Associates with Free Burma Rangers provide treatment to an Iraqi citizen wounded after the Islamic State detonated an improvised explosive device in Mosul in this YouTube video dated Nov 29, 2016.
Iraqi forces wounded in the ongoing battle to push the Islamic State out of Mosul need all the help they can to stay alive. And coming to their rescue are oppressed Christians who felt God’s call for them to travel all the way from the civil-war ridden Asian nation of Burma.
For the last 20 years, the humanitarian aid group Free Burma Rangers, led by former U.S. Army Ranger officer David Eubank, has aided the oppressed ethnic minorities in Burma who are constantly attacked by the nation’s military dictatorship.
Although FBR has established over 70 relief teams in Burma, representing 13 different ethnic minorities, the group says God presented a new opportunity for them to help oppressed Iraqis and Syrians in February 2015.
Eubank told The Christian Post in an interview that after IS (also known as ISIS or ISIL) rose to power in the Nineveh plains of Iraq in 2014, he was contacted by a friend working as a missionary in Kurdistan who pleaded for him to drop what he was doing in Burma and come to Kurdistan, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Iraqis migrated in search of safety and shelter.
The only problem was that the Burma Army was standing in the way, making it nearly impossible for Eubank to leave the country and make it to Kurdistan in the seven-day time span. However, Eubank turned to prayer and the next morning, the Burma forces had picked up and moved, which miraculously cleared the way for Eubank and his team.
“Once we got to another country, then we still needed to buy plane tickets out to meet that seven-day window but we had no money. But my friend living in the United States bought them for us. But it also happened to be a holiday and everything was full but we happened to get five seats,” Eubank explained. “There were a lot of different things happening that got us to Kurdistan, which we felt we had no place being. But with all these miracles, it was like a sign that we were supposed to go.”
“On the first trip to Kurdistan is when I was on the front lines with the Kurdish army and I was on top of Sinjar Mountain with ISIS down below and looked out and asked God, ‘What do you want me to do?'” Eubank recalled. “I just felt him say, ‘Give up the Free Burma Ranger way and help these people.'”
Eubank then went back to meet with his FBR team members in Thailand and told them about the operations that FBR would begin in Iraq. The ethnic Burmese team members were very receptive to the call.
“They all prayed and said, ‘We want to go too,'” Eubank recalled. “I said, ‘We are going to need some medics and some video people.'”
Along with his wife, daughter and son, Eubank brought about five of his ethnic Burmese team members with him when he went back to Kurdistan. All of the ethnic team members, he said, are Christians who know what it is like to have their homes destroyed, to be shot at and have their family members killed in military conflicts.
“So you get these guys from Burma and their war is not over yet. If you ask them ‘Why are you going,’ they will say, ‘God is leading us and people have helped us so we should help others,'” Eubank stated.
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SOURCE: The Christian Post
Samuel Smith
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