The Eubank family offers food, shelter, and medicine on the frontlines in Iraq and Burma.
In northwest Mosul, an Iraqi civilian preparing to clamber through a hole in a wall hands a swaddled baby to an American man wearing a dusty combat uniform. The American, Dave Eubank, is not a soldier. All around them, Iraqis hurry past, carrying children and crying out to each other as they flee approaching ISIS militants. Eubank tenderly passes the baby off to another Iraqi, remaining calm amid the chaos.
This turbulent scene opens a new documentary, Free Burma Rangers (Deidox Films and Lifeway Films), directed by Brent Gudgel and Chris Sinclair and playing in select US theaters February 24 and 25. Formerly a US Special Forces operative, Eubank is the head of Christian humanitarian service movement Free Burma Rangers (FBR). All five members of the Eubank family have spent much of their lives in war-torn areas of Burma, Sudan, Iraq, and Syria, sometimes at or near the frontlines of fighting, to answer what they believe is God’s call to free the oppressed.
FBR supplies emergency medical care, shelter, food, clothing and human rights documentation to people in war zones, often where other relief groups do not venture. Many Rangers are persecuted Christians from Burma (also known as Myanmar), who joined the group when Eubank formed it with his wife, Karen, in 1997 to aid and rescue Burmese minorities from oppression by their military government. The couple’s children Sahale (19), Suuzanne (17), and Peter (14) grew up in Burma and have assisted Dave and Karen in aspects of the relief efforts for as long as they’ve been old enough to help.
FBR was one of the first humanitarian groups to aid civilians in Mosul, Iraq, a former ISIS stronghold. And it was one of the last groups remaining at the Syrian-Turkish border …
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