MayMyo Noviciate Convent

The Army Camp behind the Convent


















The Convent built in the old colonial style

The Young Novices they were leaving the next day to go to all different hill stations so that they could have experience working in the vineyard of Christ. In other words working with the poorest of the poor.

May Myo was a colonial hill station which the British used, to get away from the searing hot summers of Mandalay and Rangoon. It was named after a British general who made the place popular by his presence their in those summer months. The present government have restored the old name that it used to be called Pyin-Oo-Lwin. One could see straight away that the town had seen better days and that in a time gone by it was a very grand place. Some of the old houses were very grand. There were at one time two main schools in May Mou and they were both run by the Catholics One was run by the sisters of St Joseph for girls and the other by the Marist for the boys. Both schools were made of bricks. Both schools were confiscated by the Government in 1963 but the orders were allowed to keep their living quarters and chapels. Now the sisters are being hassled by the government army to even give up their living quarters and chapel because it is in between the school and the army base. However, they have a formidable sister to overcome. Sister Rita will not be brow beaten into giving anything up. An officer who thought she was easy came away from a meeting with her saying, that before he came he was well but by the time he left he had achieved precisely nothing and the only thing he got was a splitting headache.

The Convent is now used as the noviciate house for the order of St Joseph of the Apparition and there are quite a few novices there working their way to final profession. It was a stark reminder to me that God will bring good out of bad. I know people will say that God shouldn’t let it happen in the first place. We have been given free will and a lot of the time we misuse that gift. It is not God that creates havoc but our greed and lust for domination over others. The good that comes out of all the chaos we create are people from all religions and walks of life who want to ease the sufferings of others. The sisters are such people who want to help others who are suffering extreme poverty and oppression because of greed and bad government. When sister Ann was told by her superiors in the West that they had many vocations in Myanmar because it was seen as a way out of the poverty trap. Sister Ann in no uncertain terms put them in their place. It just shows you how we can forget in our comfort zone that God works on a totally different level than we work on. Though we may not be able to help the sisters with our physical presence we can help them with first and foremost with our prayer and secondly with monetary help. Being condescending to the sisters is no help at all.