Story of a Wa story

Many people in Singapore laugh that when Saya Ai Nat ဆရာအိုငန ္ က္ (a Wa nationality) talked
about Wa story because 'Wa' meaning 'Wa Lone', 'overstay', 'illegal worker' in Singapore.
Anyway, modern Burmese aware Wa because their leader's infamous drug activities in Shan
states. Anyway, real Wa minority has their sad story of 'amputating head' (Pa-Shu Gaung-Phyat)
ပရႈးေခါင္းျဖက္.

As escalated by Wa chiefs, this habit was started since 8 AD. Chinese king (Yu-nan emperor
ယူနန
္ဘုရင္ခံ) scared Wa people who are very wild fighter. Emperor worried of their population growth.
The Emperor sent a boiled rice seed to Wa chief to plough. Wa chief tried the but failed. Wa chief
was animist and asked Chinese emperor why these seed did not grow. Emperor told that Wa
need to pray with amputated human's head to God. Head must be their own Wa people and this
action is to be done surprised attack. . Once Wa chief had done this action, Chinese emperor
gave good rice seed which can grow rice.

From that time, Wa dynasty practiced this as a traditional praying session. U Ai Nat himself
visited to mountain-liked heads at a prayer's place but chiefs not allowed to take photo. Nobody
dared to govern Wa territory because Chinese, Burmese, English governments scared their
amputating head tradition. Another reason is "no resources in these territory".

After 1200 years, head amputating tradition ended in 1970. Burmese Communist used Wa as
communist soildiers. Communist stopped this bad tradition and built schools, factories,
community firms, rice fields. Than, Wa children had to learn modern education. Thanks to
Communist.

Since, Burmese Communist Party fallen, Burmese Military government stepped in. Many Wa
children were adopted by Burmese army personals. Many Buddhist and Christian
started missions to non-religious Wa people. Wa ophens children were adoped and brought to
various place of Burma. Now a day, these children are going back to their mother Wa land to do
community works. Thanks to Burmese military government and missionaries to civilize Wa
people.

Rev. Ai Nat had a good experience of a Wa amputating story. Some traditional Wa chiefs still
doing this practice. In 1998, U Tar Tar: ဦးတာတာ (a Wa Chief from Tant Yang Town) followed a
Wa woman and surprised amputation was done as his 57th head amputation action (Ref No.2) .
Unfortunately, woman died but chief notised the headless woman still hold a months old baby.
This Baby under woman's arm was taking milk from woman's breast. Chief has kind heart and
brought the baby. Baby cried very loud and died after 3 days. Since, that day, Wa chief's
sleepless night started. Wa chief ear had a crying baby noise repeatedly and regreted the killing a
woman. He counseled with many religious leaders including Muslim, Hindu, Chinese Taoism as
well as Buddhist monk. Fortunately, a Christian pastor Saya Mu Le ဆရာမူးလယ္ doctrine worked
to this Wa Chief and later, surrounding Wa villages stopped the Amputating tradition..
Pastor Ai Nat [with guitar] & Pastor Augustus [www.jbcs.org.sg] together with Singapore
women and victims at PHUKET.

Bio of speaker.

Saya Ai Nat - Who was born as Wa minority. Later, he was raised and educated under Burmese
military officer Colonel Kyaw Myint ဗိလ
ု ္မႈးေက်ာ္ျမင့္. Now, he returned as pastor to Wa territory to
do social and Christian religious activities. He did not want to study again because it is touch and
away from his family life but Wa Christian group send him to study @ Singapore Bible
College 2004-2006. If anyone interested to Wa social activities, feel free to contact U Ai Nat. (He
already returned to Myanmar as Wa's Bible School in Lasho, Shan State).

When he was young, communism started to Wa region. He remembered children like him has
one spoons of food and adult got two spoon food. He was taken care by a Burmese military
officer Colonel Kyaw Myint. Under the guidance of Col Kyaw Myint, he passed 10 standard. Later,
U Ai Nat returned to Wa territory and worked for social activity together with Christian religious
priest.

