 1834 was the birthday of Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892), the most famous British preacher of the 19th C. and one of the greatest Baptist preachers of all time.

Another great man who share the same birthday was Jose Rizal. He is the national hero of the Philippines and pride of the Malayan race, was born on June 19, 1861, in the town of Calamba, Laguna. He was the seventh child in a family of 11 children (2 boys and 9 girls). Both his parents were educated and belonged to distinguished families. He was a Catholic but many historians believe that he had some kind of conversion experience.

The changed could have been the result of contemporary contact, companionship, observation, research and the possession of an independent spirit.Being a critical observer, a profound thinker and a zealous reformer, Rizal did not agree with the prevailing Christian propagation of the Faith by fire and sword. This is shown in his Annotation of Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas.

Rizal did not believe in the Catholic dogma that salvation was only for Catholics and that outside Christianity, salvation was not possible even if Catholics composed only a small minority of the world’s religious groups. Nor did he believe in the Catholic observation of fasting as a sacrifice, nor in the sale of such religious items as the cross, medals, rosaries and the like in order to propagate the Faith and raise church funds. He also lambasted the superstitious beliefs propagated by the priests in the church and in the schools. All of these and a lot more are evidences of Rizal’s religious philosophy. In one of his letters about the church, he said that:

Priests offer themselves as our so-called "spiritual fathers" as if the spirit or soul had any father other than God. You know that the will of God is different from that of the priest; that religiousness does not consist of long periods spent on your knees , nor in endless prayers, big rosaries, and grimy scapulars, but in a spotless conduct, firm intentions and upright judgment.

Saintliness does not consist in abjectness, nor is the successor of Christ to be recognized by the fact that he gives his hand to be kissed. Christ did not give the kiss of peace to the Pharisees and never gave His hand to be kissed. He did not cater to the rich and vain; He did not mention scapulars, nor did he make rosaries, or solicit offerings for the sacrifice of the mass or exact payments for his prayers.

Saint John did not demand a fee on the River Jordan, nor did Christ teached for gain. Why, then, do the priests now refuse to stir a foot unless paid in advance? And, as if they were starving, they sell scapulars, rosaries, belts, and other things which are nothing but schemes for making money and a detriment to the soul; because even if all the rags on earth were converted into scapulars and all the trees in the forest into rosaries, and if the skins of all the beasts were made into belts, and if all the priests of the earth mumbled prayers over all this and sprinkled oceans of holy water over it, this would not purify a rogue or condone sin where there is no repentance.

Ignorance has ever been ignorance, and never prudence and honor. God, the primal source of all wisdom, does not demand that man, created in his image and likeness, allow himself to be deceived and hoodwinked , but wants us to use and let shine the light of reason with which he has so mercifully endowed us. He may be compared to the father who gave each of his sons a torch to light their way in the darkness, bidding them keep its light bright and take care of it, and not put it out and trust to the light of the others, but to help and advice each other to find the right path. They would be madmen were they to follow the light of another, only to come to a fall and the father could scold them severely and say to them : "Did I not give each of you his own torch?"; but he could not answer if the fall were due to the light of the torch of him that fell, as the light might have been dim and the road very bad.

Prudence does not consist in blindly obeying any whim of the little tin god, but in obeying only that which is reasonable and just, because blind obedience is itself the cause and origin of those whims, and those guilty of it are really to be blamed. The priest can no longer assert that they alone are responsible for their unjust orders, because God gave each individual reason and a will of his or her own to distinguish the just from the unjust.

Jared's Birthday

Just want to share this to all. This is posted from our family blog.

Jared celebrate his 14th birthday in a very simple breakfast candle-blowing celebration. All of us celebrated our birthdays here this year. We miss home a lot.

My children are not living a life that normal children should be. They don't have permanent friends because we have moved five times with in their lifetime. We moved from Cainta to Pangasinan to Baguio, back to Cainta again in six short months and finally moved here in Thailand.

They never experienced the joy of childhood both Narlin and I had. We never left our respective homes until we were married. We have permanent friends and best friends who grew up with us. And although distance keeps us apart, communication was never lacking. We grew up in our respective home church with people who love us and treated us as part of their family. (These people are the ones who are supporting us here in the mission field). We matured with them both physically and spiritually. My children never enjoyed this kind of relationships.

Jared is in the second year of his teenage life. He never had a bestfriend who grows up with him. (My bestfriend lived in the next house and we were together until I responded to the call). Jared hates school. He always thought that teachers do not teach but talk to the (black)board. The only teacher he was fond of was his grade 4 teacher who took him under her care. And as a parent, I was greatly grateful to that teacher who perhaps changed Jared's perspective about education. Jared hates home schooling as well. And if I were him, I will feel the same. Home schooling materials are the most boring educational material I've ever read. But we are thankful for home schooling and for the people who made this possible for us because it is the only way he and his siblings can have their education. He likes computer. I think he learned to use the computer first before he learned to talk. He can create his own website, he knows how to mess with html code,he maintained and designed this blog (and the other blog), he knows how to install and configure Linux from the root terminal which I didn't learn and perhaps will never have a chance to learn.

In his 14th birthday, he is holding on to his childhood for as long as he can. He doesn't want it to go. And I understand it... I want him to enjoy it as long as it last because his childhood will be gone sooner than we thought. We thank the Lord that we are here in the mission field together. We share everything, the good and the bad, the happy and the sad, the joy and the sorrow, the love and the hate, the excitement and the boredom. I'm not afraid that my children will be lost from our side... because we are together in responding to God's call. Happy birthday Jared!!!