Potty Talk

Do you know how, when you go on a trip, there's usually one image that sticks in your memory as the first one that comes to mind when you think back to that adventure? For me, when I recall my month-long immersion in Myanmar last January, the first thing I remember is the day we spent in the small village of Hmawbi.

We ten seminarians worshipped on Sunday morning at the village church, St. Michael's, and afterward we were divided into small groups to visit parishioners' homes. I had three or four students from Holy Cross Theological College guiding me around, translating, and making sure I didn't embarrass ourselves too much with cultural faux pas. My group visited three or four homes, and at each one I was seated in a central place of honor and asked to tell my story - where I was from, what my family is like, what I'm studying, what my ministry involves. Then I was asked to pray for the family gathered around me. (At one home I was asked to sing a song.) And then I was fed - and fed, and fed, until I thought I would pop. In these small grass huts in the Burmese countryside, we were showered with fruit and cake and tea in china teacups. It was not unlike the feeding of the 5,000.

We learned a great deal that day about radical hospitality and generosity to the point of giving beyond your means. We knew that in almost all of those homes we were being given gifts that those families really weren't able to give, but they did because that was what it meant to them to live in a Christian community of welcome. So when we received a request from the people of St. Michael's to help them build two modern toilets with plumbing, it seemed like a small gesture of generosity on our part. We appealed to the seminary community for 100 people to give $10. For us, $10 is well within our means. It is the cost of a movie ticket or, in Alexandria at least, going out for a pretty cheap dinner - two things that the people of Hmawbi will probably never in their lives do.

The World Toilet Organization estimates that every dollar donated to improving sanitation in developing countries ends up brings $9 in value to a community. So a $10 donation will benefit the people of Hmawbi with a value of $90 or more. We ended up with the equivalent of 160 people giving $10 to help their Christian neighbors around the world. This money will travel home with our dear classmate Lwin Thida when she returns in May. She will bring the gift of this money and a strong message of communion from the VTS community to the people of Hmawbi.