Prayer Letter November 2013

…that all kingdoms of the earth may know that you, Lord, are the only God.

 Is 37:20

Dear Friends,                                                                                                November 2013

Greetings from a beautiful and much cooler Bangladesh than the one I first encountered when I arrived home at LAMB in mid September. After three weeks storms brought temperatures down to around 30 ˚C and they are now sometimes even below 20 ˚C in the morning.

It has been great returning to LAMB after a year away; the welcome by friends, staff and students has been overwhelming. The fact that the school seems to have be running very well increases the joy of being part of it once again.

Returning has brought new opportunities for engagement at work and in church; at the school my replacements have decided to stay on for (at least) another year giving us the opportunity to reconfigure responsibilities and focus on continued development at the school. We were hoping to get some construction under way, but need to find funding before we can do so. Some of my colleagues are hoping to have extended leave the way I did. Please pray for teachers who can teach English and other subjects to children aged 12 to 16 (Grades 6 – 10/Years 7-11).

It feels like the team at LAMB is committed to doing God’s work; this is a good foundation for working through our, sometimes contradictory, ideas about how and what doing God’s work looks like. At times we may be confused about what is God’s plan and what is our own personal agendas. Pray for humility and the ability to listen and hear each other.

In the Bengali school year it seems to be exam season – in fact, it seems to always be exam season – our sixth-grades have had three sets of mock tests for their final “Primary School Certificate Exams” scheduled for 20 – 28 November. Grade nine started their final “Junior School Certificate Exams” on 7 November. I don’t know how many mock tests they have done, but when they come back, we have our own week of assessments before the Christmas break. I wish we could just ignore these exams, but the results may make the difference for what further education opportunities our children have after they graduate from high school.

We believe our school provides good education but because our style is so different from other education available locally it can be a challenge for our students to adjust after LAMB. We give thanks that so far, our students have been able to continue their education in various schools in Dhaka, at Hebron in India and further abroad.

The government’s five years are up and it is time for their final exam. The opposition has called for ‘hartals’ (general strikes) since the incumbent government was supposed to step down according to the last constitution but not according to latest amendments. The hartals have resulted in about 20 fatalities so far. Most of them were ‘little people’; either ‘foot-soldiers’ who were deployed to fight ‘the good fight’; people who were caught out perhaps because they couldn’t afford not to work and even children. The incumbent government insists on an ‘all-party’ government to oversee free and fair elections, the opposition demands a ‘no-party’ government. What they agree on is that the others can’t be trusted in free and fair elections . Our students seem to have similar experiences as they return telling about how teachers and invigilators help individual students copy answers and solve problems during the tests.

The church has been without a pastor for a year now, the candidate selected after the first round of interviews has turned down the offer. Please pray for the church council to find someone willing and able to fill this role – someone whom we will be willing to have teach us God’s word.

In the teen-group I am getting good help from two others, but pray for a permanent national Christian to come help set direction for the group. It can feel like a big challenge to teach and organise a group of discerning (or critical) teens.

One passage from Isaiah recently caught my attention. In it, the prophet talks about good things the people have done but mourn that they do not recognise that the resources and conditions that allow the work all come from God (Isaiah 22:8b-11). It is my prayer that we all will recognise God as the source of all the good he does here at LAMB.

Thank you for your continued support and prayers. Pray especially for the children as they study and grow, for their teachers to have wisdom and insight into how to teach and for us all to know God and his faithfulness.