A Year After the Earthquake: Remembering, Returning, and Sharing Merit

Last Saturday, our team were invited back to some of the nunneries we supported after last year’s devastating earthquake. It marked one year since everything changed and a moment to remember, to reflect, and to quietly witness what has been rebuilt since.

We joined a memorial ceremony at one of the nunneries where a quake-damaged building has now been restored. During the event, the nuns shared merit with those who lost their lives—monks, nuns, and laypeople who passed away in the disaster. Their names, their presence, and their absence were all felt deeply.

This particular nunnery had lost an entire two-story building, its walls completely collapsed. Twenty-one young nuns live here. With your support, we were able to contribute to the rebuilding. That day, a donor plaque was unveiled, with names carefully inscribed, including “Better Burma and International Donors.” It was a quiet but powerful moment.

Later, our team visited other monasteries and nunneries where emergency shelters had been built in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. Seeing these places again—now steadier, lived-in, and continuing—was something hard to put into words.

There is a teaching of the Buddha: to continue nurturing and strengthening the good that has already arisen. Standing there, seeing what your support had helped make possible, there was a deep sense of that—something renewed, something continuing. Not just structures, but care, safety, and intention.

In the evening, we visited one of the hardest-hit nunneries in the Htut Khaung area, where even a 700-year-old pagoda had been reduced to rubble. When we last saw this place months ago, it was completely empty—just debris and silence.

This time, there were signs of life again.

A temporary shelter for the young nuns.
A newly dug groundwater well.
Brick latrines.
Boundary and retaining walls.

Simple things—but essential ones. A place to begin again.

On one of the boundary walls, we saw the inscription: “Better Burma and International Donors.”

Your support became something real here—something that protects, that shelters, that remains.

As part of the visit, merits were shared once more with those who passed, with wishes for their peace and well-being in whatever comes next.

And just as importantly, these renewed moments of meaning and quiet joy are shared back with you—the ones who made all of this possible.

Thank you for being part of this.