Well excuse the lack of a post. After you read this you might understand why. I might post once a month from now on but I’m not sure. We do have some interesting things coming up though so I might randomly post things just to keep people guessing.😂 Several have messaged and said they missed my writings so here’s a good long one. You might want to get a cup of coffee and a tissue or two before you start. It’s a doozy.
Everyone always messages and asks about the children so here’s an update!
Shania says “dada, mama, night night and hello.” Her words aren’t always very clear but I can usually understand. She delights in sneaking into the bathroom and comes out wielding the toilet brush like it’s a saber. Usually the toilet paper comes trailing behind her as well. The trash can in the kitchen is her pride and joy. That thing has to be set way up otherwise she searches through there looking for something to eat or play with. she has been developing quite a love of animals. Every kitty she sees has to be meowed at and every dog we meet on our evening walks gets growled at. She has some little plastic animals that she has been playing with a lot. She has four books that are her absolute favorites and they all have cats or dogs in them. She brings them to us the minute she sees us sit down! We have to count all the animals and then meow or growl at them. It’s hilarious! Side note: there is a dog here in pink city that barks and howls every time the prayer call goes. After the initial roar of the call starts if you listen carefully the dogs prayer call starts too. Jared saw the dog sprawled out on its side on the road asleep. The prayer call started and the dog just lifted his head up a bit and howled away. Even the animals here have religion.
Layton is really looking forward to school and Miss Shana coming. Every little bit he says “dad can I go with you to the airport to pick her up?” “How many more days is it until she comes?” He made a paper chain that he can cut a link off every day so he knows how many days it is until she comes! He has been keeping himself quite busy lately. He’s been busy with his usual… legos, Knex, snap circuits, and drawing things he wants to build. His hot glue gun is a steady companion as well. Every little Piece of wire and piece of wood is viewed as a treasure! The dining table is usually covered in above said treasures and honestly I don’t mind. One evening after everyone was in bed I cleaned up the house and had all the toys put away and the table cleared off. I happened to turn around and look back down stairs as I was going up the stairs and it all of a sudden hit me “this is what the house will always look like when they are grownup.” It made me kinda sad. I do get tired of the mess and hot glue pieces everywhere but I was glad for the reminder of how short life is. He likes when I look up Lego creations on Pinterest and then he tries to recreate them. He does really good! He gets tired of me asking him to help pick up toys in the evening. One day Shania had dumped her blocks all over so he built a contraption out of Knex that resembles a snow plow. He turns the little motor on and he used it to push all the blocks in a pile! I’m not sure who was more tickled… Layton or his dad! Jared and I were listening to church one evening and Jared’s cousin Grant led “Jesus loves me.” Layton came into the room and said “where is that coming from?” I said “it’s our church in Kansas!” He said “I know that song! We sang it in Sunday school!” Haha! We sing “Jesus Loves Me” in Bangla quite often in church but I guess he never figured out that it was the same as the English version.
Miss Kalli came to see Trevor and Lisa this past month! She taught for them last year. It felt quite normal to have her around again. To see her come tagging after Trevor’s into church, hear her singing, etc. It was fun to hear about her job and friends at home. Sounded like her village did it up right and served her more Bangla food than she could almost stomach. 🥰 One evening Trevor’s and Us had supper at the guesthouse. Nathon and his roommate came and cooked for us. It was so so delicious! Nathon is an amazing cook. He made his special beef curry, rice, two different kinds of sobji mixture. Then he wanted cabbage salad yet too. He can’t have a meal with us Americans and not have cabbage salad. We all ate until we were plenty full. Nathon didn’t seem satisfied at how much we ate. He said “this would barely be enough food for 4 Bengalis. Do Americans usually not eat so much?” We assured him it was delicious and that Americans are simply not capable of eating that much rice. Of course Trevor HAD to have my cornflake bars so I made them. After supper the men griped and complained at how much food they had eaten but guess what… they still sat and pigged out on bars and coffee. Do you think they got any sympathy from the rest of us? Absolutely not. I sent a bunch of bars home with Nathon and his friend. They had made us a really good Bangladesh dessert (shemai) but they wouldn’t eat it because they wanted my American dessert. 😊 I asked Nathon “why aren’t you eating this dessert you made it’s so good!” He said “I’m waiting for you to get out your American sweets.” 😂
