Answered prayers

Thank you God, thank you all who prayed.

Today God showed us more of the picture of who will be teaching at LAMB School next year. As I wrote a few days ago, I felt we had a crisis. Now I feel God has shown us how He has met our needs for teachers for three out of six subjects. Praise God for His faithfulness and continue to pray about the need for someone to teach sciences in grade nine.

Also see the picture of a nearly completed new science building. We can not paint until after the rainy season because the plaster won’t be dry before then so there are only two more things to be done in the picture here. There are a couple of more things on the ground and the top floors too, but it is getting very close to being finished.

God provides

In the past God has been faithful in providing for our needs at the school. Please pray with us about the need for teachers to teach grades nine from August this year.

We have just had one teacher resign. Before that it felt like a challenge to fill the teacher needs for our O Level classes; now, to be honest, it feels like a crisis.

Please pray for the children who are going into grade nine, that their needs will be met; then pray that He will send us the teachers we need.

Give thanks for the teachers we have, and for those preparing to come; one from England and one from the US we interview potential teachers on 29 May 2008 here at LAMB.

In the past God has always provided for the needs of our students and I am confident He will continue to do so in the future.

The last brick

Mofizul laid the last brick today. He is the man behind Moni in the picture. Moni and her two colleagues, Mary and Bashonti are the ones who have carried the bricks, cement and sand for every part of the construction. On only a few occasions, such as when each floor and the roof were poured, have others helped out.  

Hanna Torèn

Another farewell Thursday. Hanna Torèn’s last day at LAMB School. We are grateful for the many shorttermers who come through LAMB and whose energy and enthusiasm make life colourful and rich. We wish Hanna blessings as she travels around Bangladesh for a while and as she returns to Sweden and to Bible school in the fall.

Poverty

I was getting upset with the fact that he hadn’t come. Twice, I had sent a message to him about his daughter’s absence. She hasn’t been to school for over a month and we would like to know whether we can count on her being in the class. There is a long waiting list and no need to leave her place empty. In my letter I made it clear that we would take her name of our register from 1 June if he didn’t come.

Soon after New Year he had lost his job – something about not being trustworthy with money – I am sure he deserved it; loosing the job that is.

Now he looked sick and I am glad his clothes covered his ribs so I couldn’t see how thin he was. In a matter-of-fact manner he told me that he had had jaundice and there was nobody else to bring his five year old daughter to school. What he shared was only what I asked. He was getting treatment from the local ‘kobiraj’ (Homeopath if you are kind, quack if you not) and was getting better, he felt. His daughter didn’t want to come to school, because others had food and she had none. The family consists of the man in my office, his daughter – a student, her mother, grandmother and great grandmother. Now the family has no permanent income. They eat once a day and he doesn’t have money to go to Dinajpur to get insulin for his diabetes.

He did deserve loosing his job. I think he had hoped someone would intervene so that he would get it back, but he would have been tempted to take money again, and there are too many others who can do the work and need the job, perhaps as badly as he.

We talked about how he might pay school fees; he was very realistic about his lack of ability to do so. I gave him the form we use to apply for stipends. No land, no income, five mouths to feed, it looks bleak. He got justice when he was fired, what can we give him now. I would have been so much easier had I never met them; as it is his daughter is a student at my school and I can scarcely deny that I know she probably goes hungry again tonight.

God, have mercy on us.

Saber and Naser

It is always difficult to say goodbye and not less so when you have spent several years together. Saber and Naser are moving to Dhaka and we will miss them at the school. In the picture grade 4 is behind them. We will pray for them as they settle in to a new apartment, a new school and with new friends in Dhaka.