True change...

A treasure from a friend...

In The Meantime

Imagine for a minute. You are a 32 year old married mother of 3. You rent a house. Well actually you rent a room about the size of a western bathroom. The five of you live in this room. Your rent is barely affordable but you have some employment and you make it work. But now, given this room's proximity to the lucrative red light area, your landlord wants to charge daily brothel rates, which will mean making rent payments completely out of your reach. Also your relationship with the landlord is not the best. Your huband is frequently out of town for work and your landlord takes the chance to assault you. Black eyes are not infrequent.

What would you do? Well probably for most of you reading this, you would never have rented such a small space in the first place. You would have a 3 or 4 bedroom house, 1 or 2 bathrooms. And what? Your landlord hits you?? You would have him charged with assault and move house while you wait for justice from the police and court sytems.

But this is the story of a woman I have come to know. For her, the options are much less. Poverty it is said, is not just lack of food, clothing and material goods, but a lack of choice. She cannot choose to just leave. Her situation is horrid, but it is better than this family living on the streets. Rooms are hard to come by and particularly in this area, rent is expensive. She is looking hard, and prayerfully she will find a safe, affordable home for her family. And in the meantime she is vulnerable to a male landlord who by virtue of his gender and improved financial position, holds the power.

'In the meantime'. So many people living 'in the meantime' here. The space between the already and not yet. And while we wait for restoration and redemption, the meantime people continue to suffer. Their situations become dire.  Who can imagine a landlord having such physical and emotional power over us? For those of us who have choices, it is so foreign.

Yet, two days ago for another lady in this same area, the meantime became too long. After a fight with her landlord, she consumed enough alcohol to become drunk, doused herself in kerosene and set fire to herself. She leaves behind 2 daughters, the oldest of whom is 12.

And in the meantime, because of the hope we have been given, because of the light we continue to glimpse, we continue to pray. Come, Lord Jesus.

Last week we were very lucky to have our friends Eline and Remko and their beuatiful little bub Ella come to visit. We were impressed by their willingness to venture into our world and it was great to have them with us. We were able to show them a little bit about our daily life, our house and our neighbours. So here, in a limited way, I will attempt to do the same here with more of a visual post today :-)

Disclaimer: when I took these photos, I had no intention of using them in a blog. And now I am too lazy to take any more. So there is no 'Home Beautiful' treatment.

Here is our kitchen. The first thing you see after coming up the stairs to our door.

And here is our kitchen with cooking lesson in progress.

The playroom

The playroom at Easter

Easter - activities in process

And finished.

The honeymoon suite.

Our favourite place in the house and an  unexpected blessing is our verandah. It allows us to be outdoors and also have (sometimes much needed privacy.) It's rare to be able to combine those two elements!  Right below is the duck pond. Which is great for looking at the ducks, but unfortunately also has a lot of rubbish in it. Those trees are mango trees, and here is another beautiful surprise we had one day.

A gorgeous kingfisher right outside our house. With nature a precious commodity here, I felt pretty blessed on this day.

Directly below the verandah is our water pump. We use this water for washing and showering but not for drinking, although a lot of people in our area do drink this water.

This is the view from the side of our balcony. In the background is the edge of one part of our community. The thatch building in the foreground is the community clubhouse. Basically that's a room for men to watch cricket in.

Fun new use for a palm frond. The lane that our house is on.

Ok, that's it. Hope you enjoyed the quick tour. Pop in if you're ever in the neighbourhood.



There is much beautiful imagery attached to water in the Bible. Healing pools, thirst quenching water, streams of life giving, life sustaining water. 

There are many beautiful examples of calming waters, clear streams, teeming-with-life rock pools that we have played in. They bring to mind the beauty with which our earth was created, and often remind us to slow down for a moment. Sometimes we even drink of their purity.





Our canal is not one such example.  Our canal is a shared, connecting feature of the four otherwise separate communities that our team occupies. Our canal is polluted with toxic chemicals causing it to change colours you never thought possible. It is the sewerage system for our communities. It is full of chicken bones, last night’s left over rice and lentils, plastic, broken clay pots, rats, snakes, and washing powder. And in the last two weeks, it has borne the stench of tragic death.

First of all, a baby boy.  The circumstances of his death can only be speculated. Perhaps a family overwhelmed by the prospect of another mouth to feed? Did he have a deformity? Perhaps a family unable to consider how they might pay for the extraordinary costs involved in funeral rituals (the services of a Brahmin priest, the relatives expecting  to be fed, the cost of new white garments to mourn in)? Perhaps an awful accident stemming from the fact that low-cost housing is found so close to waste water canals – marginal land, not much other value.

And then less than two weeks later, a local shopkeeper struggling with an embarrassing medical condition. Unable to find respite, he desperately takes his own life under horrific circumstances, leaving behind his wife and two children. How much pain does one man have to feel? Too much…

And the dirty water continues to flow. Potato skins, empty packets of chewing tobacco, blood.

