New Stories Start Here – Fred’s Trip to Bangladesh
I am so deeply grateful for those who take the time to read, ponder, and care for the ministry God has given us. We live by faith and in constant awe of God and His Word. Psalm 34:3 - Oh magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together. Yes, we are in this calling together! After many months of preparation, planning, logistics, and messy mysteries, I left on January 7th for Bangladesh. I was determined to somehow plant the seed and make a spiritual impact with the Rohingya refugees driven out of Burma. I had many practical tools like flip chart pictures, visuals, wordless books, solar powered Bible stories and music devices in their native language. We had created sim cards and zip drives with everything possible in the Rohingya language. I was completely consumed with this huge mission in India, Nepal and Bangladesh! I connected with team workers and Christian leaders in these countries to work together on reaching the Rohingya people!
Our Bangladesh partners, Sanga and Binod, were waiting our arrival to help us move on to Cox’s Bazar. The Rohingya community in Cox’s Bazar Refugee Camp is where more than 900,000 refugees live in crowded sprawling settlements after fleeing Myanmar’s violent ethnic cleansing campaign in 2017. It is presently the largest refugee camp in the world with only a small number of known Christian believers among this persecuted Muslim group. The affects were astonishing as we tried to encourage and empower some of the lowest of the low in these despicable refugee conditions! The HIM office created an “official” letter/document that was a lifesaver as we faced high security roadblocks. The security guards called the commanding officer who came to our vehicle looking like a five star general!
He stared at me then stared at the document, paused, and then waved us forward and let us go through! PTL! I doubt if he could even read the document written in English! There are very few known believers among these refugees and the ones that are there have been severely persecuted both by their own people and the Bangladesh/Burma authorities. We have been able to establish strong relations and connections with these precious believers; trapped as refugees and persecuted Christians. There was also a group of approximately 200 Rohingya refugees in Delhi that I was able to meet with and with the leaders in their church. We had many divine appointments where we were able to plant the seeds and resources to influence these seriously UNREACHED people. Of course, the international humanitarian aid agencies have given this area physical help. But nothing, nothing spiritual! To give them the presence of God or hope of eternal life was amazing!
There were so many moments where God was at work. In one little dirty makeshift tea shop, we stopped to mingle with the Rohingya people hanging around. Of course a foreigner is rarely seen sitting in a tea shop! This drew a curious group of people while I was having fun with the children. We pulled out our solar device full of scriptures and music in their language and began to play it. They were shocked and so excited to hear something so new in their language! Remember, these are people who have never heard of Jesus before. There were two little brothers running the tea shop, they were probably 10 and 12 years old!! When it was time to leave, I paid for the tea. When the two brothers opened their little cash box, I put the solar radio device with all the music and Bible stories in the box. The little boys just glowed and stared at me as I shut the box giving them a signal to keep it private! Yes, a real 007 moment!
There are so many more stories! Please pray that I can write and communicate more about these things, by the grace of God. But we know eternity will tell the whole story. HIM cannot do these things and be involved with practical relationships and partners without your prayers and help. We are believing God to raise up spiritual and eternal givers/donors to help us maintain and follow up on so many of these opportunities and open doors for HIM.