Just “A Little Longer” For Anwar

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This is Anwar.

He’s homeless. He was also born with a congenital heart defect.

If you spend any time with Anwar and his mother, you quickly learn that they wouldn’t want any of those things to define them.

Anwar would rather be known for his love for soccer. He’s in 1st grade but he can’t stand school, mainly because it takes him away from his father. His father is a skilled farmer. They used to live down by the Kuwait-Iraq border and work on a farm where Anwar loved nothing else but to spend the whole day working alongside his dad.

Then the land ran out of water and they were forced to move further north.

When Anwar was one month old they found out about his heart defect. They traveled to Basra to see local doctors but they told them that they didn’t have the equipment they needed to save Anwar’s life. Even if they were able to buy the equipment, they still needed to be trained on how to use it.

Regardless, they told them to just “wait a little longer”.

They went back every month to see if the machines arrived but for 6 years they were continually turned away. Anwar’s only choice was to go overseas to a country that had the right machines and the doctors who knew how to use them. But it was a choice his family couldn’t even consider because of the cost. Whatever savings they had was continually being put towards staying warm in the winter. If Anwar gets cold, his body begins to shake and his heart condition worsens. Because of that, all their money goes towards buying kerosene to keep the heaters burning.

This winter that kerosene bill may just be a little less because Anwar heads into surgery within the next hour!

The doctors have the machines they’ve been waiting for and now they’re receiving the training they need to use the machines for the very first time!

Now, Anwar truly only has to wait “a little longer.”

Stay tuned…