Wa chief U Tar Tar: ဦးတာတာ amputated 51 heads and regreted his sin. He remembered a
Christian pastor called Saya Mu Le who did sing song to their village many years ago. Saya Mu
Le explained to Wa chief that his sin is not big as Ko Tha Phyu ကိသ ု ာျဖဴ who killed many people.
Now people were doing memorial session at Ko Tha Phyu high school and Christian church in
Pathein (formerly Bassein City, Irrawaddy division). Christian believed that all sin can be cleared
after regret, and believe in Jesus. Christian doctrine worked to Wa Chief. His Baptism in Shan
states attended by thousand people. When he was under water for Baptism, normal Baptism take
few second but he was under water for 1 min (standard time is less than 5 sec.) and scratched
his head. Later he told that, all sin attached to his skin were scratched away at Baptism.
Surrounding Wa villages has stopped the Amputating tradition. Ref: U Tar Tar: converted to
Christian after 1 years Bible study.
Testimony 1
There was 2000 people Baptism in Wa territory. Standing at cool water was a miserable life but
Saya Ai-Nat did Baptized a last person call 7001st. All 27 Pastors were very tired and he had to
go down to water for last Baptism. This guy resisted and shout loudly but later he accepted
Baptism quietly. After Baptism, he was told that "the last guy is a mental disable person". This
person used to shout loudly and disturb to others. After his Baptism, this "mental disable person"
became quiet. People were surprised for this wonderful event. All surrounding village aware that
"mad person became no loner disturbing them", many villagers agreed to Baptize.

Sometime, God use Mad man.

Testimony 2
A traditional pray place has mountain-liked human heads with huge three tree each more than 1
meter diameter (called Nyaung Pin). They asked to cut these three big tree, then they will believe
God. It is impossible but only to pray for Christian pastors. Few months later, a powerful storm
made these big tree to fall down. Many Wa people believed Jesus and Baptized.

Testimony 3
A pregnant woman gave birth to a baby girl but mother was died. According to tradition, baby girl
is to die together. Saya Ai Nat try to take the crying baby but Wa chief did not allow him to pick
baby girl. Baby stopped crying alone but still alive until the next day. Saya Ai-Nat equested again
to adopt this baby girl but Wa chief told that baby who caused mother to die will create many
chaotic environment to all. Anyway, baby was brought to Lasho town and Cambaw Za Khin
Hlaing ေဒါက္တာ ကေမၻာဇခင္လႈိင္ (a famous medical doctor) treaded for 6 months. Later, villagers
visited to his house and see healthy baby 2 and half year old without any problem, many Wa
villagers believed and Baptized.

Editor Note:
When, we go to Wa territory and dressed like Wa people, don't be surprised that your friend head
was disappeared. (Just a joke) Please, empathize Wa minority who started their new life. Not to
see very few rich drug lord and Wa military people, majority Wa people are poor and un-
educated. Need our help. 90% of Wa population will be Buddhist or animist, communist relatives.
As I learnt, Christian missionary started before 1970 and only few thousands Wa Christians. Now,
there is estimated more than 50,000 Christian (it is 10% of Wa population). You can imagine that
amputating tradition might not be easily eliminated in Wa territory. Education will help their
development. Many said, thanks to communist.

Ref:
1. Saya Ai Nat verbal sermon & testimony on 19-Dec-2004 (Sunday) jbcs.org.sg
http://burmesebible.org/wa.htm
2. A Burmese bio book of Saya Mu Le (translated from English by Tun Hlaing.)
3. Website: http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=Myanmar
 "၀" ဧ၀ံေဂလိ ႏွင့္ စင္ကာပူ ယုဒႆန္ႏွစ္ျခင္းအသင္းေတာ္

ယုဒႆန္ႏွစ္ျခင္းအသင္းေတာ္ (စင္ကာပူ) ရဲ့ အသင္းေတာ္ရဲ့ ၀ိညာဥ္ေတာ္ဆင္းသက္ပါ၊

အသင္းေတာရွငသ
္ န္ေစပါ ဆိုတဲ့ ေဆာင္ပဒ
ု ္နဲ႔ ထာ၀ရဘုရားဘုန္ေတာ္ထင္ရွားေစေရးအတြက္
ဆရာၾသဂတ္စတတ္၊ ဆရာမ်ိဳးသူ၊ Elder ဆရာစတီဗင္ တို႔ရဲ့ ၀ိညာဥ္ေရးရာဦးေဆာင္မႈနဲ႔အတူ၊
ေကာ္မတီအသီးသီးက က႑အမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳးကေန အမႈေတာ္ေဆာင္ရက
ြ လ
္ ်က္ရွိပါတယ္။
အခုေဖၚျပမဲ့အေၾကာင္းကေတာ့ အသင္းေတာ္ရဲ့ ဧ၀ံေဂလိေဆာင္ရက
ြ ္ခ်က္မ်ားျဖစ္တဲ့ စင္ကာပူအတြငး္ ၊
ႏိင
ု ္ငရ
ံ ပ္ျခားမ်ားနဲ႔ အထူးသျဖင့္ ျမန္မာျပည္တင
ြ ္ ဧ၀ံေဂလိသာသနာနယ္ေျမ ၁၂ခုေက်ာ္ကို ပံုမွန္အားေပးစာမ်ားနဲ႔
ေထာက္ပေ
ံ့ ငြမ်ားပိေ
ု႔ ပးျခင္းကို လုပ္ေဆာင္လွ်က္ရပ
ွိ ါတယ္။ ဆုေတာင္းေပးျခင္းက ပိုမအ
ို ေရးၾကီးပါတယ္။
လူနဲသ
႔ ြားေရာက္ ကူညီ၊အားေပးျခင္းက ပိုမထ
ို ိေရာက္သလို ေငြအားျဖင့တ
္ တ္ႏင
ို သ
္ မွ် ပါ၀င္ျခင္းကလည္း
လုပ္ကိုငသ
္ မ
ူ ်ားကို စိတ္၊၀ညာဥ္ပင
ို ္းဆိုင္ရာ ခြနအ
္ ားျဖစ္ေစတာ အမွနပ
္ ါပဲ။

