The Pain Behind the Face

As you know, my brother and family are missionaries to Kyrgyzstan. My brother John is there right now, while his family is at home. That must be difficult being seperated from wife and family for long periods of time. Nonetheless, its a labour of love. I would encourage you to follow his blog at http://actofkindness.blogspot.com

Here is his last post for you below or catch it on his site http://actofkindness.blogspot.com/2009/04/pain-behind-face.html

I found this post particularly touching...

The Pain Behind the Face

This is a land of contrast... the beauty all around contrasted with the post soviet concrete.. The kindness and hospitality of the people in contrast to the poverty that they live in . But what is the most striking contrast to me is much deeper then that.
Daily I come across stories and situations that are truly heart breaking .. Yesterday one of our Sponsored kids stopped by for a visit while she was in town looking at schools.. she had a friend with her.... This young girl looked like she had it all together..... she was dressed well, and looked healthy, and was very bright ... As I served Tea, she causally started eating everything on the table... It was like the commercial we have in Canada... when the lady asks for another cookie, and she is told ..."help yourself" so she puts the whole bag in her purse... I started putting more and more out and as fast as I made it she ate it... I started enquiring about her.. in the last three years, she has lost her mother father, her sister, and her grandmother... all that is left is her and her 75 year old grandfather... they don't have much.. they live on his pension from being a police officer which is a little more then most... $35 a month..... Now she was not asking for help and she did not seem to be expecting help... that was just the way life is for her.... she had not eaten for three days, and that did not seem to be anything horrible for her... that's just the way it is....

This morning Dr Tatyana arrived with a friend .. Again the friend looked like life was good.. she was dressed well. ( which I have learned can mean nothing here ) Dr Tatyana began to share... This Ladies husband has just died leaving her with 3 young children. The custom is that the wife is to go to the mountains for 30 days to morn.... this was just enough time for the husbands family to raid the house and take everything... including the family car... what is worse is that they have some how managed to steel the deed for the house as well and are now selling it too... she was left with 3 kids and nothing... Dr Tatyana was able to intervene and got most of her things back, but does not think she will be able to keep the house... she has until fall then the house will be sold.... In my mind I was imagining all the things she might be preparing to ask for... But no they just stopped bye to let me know that they had just run into my Babushka neighbour, and she has just knit a dozen pair of slippers for the kids at the orphanage, and wanted me to stop around to pick them up....

One thing that I have spoken about is that HOPE is not always possible ... it may even be a western concept.... Many of the people we run into here in Kyrgyzstan don't HOPE for better, because they do not know that anything better is obtainable..... just about every person you run into in a day here has a storey that we would make a movie about in the West...
In the last month I have not used a translator very much, so it has forced me to start learning the language, I always said that I wanted to be able to sit down and talk to some of the caractors in this play, and now that I am starting to understand better, it is exposing me to the pain behind the face....