“I was walking home from the paddy fields when I heard the sound...

“I was walking home from the paddy fields when I heard the sound of a bullet. A young boy fell right next to me. Then suddenly there were so many bullets that it seemed like rain. I ran straight to my house and told my family to run. I told them to run deep into the forest and I started grabbing everything I could. I tried to follow them but it was raining too hard. I kept losing my balance because I was carrying our bags. It took me an hour to find them. I was screaming their names like a madman. Finally I discovered tracks in the mud and found my children huddled in the woods, but my wife was not with them. Nobody knew where she was. It was too dangerous to stay so we had to keep moving. We walked for three days without food and water. The children kept asking for their mother, but I didn’t know what to tell them. I thought we had lost her forever. Finally on the fourth day someone told us they’d passed her on the road. They said she was alone and crying. We were starving and didn’t have the energy to go back. But our nephew volunteered to find her, and tell her that we’d meet her in Bangladesh.”

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This week I’m sharing a series of first hand accounts from Rohingya refugees. The Rohingya are a persecuted ethnic minority who have been violently evicted from Myanmar by Buddhist extremists. Over the past year, nearly 700,000 Rohingya have been driven from their homes and are now residing in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Their living conditions are already dire, and monsoon season is approaching. As we share their stories, we are raising money to help build inexpensive bamboo houses for these refugees. (They are currently living in plastic tents.) Bamboo houses can be built for $600 a piece, and we’ve raised enough for over 1000 houses so far, but the need is much more. Please consider donating: http://bit.ly/2H0w5lm