Clinic has been busy now that the Eid celebrations are over and done. Jared’s been seeing up to 45 patients a day. This month we had a 11 year old girl come in for rhinoplasty post cleft lip repair. She looked so miserable after the operation but she will be so glad she got her nose fixed when she is older. Jared is also in a busy season of paperwork again. One day an SB officer wanted to meet with him and Jon and requested some papers. The SB officer was investigating Doyle’s paper this time. They are working on his security clearance. The officer came to the clinic to observe our program one day while Jared had clinic. God had went before and prepared. Two patients from Golpagang came to the clinic in the 1.5 hour time span that he was there. One of them knew Doyle personally and was able to talk to the officer about him. This was an incredible help. Jared said he overheard Jon tell the officer that “it would be in everyone’s best interest if you would tell your boss that these are good people and that they need their papers.” Another day the SB officer brought another person with him and observed again. Jared said it sounded like they had small little issues that they were getting hung up on. Most of the issues lay with the NGO beauro. When they come to visit Jared always takes the tract rack down beforehand. Wouldn’t go over well if they saw we had Christian religious literature for the taking. Someone called Jared about his security clearance awhile ago but that’s all we’ve heard other than that a few months ago it got denied. Once their security clearance is approved the they can get a work permit. Trevor is the only one with a work permit right now. Another day another SB officer plus four other men showed up at our house asking for our passports. Jared was gone and had the key to our safe so I told them that he would email them to them later. They were very respectful. I was thankful that they had brought an interpreter with them otherwise I would have had to call Nathon to see what they wanted.
Peace seems to be reigning at the clinic again between the workers. Thank God! What a time of growth for everyone involved. It has been good growth though. There has been better communication between us and them about what they want and what we expect. Some boundaries needed to be set in place etc. Several of our other members at the other congregations have been quite discouraged. It’s very disheartening. Darrel flew in for four days after his stint in Myanmar to help with that all. But on the bright side, the repentance was lifted on a brother from Golpagang. It was good to have a minister here. Sometimes I wonder why God doesn’t send ministers to the mission instead of “lay brethren.” Seems like they have much more wisdom about how to handle all these problems than we do. Sometimes it seems like God sends his weakest. Pray for our members. Sometimes we wonder why we even try to have a courageous congregations here. But I always think of that verse about the few that were found faithful. Sometimes it feels like the members expect us white folk to make church fun and exciting for them.
Josna told me she was worried about boss. She said she notices that every time we go to the clinic to eat he is very hungry and eats alot. She wondered if lunch at 1 was too late. I said “oh no, the reason boss is so hungry is because we eat a very small breakfast on Wednesdays so that we have more room to eat Bangla food!” Miriam said “it is ok if you don’t eat much rice but you can eat the other things like the meat and vegetables because I know you have a small stomach.” Apparently she has been noticing that I haven’t been eating much rice. It was really special that Josna noticed and cared!
The biggest source of “entertainment” and frustration this month was that Students from universities in Dhaka and all over Bangladesh have been having huge protests. Thousands of people… It has something to do with the government and the job quota. Google it if you want better details. In the early stages of this protesting, traffic was quite terrible. One morning Jared left at 9:15 and didn’t get to the clinic until 10:40. Usually he can get there in 20 minutes. The students were going around standing in main intersections in the city so that no one could get through. Traffic comes to a halt and just stays that way until they decide to move which could be hours. One day we were headed to the clinic to eat and we were waiting at the Farmgate intersection to turn on airport road. Off to the side was a group of protestors. One of the guys ran over and tried to put a barricade up in front of a car in front of us. A bystander saw us waiting and moved the barricade and waved us on through. Sometimes it does pay to have white skin. Another day we went to Mohawkali to get Shania her next set of vaccines and the traffic was jammed. Dead still. You know it’s bad when the drivers are out walking around in amongst the cars out of boredom. Finally after awhile people started backing up and soon everyone was trying to back up and men were getting out of vehicles to help push CNGs out of the way so they could get out. So finally what was there to do but to back up with the crowd? When there is not a protest usually people just shut their cars off and sit and wait. Thankfully we were close to a turnoff so the backing up was maybe several hundred feet until the turn off. We backed out and went back from whenst we came and decided to go to the travelers clinic another day. Another afternoon we were headed to the clinic for singing. Sat in traffic for two hours. Moved maybe a total of 1/4 mile in that time. Finally managed to wiggle through enough to get to the road we needed. Got to a big intersection and there was trash all over. The police were guarding the intersection, looked like protest had just moved through there. A little bit later here came the water cannon truck and the crowd dispersing truck. The crowd dispersing truck is a big army tank with a bull dozer blade of sorts on the front. We got up on the expressway and saw a bunch of smoke, students were burning tires and the police press were up on the expressway keeping an eye on it. The prime minister has closed all schools and universities for an indefinite period of time until things calm down. She was hoping the students would all go home and things would be at rest but it appears as though it amplified things. After seeing the burning tires and being stuck in traffic so much, we have been being careful when we go out. When we headed back from the clinic that evening we noticed the inter city train was just sitting on the tracks. Thought that was odd. Sure enough Jared checked the news and the students had protested on the train tracks and shut the thing down for 6 hours that day.
