An Astounding Smile: Although she’s lost all her fingers and toes, she has something to smile about—she knows her Lord has promised her a resurrected body, and she knows she is part of a family that loves her. Heaven’s Family has come to her aid, and to the aid of many in her colony who are also isolated and abandoned, with monthly assistance of food, soap and other toiletries, plus clothing, medical care, and more.
This healthy mother, stigmatized from birth because her parents are afflicted with leprosy, has had no alternative but to beg on the streets all of her life to survive. Now she has hope of a better life for herself and her family, as she is learning to sew at a skills-training center supported by Heaven’s Family.
Shaya Das was married with two children when he discovered he had leprosy. He didn’t tell his family, but secretly left and never returned because of the social stigma they would all suffer if their community learned his secret. Here he waits to be fitted with the new prosthetic leg on his right.
The healthy children of leprosy-afflicted families are usually not welcome at public schools in India. Because of sponsorship by Heaven’s Family, 8-year-old Muskan, a child of leprous parents, is able to attend a private Christian school near her colony in Hyderabad. She is one of 55 such children whom we are helping with educational opportunities. Older sponsored children are attending high school, Bible College and vocational training schools where they learn skills that will help them escape the poverty into which they would be otherwise destined.
