Burma Smiles, April 2009

Khin San Zi, Hnin Hnin Shwe, and Hmung Hmung Aung, who live together at Light of the World Children's Home

Once again I'm feeling that familiar emotion that is so hard to describe. It's a mixture of compassion, helplessness, guilt, and awe. I'm sitting in the simple home of Peter and Par Chin Cung, which they rent for about $64 a month. Before me sit twenty-five children whom they've taken in, orphans and unwanted children, all from remote villages in western Myanmar (Burma). They call their place Light of the World Children's Home.

Each child shyly stands---with a heart-melting smile---to speak a few words of memorized English, thanking me for coming to see them. Then they sing a song about Jesus. At the end, they reward my standing ovation with more pure-hearted smiles. I'm reminded that their angels are continually before the Father. They are His treasures, and I feel unworthy to be in their presence.

Our two teams of Americans are elsewhere, visiting orphanages that are sponsored through our Orphan's Tear division, and so I'm here alone. Although Peter and Par Chin would like for me to take portraits of their children to try to find monthly sponsors for them, I've gently explained that there are 300 children already waiting for sponsorship on our website, and so there is no use adding any more. Graciously, they smile, and say they understand. How I wish that I could.

Rejoice with us as you read some highlights this month of Heaven's Family's work in Myanmar. And pray that the Lord will enable us to be the reason for more of those beautiful Burmese smiles. -- David

The Doctor is In...Christ
The Village Development Fund

"Doctor" Ni Kung, among some of his patients, holding a new microscope from Heaven's Family that will help him diagnose and treat malaria.

One of the highlights of our annual Fall trip to Myanmar is when a few of us travel by motor scooters across dirt roads to an eventual footpath that leads us to Cang Ai Village. Living there at the base of the Chin mountains are some of the poorest people I've ever met, mostly subsistence farmers and day-laborers. The large majority are Christians, however, and they are openly enthusiastic about their faith.

Two years ago, when we first visited them, they had lost the village well to an earthquake, and were forced to walk about a mile and a half for water. We supplied them with a mile and a half of plastic pipe, and now the village has running water---from a single pipe in the center of the village.

Last year when we visited, we found the village chief wrapped in blankets, shivering from malaria, with no money for a doctor. He told us he had lost two of his grandchildren that year to the same disease. We were motivated to pay for the medical attention he needed, and also to provide more than a hundred mosquito nets to protect everyone in the village. Heaven's Family also funded the start-up of a small village pharmacy.

During our most recent visit, we learned that the village chief's former assistant, Ni Kung, is now the chief. He has taken advantage of a government health program to learn how to diagnose and treat common rural ailments. He showed us how he can read someone's blood pressure, take blood samples, and examine those samples under a microscope that had been temporarily loaned to him by the government health service. For $250 (an enormous sum for them), the village could buy the microscope and the blood pressure cuff. I couldn't resist.

The villagers also requested that we help them with the purchase of three-inch plastic pipe through which they could bring water from a mountain spring to irrigate their fields, thus extending their growing season. They need about $1,450. If you would like to help with that request, contributions should be made to our Village Development Fund.

Things are looking better every year at Cang Ai Village, and they are using their blessings to bless people of other nearby villages in Jesus' name.

Forty Years Faithful
The Native Missionary Fund

Evangelist Sang Bel

Evangelist Sang Bel has a reputation among many Christians in Myanmar. They say, "Don't ever give Sang Bel money if you want to bless him, because he always gives it away to someone whom he thinks is more needy."

For that reason, a friend of mine arranged for Sang Bel to preach in many churches in the former capital city of Yangon, sharing about his anointed adventures as he has proclaimed the gospel in very remote places for the past decades. My friend then guarded the offerings that were given in those churches, and eventually used them to build Sang Bel a modest home to replace the shack he and his family were living in. It wasn't enough, however, to build interior stairs to the second floor, and now, ten years later, there is still a ladder standing in the main room that connects the first floor with the second floor through a hole in the ceiling. Sang Bel, who is sixty years old, climbs up and down that ladder every day when he is home.

Sitting in his first floor room, I asked Sang Bel about that ladder, and why he still doesn't have stairs. He replied, "The Lord hasn't sent the money yet." His wife looked at me with a knowing glance that said, "The Lord has sent the money many times, but he always gives it away."