July 18: Jared got an email this morning saying the US embassy issued a “cautionary alert” because the protest group was going to close the country down to get their point across. Supposedly everything would be closed except hospitals and only ambulances would be allowed on the roads. We stayed home. Didn’t really have any reason to go out. It’s hard to know here. Sometimes we get alerts about things and it looks like not a soul follows them and then the next time it’s taken seriously. At bedtime we noticed the internet was seriously slow. It worked a little bit on our WiFi.
July 19: . The government shut off all internet and I mean completely. No WiFi nothing. (This happens sometimes when there’s political protests going on but it’s never for more than a few hours. This one lasted 10 days) They shut off all international phone calls as well. Carl was able to call briefly to check on us but Jared could hardly understand him due to static. He ran up to the roof because sometimes there’s better service up there but it didn’t help much. Being the optimistic missionaries we are we decided we should go to the clinic and have church. Part of our reasoning was that in the past most protests have stopped on Friday because of the Muslim Sabbath and then they resume on Saturday or Sunday. However, our internet was down so we couldn’t read the Daily Star or the government alerts we were getting. The government alerts are in Bangla and usually we copy and paste them to Google Translate but that’s impossible without Internet. Well on the way to clinic, after we got out of Bashundara and went to get on the expressway… it was closed, which is very bizarre. We went on the old airport road up to the Banani entrance, it was closed, so we go up to the mohawkali entrance. I might add here that there was NO traffic on the road. Jared said he had never driven so fast before on that road. This was where a few days before we had sat for two hours. There were a few private cars and CNGs but that was it. When we got to the Mohawkali exit, a terrible sight greeted our eyes, that was when we both realized that maybe just maybe we should not be out and about. The entrance toll both was burnt to cinders, the government building next to the expressway was burnt along with maybe twenty vehicles. Jared said it looked like fire bombs had been used. We continued on the airport road and got to the clinic in record breaking time. After church Jared took care of some patient details and we journeyed on to Gulsan. We took a roundabout way to get to Gulsan to avoid the bus stand because sometimes they can be a place of jams and crowds and the US embassy said to avoid places where large groups of people could gather. Welllll….. things went downhill from there. UniMart was closed. So we went to Schwapnos (a mini grocery store) and got the basics. Had a quick lunch at a restaurant right beside there and then tried to come home. “Tried” being the key word. Every road around in Gulsan 1 and Gulsan 2 was blocked and barricaded and guarded with police. Not just one or two police but 50 plus police. Some of the roads we could see down past the barricades and could see cement chunks scattered all over the road, vehicles that already had burnt and some that were actively burning. Seemed like everywhere we looked some building or something was burnt. One lane of the road had a burnt truck sitting right in the middle of it. Later Jared said he thought we had seen at least 200 burnt vehicles. The police station in Gulsan had rows and rows of burnt vehicles outside of it. Jared tried every route he could think of, even the embassy road was closed. Finally he stopped and asked a police officer “How can I get to Bashundara?” The police officer just shrugged and said “the road is closed.” Finally Jared said “I have no idea how to get home.” I prayed mightily and we just kept driving around and finally Jared found a road that took us to Kuril. I tell you Pink City never looked so good. When we got out of the van I realized I was shaking. Guessed it scared me more than I thought it had. Jared had to lay down for a while when we got home to relax after it all. He told me it was “moderately unsettling” but being the man he is later I overheard him telling one of the CSI men that “it’s not too bad” This is worse than anything we ever saw during election. Once we got to Bashundara everything was peaceful and no protests, burnt buildings or cars or anything. We felt good about that. We feel safe here in pink city. Jared felt bad about the whole deal because we have been keeping a close eye on the news with it all but now with the internet shut off we had no way of checking. We didn’t realize the enormity of the situation until we went out and about because there is always some type of protest going on it seems and usually they are just marches or something. I told him not to feel bad we all got home safe and sound and that’s all that matters in the end. Anyways… lesson learned. Seems like every missionary has a good scare once in their term so maybe this is ours.