My friend and team mate in whose community the baby died reflects on the words of Wendell Berry, farmer and poet;

                There are no unsacred places,

                There are only sacred places

                And desecrated places. (How To Be A Poet).

My friend says the canal is desecrated to him now, and I can’t but help to feel the same. We continue to look in faith towards a new earth, knowing that much redemption of our canal is needed if we’re going to see it restored to the biblical benchmark of beauty. But more than that, our hearts cry for the families living alongside this canal, our neighbours.

Cultural lessons in dental hygiene

When we came to K town, I knew I had a lot to learn in terms of cultural differences. I didn't anticipate dental hygiene being one of them. We have discovered that the morning ritual of teeth brushing is quite time consuming. One brushes one's teeth prior to eating and the process takes a minimum of twenty minutes. But don't be mistaken - productivity for the rest of the day is not lost. It's all about multi tasking. Here are some things I have seen people accomplish while brushing their teeth

Get daily supplies from the market
Got to the toilet
Play a game of soccer
Smoke a cigarette
Drink tea

Not sure if my dentist would be impressed or not?

Our First Jisu Christo Puja

For a long time we have spoken to each other, amongst our team and others in the city of our desire for a contextualised ministry. While good work is being done and has been done to reveal Jesus to nationals here, many expressions of faith mimic those of the West. Much of the meaning and depth of spirituality available as a bridge between believers and non-believers can be wasted as the potential for redemption of worship forms is dismissed as ‘non-Christian’. By discarding certain aspects of culture as idolatrous, or simply failing to recognise their capacity for redemption to become meaningful ways to worship Jesus, a barrier has sometimes needlessly been placed before those seeking to know Jesus.


To choose to embrace a new God as only saviour can bring with it a perceived need to denounce all forms of previous devotion, and that has been prohibitive to those who would know Jesus. It can mean ostracism from family having huge ramifications for believers. It can mean hiding faith or just being too fearful to pursue it. One simple way we have chosen to bridge a gap is by referring to ourselves as Jisu Christo Boktora (devotees of Jesus Christ), due to the number of connotations Christianity can bring with it in our context.



Being surrounded by many and varied pujas (expressions of Hindu worship – for a recent example see http://www.everyaffliction.blogspot.com/  ), we chose to share our Easter ‘puja’ with our neighbours. It was our first public foray into what it means to be a Jisu Christo Bokto. It was a simple affair. A mix of us foreigners with local neighbours. A service of scripture and prayer in Bangla and English celebrating the resurrection. We used incense – a common element in worship here – as a symbol of the fragrance of our prayers moving beyond ourselves and into the presence of God (Psalm 141: 1-2). A candle symbolised the life death and life again of Jesus.Our landlady and her family offered flowers and mishti (sweets), also a common devotional practice. I and others with me felt the presence of God in a way I have not previously experienced in our community. And then we ate a massive amount of chicken curry and rice – true Bengali style!

And as has become the norm, in the midst of me sharing the good news of new life with my neighbours, they began to teach me also. As I watched Aunty approach our devotional area, and ‘our’ God with such reverence, bringing flowers and sweets to offer, I was struck by her demeanour of respect. I’m still figuring out what it means for her to give offerings to her gods (want to vs. have to?). I’m struck by her continuing to come to our Jisu Christo prayer area everyday bringing incense and flowers. I’m wrestling internally with what it means to bring offerings to Jesus, when I know that He Himself is the final sacrificial Lamb. Once again I am reminded of the awareness here of the need for someone greater than ourselves, and the elements of spirituality which means that even in a ‘closed country’ I am much less fearful about being open about my faith than I am back home.

Growing up doesn't necessarily equal maturing.

"And I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do, about you now"

I’m wondering if I should rename my blog something along the lines of “Things we learn from kids”. I never meant it to be like this, it’s just that this is what keeps coming. Jesus teaches us to become like children, and I’m understanding that there is so many layers to His teaching. It really is a privilege to be a mum and learn all the things I was not privy to before.


We’ve just returned from a beautiful trip to Thailand. Half visa run, half holiday. So relaxing – markets, cafes, delicious street food abounds. The completely laid back atmosphere, something so different to what we have become accustomed to, was what I needed to get some energy back for returning to K. We spent an evening with one of our amazing team mates, (happy to chill with our little party of four!) We sat at a sidewalk table, as a soloist played guitar just across from us. Mim started to dance on the sidewalk. Just by herself, completely oblivious that other people were watching. She was just doing what felt right and fun! Jumping, skipping, twirling, making up some words and moving to the side if she was in anybody’s way and then picking up right where she left off.

It made me wonder why I can’t ‘dance’ in the same authentic carefree way, moving to the side as I need to, but coming back to what I know is right? A four year old can forget everybody watching, so why do I always move as if I have an audience, even when there isn’t one at all?