Pray for Burma

Today I got word that the Burma Army and the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) are planning to attack Ler Per Her, a Karen village on the Thai-Burma border where many internally-displaced people have set up camp for years. Some have heard that armed troops of hundreds of soldiers are only 2 days walk away. The people in Ler Per Her have nowhere else to run and are in fear for their lives.

Some of you may know that while in Thailand, I worked on a small development project called Babies at Risk. I, along with a nurse from England and good friend of mine, Kelly, trained village health workers to provide breastfeeding and nutrition education to mothers and to prevent, assess and treat malnutrition in infants. We also regularly distributed vitamins and vegetables seeds and provided training on how to grow vegetables and reproduce small crops year after year.

Ler Per Her is one area that we did a lot of work in. I've made numerous trips there and we trained more than 30 regular health workers and provided them with a small salary for a while. In the process I got to know many of the health workers, who do what they can to serve their people. They are very dear to me. I want to post some photos from some of the time I spent there in 2006-2007. Please pray for these precious people.

The boat ride across the border


Walking into the village


A walk through the village to the middle school


The Health Center annex where trainings are held


Community Health Workers & Babies at Risk trainees

Teaching on how to use growth charts


Learning to use the infant weighing scale

Shwe Dah and children - a struggling family we got to know; Shwe Dah's malnourished 18-month-old son died from an upper respiratory infection 7 days after her baby (pictured here) was born

Shwe Dah and Kelly with the squash grown from seeds that were provided

Heading back to Thailand

Male health worker demonstrates proper breastfeeding position



Health workers take a training break to play a game