ဒီေဆာင္းပါးတိုေလးမွာေတာ့ "၀" သာသနာအတြက္ ဧ၀ံေဂလိလုပ္ေဆာင္ခ်က္ကို

အနည္းငယ္ေဖၚျပခ်င္ပါတယ္။ ၀လူမ်ိဳးဆိတ
ု ာ အခုေခတ္မွ နာမည္ထက
ြ ္လာခဲတ
့ ာပါ။
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=Myanmar စာအုပ္အရဆိရ
ု င္
၀လူမ်ိဳးအေရအတြကဟ
္ ာ ကခ်င္လူမ်ိဳးေလာက္ရွိပါတယ္။ ကြန္ျမဴနစ္မ်ား ရွမး္ ျပည္ဘက္ အင္အားတိုးခ်ဲ႔ရာမွာ
သူတက
ို႔ အ
ို သံုးခ်ရာမွစတင္ျပီး ျမန္မာျပည္မွာ လူသိမ်ားလာရျခင္းျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဘာသာမဲ႔ ကြန္ျမဴနစ္၀ါဒီ၊
နတ္ကိုးကြယ္တဲ့ မိရိုးဖလာစနစ္မ်ားကေန ထာ၀ရဘုရားကို သိရွိ၊လက္ခလ
ံ ာၾကပါတယ္။ ေျမာက္မ်ားစြာ ႏွစ္ျခင္းခံ
ေျပာင္းလဲလာၾကေသာ္လည္း ၾကမ္းတမ္းလွတဲ့ ေဒသနဲ႔ ယဥ္ေက်းမႈ Culture ဒါဏ္ကို
လာေရာက္သာသနာျပဳၾကတဲ့ ကရင္၊ ကခ်င္၊ လားဟူ၊ ဗမာ လူမ်ိဴးစု ဓမၼဆရာမ်ား ၾကာၾကာမေနႏိင
ု ္ပါဘူး။
ႏွစ္ျခင္းခံျပီး ဓမၼဆရာမရွေ
ိ တာ့ ေနာက္ႏွစဆ
္ ို နတ္စားဘ၀ ျပန္ေရာက္သြားတာမ်ိဳး ေတြ႔ရေတာ့ ဆရာအိုင္းနတ္
"၀" သာသနာျပဳမ်ားက သူတလ
ို႔ ူမ်ိဳး ဓမၼဆရာမ်ား ေမြးထုတ္ေပးေရးအတြက္ က်မ္းစာသင္တန္းေက်ာင္းမ်ား
ထူေထာင္ရပါတယ္။

စင္ကာပူမွ ယုဒႆန္ ႏွစ္ျခင္းအသင္းေတာ္ဟာ ဒီအခြင့္အေရးကို ဘုရားသခင္ေပးသနားေတာ္မူပါတယ္။

