So, Monday was a very event-filled day!!! And, by very event-filled, I am not sure I’m describing that well enough. First, this American is not accustomed to the level of heat that we had during the night, so I slept very little.....in no more than 2-hour increments at this point. After an encounter with a few Indian bugs early in the night, we thought we had a great idea to keep our windows closed through the night in order to keep out the bugs. I’m not sure if you’ve ever tried to sleep in an oven, though, but let me sum it up to say that it can’t be done! Well, it can’t be done by anyone except Heather who has a gift that I can’t describe to sleep through ANYTHING for hours on end! I must admit, I am so jealous of her at this point! And, after waking up in the oven that we had created in our room, it never cooled down during the day.....it only got hotter.
Our morning started off as planned with devotion at 7:30, led by Mike and then breakfast around 8:30. We talked about the plan for the day again and felt good heading into it.
We arrived at the school around 9:00 this morning and we introduced ourselves to the children and the teachers and then the teachers were introduced to us in the large group. We handed out a few globes that we had purchased (basically a beach ball with the whole world on it) to show them where we were from and the route that we had traveled to be able to spend the week with them. We were, after all, supposed to be "teaching" them English, so we incorporated this into our “lesson” (the funny thing to still think about is the fact that we were supposed to teaching someone English).
Then, we split into 3 groups led by Brooke and Heather, Michael (with the assistance of Andrew) and Megan and Louanne. English teachers served as the interpreters for the groups led by Brooke/Heather and Megan/Louanne and Andrew served as the interpreter with Michael. We taught the Bible stories that we had previously agreed to teach and had very interesting interaction with the kids......or, should I say, lack of interaction with the kids. It was probably one of the most challenging experiences I’ve ever had with talking through an interpreter. We would ask a question and the teacher would turn around and say something to the kids and come back with, “yes.” I would respond with, “can they tell me why this happened?” Then, he would say something to the children in Bengali and turn to me and say, “yes.” Needless to say, a bit frustrating. Then, we asked the children if they had a favorite story in the Bible to share with us and one child read the parable of the sower.....GREAT STORY!!! So, that propelled Megan and me to go 1 chapter later in Scripture and read the parable of the sower explained and we expounded with questions to try and make sure that the kids understood and were met with the same challenges in the translation. Then, we decided to teach each other songs in our native language and play a few games. We also had a snack time and simply tried to continue to build relationship with these amazing kids through the challenges we were experiencing. We ended our time with the kids around 1:15 with a competition of various relay races and random running in the school yard (by the way, 4 hours is a LONG time when you’re having challenges with language).
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| The group that Megan and I were privileged to spend time with. |
When we left the school, we took a little detour on the way back to the church compound and visited the river where Andrew pointed out the border of Bangladesh and we were also able to see some folks fishing and others simply going about their daily life of traveling by ferry and having lunch or rest.
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| Our team......taking full advantage of the photo-op! |
After we took full advantage of a photo-op at the river, we returned to the church compound for lunch and a “short rest” in the middle of the day. See the beginning of this post for a reference to the heat and then decide whether or not you think we were actually able to rest. By this time, it was over 100-degrees Fahrenheit with a level of humidity I’ve never in my life experienced in the US! So, that “short rest” was definitely short and not very restful.
Then, around 4:00, we received our 2nd coconut of the week (when we arrived on Sunday, we were greeted with coconuts to drink for their nutritious value....the people of this church took VERY good care of us making sure that we didn’t get dehydrated) and piled on 2 “village harley davidson’s” (in the daylight, I now have a much better picture of what this mode of transportation is.....envision a motorized tricycle with a large wooden pallet on the back) and headed to the hand pump sites. The first one had been there only 1 month. We introduced ourselves to the people there and then did a role-play of a river-crossing. The whole purpose for this skit was to show the people that the inforamtion we were about to teach to them was not meant for them alone, but now that they know, they are responsible for teaching the others within the village. We used pictures to help teach them about protecting their water from microbes and how to increase the sanitation at the hand pump site. Then, we tested their knowledge by playing a game of “Snakes and Ladders,” which, by the way, they LOVED!!!
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| The incredibly sketchy bamboo bridge that we had to cross 1 at a time in order to get to the first village.....Sunderban is to our right at this point. |
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| The group from the first village that came out to be part of our visit and the teaching we were bringing. |
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| The group that gathered from the 2nd village to meet with us |
After this, we visited a home or 2 and then loaded up to visit village #2. At village #2, we participated only in home visits to learn how they are using their newly installed well, which was 3 months old. We asked questions like how many people lived in the homes that we visited, how much water they use per day and what they were doing with the water they pumped from the well (cooking and drinking are all that’s recommended for these wells).
Then, we packed back up and went back to the school building for training with the evangelists. What we came to learn was that most of these evangelists are actually pastors and some had traveled from up to 1.5 hours away to take part in this training. All of these men are being discipled by the pastor of the church that we are serving alongside this week. Mike led this training with these men and began teaching them about the steps of salvation. After this training was completed, we loaded back up on the village harleys and went back to the church compound for dinner and then bed time. We were able to add a little debriefing time in there too.
This was an absolutely exhausting day!! It was fantastic and I feel like we learned a lot - both about how weak we are and how much we can learn from the faith of the people we are going to spend time with this week!! But, we are tired and sort of at a loss for what to do with these kids tomorrow. We were able to talk with Andrew about the challenges with the interpreters and he said that the teachers actually felt the same way. We also felt that maybe the children would be more open without the teachers present.....we shall see how the Lord works tomorrow!!
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