Typhoid

         This morning we took the put-put into town because Kerri had to take a few kids to the clinic in Hili. Tisha was one of those kids. She has had a fever for the last few days. As we went down the bouncy road she attempted to rest her head on my back because she had no energy to keep her head up on her own. The doctor told us that she had Typhoid fever and that she would have to take an injection of antibiotics two times a day for a week. This horrified her.
             Tisha was one of the first kids that I remember meeting when I got here. She is so hyper and outgoing that everyone has a special place for her in their hearts. She was the one that gave me a note everyday before class and always told me stories at nighttime when I went to her room. Every memory I have with Tisha has been of her being happy, crazy, and doing weird Tisha like things. Tonight was the first time that I have seen her in such a depressing state.
             On the way back from town she sat curled up beside me with her head resting on my lap. It was rather uncomfortable since there were about 11 of us stuffed onto the tiny little put-put. I could see her face wincing in pain the whole way back from town but I could do nothing to take away the pain. After I had dinner I got a packet full of notes and pictures that Tisha had drawn for me early that day and so I decided to visit her. I sat there for about an hour while Tisha talked her head off like she normally does and I told her a few stories of my own. At one point I rested my head on her and she stopped talking and said, “you go to sleep.. I’ll wake you up when it is time for you to go tell chapel” she then proceeded to talk to me and if I even moved my head up to look at her she would take her hand and smash my head back on to her shoulder so that I could “sleep” some more.
              After a while the bell rang and I did the worship for the other kids and when I got back Tisha was a completely different girl then the semi-normal Tisha I had seen a half hour earlier. She lay on her bed with her hands clutching at her stomach and her teeth chattering together, she had a fever of 103. Her face was wincing once again with pain. By now Kerri was there and she asked me if I would help give Tisha’s injection of antibiotics. I then had to restrain Tisha as she screamed her head off because she was so terrified of the needle. She was thrashing about and punching away anyone that got too close to her.
             After the shot everyone left and I just sat there with my hand resting on Tisha’s back. I whispered prayers as she whined helplessly for the next half hour. I spent several hours with Tisha tonight because I know that if I were sick I would want nothing more than my mom to be there with me. If I wasn’t there for Tisha she would have been alone for the majority of tonight.  Every time I got up to stretch my legs she would beg me to stay longer. I always reassured her that I would stay as long as I could because I loved her.
               It pains me to know Tisha’s story and to know what her mother was like. Her mom tried to bury her alive when she was a baby. Tisha is probably the most gorgeous little girl I’ve ever seen and I can’t even imagine anyone not wanting her.
             Now, I am exhausted from all the energy that I exerted in taking care of Tisha but I wouldn’t have spent my energy any other way.

 I ask you all for your prayers for Tisha and others that have been getting sick around here. We need it desperately.

Thank you. 

Discipline

“Do not despise the Lord’s discipline and do not resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.”
Proverbs 3:12
            Kids are kids. They laugh, cry, hurt, and love with all their heart. Most of the time they love you but sometimes they get mad at you for the silliest reasons. This is what happened last week while I was saying goodnight to the girls. They were going absolutely insane like they normally do and somehow in the process of saying goodnight I had really upset Hannah (I still don’t know what I did). All of a sudden she started calling me all these bad names in Bangla, one of which being “satan.” I was to tired to do any disciplining that night so I decided that I would talk to Papri, the principle, about what I should do during lunch the following day.
              During Lunch I explained to Papri what had happened and she took me with her to talk with Hannah and explain in both English and Bangla how she had done a very bad thing by disrespecting her teacher/friend. She told her that she would have to miss lunch (I would have been upset if I didn’t know that they get a million snacks throughout the day). As the tears began to roll down her face while she apologized I ached inside. Of course she deserved to be disciplined because of the way she had been disrespecting me the last few days but I didn’t want to see her suffer the consequences or hurt the way she was.
             Bangla Hope has taught me a thing or two about discipline. It really sucks but it is necessary if you love someone. If you let a child get away with over stepping their boundaries it doesn’t help them achieve maximum growth. The kids push and see where the boundary are and even if they realize to late that the thing they have done is wrong they need to be shown that there are consequences for their actions. This is very hard for me because I just want to love everyone and not have to deal with that sort of thing but the more I understand discipline the more I understand the Old Testament and the way the God must have felt throughout the past and present. Discipline is a way of showing your love toward someone by caring about his or her character growth.
             Recently I have been reading the OT (Leviticus-Joshua) and sometimes it is hard because I’m not sure how to take everything and I don’t always understand why God handled situations the way He did. A good example of the Lord’s discipline is found Joshua 7. Achan had sinned against God and although he confessed his sins it was only after God had pointed it out and many people had died as result of his stealing/coveting.  Achan paid the price with his life. I can’t imagine that God felt good about the discipline that He has had to give throughout the ages. It has pained Him to allow the natural consequences of life to occur to the people who have acted wrongly. Just like it hurt me to discipline Hannah.
             This may sound like a weird thing to learn or even blog about but I realize how important it is and that the Bible talks about it a lot. Hebrews 12:10-11 says, “God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” Of course it is painful but God allows it for our growth. It is through discipline that we become more like Christ. Isn’t that the goal in this life anyway? 

