PARTNERSHIP
Working in Asia confronts OEW with many challenges, such as poverty, natural disasters (tsunami), political instability (wars), women’s issues and AIDS. It is not possible for OEW to deal with all these challenges as well as our major focus of teaching on a biblical understanding of sexuality. However, we can partner with others to make some response.
Recently we partnered with Visited Planet to help Indonesian boy Ma’Ruf for an operation to fix a hair lip. Visited Planet is an online photography library by photojournalist Jo Lane who travels worldwide writing about different countries and cultures, and assisting different organisations and people groups along the way. She also kindly donated photographs to us for our website!
Ma’Ruf (12 years) lives in a village outside Yogyakarta, Indonesia and was born with a hair lip. In recent years he had become more embarrassed about his appearance and had stopped going to school. Jo visited his village in October 2006 while making reports for the IES church in Jakarta to give to their donees who had supported house building in earthquake effected areas. Jo met Ma’Ruf and was touched by his plight. He’d been injured in the earthquake and gone to hospital where he’d had to wait days for medical aid before a pin was put into his leg. He’s now on crouches and unable to walk. It seemed so unfortunate that a boy already suffering humiliation and rejection from his facial appearance should also be disadvantaged due to another physical injury. So a group of friends in Brisbane, including OEW, worked with Visited Planet and IES Jakarta in December 2006 to arrange an operation and hopefully give Ma’Ruf a new start in life.
If you want to respond financially or be informed of developments contact Visited Planet – admin@visitedplanet.com