Sang Bel is a pioneer evangelist in Chin State, and he's preached many times to very primitive people in remote villages who have never heard about Jesus. He told me that some were so primitive that they were "half-naked." (I told him he should consider coming to America to preach.)

Sang Bel usually travels by foot, unable to afford any other kind of transportation, and mountain footpaths are often the only routes to his preaching points. He's lived by faith for forty years and has often been away from home preaching for two months at a time. His life has been threatened by hostile villagers, but the Lord has been faithful to deliver him.

Through our Native Missionaries Fund, Sang Bel now has a monthly sponsor named Gary in Alabama whom he will one day meet in heaven. That monthly help came at a providential time, as Sang Bel has had to slow down somewhat due to a minor stroke that he's suffered. But he is still amazingly active, preaching locally and remotely, calling people to repent and follow Jesus. Take a good look at his photo above. None of us will likely see him in heaven, as he'll be so near to Jesus!

A Glorious Opportunity: We know of hundreds of God-called native missionaries around the world whose effectiveness could be multiplied with a little monthly support. If you would like to help one, please let us know. You can set the amount to be automatically deducted each month from your bank account or credit card, from $20 to $200, 100% of which will be sent to your native missionary. You will also receive monthly email updates about his or her ministry in broken but understandable English. You can reply if you would like. Most of the world's unreached people can only be reached by native missionaries.

Mercy Came Down
The Dorms for Orphanages Fund

Widow Rin San Puii and the children of Mercy Children's Home, standing in front of their new dorm

Rin Sang Puii moved with her husband from Myanmar to Thailand as a missionary many years ago, but she returned as a widow. Her father gave her a small one-room wooden house to live in, and she opened her heart and home to orphans and unwanted children. When we visited her in November of 2006, she had eighteen children, and she was suffering with a problem in her lower back that caused her to limp. We went to work finding sponsors for her children, and we helped her with $700 she needed for surgery.

When we visited her in November of 2007, she could walk without pain. But she had thirty-eight children living with her. She asked us if we could help her build a dormitory for her children who were sleeping like sardines on the floor of her one-room house. So we produced a video, Dorms for Orphanages, about Mercy Children's Home to show to our friends, asking for their help. They did, and when we returned in November of last year, the new building was finished. It is beautiful, and stands in stark contrast to the old and small wooden house that sits right beside it.

All those children, as well as Rin San Puii, her sister and the other helpers, use two connected outhouses that are....Well, there is no way to describe them. You would have to see them for yourself. By the time you read this, however, they should be using their brand new, four-stall, good-smelling, long-lasting, concrete and porcelain, state-of-the-art (for rural Myanmar) outhouse, thanks to gifts to the Orphan's Tear Special Gifts Fund.

Rin San Puiis' back problems have returned, and she can't even sit without pain. So we are sending her four-hundred miles to the capital city of Yangon to have a good doctor take a look and do what is necessary. That blessing is also a result of gifts to the Orphan's Tear Special Gifts Fund. How can we neglect a widow who takes care of orphans? Thanks so much.

The Bigger Picture: Through gifts to the Dorms for Orphanages Fund, we've constructed or purchased new dorms for twenty-one orphanages in Myanmar and Tanzania. Eight more new dorms are currently under construction. 100% of all gifts to the Dorms for Orphanages Fund are sent overseas to pay for labor and material costs of new dorms for orphanages helped each month through Orphan's Tear.

"I Met My Child in Myanmar!"
The testimonies of three Orphan's Tear sponsors

Charity McDaniel and Lal Par Dim

Last November and January, we took seventeen friends with us to Myanmar, most of whom sponsor children at one or more of the thirty Christian orphanages that we assist there every month through our Orphan's Tear division. All were very blessed to meet their sponsored children. One such sponsor was Tenney Singer from California, who later wrote:

My very last day in Myanmar was spent visiting more orphanages in Yangon. The girl I had sponsored for the last four years was at one of them, and I was excited to meet her....When I saw her, I was overcome with emotion. This was the face I had posted on my bulletin board back home and prayed for, and here she was: a lovely young woman! She had already passed her exams and was now in Bible College. She could read my English Bible, and understand it....We connected easily and spent an hour together talking about all kinds of things. When we left, she disappeared, so I wouldn’t see her cry. My heart was deeply touched by this meeting, and I want to go back again.

