The children and director of Love Children’s Home inside their bamboo house. The water of Inle Lake is presently just inches below the floor upon which the children are sitting.

Greetings from Myanmar, where Heaven’s Family has been working for nine years. Today our team visited Love Children’s Home, directed by a missionary from India, and supported by Heaven’s Family U.K. The orphanage director originally relocated to Myanmar’s most unreached region to spread the gospel among tribal people, but he found himself also taking care of orphans and unwanted children from the remote villages where he preached.

Their home is built on stilts, and much of the year it sits above eight feet of water on Inle Lake, as do thousands of other homes in the surrounding villages. The children are all good swimmers, and it is a good thing. They must take a boat if they want to go anywhere. Today I saw, for the first time, the sturdy boat that we funded for them last year, and it can fit all the children.

We also visited their one-acre fish pond, dug deep in the lake shallows, that holds 20,000 growing fingerlings. The idea is for Love Children’s Home to become more self-sufficient through fish sales, and we are thankful for our friends at Alpha Relief in Denver who have funded that project.

The children are all doing well, and they enthusiastically sang some beautiful songs for us in English. Our team played games with them before they gave us a rousing send-off with many of the boys jumping into the water near our departing boats.

Below are a few photos from the day. Thanks for your prayers.

David

Many of Inle Lake’s people make a living through small-scale fishing, which requires a good sense of balance, as demonstrated by the man in this photo. Like all the other of Inle’s fishermen, he can also stand at the same spot on his boat, row with an oar held by one leg, and work his net with his two free hands.

One of Inle Lake’s children “girding up his loins”

This is how clothes are washed by everyone who lives on Inle Lake

Christopher Biak Lang, Love Children’s Home’s director, standing in front of the orphanage fish pond

A typical house on stilts on Inle Lake

Philip Barker, director of Heaven’s Family U.K., playing a game with one of the children

A contemplative boy. Please pray for the people who live around Inle Lake, as only a tiny fraction of them know Jesus. But that minority is reaching out, even though they face persecution.