In honor of my Dad’s birthday (today 7/9 he would have been 80), I’m asking you to help me help Mac’s family save their house. If he doesn’t raise the money (not a large amount to some but an insurmountable sum to his family), he and his family of 6 will be homeless. He’s fallen behind in his mortgage due to a car accident earlier this year and has no one else to turn to. He’s a proud man and a proud American citizen and has never ever asked us for anything. I can’t imagine how difficult it was to reach out and say he needs real help. For all he had done for my Dad and my family, I HAVE to try to help. If my Dad were still alive, he would be asking you himself because Mac meant the world to him. He became my Dad’s Angel during the countless hospital stays as he first waited for a new heart and then second, dealt with all the post transplant issues that occurred more often than we would have liked. Mac befriended my Dad at his most vulnerable point. He provided kindness and caring towards my Dad and helped make that very scary time in his life a little less terrifying. We all came to love Mac and very quickly accepted him as family. Only after we learned to love him did we find out his unbelievable past. Learning about what this quiet and noble man went through that brought him to a place where he could befriend my father left us all speechless. Machar (or Mac as we call him) worked as a patient care assistant at Brigham and Women's Hospital, which is how he and my father connected. Mac befriended my dad as he waited over 3 months for a new heart. I found a great article about Mac (now a proud US citizen) in the Brigham and Women's newsletter. The following info came from this article: "Mac is from Sudan, where he lived until civil war and horrific genocide ravaged the country. He is one of Sudan’s Lost Boys, the term aid organizations use for the group of courageous refugees who survived. Mac was forced to leave Sudan in 1987 at the age of 7 or 8. In 1987, an attack on his village of Kolnyang separated Mac from his family. He hid with other children until it was over. Everything was destroyed. He prayed for his family but did not find them. He walked with other surviving children and a few adults 300 miles to a refugee camp in Ethiopia. They experienced terrible hardships on the journey, encountering wild animals like lions and hyenas, and a severe lack of food. Not everyone survived, but in December of 1987, Mac and others arrived at the camp. They stayed two years, fighting off disease and enduring hunger. A civil war in Ethiopia forced them to flee to Pochalla, a town on the border of Ethiopia and Sudan. When Pochalla was bombed by the Sudanese government, Mac and the refugees walked for four months to Kenya, where they lived for nine years until 2000. Then, the U.S. government brought 3,600 Lost Boys to the U.S, and Catholic Charities placed Mac and others in the Boston area. After working briefly in a nursing home and a rehabilitation center, Mac took a patient care assistant prep course and was hired by B&W. It was through the support of his coworkers that Mac found the courage to return to Sudan in 2004 to find his family, a family he had not seen in 17 years, a family he did not know if they were alive. Mac returned to his homeland in 2004 and found his parents and sister. It was a tearful and joyful reunion. His parents didn’t know if he had survived, and they were shocked and overjoyed to see him." Amazing, isn't it?
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