Merry Christmas From Bangladesh!!

Merry Christmas Everyone!!

Since our last update, we packed up our bags and got on a bus headed from Dhaka to the villages of Dinajpur, Rangpur. It was a pretty interesting bus ride with a lot of bumpy roads and constant beeping horns. We were dropped off in Rangpur on Friday night and took Rickshaws (which are carts pulled by bicycles) to our new home for the next month. We are currently in a beautiful mission compound called Bangladesh Lutheran Church. Right now, the compound is on Christmas break, but it’s used to educate and feed the Compassion kids! We have had plenty of opportunities to get to know and play with kids from the surrounding villages, and at the beginning of January, 243 Compassion kids will also be around! The kids have blessed us so much already just by sharing their simple joy and smiles with us, and reminding us again what it means to love God with a childlike heart and faith. There is a language barrier in some ways, but the Holy Spirit has made it so easy to get past that and share His love and recieve their love back. In the last couple of days, we have been getting to know a lot of the people around the compound and start building relationships with them. It has been very eye opening to see the simple conditions that they live with around here and also see the unadorned happiness that they have. The 5 girls on our team have been reaching out to the women here, while Cesar and Tyler have been working more with the men. We have gotten to know a little bit of the Bangla language, and between our broken phrases and flashing a smile at the passing women on the street, we have seen the true beauty that God sees on each face here. It’s safe to say that everyone on the team has really taken the mindset on how beautiful the women are here, and we don’t see with them OUR eyes but with God’s. He’s already broken our hearts for what breaks His. Today was a special blessing for our team through the Christmas celebration on the compound. Most of us got up this morning excited for where we are and what we are doing, but also pretty homesick for our families and the holidays back home. But then we had some awesome team time in the morning and continued on to the church building where we went between singing (or trying to) in Bengali and listening to the sermon. By the end of the service we had smiles on our faces and little kids in our laps or sitting around us. Through the rest of the day, the girls made a lot of new friends in the Christian women and children around here and the guys made friends with a bunch of men as well. Everyone was very inviting and happy to show us how they celebrate Christmas. They got out a birthday cake, cut it into little pieces after singing Happy Birthday to Jesus, and then little kids fed us some cake. We were also blessed with a huge and delicious meal of rice, chicken, potatoes and dal.

Our team has been growing closer every day. God has blessed us so much here, whether through giving us amazing food or even humbling us and making us so grateful for what we have. The one day we went out to play with the children, thinking that we will be able to bless them, but we came back to the house later completely blessed by them instead.

We can’t thank you all enough for the continued support and prayer!! Prayer needs that we have lately are for our health; that we will be healed of any sicknesses quickly. Also, our translator and his wife are newlyweds, so just that they will be able to continue to rely fully on God for what they need (His blog is http://ombd.multiply.com if you want to check it out). Other than that, just pray for continued unity for our team and open hearts, whether for us or the people around us.

We were blessed with this internet access for tonight, but we will try to continue to find some Wi-Fi to keep this updated for everyone! And once again, Merry Christmas to everyone at home!!