Another cutie in Maul Zawl Village
Ending on a High Note
David’s 4th and Final Blog from Myanmar
Dear Friends,
In all of the villages that we’ve visited on this trip, I’ve yet to see a child with a toy. This is not to say that I haven’t seen children playing or having fun. The children we’ve encountered never lack entertainment, all generated by themselves.
In Maul Zawl, I noticed that most of the children were wearing rubber bands around their wrists, like in the photo below:
When I inquired about the reason, the brother and sister in the photo above demonstrated a game that all the village children play in which they compete to gain the most rubber bands.
They began by taking a piece of charcoal from a cooking fire (not difficult to find) and drawing a circle on the hardened ground about 3 feet in diameter. Each player places three rubbers bands inside the circle. Then they walk a certain number of paces away and, by means of throwing their flip flops, attempt to knock their opponent’s rubber bands outside of the circle. If they succeed, they gain their opponent’s rubber bands. Here’s a photo of the game in action:
But life is not always fun and games for Chin State village children. One day I was invited to a house in Maul Zawl to meet a 14-year-old girl named Lal Tlan Mawi. Lal was helping her family clear some land when her ax became lodged in a tree stump. Trying to dislodge it, she severely strained her back, and as her condition worsened over the next few days, she found herself unable to walk and incontinent. For the past ten months, she has lain on the floor of her parent’s home. They have not been able to afford the medical care she needs. Here is her photo:
Lal Tlan Mawi
So we carted Lal and her mother 3 hours in our SUV to the nearest hospital. From there she was referred to a better hospital hundreds of miles away in Mandalay where she is currently undergoing testing, all thanks to gifts to Heaven’s Family’s Disabilities Ministry. Please join me in praying for Lal’s complete recovery.
We spent about two days in Maul Zawl and then headed our SUVs down the same mountain ridge to the village of Zatual, just 30 minutes away, but where the people speak a completely different language. Heaven’s Family has been serving in Zatual just as long as in Maul Zawl, and the entire village turned out to greet us. The Zatualians have been a little slower to adapt to change than the Maul Zawlians, but they, too, are prospering and making progress.
Below are some photos with captions from our days in both Maul Zawl and Zatual. Thanks for joining me on this journey!
David
I’ve seen this pastime played by children all over the developing world. All it takes is a stick and old tire to keep little boys entertained for hours, as they keep their tires rolling along.
Our accommodations in Zatual, a vacant house that I christened some years ago as “The 5,000-Star Hotel,” because when you make your way from the hotel to the hotel outhouse in the middle of the night, you can see 5,000 stars in the sky! Another unique feature is how the entire hotel sways when a single lodger rolls over in his sleep! On the balcony is my son, Stephen, with Bruce Harris looking out the second-story doorway.
Zatual’s Baptist Church
Baptist Bruce sharing the Word
Me leading a impromptu children’s choir on the steps of Zatual Baptist Church. They sang a familiar song in their language, but I directed the tempo, occasionally forcing them to sustain a high note for an unduly long time, which they loved. And we’ll end this series of blogs on that high note!
