Song for Week (TaKhinYaeANhar [သခင့္ရဲ ့အနား]- SangPi)

How to Teach Your Children Discipline

Children have to be taught discipline. They are not born with it. Little by little parents have to teach it to them. While teaching discipline does take time and practice, it gets easier as children learn to control their own behavior. And best of all, teaching discipline does not have to hurt either the parents or the kids.

Parents ask.. What is discipline?

Discipline is helping children develop self-control. Discipline is setting limits and correcting misbehavior. Discipline also is encouraging children, guiding them, helping them feel good about themselves, and teaching them how to think for themselves.

Is spanking a useful approach to discipline?

No. Discipline should help children learn how to control their own behavior. Spanking is used to directly control children's behavior. Spanking does not teach children how to change what they do, as good discipline should.

Isn't is easier to just spank my children?

It may seem easy at the time. But babies who are hit often cry louder. Older children who are hit often are learning to solve problems by hitting others. Many parents notice that after a spanking children may settle down for a while, but pretty soon they start misbehaving again.

Won't spanking teach children whom boss?

Kids do need to know that the adult is in charge. Spanking can teach children to be afraid of the adult in charge. Good discipline teaches children to respect the adult in charge. Respect goes both ways- treat children with respect and let them have some control, and they will respect you and listen to you.

Won't spanking make my children afraid to misbehave?

It can. Spanking can make children afraid to misbehave, but probably only when you are watching. Children need to learn to control their own behavior even when you are not around to watch them.

Don't children need a good spanking sometimes?

No child needs a spanking. Spanking can be dangerous. You can never tell when children will be hurt badly by a spanking if you lose control. Children do not need to be hit in order to learn how to behave.

If I do not spank, then what can I do?

You can do lots of things that will help your children learn self-control - you can help them feel good about themselves, you can show them how a person with self-control acts, you can guide them, you can set limits, you can correct misbehavior by talking to them, and you can teach them how to think for themselves.

How to Be a Good Christian Wife?

How to Be a Good Christian Wife? 

by Karla Downing

Are you looking for guidance on how to be a good Christian wife? If so, here are seven things you simply must do:

1. Pray for your husband.

The world is a difficult place for a man. They are competing in the marketplace for jobs, feeling the weight of the financial burden of providing for a family, and having to deal with many stressors beyond their control. They are also in a world that increasingly assaults their masculinity.

2. Speak clearly and directly to your husband.

Men use fewer words than women do. They want to get to the bottom line of the message quickly and they also process one aspect of an issue at a time. Women like to explore all aspects of a subject at the same time as well as give hints about what they really want. Give your husband the gift of direct and short messages he doesn't have to work at interpreting.

3. Have your own support system.

Too many women expect their husbands to handle all their emotional needs. Men aren't equipped to do that. They don't understand their wives emotional ups and downs and they don't understand how to respond to them. They want to solve the problem and don't get it when we just want empathy. Men aren't capable of being girlfriends.

4. Accept his relationship with his mom.

There's something about the two women in the kitchen that transfers to the two women most important to a man. It is hard for us to accept that there is something between our husbands and their moms that we don't share with them. Our mother-in-laws will always see them as their little boys. We will feel the same way about our sons. Unless their relationship is really dysfunctional and ruining yours, let it be.

5. Be his partner.

The two of you joined together to have a life together. Figure out how to take care of your needs and goals while prioritizing filling in the gaps that your husband can't fill. This way you are his helpmate and you are a valuable team member. Also make time for being with him doing things he likes.

6. Be an independent woman.

He was attracted to you as a single woman. He saw you as a person he respected and admired. You need to continue to have interests separate from your husband and to have different opinions. He needs to see you as a person and not just his wife.

7. Accept him as a spiritual leader.

Not all men lead their families spiritually by having sit down devotions. Some lead by example through hard work and good character. Some lead by their strength and desire to protect. Others lead by teaching life lessons. Accept whatever form of spiritual leadership your husband offers rather than making him feel like he is a failure as a spiritual leader.

You simply must do these seven things to be a good Christian wife. Your husband will absolutely love the new you and you will love your new man!

