Thursday, February 25

Up and going early this morning. It was a non-stop day. We drove about one hour to the Aberarpara Sponsorship Program and Ministry Center in Ghoraghat. After some refreshments, they are trying to fatten us up over here, we walked to 2 small rural CDCs. We were entertained by the children with songs and dances, and given flowers as welcome gifts. We gave each group a couple of frisbees.

 

We then drove to a CDC site which some of us had been to last year. Last year they were meeting in an old house, but now have a beautiful new building that was donated by Josh Brown of JESUS Film Harvest Partners. Of course they entertained us, gifted us with flowers, and we gave them frisbees.

Back to the Ministry Center for lunch, followed by meeting the children in the sponsorship program there. These children are sponsored by Compassion International and their schooling is provided by the Church of the Nazarene.

We then had a time of visiting with some of the JESUS Film team members from the area. We had a question & answer time with them concerning their ministry and their needs and closed our time together with prayer. There are currently 30 JF teams in Bangladesh consisting of 3-4 per team. Each team averages 10 JESUS Film showings per month for around 3600 showings per year in Bangladesh.

After leaving the Ministry Center we drove to the Gopalpur Child Sponsorship Program, another school sponsored by Compassion International in partnership with the Church of the Nazarene. We were greeted by children in traditional dress accompanied by a drum band. We were showered with flower petals as they danced before into the school grounds. Susan was at this site last March when we visited Bangladesh. We were once again presented with flowers by the children and also were given laminated hand-drawn pictures from some of the students. After a wonderful cultural presentation we were served refreshments once again. There are 235 children in this school. The local community has a population of around 2000. The church here has an adult congregation of 150, not counting the children. It was a wonderful way to end our visits to the children’s projects in Bangladesh.

To end up the day we went to a JESUS Film showing on the grounds of a Hindu temple. There were approximately 750 people in attendance. We arrived back at the hotel at 10 pm and had a late supper. Tomorrow we leave Bogra and go back to the district center in Dhaka.