Holy Spirit

            Metali can sometimes get in a mood where she is just mad at everyone around her for no reason. Well, there may be a reason but it doesn’t make sense. The other night she was in one of those moods but I know that she needs love and attention so I decided to follow her and be there for her even though she was being mean to me. She finally stopped walking away from me so I had a chance to talk to her. When I got close to her it was obvious that she had been crying. I asked her what was wrong but she wouldn’t tell me. Finally I asked if she wanted to go to the roof with me and she hesitantly agreed.
             We sat on the roof looking at the stars for a while and she finally told me that she was sad because I didn’t have time for her because I was with the kids. She was also upset because I was leaving in two months. I looked at her and tried to explain that I had to share my love with everyone but I finally just told her how much she meant to me. This worked a lot better.
             It was a little chilly so I made some hot chocolate and we sat and talked for a little while. She cheered up and then we went and played badminton for a while but when that was over she wanted to go back to the roof and read the Bible with me. I started off reading most of Philippians (one of my favorites!) and then she wanted to start reading. Now, Metali is smart but she is a little behind in her reading skills because she didn’t start school until she was older. I was a little worried that she wouldn’t be able to understand or be able to read it. However, she insisted that she should have her turn to read. We prayed that the Holy Spirit would be with us and then she started reading. She started pronouncing difficult words and I would explain what they meant. Kids in Bangladesh don’t use phonics when they read they generally memorize words but Metali was sounding out words and reading very fluently. At one point while reading she looked up at me with a puzzled face and asked, “how do I do that?” I laughed and told her it was Holy Spirit who we had prayed for. The answer satisfied her question and she just laughed and continued reading.
             Sometimes we forget how powerful our Holy Spirit is. He is powerful enough to help a 11 year old read the Bible.  He is powerful enough to heal the injured at heart. He is powerful enough to raise Jesus from the dead and that same spirit lives in me!

“But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who lives in you.” Romans 8:10-11

Don't Do Drugs

            I’ve had an interesting last few days. About two nights ago I woke up with a fiery itching on my head. My first thought was that I had gotten lice from the kids.. I figured it would happen eventually. This itch was not a tiny little annoyance but it burned and kept me awake for good majority of the night. By the time I actually got up and looked in the mirror I saw the remainder of what looked to be a rash or some sort of bug bite. It was mostly gone by the time we were suppose to go down to breakfast so I let it leave my mind until later when I was talking to Shati. My leg started itching so I started telling her about how my head had kept me up most of the night because of how much it itched. She talked to me about it some and then we found out that the group that had gone south had returned so we all went running over there to greet them when I noticed that my leg that had simply been itching now felt like it was on fire. Suddenly I knew why my leg was itching so badly.
             I grabbed Kerri and ran to the clinic and as soon as I got to a place where I could pull off my pants and look at my legs I realized that I had enormous hives all down my legs. These weren’t tiny hives at all. There was one on my knee the size of soft ball. Apparently I am allergic to something but I don’t know what it is. Kerri gave me some Bangla medication for it but she sadly didn’t have any non-drowsy. Knowing my reaction to that sort of medicine I knew that the rest of my day was shot because I would be in the state of zombie for the next 12 hours or so. Sure enough I almost fell asleep at the supper table and I had to walk all the way across campus up four flights of stairs to my bedroom. I got so bad that I couldn’t finish changing into my pajamas. I was literally stuck on my bed looking at Heather’s bed falling asleep. I somehow finished getting dressed and attempted to send a few email’s (sorry, if I have sent you an email recently that didn’t make sense.. it was the meds). I finally passed out hugging my computer while mumbling to my roommates who were laughing hysterically at me.
             At some point I woke up to Kakoli screaming at my roommates, “LET ME IN, I WANT TO SEE MY MOTHER.” I stood up quickly to get my baby girl when I realized that I didn’t have the energy to keep myself standing there and I fell down. Thank goodness no one was there to see that. I fumbled my way back to the bed where I laid there and waited what seemed like an eternity for someone to walk past so I could tell them to let Kakoli in. Finally Marissa came in to use our bathroom and I asked her to send Kakoli in. Before I knew it Kakoli and Metali were at my side trying to make me feel better. I was practically falling asleep the whole time. Finally it was time for them to go but I asked if I could pray with the two girls. Each of us said an individual prayer out loud while we all held hand. It is amazing how God sends people to you even when you are in such an odd state of being. I will never forget that little prayer that we had together.
             I finally fell asleep without being disturbed for a good 11 hours and woke up feeling like I had been hit by a truck. I felt better by the time Sabbath school was over and I was able to hang out with the kids all day. God is good.

