Mix Christmas and New Year’s together, and you would have something close to the Sinim New Year celebration. Gaudy tinsel, flashing Christmas lights, red lanterns and gifts of all kinds line the market streets. Businesses bustle as people buy food, gifts, peach trees and yellow mai trees. Red, gold, and brightly colored decorations cover store windows. Sinim people line up at ATMs and banks to withdraw crisp new bills to place in red envelopes and give as New Year gifts. At midnight on New Year’s Eve, the sky explodes with fireworks, setting off car alarms.

On December 23 of the lunar calendar, people believe that the kitchen god will ride a carp up to the Jade Emperor in heaven to deliver a record of all the happenings of the year. People clean their houses and burn offerings of fake money and paper images of new clothes, cars and other valuable items. And before noon, they go out to ponds, streams and lakes and release gold fish to help the kitchen god ride on his way. Some will also pray and dump the ashes of their offerings along with the fish.

Observing the festivities with my language teacher, I noticed an elderly woman bowed over the water. As she murmured and vigorously moved her hands in prayer while holding a stick of smoking incense, her desperate fervency weighed upon my heart. What struggle was she facing at home? Did she live in poverty like so many other elderly Sinim women? Was she hoping for a cure for a sick loved one? Whatever her trial was, a deep sadness welled up within me as I watched her putting her hope into fables, superstitions and spirits. All her offerings, prayers and hopes were as futile as the fake money she was burning.

Please pray for our project as we break the fallow ground in this city so that soon people who are desperately looking for hope will discover true hope in God that never fails.

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