 

 

မွန္ကန္ေသာစိတ္ထားျဖင့္ ေတာင္းပါ။

သင္တို႔တြင္တစံုတေယာက္ေသာသူသည္ ပညာကိုလုိလွ်င္၊ ကဲ့ရဲ့ျပစ္တင္ျခင္းကိုျပဳေတာ္မမူဘဲ၊ ခပ္သိမ္း ေသာသူတို႔အားေစတနာစိတ္ႏွင့္ ေပးသနားေတာ္မူေသာ ဘုရားသခင္ကိုေတာင္းေစ။ ေတာင္းလွ်င္ ရလိမ့္မည္။


သို႔ရာတြင္ေတြးေတာျခင္းမရွိဘဲ ယံုၾကည္ေသာစိတ္ႏွင့္ ေတာင္းရမည္။ ေတြးေတာျခင္း ရွိေသာ သူသည္ကား၊ ေလခတ္၍လႈပ္ရွားတတ္ေသာ လႈိင္းတံပိုးႏွင့္တူ၏။ (ယာကုပ္ ၁း၅-၆)

ဘုရားသခင္သည္ သင့္အသက္တာာအား လမ္းျပေပးလိုသည္။ သို႔ေသာ္ လိုအပ္သည့္ အခ်က္(၂)ခ်က္ မွာ သင္သည္ “ဘုရားသခင္” တည္းဟူေသာ မွန္ကန္ေသာပုဂိဳလ္အား ေတာင္းရန္ႏွင့္ အေျဖကိုေမွ်ာ္လင့္လွ်က္ “ယံုၾကည္ျခင္း” တည္းဟူေသာ မွန္ကန္ေသာ စိတ္ထားျဖင့္ ေတာင္းရန္ျဖစ္သည္။


သင္သည္ အေျဖရရန္မေမွ်ာ္လင့္ဘဲ ဘုရားသခင္ထံ တစ္စံုတစ္ခု ဆုေတာင္းဖူးပါသလား။ ထိုသို႔ မေမွ်ာ္လင့္ေသာ ေၾကာင့္ သင့္မရခဲ့ျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။ ဘုရားသခင္သည္ ကၽြႏု္ပ္တို႔ ယံုၾကည္ျခင္းရွိသည့္အတိုင္း အသက္တာတြင္ လုပ္ေဆာင္ေပးေနသည္။ ကၽြနု္ပ္တို႔သည္ “ဘုရားသခင္ ကၽြန္ေတာ့္အားလမ္းျပပါ” ဟူ၍ အႀကိမ္မ်ားစြာ ေျပာၿပီး လမ္းျပမႈကိုမူ မေစာင့္ပဲ ေလွ်ာက္သြားတတ္ၾကသည္။ “ဘုရားသခင္ ကၽြန္ေတာ့္ကို ဥာဏ္ပညာေပးပါ။ မွန္ကန္တဲ့ ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ ခ်ေစပါ” ဟုေျပာၿပီး အမွန္တကယ္မွာမူ ဘုရားသခင္ထိုသို႔လုပ္ေဆာင္ေပးမည္ကို မေမွ်ာ္လင့္ပါ။ ထိုအရာအားလံုး ကၽြနု္ပ္တို႔ႏွင့္သာဆိုင္သည္ ဟုထင္ၾကသည္။


ဘုရားသခင္သည္ ကၽြႏု္ပ္တို႔အား ဥာဏ္ပညာေတာင္းပါကေပးမည္ဟု ကတိေပးထားပါသည္။ ဥာဏ္ပညာဆိုသည္မွာ မိမိအသက္တာကို ဘုရားသခင္၏ရႈေထာင့္မွမွ ျမင္တက္ျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။ ဥာဏ္ပညာသည္ ဘုရားသခင္ဆံုးျဖတ္သည့္ အတိုင္း ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ခ်ႏိုင္ေသာ အရည္အခ်င္းျဖစ္သည္။


ဤအရာကို စဥ္းစားၾကည့္ပါ။ ဘုရားသခင္သည္ မေကာင္းေသာ ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ ဘယ္ေတာ့မွမခ်ပါ။ အမွားဘယ္ေတာ့မွ မလုပ္ပါ။ သူ႔အားယံုၾကည္၍ သူ႔စကားနားေထာင္ပါက ကၽြနု္ပ္တို႔အား လမ္းျပလိမ့္မည္ ဟုေျပာေနသည္။ သို႔ေသာ္ ယံုၾကည္ျခင္းျဖင့္ ေတာင္းရမည္ ျဖစ္သည္။

Incheong Jung Ang Church Team are visited to Maesai Grace Primary School

Christians face systematic discrimination in Chin state

Christians in Chin state face systematic religious discrimination at the hands of the Burmese government and are often forced to convert to Buddhism, a new report by the Chin Human Rights Organization (CHRO) has revealed.