Happy Sabbath America. 

Monkeys and The Land of Sliding Kangaroos

The thought of leaving seems impossible. When I think of going home my mind cannot even fathom how I will cope with the loss of my kids. I feel like I will be a parent who is ripped away from their child… never to see them again. I know that that sounds very dramatic but after spending everyday with them for the last few months I cannot help but feel love for them. What hurts more is thinking of how it will hurt the kids when I leave. God has really taught me how to love here. I’ll try to explain/share just a piece of the love that embraces this campus.
  The new missionaries are here and it has been quite humorous to watch their overwhelmed faces as the little girls attack their hair and use them as a jungle gym. The look of panic on their faces is a mirror image of what I was like when I first arrived. In all honesty, saying goodnight to the older girls could be compared to climbing into a cage of monkeys who have neither fear of humans nor any consideration of your comfort zones. My girls sometimes overwhelm me but I’ve just learned to say goodnight and go to the boys room (boys are so much easier)!
  In my head I refer to the boys room as the “Land of the Sliding Kangaroos.” All of the boys have kangaroos (aka footy pajamas). The adorable part about that is that there aren’t enough boy kangaroos to go around so a few of the boys run around in bright pink girly kangaroos and don’t even think twice about it. They are hyper like the girls but all their energies are focused on running as fast as they can and then sliding across the concrete floor. Joseph ran up to me one day and with excitement written all over his face he said, “Look Chantel, sliding kangaroos!” Of course the best part of saying goodnight to the boys is I get a million kisses on my cheeks, forehead, nose, chin, and the occasional sneaker on the lips. We aren’t supposed to really kiss them on the lips but if they sneak one in I just exclaim, “OH NO, you got me!” This reaction has caused all of them to try and kiss me on the lips.
  When I’m not getting goodnight kisses I am being told how much I am loved. The boys will come up and say, “Chantel, I love you…12, 96, 45, 2000, 50, 34.” It doesn’t really make much sense but they are just throwing out big numbers that in their brain means that they love you A LOT! They have become more creative about saying I love you. They have decided to say something that they think is amazing. For example: “I love you candy.” You should have heard all of the things that they use. I just tell them, “I love you pie,” for those of you who know me well you know that that is the most I can love someone hahah.
  I was trying to imagine what it would be like to be home and to finally have some alone time. For a while I was really looking forward to being alone for the first time in half a year but now I have a feeling that I will just cry. What would it be like to not always be holding a child’s hand or kissing the cheeks of all my kids? What will I do when I can no longer visit the Land of Sliding Kangaroos or have 7 monkeys on top of me at the same time? 
  When I was having a hard time at the beginning of my stay I felt like God told me I was here to learn about his Love. Now that I have learned a fraction of what that Love is like, how can I just get on a plane and never look back? These are the things that have been running around in my brain as I see that I only have 2 months left here. I suppose this is another point in my life where I have to rest in the comfort of Proverbs 3:5.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and he will make your paths straight.”

I’m not understanding..
but I’m trusting. 

...But I Love You Anyway

School is back in full swing and with all the extra work that I have been trying to accomplish I have lost all of my energy. There are a lot of exciting things that have been happening the last few days. Mr. Waid had his 83rd birthday yesterday and the whole campus was so excited. I was running everywhere helping Tuli decorate, bake, and doing anything else that she wanted me to do. The Bengali people really know how to have birthday party and I am a tad bit sad that my birthday is in June when I wont be here.
  My class is full of timid but very smart kids. I only have one kid who I fear because of his random emotional outbreaks.. Johnny. Today Tuli was telling him that he did so well on his math paper and he literally started sobbing because he didn’t want her to read his paper.. it will be interesting dealing with him for the next 2 months.
  We are getting 2 new missionary girls tonight and a family is coming here for a few weeks. I think there is another lady that is coming here for some reason that is probably important. I’m excited and slightly nervous about having more American’s around here. I’m not use to pale faces with the exception of the few people that have been here the whole time. I have a feeling that I will be like the Bengali people in town that awkwardly stare at white people as they walk by.. I might just stare at the missionaries the next few days haha.
  God has been teaching me a lot lately. It is funny how sometimes we can just be walking along and He’ll just kind of hit us over the head with a huge problem that we have had in our lives but have acted as if it doesn’t exist. Yesterday I was informed that a friend of mine that is a student missionary was going to stay another 10 months at her orphanage so that she could be with her kids. Rather than being super excited for her I was a little overwhelmed at the thought that I wasn’t as good as she was Although I love my kids I am super excited about going to American in 2 months and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t change that. All of a sudden I began to wonder why I wasn’t the “super missionary” that I always hear about in stories at church. I expressed my feelings to Lauren and she just said, “you’ve got to stop comparing yourself to other people.” Rather than trying to deny that statement or feel bad about it I instantly knew that what she had said was something that was painfully true.
  It is funny how I didn’t even realize it until she said that but I know that it will now have a profound impact on my life. I compare myself to everyone in probably everyway whether good or bad. I think it is a problem that most people in the human race fight against. We all want to be good or better than the person next to us. I forget that every person isn’t the same and God made us to be different.. it is actually a beautiful thing. So, God has been humbling me lately and it is making my experience in Bangladesh even more special because of the growth that has taken place.
  Last night I sat on the roof feeling rather humble about my state of existence. I have finally acknowledged that I am not perfect and that it is impossible for me to keep pretending that I am never wrong. While contemplating all of this I felt like God was saying, “…but I love you anyway.” The truth is that we can’t be perfect while on this earth and everyday we are learning and growing (if we choose to do so). Even though the human heart is deceitfully wicked (Jeremiah 17:9) God loves us anyway.
 

