A Children’s Book Is Spreading God’s Truth Across Generations in Myanmar

God’s Word Spread to the Kachin People

In March of 2025, headlines informed us of the catastrophic earthquake in Myanmar that impacted over 17.2 million people across the country.¹ If you continued to read, you might have learned about another tragedy that this country has been facing for the past 60 years—civil war. Ruth, a native of Myanmar (previously called Burma) shared her personal experience with the ramifications of the civil war, which began in response to a political coup by the Myanmar military in 1962:

There are a lot of difficulties—like electricity. It’s like that with rations and also internet connection. It’s completely different from just two or three years ago—completely different. It’s like going backward 50 years. They cut off the internet so people right now need to pay to go to an internet cafe. The phone lines are at a bare minimum connection.

The war has shattered the lives of people across the country, including ethnic groups like the Kachin. Ruth, Kachin herself, noted,

Currently, the Kachin and a lot of other ethnic groups are involved in the civil war situation. A family member’s house is gone; their church is gone. Everyone in that area fled from that city and scattered. Churches in other cities are hosting people when they flee—they become internally displaced people.

The Kachin are a majority Christian group, making them unique in Buddhist Myanmar. They learned about the good news of Jesus Christ through missionaries like Ola Hanson, who translated the Kachin Bible in 1890, inventing the Kachin alphabet in order to do so. The Kachin people are currently experiencing many hardships due to the war, one of which is a lack of access to biblical resources—a need that the Lord has called Ruth to respond to.

Ruth was born and raised in the Kachin state, but currently lives in the US with her family and frequently travels back to Myanmar to support the needs of her people. Ruth started Logos, a ministry aiming to provide much-needed theological training and Christian resources for the Kachin people. She shared a moment when she witnessed this lack of biblical materials for the Kachin people: “I checked out some books in a convention bookstore for Kachin, and they’re in Burmese—not Kachin. Although many Kachin can understand Burmese at some level, they would understand the book more clearly if it was in their own language. There are a few books here and there, but not a lot.” With the support of Crossway Global Ministry, Ruth and her team at Logos took on a project to aid this need: developing a Kachin translation of The Biggest Story.

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The Lord Uses Many Hands for His Work

Undertaking the task of translating, printing, and distributing a book is complicated in any country, let alone a war-torn one. But the Lord has provided for the Kachin through Ruth and her team. Ruth shared the process of creating this edition, which started with picking The Biggest Story by Kevin DeYoung. She explained, “We hardly have any books like this. Adults even like it. It’s a children’s book, but it’s not just for children. Adults like to look at the pictures too. And then, because our people are more of the storytelling type, you have to preach in more of a narrative style. So they resonate with this kind of storybook.” Ruth selected a book that all generations of Kachin would connect with so they could more thoroughly understand the story of the Bible.

Picking the book was the easy part for Ruth, but the rest of the process presented several obstacles. Ruth first translated the book herself from English into Kachin then sent it to her editors. “My Kachin translation was quite literal from English. So my professor friends in Myanmar made the translation smoother and more readable. But with the poor internet connection they have—oh my goodness—it took so long to finish it.” Once she finally felt good about the quality of the translation, the book was sent to print in Rangoon (Yangon), the largest city in the country. Unfortunately, the printer didn’t have the necessary materials the book required, so they had to place a special order. Ruth shared her reasoning for needing specific paper, “I didn’t want the book to get all the way to the war zones just to fall apart and get torn up.”

The next phase in the process, shipping the orders to their destinations, had complications of its own. As Ruth recalled, the shipment’s timing was rather unpredictable due to the March earthquake and the war, delaying the shipments. Even once the shipments reach their destinations, there are a variety of difficulties. Ruth shared, “. . .One pastor had to come get the books because we couldn’t go to him [due to the war]. So we can only distribute in places where churches can go to receive them. Our teammates go to distribute it where they can, but we can’t travel to a majority of places.” But these hard to reach places are those where the need is likely the greatest.

Despite the struggles faced throughout the process, the Lord provided a way for the books to reach the Kachin people. Ruth shared her praise for the completion of this immense project: “In order to get this book into people’s hands, it took a lot of work. I’m so thankful for how God made this happen. This took everybody working together.”

His Word Goes Forth

God continues to care for his people and for the Kachin, in this instance, by providing them with a children’s book. Ruth reports that, “So far, we have had people from about 60 different churches come and get the book. And they’re reading it.” People are seeking access to copies of The Biggest Story from across the country, even those who have been exceedingly affected by the war:

Some of the refugees, the internally displaced people, come and get the book. They want 100 books, but we’re limited to 50 for each refugee camp. I wish I could give a copy to all the families. I asked them, “Can you share? Can you put it in your library if you have one?” Because if it’s a camp, then there are several households that have joined together—they all live in one bamboo-made barrack.

The Kachin people continue to seek out God’s Word. Despite the war and the earthquake, and their lasting effects, God’s Word continues to spread and reach his people. A Sunday school teacher shared her excitement over the storybook: “Since I heard about this book, I wanted to get it so badly that I was the first person in line when the books were distributed at my church. I am so pleased to see an important story with the vibrant pictures because it will definitely engage the children. I am reading it first and like it so much.”

Ruth and her team also provide encouragement and direction to those who received a book:

Use this book—read it every night. Use it in Sunday school, use it in church school, use it for family devotions. Don’t just pray, though do that too. Read the Word of God in storybook form. Once you finish it, don’t just put it away and forget about it. You have to pull it out repeatedly and read it. . . . We tell them to read it repeatedly so that they will know this story by heart. And then when they read the Bible, even if there are no pictures, they will understand it because they have the basic story already. Even for adults that’s very important.

Ruth hopes that the truth that these stories hold will saturate readers’ lives and aid them in further study of God’s Word. Ruth also shared that The Biggest Story is often shared among the Kachin during their everyday family devotion time: “One beautiful thing is that almost all Kachin people always have family devotion around seven or eight at night. Whenever you go to someone’s house around that time, if they have devotion times, we participate. During devotion time is the perfect time to read this storybook.” And families are reading it—together. A mother who received the book shared, “I wanted to have the book for my children, but when I read it to them, I was so moved by it myself that we read it together as a family repeatedly.”

The Kachin edition of The Biggest Story has been so well received that Logos is on their next printing of the book due to its high demand. The Lord continues to support and encourage his people in Myanmar, and others around the world, as resources are reaching his people who are in critical need of the good news. You can join with Crossway Global Ministry to support future translation projects for believers in need of biblical resources in their native languages.

Pray that the Lord would continue to strengthen and guide Ruth’s ministry to spread the gospel to the Kachin people. And pray that the Lord would bolster the faith of the Kachin at such a challenging time.

Pray that the Lord will provide for the next generation in Myanmar. Due to the civil war, many schools for the Kachin students have closed and there is a lack of teachers and resources.