Charity McDaniel, a Heaven's Family employee from Pennsylvania, had visited her sponsored child three years earlier. She wrote:

When we visited El Shaddai Orphanage in Kalaymyo, my sponsored child, Lal Par Dim, was not there. The director informed us that she was now staying at a boarding school in town, as is common among children in their final years of high school, but he would try to bring her by our hotel later that evening so that I could see her.

He kept his word, and as the sun was setting he and Lal Par Dim drove up in front of our hotel on a motor bike. I was so excited to see her! She was not the same little girl who three years ago had boldly grabbed my hand and been my personal playmate. In place of that little girl was a shy and beautiful young lady....The next morning we had to leave Kalaymyo, and it was a sad day. But the one bright spot was seeing Lal Par Dim in her school uniform with one of her classmates, coming down the road to the airport to see me off!

John Moret with Lal Ro Pui , and Tenney Singer with Ning Kyaw Ti

John Moret from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, wrote:

I met both of the children our family sponsors. Both of the meetings touched my heart in different ways. One child was very playful, happy and full of life...Our other child was orphaned in his teenage years and the pain of it showed on his face. I think he still is recovering from the trauma of it....The love of God was present in all the orphanages we visited.

The Bigger Picture: Currently, nine-hundred and sixty-five children are sponsored in eight nations through Orphan's Tear. Hundreds are waiting for sponsorship at Orphan's Tear.

A Widow at Taunggyi by Stephen Kirkwood
The Christian Widows Fund

Amini with her three children in front of their tiny house

Perched on a hillside outside the city of Taunggyi, in Shan State, Myanmar, is a tiny wooden shack with a tin roof. It is six feet by ten feet. At first glance, you would think it was just a storage shed. A quick look inside, however, reveals that this is a home---of a family.

A mother named Amini lives there with two of her three children. Inside is a crude wooden bed where they all sleep, a few shelves that hold their meager possessions, and a single pot in the corner for cooking their meals over a wood fire. Newspaper clippings cover the walls, which provide insulation and artwork. On the door, Amini has painted a blue cross to let her neighbors know she is a Christian.

Although Amini faces a more difficult life than most of us can imagine, the joy of knowing Jesus lights her face. She has been a believer since childhood, but her parents arranged for her to marry a Buddhist man. He turned out to be an alcoholic, and eventually his addiction killed him. Amini's deceased husband's parents will do nothing to help her since she is a Christian.

Amini, Mya Win Thun, Hla Hla Win, and Tha Zin Oo

Since she became a widow, Amini has done chores for her better-off neighbors to make ends meet. She washes dishes and clothes and cleans her neighbor’s homes, but her income isn’t sufficient to support all three of her children. So Amini's oldest daughter, who is age thirteen, works full-time as a maid for a wealthy Buddhist family, with whom she also lives. She labors seven days a week and is permitted to visit her mother only one day of the year---on Christmas. She does not attend school. Amini had to beg her daughter's employer to let her have the day off so that we could meet her when we visited.

With contributions to the Widows’ Fund, Heaven’s Family recently provided a $500 grant to Amini that has enabled her to start a small noodle shop in a nearby market. The income she’ll generate will be sufficient for her to take care of all of her children, including her thirteen-year-old, who will soon be back home and able to attend school. Thank you for making this blessing possible. We hope to provide funds in the near future for a better house for Amini and her children. One is being considered right now that costs about $4,000.

The Bigger Picture: 100% of all gifts to the Widows Fund are sent overseas to help impoverished Christian widows in developing nations start life-sustaining small businesses. Funds are also used to support Christian widows who are unable to work.

Parting Shot
Follow Me as I Follow Christ

Always wanting to obey Scripture and set a good example, I made sure that my left hand was behind my back as I publicly presented Dr. Ni Kung with a big wad of Myanmar cash for purchasing his new microscope. That way my left hand wouldn't know what my right hand was doing, just as Jesus taught us. --- David