အနာဂါတ္ "၀" က်မ္းစာေက်ာင္းအုပ္ေနရာကို ဆုေတာင္း၊ေမွ်ာ္မန
ွ ္းတဲ့ ဆရာအိုင္းနတ္ စင္ကာပူမွာ
အဆင့္ျမင့္အဂၤလပ
ိ ္စာနဲ႔ သင္ၾကားေပးတဲ့ အလြန္ခက္တဲ့ Singapore Bible College ကို ၃ႏွစ္ တက္ေရာက္ျပီး
ဓမၼပညာ မာစတာဘြဲ႔ကိုရရွိခဲ့ပါတယ္။ မူလက အဂၤလိပစ
္ ာ အလြန္အားနည္းေသာ္လည္း
ဘုရားသခင္ေပးသနားတဲ့ ေက်းဇူးေတာ္ေၾကာင့္ အာၾကီးမႈရရွိခေ
ဲ့ ၾကာင္း ဆရာအိုင္းနတ္ကိုငတ
္ ိုင္
သက္ေသခံခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဒီအျပင္ .. ဘြဲ႔ထက္ ပိုအေရးၾကီးတဲ့ စင္ကာပူ ယုဒႆန္အသင္းေတာ္မာွ အခ်ိန္ျပည့္နီးပါး
ပါ၀င္အမႈေတာ္ေဆာင္ခပ
ဲ့ ါတယ္။ သူျပန္သာြ းျပီး "၀" ဓမၼဆရာမ ငယ္ရယ
ြ ႏ
္ ုနယ္တဲ့ ဆရာမစန္းစန္းကို
ယုဒႆန္ႏွစ္ျခင္းအသင္းေတာ္မွ Full Sponsorship စရိတ္အားလံုးအကုနက
္ ်ခံ ေခၚယူခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ဆရာမစန္းစန္းလည္း ယုဒႆန္အသင္းေတာ္ အတြက္ အခ်ိန္ျပည့္ အမႈေဆာင္ရင္း၊ Cell Groups ေတြကလ
ို ည္း
မေမာမပန္း ပါ၀င္ဆပ္ကပ္ခဲ့လို႔ အဂၤလပ
ိ ္လသ
ို င္တဲ့ က်မ္းစာေက်ာင္းသင္ခန္းစာမ်ား အားနည္းသြားရပါတယ္။
ဘုရားေက်းဇူးေတာ္ေၾကာင့္ စာမာစတာဘြဲ႔ကို ေအာင္ျမင္စြာ ျပီးစီးခဲ့ျပီး အသင္းေတာ္က June 2009 Sunday မွာ
ႏႈတ္ဆက္ပြဲလုပ္ခပ
ဲ့ ါတယ္။ ဆရာမကလည္း ဓမၼေဒသနာေဟာၾကား သက္ေသခံ၊ ေက်းဇူးတင္စကား
ေျပာၾကားသြားခဲ့ပါတယ္။
 လားရႈိးျမိဳ႔မာွ "၀" ႏွစ္ျခင္းက်မ္းစာသင္ေက်ာင္းရွပ
ိ ါတယ္။ ႏိုငင
္ ံျခားအေထာက္ပံခံ
အျခားက်မ္းစာသင္တန္းေက်ာင္းမ်ားလို တိက
ု တ
္ ာ၊အေဆာက္အဦၾကီးနဲ႔ ခမ္းခမ္းနားနားမဟုတေ
္ ပမဲ့ ဘုရားသခင္
ေက်းဇူးေတာ္ကို အမ်ားၾကီးခံစားရပါတယ္။ လူအျမင္၊လူဗီဇအရ ၾကီးမားတဲ့ အေဆာက္အဦး၊
အသင္းေတာ္ၾကီးေတြနဲ႔ သိန္းေပါင္း 13,000 အကုန္က်ခံေဆာက္လုပေ
္ နတာလည္း ဘုရားမွာ
အၾကံအစည္ရမ
ွိ ်ာပါ။ လူဗဇ
ီ အရ ေတာနယ္ေလးက ၀ါထရံအသင္းေတာ္အေဆာက္အဦကို လွဴခ်င္ေပမဲ့
ရန္ကုန္ျမိဳ႔ေတာ္ၾကီးက လူေထာင္၊ေသာင္း လာေရာက္၀တ္ျပဳ၊စုစည္းၾကမဲ့ အေဆာက္အဦၾကီးကိုပဲ
လွဴျဖစ္သြားတာ .. မဆန္းလွပါဘူး။

JBC Singapore ကို "၀" က်မ္းစာေက်ာင္းမွ ဧည့္သည္ေတာ္ပါေမကၡအျဖစ္ ေခတၱလာေရာက္ဖို႔

ဖိတ္ေခၚထားပါတယ္။ ဆရာမ်ိဳးသူ သြားေရာက္ရန္ရပ
ွိ ါတယ္။ ဘယ္ေတာ့သြားမလဲ မေသခ်ာေသးပါဘူး။

"၀" ဧ၀ံေဂလိအဖြဲ႔၊ က်မ္းစာသင္တန္းမ်ားနဲ႔ ယံုၾကည္သမ

ူ ်ားကို သတိရဆုေတာင္းေပးရန္ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ယုဒႆန္
ႏွစ္ျခင္းအသင္းေတာ္ (စင္ကာပူ) လည္း ဘုရားဘုနေ
္ တာ္ထင္ရာွ းေစတဲ့ ပံုသက္ေသျပ လုပေ
္ ဆာင္မႈမ်ား
ဆက္လက္ ကိုးစား၊ဆုေတာင္း လုပ္ေဆာင္သြားရန္ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

Sayama Moreen and San San (Wa Nationality) - Front

With Rev. Augustus (JBC) left (last row), |
Principle couple "Wa Bible School" Myanmar (2nd row - center)