Restoring Dreams

BY BRENDA KIŠ

Saw See* convulsed in another spasm of coughing. Blood spewed from his mouth as he tried to regain control. Only 30 years old, he felt like an old man already. Poverty, tuberculosis, and an addiction to alcohol assaulted his physical reserves and drowned any dreams he might have had at one time. Then Nin Si,* an ASAP medical missionary, arrived at his door.

Nin Si, a 50-year-old single woman, lives in Myanmar. She is constantly on the lookout for new people who need to hear the Good News. Her search-and-rescue method is to go out every morning after breakfast and help people in the villages with whatever they need. Sometimes she takes people to the clinic and translates for them. Sometimes she herself gives natural treatments and prays for the sick persons. Sometimes she simply befriends families and helps them enroll their children in the mission school. Last year she took a Baptist family and their 15-year-old son to see our school. They liked the campus and structure of the mission school and today, as a result of his daily contact with the staff, the young man is a baptized member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Every day Nin Si’s schedule is different as she listens to the Lord’s leading. On this day she was visiting from house to house in a certain village when she came to the hovel of Saw See. Recognizing that he would die if left alone in his condition, she arranged to have him taken to the hospital where she visited him often. Rallying church members, she asked them to give from their own meager funds so he could have good food, necessary medications, and whatever else he might need. After ten days of medical care, he recovered and was able to go home.

Nin Si’s reward was to have him come and thank her for her kindness. She seized the opportunity to tell him that God was the One who had healed him. Later she invited him to church and gave him Bible studies. He began to attend church regularly, gave up drinking, and was one of eight people baptized last October through her efforts. Today Saw See is being discipled through follow-up activities and sometimes accompanies Ni Si as she visits other villagers. Soon the cycle of evangelism will be complete as Saw See begins his own outreach efforts.

Nin Si has a dream to start a nursery school in a Buddhist village. She has no money but she has prayer. Passion like hers is one of the reasons God rejoices in partnering with people to see the fulfillment of His own dream: to bring the lost of Myanmar to Himself!