Biak Hlei Par and her mother, Siang Doi

Today’s highlight for me was meeting a little girl named Biak whom Heaven’s Family helped about four years ago. Desperately in need of some income for her very poor family, Biak’s mother had taken a temporary job as a cook at one of the Christian orphanages that we help here in Hakha, which is 60 miles from her home village of Phaizawng. She had brought her youngest daughter, Biak, with her, who was just four years old at the time.

For more than two years, a tumor had been growing behind Biak’s right eye, and the orphanage director sent us a photo of her in early 2009 which I’ve pasted below:

We sent out an appeal to all our friends to help us send Biak 500 miles away to a hospital in Yangon for a diagnosis and surgery—if her life could be saved. To make a long story short, the Lord provided the funds that were needed, and Biak received surgery that saved her life.

Today, Biak and her mother traveled 60 miles from their village on the back of a motor scooter just to see me and to say thanks. Biak had never seen a person with white skin before, so she was a little shy at first. When I showed her the photo above on my laptop, she said that she could not remember anything about the tumor or her surgery.

I’m going to write an article for a future magazine that will include more details, because the Lord used Biak’s coming to Hakha to meet me to touch many people at the final night of our crusade. But meeting Biak made all the trouble of our journey worth it for me.

Speaking of the final night of our crusade, the crowd spilled out of the church, and was estimated to be between 600 and 800 people. My sermon was again centered on true repentance and faith, and the crowd responded with an act of repentance that I’ll save for my magazine article about Biak.

Tomorrow we start another journey deep into Chin State to visit remote believers whom we’ve been helping with water projects.

Below are some photos from the past few days. Thanks for your prayers. — David

Two little beauties dressed by their mothers in traditional Chin clothing to greet us at an afternoon church service at which I preached.

Team member Bruce Harris and the watchman at the government guest house where we stayed. He claimed that he was 102 years old, born in 1910! His secret to long life is drinking hot water.

This is not the altar call. This is the crowd during the sermon, sitting on the floor, in the pews, in the aisles, and outside the back doors of the church.

This is how roads are paved in rural Myanmar and in much of the developing world. Workers earn about 50 cents a day, and sleep under tarps along the road.

Two of a kind!

These little boys had just returned from checking and collecting their rat traps. The two rats that they caught will be gutted and cooked on sticks over a fire.