Cavities to fill

Dear Friends,

I have been back in Bangladesh for about six weeks, a dentist appointment in Dhaka is a mundane reason for leaving LAMB for a weekend and in many ways it feels like I am going where I haven’t gone before.

Since coming back after over two months in Denmark on the auspicious occasion of my parents’ fiftieth and my father’s eightieth – we like grand words like auspicious in Bangladesh even if they are not much in vogue elsewhere, least of all in Denmark where we speak Danish.

Shortly after returning to Bangladesh it lost its innocence again. First there was a case involving some of the people I love at LAMB, and then there were direct hits followed up by threats against foreigners.

We, or at least I, had lived in a pretend world of the privileged who are not going to experience sin and oppression. The events of the last six weeks feels like several consecutive deaths and if I am melodramatic, it is because to top it up, a good friend got mad at me, another tried to end her misery and we just fall way short of what is right.

I was listening to a version of Leonard Cohen’s famous ‘Hallelujah’ which was predicted to become the next favourite Christmas carol and all I could do was look at the expensive furniture in the café where the artist were performing thinking what the carpet could buy for some of the poorest people here.

There is little we can do, and yet, we are doing more than ever at LAMB. By January 2016 we expect to be around 1,500 staff at LAMB, all working to make positive changes in a place where so many long for something better but many live in fear; some in fear of diseases and poverty, some in fear of the changes we are trying to bring to alleviate those fearsome ills.

With the threat to foreigners in Bangladesh – we haven’t been threatened at LAMB since last year – we have been given the privilege of what it feels like to live in conditions that pale compared to that which is reality for so many of our brothers and sisters here, let alone for the people living in places where evil reign in public.

Today I had two former students in my office, they came for some financial help made possible by generous foreign donations. Last time they came, they asked if they needed to bow before me to show their gratitude – that is what they should do culturally, excepting that I am only the messenger. Today they talked about the challenges posed by classmates who question the girls’ Christian faith, except the ‘faith’ they question doesn’t look anything like what we believe. We talked about one of the best things about God – that He is our Father and that He loves each of us.

As I write this, I hear the car come to pick me up for my trip to Dhaka and a dentist’s appointment. There are cavities to fill – some can only be filled by love.

Thank you for your prayers and support in sharing That Love.

Christian

November 2015