😂 We were able to message by SMS abit with Doyle’s and Trevor’s to make sure they were all ok. Kulna has had some protests too and Golpaganj has had brick throwing events. We decided we better subscribe to the Daily Star here in Pink City so that we can get a paper copy of the newspaper so that if Heaven forbid we deal with this again while we are here we can at least read the paper if the internet is down so we know what’s safe and what isn’t. We got the paper at Siza Court but just have never gotten around to restarting our subscription here. With this lockdown in place, the pink city kids are all getting bored and restless without internet and being home all the time. This evening when I was out walking I saw a car full of maybe 10 teenage boys all hanging out of the doors and trunk and windows trying to make a video of sorts, I burst out laughing and it appeared as though they appreciated my reaction. another boy appeared to be taking his dads car for a test run. Judging by his driving skills I think drivers Ed would prove helpful.
There are some very bored CSI people in Bangladesh due to this lockdown. Jared resorted to wiping down the walls in the downstairs, Trevor ordered many ice cube trays, and Doyle sent the men hilarious jokes about “vowel movements.” 😂 I’ve been having to get creative with keeping Layton entertained. Water beads and shaving cream did the trick, rode bike a lot, read so many books, one day we read the entire “Mouse and the Motorcycle” book and then started on “Mrs Piggle Wiggle”. One evening he put on his winter pajamas and we made hot cocoa and popcorn after Shania went to bed for a “mama and son” date, Jared did some school work with him, we built legos, built tents, played games, played snap circuits, swam in his pool, let him do things I usually wouldn’t… you get the point. The days are awfully long being stuck at home all the time. But I’d rather be safe than sorry and end up in a bad predicament. I was reciting Dr Seuss to Layton and made this up “It’s not safe to go out, too hot to play ball so we sat in the house and did nothing at all.” I think Jared officially thought I had lost my marbles at that point. But after 11 years of marriage I like to keep him guessing whether my sanity is intact or not. I’m fun that way. I asked him if he wished he had married someone that was quiet and shy and didn’t have any opinions. He didn’t say anything. Smart man. He has learned.😂
July 20: A lady invited all the children over to her house this afternoon for a drawing party. The kids and I went to get out of the house! She was the nicest lady so we stayed for quite awhile. There was maybe 20 children there. They all sat on the floor and colored and drew. I took a big pack of markers and they all were excited to use them. They played pass the pillow and several different games. The lady’s maid had cooked up some Bangla noodles, chicken curry and French fries for all the kids for snack. After snack the kids all went outside and played soccer on the lawn. Two other moms were there too and they both knew English so we visited quite awhile. I had them tell me what the government alerts said on my phone so I could tell Jared. After everyone left the lady insisted I stay for cha so I did. Figured why not, nothing else to do!!🥰 she found out I do my own cooking and she generously offered to bring me a duck to cook. I think we all know by now how I feel about duck in this country. I was so thankful for an opportunity to get out and be with other ladies and talk. Jared doesn’t mind being at home a lot but I have to get out or I go nuts. One thing that has been so neat about this whole situation is everyone is home from work now. So in the evenings a lot of families are out playing cricket with their boys, taking walks, the kids are riding bike, jumping over bushes in the median, etc in the street. It’s a real community spirit. I have enjoyed it so much! People are all wanting to visit just cause there’s no internet. I told Jared “is this what life was like 30 years ago before internet?” Everyone was social and talkative?? At the play date one of the boys there was from Dallas. He said he had come to visit his grandma in pink city. He was quite shy and once he found out that Layton was American and knew English they became fast friends. He went home and told his mom all about Layton.😊 so one day we went to his grandmas house and invited him to come play! He was quite tickled that Layton had Legos so they played that for awhile and then played soccer. I really enjoyed visiting with his mom. It was so good to hear about things from the states. She causally mentioned ordering something off of Amazon and I told her I couldn’t wait to go home and order things on line again and to do pick up orders. She totally understood! Both of his parents are Bengali. They’ve lived in the states for 10 years so they are quite Americanized Bengalis. His dad is a software engineer.
