Prayer Letter, September 2013

Dear Friends,

After experiencing the seasons; rainy-, winter-, and what I am told is a rare guest: a beautiful sunny summer, in England my tickets are bought, visa in hand and vaccinations scheduled it is time to return home to Bangladesh.

I have been privileged to study at Redcliffe College in England for a year. While others have finished their degree in a year, I will need more time to do so, and because I am scheduled to start work again from mid September it will be quite a while before I finish my degree.

It has been a privilege to study Justice, Advocacy and Reconciliation. The requirements have been that the students make their studies both Biblical and relevant to their work. This has helped maintain motivation for me as I have been able to work on how various challenges others are working throuh have relevance for us at LAMB.

Studying has been challenging in many ways, not least academically. The struggles have given renewed appreciation for those of our student at LAMB who find learning a challenge. Insights from many parts of the world on working for justice and reconciliation have also given me hope; hope that circumstances can improve for those who do not live the lives of freedom God intended.

A key passage from the New Testament is where Jesus claims that the Isaiah’s prophecy has been fulfilled:

Luke 4:18-19.

¹⁸ “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, ¹⁹ to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour. …

²¹ “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

A challenge for us today is to see how this is true for us today, and in what ways we are called to participate in making it a reality. Redcliffe has given me many questions; while the answers are few and weak the hope we have in Christ is strong.

When I return to Bangladesh I hope to work on my dissertation every week. There is much to learn but I look forward to the process of relating what I have learnt to our lives at LAMB.

Highlights from the past year includes bike-rides with former colleagues from LAMB; visiting and having visitors from all over the world and experiencing God’s provisions for people I care about and for me. Being away from LAMB has given me renewed appreciation for the work God is doing in and through us there: I count it a privilege to be part of a work which, while by no means perfect, has a focus and aims to be proud of.

At the school a new year has started, we continue to take on more students and new challenges. The Snowdons who have covered for me while I have been away have agreed to stay on at the school. I look forward to working with them on developing the school in new areas and to return to work with all the colleagues who have carried extra loads while I have been away.

Praise

A year of study and reflection

Competent cover at LAMB while I have been away

The opportunity to meet friends and family

The opportunity to return to LAMB

Prayer

Travel mercies

For good re-integration into work and community at LAMB

For wisdom to know how to use what I have learnt

For time and stamina to finish my studies

For LAMB to do justice to our focus and the God we claim to serve

Christmas 2012

Dear Friends,

At first, an apology for not having written for a long time, then best wishes for Christmas and New Year 2013.

This picture was taken today, 9 December 2012, from the window in my college room.

I sit at my desk and look out, and get a glimpse of the countryside in the horizon and today, the hope symbolised in a rainbow.

My current assignment as a student – a four-and-a-half thousand word essay – is about how we, rich Christians relate to poorer Christians. The buss-word is ‘Inaugurated Eschatology’: about how God’s Kingdom has already come with Jesus’ first coming that Christmas two thousand years ago and how it gives hope to our lives today, both in light of Christ’s second coming when everything will be made new; when such things as poverty will be history. It also gives us hope for today when we let that future reality take hold and let God reign today, in our lives, right where we are.

I am struggling with the academic way of thinking and perhaps more to the point; writing, but I am thankful to God for the opportunity to spend a year studying and I am excited about the fact that the focus is required, apart from having high academic standards, to be relevant for the work I am a part of at LAMB and Biblically based. It is to be true, relevant and good.

A friend reminded me, when I got my first assignment back a few days ago, that it is more important that what we learn is useful than that it is assigned good marks. (I wouldn’t mind both.)

Back at LAMB, the school seems to be running well, Dave and Shannon Snowdon who are covering for me, as well as the wonderful team of teachers are a gift from God. We continue to have challenges with visas, trained teachers, special needs and teachers who have been unwell. I do believe, however, that God is faithful and continues to care for us.

A number of children will transition into other schools from January. It is always with mixed emotions we say goodbye to children. At times we would like to keep them for a while but the alternative leaving would probably be worse.

The challenge parents face is always to know when is the right time, given the need for children to continue education in another system, sometimes in another language. Each child’s aspirations, potentials and gifting along with the family’s hopes and abilities – including but not limited to financial abilities – determine when is the best time to move away from LAMB School.