CHRO accuses the nominally-civilian government of pushing ahead with the military policy of “Burmanisation” in ethnic minority areas, resulting in widespread human rights abuses including violations of religious freedom, forced labour, torture, and sexual violence.

The report, based on 100 in-depth interviews over the past two years, documents numerous cases where the state has destroyed crosses or denied Christians the right to worship through arbitrary regulations, threats and violence. Many civilians complain of being forced to build pagodas or hand over their land to make way for Buddhist constructions.

“President Thein Sein’s government claims that religious freedom is protected by law but in reality Buddhism is treated as the de-facto state religion,” said CHRO Program Director Salai Ling. “The discriminatory state institutions and ministries of previous military regimes continue to operate in the same way today. Few reforms have reached Chin state.”

The report criticises the government’s Border Areas National Races Youth Development Training Schools (known locally as Na Ta La), where Christian students are offered a more affordable education, but are regularly coerced or threatened into converting to Buddhism. Some students even report being forced to shave their heads and wear monks’ or nuns’ robes.

“If you don’t want to be a monk, you must join the military,” the headmaster of a Na Ta La school told students in 2010, according to the report.

Buddhist monks are reported to be working together with the Ministry of Religious Affairs in recruiting Na Ta La students, as well as tracking down those who have fled from the schools.

“Local people tell us that some of these monks they believe to be military agents, and there certainly seems to be a very close relationship between monks and the military in Chin state over the years, with the military exacting forced labour to build pagoda monasteries and more recently with regard to these schools,” CHRO Advocacy Director, Rachel Fleming told DVB.

A 20-year old Chin woman who ran away from one such school in May 2011 told CHRO, “The monks from the school came there with soldiers from Light Infantry Battalion 274, looking for me. They told me, ‘You have to come back to the school or else you will be forced to join the army.’ ”

“The schools appear to offer a way out of poverty but there is a high price to pay for Chin students,” said Fleming. “They are given a stark choice between abandoning their identity and converting to Buddhism, or joining the military to comply with the authorities’ vision of a ‘patriotic citizen’. ”

In March, a US government report listed Burma as among the world’s worst countries for religious freedom, citing incidents of bibles being burnt in predominantly Christian territories.

“One of the most under-reported aspects of Burma’s human rights record has been the regime’s discrimination and persecution of religious minorities and violations of religious freedom,” said Benedict Rogers, East Asia Team Leader, Christian Solidarity Worldwide.

The recent sectarian clashes in Arakan state has shed a light on the persecution of the Muslim Rohingya minority, who are denied the right to citizenship even though many have lived in Burma for generations.

Large swathes of Burmese monks have lent backing to the government’s policy, with hundreds of them pouring onto the streets of Mandalay over the past few days calling for the Rohingya to be expelled from Burma.

“It was very sad to see such kind of actions taken by the monks who have been heavily oppressed and killed in many cases in 2007 during Saffron Revolution,” Soe Aung, a spokesman for Forum for Democracy in Burma, told the Voice of America.

Although the President recently established a 27-member commission to investigate the unrest in Arakan state, CHRO insists that an international mechanism will be necessary to address union-wide grievances.

“As far as we can see there haven’t been enough reforms of key state institutions that would guarantee a fully independent impartial investigation,” said Fleming. “What we’re calling for is an international investigation to the human rights situation throughout Burma and particularly in ethnic areas.”

From : DVB

Asia Pacific Baptist Federation Congress

This year I have chance to attend the Asia Pacific Baptist Federation Congress in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

And I have able to attending the Development Consultation as a resource person. My paper topic " Holistic Development That Results in Sustaibable and Marketable Livelihood for the Case of Maesai Grace Church.

Holistic Development  That Results in

Sustainable and Marketable Livelihoods:

The Case of Maesai Grace Church

Prepared For:  APBF/BWAid Development Consultation, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (2-4 Sept 2012)

Introduction:

The Maesai Grace Church was established 8 years ago as part of a Korean missionary church planting effort to reach Burmese speaking people living in Thailand.   Under the pastoral leadership of Pastor Go Shin Maung,  this church has been involved in establishing a number of ministries in their community on both sides of the border town where they are located.   The Mekong Minority Foundation has had the privilege of partnering with this church for several years. 