July 24: After lunch we ventured out to the clinic. Supposedly the national curfew now is from 2-5, but we left the house at 1 and no one was enforcing curfew in the least. Traffic was pretty much back to normal. Yesterday we tried to go out to the coffee shop but the roads were all still blocked and barricaded. Lots of police out. They had made berms out of sandbags and there would be several behind them with their guns. Saw a police truck slowly driving through traffic with a police standing on top watching things. Jared took a picture of the sign on the entrance to the expressway so he could have someone translate it. It said “temporarily closed.” We drove the old route to the clinic. Took maybe 45 minutes. Stopped and filled up with gas just to be safe in case things close down again. I have NEVER in all my life been so happy to sit in a traffic jam and the gas line. Oh it was so good to get out of the house. We got to the clinic and everyone was fine and happy. One of the patients has been there for two weeks because the roads to her village are all closed. We saw lots of buses out and about so hopefully she can get home soon. Trevors were able to make it into Dhaka today as well. For awhile they weren’t letting people travel from one district to the other but they didn’t have any troubles. They brought Nathon back to Dhaka with him. Sounded like he was one happy boy. He said “I need WiFi, I am not a village boy anymore.”😂 Lisa called me and said “we are at Herfeys and their WiFi works!” We raced over there after we were done at the clinic. It was so good to see them again! Never mind it had only been a month since we saw them last. We ordered some drinks and and connected to the WiFi. It was slow and took awhile to get messages on WhatsApp. We couldn’t download any voice messages or send voice messages. I was so relieved to be able to message my mom and Jared’s mom. Haven’t been able to call them at all. People from the states have tried to call us but we can’t hear anything. Spent the evening with Trevor’s. Lisa and I took a long walk. Layton was so glad to be able to play soccer and ride bike with Brock and Kylie.
July 25: Nathon was bored out of his mind so he came and got the scootie and took it in for a service. He was very pleased because he has internet. We still don’t have any. I told him we were all going to move in with him. Jared called the internet guy to come check our WiFi. Nathon thinks it’s a cable issue. Pink City was supposed to get internet last night. It’s very frustrating not being able to use google translate. We feel like real pioneers. No google maps, google translate, WhatsApp, etc. It’s good for a soul I suppose to go without technology once in awhile. But a week? There was a rumor going around that a data center got burnt and that’s why the internet was “shut off.” Nathon says there is no way that’s possible because there are how many data centers all over Bangladesh and he himself works at several of them so no one data center is the cause for this all. Not only that the one was supposedly burnt only had outside damage. Sounds like people in the states get more news about what’s going on than here. The Bengali government is trying to keep everything very quiet. Supposedly the death toll has been declared as “200.” But it’s more like 1,000. Nathon said his one family member works in a hospital close by and she said in just her one shift 150 people came in that were either shot or dead. This is the biggest uprising since the freedom war. Nathon said “you have dealt with a lot since you came to Bangladesh! Just think now you got to be a part of history.”This fact seems to make him quite pleased. He wanted to know all about how Dhaka had been while he was gone. It is so good to have him back. Today the curfew was after 5 pm. Us and Trevor were together in the evening.