I am continually learning more about myself and my God on this trip. I love it!

Nepal Adventure (part 2)

Thamel has a lot of motorcycles. The roads are very narrow yet cars, people, bikes, and motorcycles squeeze past each other and somehow I never saw anyone get hurt. Lauren, Heather, and I found out that we could rent bikes for a day and we were absolutely thrilled. We found a bike hire place and got three mountain bikes and just started peddling. We dogged the people and cars like we had been living in a third world country for three months (wait a minute.. we have)! We had no real directions and so we eventually stopped by this temple looking thing to figure out the game plan. In the middle of our struggles an old man came up to us. He pointed in three different directions and told us what lay in each direction. We decided that we would go in the direction that led toward the monkey temple. Unsure if we were taking the right roads we just kept peddling and dodging until we eventually could see the large hill in the distant that had the beautiful stupa nestled on top.
           We finally reached the base of the hill and found a way to lock our three bikes up with two little bike locks and made our way to the staircase. The monkey temple is actually called the Swayambhuanth but because I don’t know how to pronounce that (and neither do all the tourists) it is just called the monkey temple. The name makes sense once you begin the long journey up the staircase. I can not tell you how excited I was to just be going up a hill. Bangladesh is the flattest place I have ever been to and I love hiking.
            Along the way up the stairs there were all sorts of little shops and even the little street kids playing. They were absolutely hilarious. There was about three of them who had found plastic bottles that they were using to put under their bums as they slid down the concrete sides by the stairs. I have a soft spot for the street children and I try to spoil them every chance I get. I even try to spoil the beggar kids. Most of them don’t really want to beg but they have just been forced to do it. Money doesn’t mean much to them (all of it goes to whoever is forcing them to beg) so I try to sneak out a cookie to them. You should see how their faces light up when they realize that they finally get a treat of their own.
           When we reached the top of the monkey temple we could see the whole Kathmandu valley and the mountain range that lay on the other side. Although the place was for Buddhist I focused on all the wonderful things that God had done. He had made the mountain range that lay in the distance, He made the people who walked around and marveled at the stupa that was pathetic compared to the things that God himself had made.
            After we rode our bike rides we decided that it was time for dinner. In all honesty the food was one of my favorite parts about Nepal. It was about $2 to go to a nice restaurant and get ethnic Nepalese, Indian, Thai, Tibetan, or even American food. Every night we would get a plate of Momo’s and some other type of curry or Nepalese Dhal (it is completely different than Bengali Dahl and I might like it more than the Bengali Dhal).  Momo’s are these Tibetan dumplings that can either be filled with veggies or meat. They had a sauce that went with them called pickle, it didn’t taste anything like American pickle but it was really spicy. I could write all day about the amazing food that we ate or my favorite restaurant in the world but I don’t want to upset my hungry readers.
             The rest of our trip was absolutely amazing as well. On Sabbath we went for a walking tour of the places surrounding the Thamel district. We celebrated the New Year dancing around on the balcony with the expensive sparkling apple juice that we had bought on the corner market. New Years was very loud because there was about 5 live bands playing at the pubs that are scattered throughout Thamel. We went down to Chitwan National Park and went on a Safari while riding an elephant. I got really sick while on a 5-hour bus ride but thankfully after praying about it I got better and was able to enjoy OR2k (favorite restaurant) that night. Overall it was so nice to experience Nepal and have time to be a tourist that got to go out to eat every night. However, I am so glad that I am back in Bangla Hope. There is no place like Bangla Hope!
 
I posted more pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2393352084597.122212.1574787470&type=1&l=9e86cdbdbe

Sorry I always post the pictures on my facebook. The Internet is so horrible here and it is easier for me to post them on my facebook rather than my blog.