The attachment lists the numerous ministries of this thriving community of believers.   This paper primarily focuses on the micro finance ministry which is a savings and loan program for the community.

Micro Finance  Program

The Maesai Grace Church established the micro finance program with three main objectives in mind:  1) to help it’s members begin to save,  2) reduce migration,  and 3) help the members to establish small businesses or investments.     Many of the people who migrate across the border from Myanmar come to Thailand for work.   Usually,  the border town of Maesai is only a transit point.  They will seek better paying jobs further in the country nearer to Bangkok once they have learned some language and a bit about the system works related to migrant workers in Thailand.  The church believes that it can help migrants from Myanmar to reduce their risks by reducing their migration and by helping them to find ways to make a stable income.   Also, rather than continue to seek employment,  by helping these people to establish their own small enterprise,  then they will be more independent and less likely to be taken advantaged by unethical employers.      

The initiative started out with 30 members.  They agreed to save 10 Baht / day or 300 Baht/ month.   (Approximately US$10/ month).  The rationale was that instead of buying that extra cup of coffee each day, drink a glass of water instead and save that 10 Baht.   Each month,  members are allowed to take loans, which they return either short term or medium term with an interest of 1% per month.    After 3 years of operation,  the group has grown to over 70 members,  12 of whom are children.   The fund has grown to over X00,000 Baht.  The Maesai Grace church savings group is made up of both members of the church and those who are not.  This is considered a ministry of the church with the purpose of reaching out to those in need.     At the end of each year of operation,  the gains of the group are split 50/50 between the members and the fund.  So the members will receive dividends each year.  

Loans have been used for starting small businesses: food/vegetable stalls in the market,  a laundry business, and a dress shop.  Also, five loans have helped members to buy their own land thus becoming established in the town.   Other loans have gone toward the Thai government’s annual fee for migrant worker permits.  A member will borrow up to 3,000 Baht ($100) and return within a period of up to six months.   In order to help increase the savings group’s capital,  MMF has provided a low interest loan of 50,000 Baht ($1,500) each year to the group for the past 3 years.  

Pastor Go Shin Maung seeks to counsel people on business opportunities and always makes a case to his parishioners that moving on to another city in search of better pay is not necessarily the best choice. Always moving to a new place means increased risks to abuse and falling into risky behavior.   Staying means that they can be near people they know and can trust,  namely the members of Maesai Grace Church.     

This ministry,  has been a blessing to over 70 people,  about 30% of whom are not Christian. It’s been a true example of caring for one’s economic needs amidst an opportunity to build caring relationships between believers and those who don’t know Christ yet.   Since the church is involved in helping the community in a number of other ministries as well, the savings and loan ministry is linked to these other ministries to the community as well.

MMF has been learning and partnering  with Maesai Grace church for 3 years.  Together, they have been learning about how the local church can be both salt and light to the world.  One model explains the local church’s purpose as fivefold:   1)  Praise and worship the Lord Jesus Christ, 2) Discipleship: helping it’s members to grow and develop spiritually 3)  Learning the Word through teaching and studying the Bible,  4)  Spread the word through evangelising the nations.

As can be seen by the numerous activities of the Maesai Grace Church listed below,  one can see that this church is actively involved in all five of these areas.  

Areas of Ministry of Maesai Grace Church

(1)Worship Service Program

-Wednesday                      -Cell group meeting

-Friday                                  -Choir Practice

-Saturday                            -Youth Fellowship meeting

-Sunday                               -Morning Worship Service 10:00 to 12:00 am

                                                                -Evening Worship Service    7:00 to 8:30 pm

(2) Fellowship with the people and mobilize to the peoples

                -Home visiting to the church member on every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday night.

                -We organize the sports program for mobilizing the peoples.

               

(3) Discipleship Program

-We conduct the disciple training.

-And also provide summer bible camp for adult and children.

-Baptism course for new believer.

-Sunday School Program.

-Christian home and family day training for one week.

                 

(4) Church Ministries

                -Agape Children Home

                -Early Child Care Development Center

                -Burmese Migrant Primary School

                -Women Networking Group

                -Micro Finance Program

                -Legal Assist Program

                -Child Protection Program

                -Child Trafficking

(5) Evangelism and Mission

                -Narkaung Moo Church

                -Mae Ning Church

                -Christmas Caroling for Evangelism

Submitted by:  Pastor Go Shin Maung, Maesai Grace Church pastor,  and

Ms.  Nitaya Buayoi,  MMF Director