July 26: Darrell’s flew in around 1 am. They headed to Kulna around noon to start the work over there. We had church like usual. Felt good to be with Josna and Sumita again. Three patients at the clinic. Noticed the one little boy only has three toes. It’s not uncommon at all for the left lip/palate babies to have missing fingers and toes. Josna saved me more newspapers so I could cut the pictures of the protests out! I take the pictures I get from there to the Dokan and get them laminated. Getting quite a stack from the past 1.5 years. Found a picture of the Mirpur 10 metro station. Looked like some went in there with a sledgehammer and made quick work of it all. We just cannot figure it out. The metro has only been operating maybe a year if even and they vandalized it horribly, then the expressway has only been open 6 months and they burn a toll plaza???? Ami bujhi na. They so badly want Bangladesh to become a progressive country but how when all the good things get abused? Anyways Nathon told us that when we go home and give our report that we should make it sound like we were dodging bullets. Jared was Crawling on the ground to avoid getting hit, windows shot out, and that Brianna was still flying around on her scootie while bullets whizzed by her ears.😂 oh we laughed! It felt good to laugh about this ridiculous predicament this country is in. Seems like we are kinda short on laughs these days. We ventured into Gulsan this week. I was kinda worried about it after last weeks drama in Gulsan but like usual my worries were a waste of energy. Lots of police around, some of whom were sleeping under trees. This struck us funny because we had been told to “expect heightened security.” We stocked up on groceries just in case we get lockdown again. Came home and napped. Lisa left Layton two of her old mixers that got burnt motors in them. So he was very busy taking them apart for the rest of the day. We are trying to install VPNs on our phones so we can get WhatsApp. Trevors got it and it’s working well for them. However the WiFi is so slow that it says it will take 8 hours. The UN is calling for the prime minister to allow all internet and communications to be restored throughout all of Bangladesh. “Human Rights.”
July 26: Jared did paperwork all morning. Lucky came to clean at the guesthouse. She was really nervous about coming but I told her that we had been out yesterday and everything was ok. That seemed to relieve her. After lunch we went shopping abit. Needed to order new sheets for the guesthouse. The traffic is insanely congested now with the expressway closed. It took us 3.5 hours to drive to Gulsan go to two places and then come home. It’s very disheartening to be sitting in a jam and look up and see the expressway right above our heads just sitting there. We have started praying that it opens soon. Nothing is off limits when it comes to prayer we’ve discovered!
July 27: A hard day emotionally. Trevor’s girl Whitney was expelled in Kulna. It was part of the work Darrell came to do. Even though we knew it was coming it didn’t make it any easier. Trevors children feel like our own and while we didn’t feel the parental emotions they did it still hurt our hearts. They plan to go home as soon as arrangements can be made. This added to the hard emotions but we support Darrell and the boards decision. The government restored the internet this afternoon and allowed WhatsApp. The internet and WhatsApp is slower than molasses but it’s a start. Still can’t get any voice notes. So if anyone sends us a message be prepared for us to not reply for a day or two. Jared didn’t have much luck with the VPN. We finally got them downloaded after how many hours and then it wouldn’t allow us to finish the process. Today the news said that in Bangladesh with the internet outage there’s been an 5,000% increase in people trying to download VPNs so no wonder.
July 29: Darrell’s finished up their visits in Kulna and then Doyles brought them into Dhaka. Darrell had so many things to do in four days. Jared and I had Doyle’s and Darrell’s, Josna and Sumita and Nathon for supper. It was really enjoyable. I made roast, potatoes and mixed vegetables for supper. Darrell told us funny stories and it felt good to laugh!
July 30: Doyle’s took Darrell’s to the airport. They are continuing onto China now for several days to do some work there.
So thus concludes our month. An inspirational thought I had in closing… A friend sent me a letter describing her mothering moments with her young children two of whom are sons who enjoy adventurous behavior. She wrote she was “unsure but yet committed” to the task of being their mother and keeping them out of harms way. That phrase really impressed me. Later on in the letter she had a day where her children were well behaved and showered her with affection. That day she felt “more sure and still committed.” I had to think of that often this past month. Seems like during the low times and the monotony of being home for days on end because of the protests and then sad news of Trevor’s needing to go home, we feel “unsure but yet committed.” We aren’t sure how things will go with just us and Doyle’s here after Trevor’s leave. After Darrell’s stopped in we feel “more sure and committed.” 🐦⬛
