North Korean Border guards taking a break outside their guardhouse on the South Korean border. They are ordered to shoot any who attempt to escape their country.

Dear Friends,

Let me tell you about Mrs. Sun (not her real name), a North Korean woman who is not all that she seems to be.

To the North Korean government and many of her influential friends and family, she is a doctor and a loyal, upstanding citizen.

To hungry and impoverished North Korean Christians, she is a Good Samaritan who helps sustain them by smuggling food, medicine, and Bibles into North Korea from China.

Mrs. Sun’s official life began decades ago, during a time of relative prosperity in North Korea. As a college student, Mrs. Sun had the opportunity to pursue the career of her choice. Due to her strong desire to help others, she chose medicine. Years later, when Mrs. Sun was in her thirties, North Korea endured the worst famine the country had ever experienced. Once again she heeded the call to help those in need by offering food, which she obtained from neighboring China.

Twenty years later, her life as a “double agent” had become routine. By “day” she served her people as a medical professional (under the guise of a loyal national), and by “night” she served as one of our most effective underground food distributors and evangelists. Using her influential status to travel into China, she gathered food, medical supplies, and other aid to bring back to the hundreds of people in her home city.

Last month, however, the unthinkable happened. During her stay with some friends in China, she received an urgent message from a trusted friend. Government spies had discovered the true purpose of her frequent border crossings. The message warned that officials were waiting to arrest her as soon as she stepped foot on North Korean soil.

Mrs. Sun was devastated. She knew that she faced certain death if she tried to return home, but the thought of leaving her husband and pregnant daughter in North Korea was unbearable. Making the hardest decision of her life, Mrs. Sun entrusted herself to God and went into hiding with the help of her friends in China.

But Mrs. Sun could not stay in China—she was now a hunted woman, as China cooperates with North Korea in searching for and returning North Koreans who have escaped. Those who are caught in China and returned to North Korea are sent to concentration camps where they are not likely to survive their sentences.

Using gifts from the North Korean Christians Fund, Heaven’s Family funded Mrs. Sun’s safe passage to Thailand, where she is now living. She will be there for three months and then relocate to South Korea. Please pray this month for her to have a smooth transition to her new life in South Korea as well as for her family left behind in North Korea.

For our suffering family in North Korea,

Elisabeth Servant
Director, North Korean Christians Fund

Dear Friends,

After my last blog post from Myanmar, we found it very difficult to send photos via the internet. Thus the reason for this belated blog (I’m now home).

Our final nine days in Myanmar were split between two cities where Heaven’s Family supports 40 orphanages by means of child sponsorships through our Orphan’s Tear division. While several of our team members hosted two-day conferences on foster care and micro-banking for all our orphanage directors in both cities, the rest of the team spent their days visiting their orphanages and interacting with the children. Those children never tired of playing Hot Potato and Duck, Duck, Goose.

On one special day, we journeyed by jeep and motor scooters to two remote and primitive mountain villages—consisting mostly of believers—where Heaven’s Family has been working. In both villages, the people used to hike for miles to fetch their drinking water. Now they enjoy multiple public water faucets made possible by a lot of hard work by the villagers, plus PVC pipe and concrete provided through our Village Development Fund. During our visit at one of those villages, I had a lot of fun introducing something the villagers had never seen—a frisbee.

Thanks for your prayers while we were away. Below are some photos I thought you’d enjoy. I’m returning to Myanmar for two weeks in December to bring relief to Kachin refugees who have had to flee from fighting in their region, as well as to spend one-on-one time with all our orphanage directors. I’ll appreciate your prayers from December 5-19.

In Christ,

David

One of the sincere worshippers at Hallelujah Children’s Home

Duck, Duck, Goose at Grace Orphanage in Kalaymyo

Team member Sittinan Liankatawa being crushed in an arm wrestling contest at the Handicapped Care Center. Heaven’s Family U.K. director, Philip Barker, in the background, capturing the defeat digitally.

On the way to the villages: A large ditch in the road required a makeshift bridge for our jeep to pass

Asking this couple for a mild public display of affection for their portrait caused quite a stir in Mawl Zaul village

HF Staff Member David Warnock showing some of the Zautal villagers photos of Pennsylvania snow on his laptop

At one of the ten new public water faucets in their village

Sampling a tiny red chile that was being dried in the sun at Zatual village

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.