Every month, Heaven’s Family helps far more people than we could ever highlight in our bi-monthly newsletter. For that reason, this page contains additional photos and stories of some of the “least of these” among our spiritual family whom we’ve recently been blessed to serve.
Every Christmas we do our best to bless the ladies at the Women's Wellness Center in Goma, DR Congo, with something extra to remind them how loved they are. In 2013 we gave new shoes to each woman and their children, thanks to our generous donors. We did this again last November during our visit, and we also provided extra food to help them make it through the holiday season.
Restavek. It's a word that you've likely never heard. But everyone in Haiti knows what it means. Although derived from two French words (reste avec), that mean "to stay with," the more literal translation of restavek is "child slave." Haiti's restaveks are children who are sent by their deeply-impoverished rural parents to work as live-in domestic servants in the homes of city families who are somewhat better off. There are as many as 300,000 restaveks in Haiti, a reflection of the desperation of hundreds of thousands of parents who can't escape the world's poorest nation.
Providing new clothes at Christmas for the children who live in orphanages—what are for most the only new clothes they receive all year—has been a great tradition at Orphan's Tear for many years now, and Christmas 2014 was no different. Except, perhaps, that this time sponsors didn't receive an appeal beforehand as we've done in the past.
Becky and I are now in northern Iraq. We're not far from the city of Erbil, capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, much of which is now controlled by ISIS militants. Erbil was attacked by ISIS forces last summer, but was repelled by U.S. airstrikes and Kurdish soldiers. We feel quite safe here—at least 50 miles from ISIS-controlled Mosul (where just a few days ago, ISIS militants publicly executed, by machine gun, 13 teenage boys for watching a soccer match on TV).
Lebanon's Syrian refugees are different, generally speaking, than refugees in places like Africa. Many Syrians fled from very adequate houses and farms. Some had cars, which they drove to the safer places where they now live. Some brought their savings (although many had savings stolen at gunpoint at ISIS checkpoints).
In front (left to right), sisters Hnin Tin Par, Bawi Hlei Par, and Sung Siang Dim, and behind (left to right) their Uncle Nawl Nawl and Aunt Biak Rem Mawi. When the youngest of the three sisters above was just an infant, their father died […]
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