Hello! This is our update on the Myanmar mission. I wrote on two separate days, one while traveling, and one on Sunday after arrival. Here are the topics I cover in this letter…
God Sending us to Myanmar
God’s Confirmation
Colorado Preparation
Shipping School Supplies from Florida
Church Sending
Travel Status
Arrival
Today is April 4, and we are currently flying over the Pacific Ocean with 8 check in bags, 8 carryon bags, and one 5-pound Chihuahua. I wanted to give an update and let everyone know what has happened since God called us to Myanmar in July last year.
God Sending Us to Myanmar
For those who haven’t heard, I thought I would briefly explain how God called us to serve in Myanmar. We had served in Florida for 2.5 years and we had been praying about what was next. Tessa and I went to see “Sound of Freedom,” a movie based on a true story about rescuing children from sex-trafficking. During our nightly family prayers, I said to God that we did not know what his plan was for us, but I asked if we could serve him by saving kids from the evil of trafficking. I told him we would go anywhere and do anything, no matter how dangerous or uncomfortable, but that he had to be the one to send us. After prayers, I kissed all the kids and Macaiah exclaimed, “Dad, I have to tell you. When you told God you would go anywhere, he said ‘then go to Burma’” (Myanmar’s former name)! Tess and I prayed about it and discerned that was God’s voice. After this, I went to Tajikistan on a mission trip with FCA, then to Myanmar for three weeks on a vision trip with Allan and Randy. We prayed about what to do and it was put on our hearts to have our church send us. For us, this is not one local church, but it means all the churches we have served with. We had two days in Florida to gather and pray with everyone from the gym ministry, the house church, and the Bible teaching program. In late November, we packed our bags and drove to Colorado.
God’s Confirmation
In Colorado, we met with our churches (Spirit and Truth & Calvary Chapel Aurora) there. At the first Sunday gathering with Spirit and Truth in Ft. Collins, Tessa had a vision of a metal fire poker coming to her lips. We read Isaiah 6. God asked, “who will I send to these people?” Isaiah told God, “Here I am, send me.” Then God said, “go…” We started crying when we realized that our calling followed the order of this passage, with my prayer for God to send us, and God telling us to go. This is one of many confirmations we had.
Colorado Preparation
While in Colorado, we had to apply for long-term visas. We also had to test all the children at the homes to see where to place them in the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum. We had to apply to School of Tomorrow Asia (SOTA) for the school we are opening for 39 kids (35 from the initial 2 children’s homes we will serve, and 4 of our children). If we run the school to their standard for two years and do not charge tuition, we can receive a scholarship that covers the students’ curriculum costs (about $500 per student). The final thing we need to do in order to complete the SOTA application is attend the administrators’ training in May in Yangon. Another thing we completed while in Colorado was ordering and shipping all the school supplies, about $30k worth of curriculum, musical instruments, and supplies that the Lord provided at no cost! Thank you Jesus!
Shipping School Supplies from Florida
God connected us with a wonderful brother in the faith to ship all these supplies from Florida at a reasonable cost. I flew back to FL for two days and condensed all the boxes to go on two pallets. We have about 18 musical instruments (electric and acoustic guitars, ukuleles, and percussion). We have several 1st thru 9th grade Accelerated Christian Education curriculum sets along with elective classes such as Life of Christ, New Testament, Old Testament, Sketching, Painting, etc. God provided some play equipment as well (climbing ropes, swings, etc). Also, I had several unused sets of kickboxing mitts, pads, and gloves in my possession. I brought those to FL, put them into a large bin, and onto the pallet. The school will be ready to go!
Church Sending
Finally, both Calvary Chapel in Aurora and Spirit and Truth in Ft. Collins gave us a formal sending. We were part of Calvary Chapel for 11 years while we lived in Aurora and Arvada. Pastor Ed and the leadership have always been a blessing and an example of faithfulness to me. Ever since I felt the call to international missions, Pastor Ed has told us he wanted to be one of our sending churches. Missions pastor, J.J. Hedden, asked us to give our story during the Wednesday service. They blessed us with any and every book we wanted from their bookstore, all of which are currently in transit to Myanmar! They also prayed over us for Missions March at the weekend services.
Spirit and Truth was founded by Pastor Rob and Pastor Micah, who was a very close friend since becoming housemates for a year back in 2017. We were able to be part of their house church gatherings and Sunday gatherings from December through the end of March. We got to know the whole church fairly well in such a short amount of time. I am very encouraged by the faithfulness of Pastor Rob’s leadership and his ability to allow the Spirit to lead the church. I was able to share one message on the visions of Jesus throughout Scripture. We had two movie nights in reference to our mission: “Mully” and “Free Burma Rangers.” I highly recommend both. “Mully” is about a man who saved thousands of street kids (like a modern day George Muller). “Free Burma Rangers” is an amazing documentary that sheds light on the political situation (75 year civil war, genocide, oppression, etc.) in Myanmar (f.k.a. Burma). We also shared a mission update and we were officially sent out on Resurrection Sunday! Pastor Micah gave a prophetic word over us and we are already seeing some of the fulfillment of this.
Travel Status
We had applied for 1-year visas, but those have not come in yet. We then applied for 70-day visas a few days before our flights. We weren’t allowed to check in because the short-term visas had not been approved. We had our flights rescheduled and came back the next day after tying up some loose end and were able to check in with our printed visas. Now by God’s grace, we are sitting in complementary upgraded seats all together as a family on our 17-hour leg from San Francisco to Singapore. As I reflect on the last few month and last few years, I notice one thing: God’s grace. He has given my family and me much undeserved favor. I am so thankful for everyone who is on this journey with us. I am so thankful for God’s provision, protection, and calling on our life. I have hope that you all will pray dangerous prayers with no reservations and follow God wherever he will lead. I will try to give an update in the next couple months. Please be patient with me as I know we will be so busy setting up the school, preaching, teaching, setting up the home, adjusting to culture, making friends, and following God’s voice to bring light in the darkness.
God bless you all,
Nate Marquardt
Arrival
Today is April 7th. We arrived on Friday April 5th. The kids did so great traveling. God gave us favor in that we had great seats and all of our stuff arrived! The trip was not without difficulty, but God gave us grace and continues to give us grace. The mom of All Nations Children’s Home, May May, picked us up and brought us to our new home that shares a building with the boys’ dorm rooms. It’s a 2 bedroom apartment. We had 2 AC units installed before we came. We also ordered beds and a table and chairs. Besides this, the place was completely empty (no stove, refrigerator, couch or furniture). Most people in Myanmar do not have AC or refrigerators. We have been spending most our time getting settled and acquiring items so we can function (food, stove, dishes, closets, dressers, etc.). Sometimes I wonder if the people of Myanmar think Americans are weak since we need things like AC, mattresses, and refrigerators. One thing that I have grown to rely on is access to internet. I’ve wanted to send the update since Friday, April 5th, but the internet is weak, the electricity is scheduled to turn off 8 hours a day in addition to continual outages, and I have not been able to get my phone a SIM card. As I write this, I assume it will take about a week to send to everyone on my email list, but that could be too optimistic!
Anyway, I just wanted everyone to know that we love and appreciate you all. We feel really blessed to have you all in our corner and believe that God is and will be doing a great work here. We can’t wait to see it! Also, we are very happy to be here. It already feels like our new home. Just earlier, our 4 kids were running around playing hide and seek with over a dozen kids here. God is good!
Love you all,
Nate Marquardt
Comments