A typical couple in front of their typical home in Chin State, Myanmar’s most undeveloped region. Note that the mother has a tattooed face.
A Great Story
David’s 2nd Blog from Myanmar
Dear Friends,
Today at a Working Group meeting at the Heaven’s Family offices in Yangon, I heard a wonderful story about two brothers whom we’ve recently been able to help. Their names are Huang Maung and Huang Khui Shin. Eleven years ago, at ages 4 and 6, they were torn from their mother, other siblings, and their home and village in Chin State. At the time, their twice-widowed mother was struggling to care for them, and a pastor from Yangon promised her they would have better lives in a Yangon orphanage hundreds of miles away. So she let them go with him, and that was the last time she saw them.
A year or so after their arrival in Yangon, their orphanage was shut down by the government due to an incident of child abuse, and all the children were divided up and relocated to other orphanages. The two brothers ended up in different orphanages and no one knew or cared. Thankfully, however, Huang Maung has been living in one of the 13 orphanages that are cooperating with our child reintegration program, and our social workers have been diligently doing detective work to trace each child’s background in hopes of reuniting them with their families.
I won’t bore you with the details of that detective work, but the result was that Huang Maung’s brother was located at another orphanage, and after nine or ten years apart, Huang Maung and Huang Khui Shin were recently reunited. Here is their photo:
Our social workers’ detective work also eventually uncovered the name of their home village, which neither of the boys could remember, as well as the name of their mother. Not knowing if she was even still alive, those social workers then made the long journey to her village that could only be reached by a motorcycle trail deep in the mountains. Praise God, they found her and told her the story of her sons. She was thrilled, saying that she often thought about them and was angry that she had allowed a pastor to take them away eleven years ago. She feared they had been trafficked, but now has hope of seeing them again.
When our social workers returned to Yangon and showed Huang Maung and Huang Khui Shin a photo of their mother, they did not recognize her.
Now our team is determining what is the best future course for the boys based on a number of criteria. But within a few months, during their summer school break, they will travel to Chin State to be reunited with their mother and their other siblings for the first time in eleven years. I’m thinking about coming back to Myanmar then so I can film that reunion for you.
David Servant
Founder and President, Heaven’s Family
