My Buddy Biak [David's 3rd Blog from Myanmar]

07 Jan

My Buddy Biak [David’s 3rd Blog from Myanmar]

Beautiful Biak Hlei Par, age 8

After an all-day drive yesterday from Khua Hrang back to Hakha (on the same “roads” as before, but this time escorted by even more young men who got us through the impossible sections), I started today meeting a little friend of mine. Back in early 2009, we learned about a 4-year-old little girl named Biak who had a tumor growing around her right eye socket and bridge of her nose. Her impoverished mother lived in a tiny village 50 miles away from Hakha, and she had come with Biak to Hakha to work as a cook for an orphanage we were supporting there. Here is what Biak looked like then:

Biak in February of 2009

We raised money to transport Biak and her mother to Yangon, 500 miles away, and to pay for surgery to remove her tumor. That was the beginning of Heaven’s Family’s Critical Medical Needs Fund, which is always saving lives and making the impossible possible through the capable administration of Patti Samuels. Biak’s surgery was successful, and she regained the use of her eye. The tumor had not reached her brain. Four years later, her scar is barely noticeable.

Last year when I was in Hakha preaching an evangelistic campaign, Biak and her mother visited me, and the end result was a new winter coat for Biak and her mother, plus 870 other warm coats for residents of poor Chin State villages. (You can read that story by clicking here.)

Biak was wearing her last year’s new coat when I met her this year, but she was outgrowing it. So I made sure it was replaced before she and her mother returned to their village. I also learned that Biak was absent from school all of October and November because of malaria. So I made sure that she and her mother had enough mosquito netting for the whole family. Next year I hope to visit their village, and I sent word with Biak’s mother to the elders, asking if we can be of service.

Another photo from four years ago of Biak and her older sister, Van Dawt Za Ting, and then both today (with me)

This afternoon I spent several hours meeting with about 15 small business owners, mostly women, who are raising chickens, pigs and fish, and making fabric, all thanks to $200 loans made possible by gifts to our Micro-Loan Fund. They are all members of The Church of Jesus Christ (an indigenous denomination in Myanmar) in Hakha. That church is pastored by my dear friend, Andrew Ngun Khar, who is a Heaven’s Family micro-banker.

Andrew is also the director of an orphanage named New Hope Children’s Home that has been supported for quite a few years by Heaven’s Family U.K. The borrowers I met with this afternoon, as poor as they are, have all dedicated some of their profits to support four teachers who tutor New Hope’s older orphans, who otherwise would not be getting an education because of cost prohibitions. These are the kind of people of whom the world is not worthy, and I am humbled to be among them.

At left, two of the children who live at New Hope Children’s Home, behind them in the background. Heaven’s Family funded their property and building about eight years ago. At right, evangelist Tluang Hnin Thang stands to tell us how he used his micro-loan to purchase 1 pig and 15 chickens. I learned from him that the best ratio of roosters to chickens is 1 to 4!