Sitagu Sayadaw’s 74^th Birthday Invitation Letter

You are cordially invited to our Great Benefactor's, Most Venerable Sitagu Sayadaw’s, Seventy-Fourth Birthday Celebration in Sitagu Dhamma Vihara, Maplewood, MN.

Sitagu Sayadaw, Dr. Ashin Nyannissara ( Ph. D., D.Litt.), is a Chancellor and founder of the Sitagu Internal Buddhist Academy, founder of Sitagu Ayudana “Gift of Life” Hospital, and visionary behind the Sitagu Water Project, that brought running water to a now thriving Sagaing Hills, Myanmar (Burma). Sayadaw Gyi is a very well known throughout Myanmar primarily for his profound and moving Dhamma teachings, founding health clinics, performing social humanitarian works, founding monasteries and monastic universities throughout Myanmar, (Burma).

In America, Sayadaw Gyi is the founder of Sitagu Buddhist Vihara in Austin, TX and a patron of, Sitagu Dhamma Vihara in Maplewood, Minnesota.

Come join us for: Sitagu Sayadaw's 74 th Birthday Celebration

Date-               March, 20, 2011, Sunday,

Time-               10 AM - 3:30 PM

Venue-             Sitagu Dhamma Vihara
1519 County Road C, East
Maplewood, MN 55109
651-797-3311

Sitagu Dhamma Vihara Maplewood,Minnesota, United States

The Celebriation of Burma Tradictional Htamane (Sticky Rice, mixed with Oil,Peanat, Sesame seeds etc.)

Construction began on the Sitagu Ayudana Hospital in 1985, and the hospital opened in 1989. The hospital now has one hundred beds, including those in the VIP, eye patient, and infectious disease wards. The out-patient department (OPD) and in-patient wards are housed in seven buildings. Besides these, the hospital boasts a modern laboratory, an X-ray hall, a general operation theatre, an eye operation theater, an indigenous medicine clinic, a training center, a museum, a library, a computer office, an administrative office, guest hostels which include a VIP section, staff quarters, and a Buddha-shrine hall. On average, the hospital treats sixty in-patients and two hundred and fifty out-patients per day, and since its inception has provided health care to over 100,000 individuals. Over the last nine years, the hospital staff has grown to more than seventy persons, including doctors, nurses and general personnel. Medical specialists from Mandalay also kindly donate their services on a weekly basis in the areas of general medicine, surgery, urology, dentistry, orthopedics, and in the treatment of diabetes and heart disease.

The eye treatment department in particular is equipped with technically advanced instruments for both the surgical extraction of cataracts, and for their removal without surgery through use of laser equipment. In addition, for the past four years the hospital has organized a special medical program in the month of December during which time eye specialists from England and the United States are invited to performed cataract operations in which hundreds of patients are given intra-ocular-lenses. The special program has been expanded this year to included two sessions, the first being held in October and the second in December. It is planned that this very successful medical program will be continued on a yearly basis.