We are thankful for the time we have the children and we pray – do pray with us – that we will have helped them grow to their potential and that they know the God who loves them.

On next Saturday I plan to travel to Denmark to spend three weeks with family and friends there. In 2010 we hoped to have our whole family together for Christmas. I had to leave just before on 22 December to return to Bangladesh because of visa issues. If we succeed this year, it will be the first time since 2001 or 2002.

May your Christmas be a celebration of the reality of Luke 17:21 ‘the kingdom of God is in your midst.’

In Him,

Christian Vestergaard

LAMB, Bangladesh; 1995 - ?

Redcliffe, England; 2012-13

Kingdom of God; already and forever…

If you want to see where I am now, enter my current post code ‘GL1 3PT’ into Google maps or another mapping application.

There have been lots of complaints lately, loud, rude, inappropriate early moning and all through the day complaints; persistent complaints; furious and frustrated complaints; at times violent complaints.

Some of these have been at work, but the ones I mention here have been at home – on my roof. 

This winter I got a new water heater, a beautiful shiny new water heater, enough for everybody in the house to share – as long as we told each other when. That hasn't been the complaint at all. The problem has been that on the other side of the shiny surface there has been a matching number of claimants to the space on my roof, and the crows have been at it for weeks.

I didn't realize right away that the intruders on the other side of the shiny surface were what caused the furore and have been asking around to find out what to do. Most people say it is impossible to get rid of crows and as the days grow longer - and start earlier - I have been alerted to the conflict above my head earlier and earlier each day.

I am not a good sleeper at the best of times, but when on a weekend morning I just about managed to sleep in and then woke up because of the racket on my roof I had had enough. 

One neighbour suggested that, if I could only kill one single crow and hang a wing somewhere on or near the roof, the crows would not come back. I was ready to do what it would take.

That is when another neighbour suggested we cover the heater in black plastic and so reminded me that I had some paint left over from when my parents painted my kitchen this January.

Light blue paint on my water heater has done the trick, it is bright, but much to prefer above the alternative of a dead crow hanging over my head. I still hear the crows at times, but now theirs has mingled with the sound of hundreds of other birds. They are still loud, but their talk is no longer incessant complaining but more a quiet sharing of joys and sometimes sorrows too – just like at work.

Dependencies

As a missionary one of the things I absolutely don’t want is to create dependencies. People who are dependent on me have the wrong ‘god’. They might not ask God for help because it is easier to ask people and when I provide, I run the risk of standing in the way of them seeking and experiencing God.

A good friend gave a passage from a book called Gracia! By Henry Nouwen where the message is that to reach people we need to find their gifts, receive them and thereby allow them to see how God also receives them and they are valuable in His sight – that is what I took from it anyway.

Yesterday an older friend came to my door telling me two things; first that he had an injury to his leg and then that someone had forgotten to give him money for a cup of tea while they had a break in the work they were doing together. I couldn’t find the change he wanted, and then asked if he would like my leftovers.

After he had eaten, I asked him to pray for me and for the teen group I was going to.

Today, when I saw my friend again and asked how he was doing, he told me his leg hurt. I hadn’t heard him when he told me yesterday. He had seen a village paramedic who had given him tetanus injections, but this was ten-twelve days after he had pricked himself on some thorns while building a fence. The oozing wounds needed more and better treatment today. I took control of the situation, gave my friend a little money, told him to get seen at LAMB and then come see me again.

The man is not independent and I am not the only one who gives him the help he needs. Where is the point, when things are going so wrong, that it is all right for me to take over?

My friend probably hadn’t gotten treatment for two reasons; he didn’t have the Tk 203 (DKK 14, GB£ 1.4 or US$ 1.6)! it took to get proper treatment, and he knows I will pay him for work done, but don’t want him to beg from me.

I so desperately want people to trust in God rather than in me, sometimes, perhaps, I end up missing the opportunity to bring the help God is trying to send. Perhaps I am in desperate need for God’s wisdom to know when to give, and when not to; perhaps I am the one who needs to trust God, and just get on with helping my neighbour when I can.