I miss you.

Bangladesh my home, I miss you.

I miss waking up to the red sunrise.

I miss my kids meeting me at the gates and calling my name.

I miss singing you all to sleep.

I miss telling stories.

I miss giving hugs.

I miss appa de bows.

I miss rice.

I miss dirt.

I miss badminton and 5 crowns.

I miss street kids and hawkers.

I miss the smog.

I miss the people.

I miss everything.

Bangladesh when will I come see you again? I dont know. But I know I will not be able to stay away too long.

Hand-me-downs

Our Children at BanglaHope are dressed exceptionally well. Wonderful people in America send over brand new clothes for our kids. So every year Mrs. Waid goes through all the clothes and replaces all the grungy ones. These ones that are considered grungy by American standards are like gold to the villagers. On January 24, 2010 we handed out gobs of clothes to the villagers. We had so many clothes. After we finished handing them out to the near by villages we piled into the back of the pickup and handed them out to the people in the streets, surrounding villages and anyone we saw. People were running after our truck, hands flailing and laughing all the wa

y.

You may now...WALK AWAY...with the bride?!

In Bangladesh PDA is not allowed. To call Bangladesh conservative would be an understatement, but as usual Bangladesh never ceases to amazing me. I went to a wedding today and the bride and groom did not kiss, talk, or really smile. But, I know they are happy.
O-Be-Dum is our handyman at Bangla Hope he can fix everything. He is a Catholic man who worked at the Catholic hospital before coming to work for Bangla Hope. He fled from there to escape an arranged marriage so he could marry this girl. :) I am so happy that he actually got to marry the girl that he wanted. I have started thinking....I think that when I get married I want to have two weddings: a traditional one in the states and one with my Bengali family in Bangladesh!

O-Be-Dum and his wife

Their rings

She looked Beautiful...

The get away car :)

Teaching.

One of my main duties at BanglaHope is teaching English. This has taught me two things: I LOVE working with kids, but I do NOT like teaching them! :) But these last few months I have enjoyed getting to know my kids inside and outside of the classroom. When we first arrived our children spoke no English, now almost 5 months later the bigger kids can all speak some english and many are forming broken sentences! I am SO proud of them! IT really amazes me how different we all really are and how uniquely God created each of us. My kids sparkle from the inside out and I cannot wait to see what they become!

Me and some students at reading group one afternoon

January 17, 2010

Clinics started today. Ww saw around 300 patients everyday. I played doctor quite well, but this defiantly gave me an insight: I don't really want to be a doctor, at least not family practice. But this was an amazing experience seeing all the patience was a minute reminder of how lucky I am to be healthy. Every person had aches and pains, worms and colds. We gave out lots of Tylenol, smiles and hats.

Me playing Doctor

Jehanna and I with the REAL Doc :)

This is a boy that I worked with, he had no eye ball

Pharmacist Jehanna

It was SO cold these poor children were literally freezing the second day of clinic we ran out of hats, I was able to go get some more to handout...thanks poppie for the Christmas gift again.

January 15, 2009

Today my children and I made Butterflies. We made them out of Coffee filters, popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners. They are decorating our classrooms and filling out room with color.

Me and Marjorie (and her BEAUTIFUL Butterfly!)

Sorry.

I have been really bad about keeping my blog up this last month, the truth is I have been busy soaking up and giving all that I can to Bangladesh. Bangladesh has stollen my heart. I will now do my best to catch you all up on what has been happening with me, my ambitions, my kids and God. One thing I have learned for sure: Life is not worth living if it is just lived for yourself.

Bangladesh: Finally home.

I woke up at 6am. This is unusual. This is only unusual because I want to bed at 12:00am last night.

My evenings have been filled with Badminton, 5 crowns, lots of laughing, hugging kids and last night we watched the Olympic opening games!

Bangladesh I will be leaving you soon, and even as I type that I get a sickening feeling in my stomach. I will miss you more than I have ever missed anything in my life. You have become my life, you have shown me a new way of thinking, you have helped direct me to know a bigger greater, grander God then I could have ever imagined. It seems surreal that soon I will not be waking up to roosters crowing in my back yard, greeted by a 104 kids every morning: I will miss every part of you.

Here I have found true Joy: I have LIVED NOW with TRUST and Joy and I am so thankful for all that you have blessed me with. Bangladesh I have a little more time with you and I am going to savor every minute of it.