May 6, 2012
In order to travel to Burma for the Spring Holy Days, I asked Mr. Brian Drawbaugh if he would be willing to come over and hold services at the Legacy School for COG members and students who might have remained at Legacy for the school break. He kindly agreed and flew over to help.
Here is a brief write-up about the Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread in Thailand:
Leon Sexton
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| Left to Right: Katrine, SeyNeeSey, SeyNeeHtoo, SawSeyHtoo, NawMya, EkaNeyHtoo, SeyNeePaw, HtooMyaShwee, NeyBlooHtoo, Nathan Albright, Utaiwan Han, Abigail Syltie, Austin Mangels, JaJu, Brian Drawbaugh, Matee |
Passover and Unleavened Bread at Legacy
by Brian Drawbaugh
To make it possible for the Sextons to make the Passover trip to Burma, they invited me to come to Thailand for the festival season and hold services at Legacy School. It is the HOT season in Thailand, so the fans at the school were greatly appreciated.
Since it was the time between school years, all but about 5 of the Thai students were home, so for the festival we had about 19 or so at the most, with 15 taking the Passover. As always, the language barrier is an issue, since I speak no Thai or Burmese. We were all very blessed, however, that a graduate of Legacy, Jeh Pabolaw, was on break from university studies, and was able to be there for the whole time, except for the last day. Jeh is a Thai national, but he is a member of the Karen tribe, and the Burmese refugees at Legacy are also Karen, so Jeh was able to translate into the Karen language for them. Matee, a Legacy student of the Lahu tribe translated into Thai.
For the entire festival, we had a service and a Bible study every day. The refugees, especially, wanted to meet together and learn as much as possible. It was a challenge for me to simplify my vocabulary and try valiantly to remove as many idioms as I could recognize. For each presentation, I developed a PowerPoint presentation to help bring the concepts to life. This preparation kept me fully occupied until the last day of the festival. Since Jeh was not able to be there for the last service, I had him record his translation right on the PowerPoint I had prepared for that day. Therefore, we had the translation before the original—unusual to say the least.
Nathan Albright, a Legacy teacher from Florida, also spoke a few times during the festival plus Sabbath, and the Saw Htoo family from Burma treated us to several pieces of special music. Those of us from the West may not think about this, but I found that I needed to give an entire message about how “bread” is used as a symbol in the Bible. As important as bread may be to us, or to someone from the Middle East, it has no significance to people who eat rice at every meal and have no idea how bread is made or what leaven is. As always, the twin goals of simplicity and clarity serve to make teaching in Asia as educational for me as it is for those to whom I speak.
Brian Drawbaugh
View on Blogger: Passover and Unleavened Bread at Legacy
