Give a Man a Fish (Random Stories From the Last Few Months)

Give a man a fish, feeds him for a day.

Teach a man to fish, feeds him for a lifetime. 

-Anne Isabella Ritchie

The above quote has been running through my head recently. I often want to take things over, do them myself, save others the pain or work. But this is not helpful for them. And as I am living in this vastly different culture from my own, it is not helpful for people to do this for me either. 

One thing I love about Bangladesh is that I am always learning new things. Whether it is cooking, language learning, cultural events or attending weddings. I have learned to take off my western tinted glasses to see this world around me. Some things I love and somethings I disagree with. I have spent a lot of time discussing with my friends here what is biblical and what is cultural. I am happy to conform to cultural rules as long as they do not interfere with my Biblical worldview. This has been an interesting challenge and lesson we have presented to our youth group kids. My new favorite question to ask them, when I see something cultural that may not be biblical, is to ask "Why do you do that?" and then "What does the Bible say about that?"

It would be very easy to just correct my kids, to "give them a fish" but I want them to become Fishers of Men (Matthew 4:19), so we continue to teach them to fish, to fish for answers and question the world with Jesus tinted glasses. 

My youth group girls dressed in traditional Giholude Sarees

I recently attended a wedding. At the prewedding ceremony, called a Giholude, tumeric is spread on the bride and groom's skin as a blessing and gives their skin a nice glow on their wedding day. (It turns my very pale skin bright yellow). This particular Christian wedding was an arranged marriage. Something I still cannot quite wrap my mind around, but am learning how normal it is here. I talked with my kids and all of them said they would not mind an arranged marriage. Of course, they are all welcome to have a love marriage, but most expect to have an arranged marriages. 

As you can expect this has led to many interesting conversations. And since arranged marriages are very present in the Bible, Alpha and I do not dissuade or discourage this. What we do encourage and teach our kids is to love and honor their spouse, however and whenever they get married. Alpha and I try our best to show appropriate affection to each other in public as an example of what a Biblical, loving marriage looks like. 

Shredding Coconut by had for Bangla curry

I am also learning to 'fish'.... I have written in previous blogs how hard I find it to cook here. But in the last few months I have become more proficient with the help of my mother-in-law. We make everything from scratch here. And though I do not enjoy spending hours in the kitchen, I do feel accomplished when I can put a meal on the table for my family.

Making baskets in art class

Swimming in the pond

As we are teaching our youth group to "fish", I have also been blessed with the opportunity to teach English at a local school to 20 precious, rambunctious little boys. And what started out as English has turned into teaching Art, Swimming and occasionally Science. Needless to say my Bangla is improving very quickly when trying to maintain control in a classroom of 20 boys under the age of 10. 

I had been dying for a swim all summer as it had been consistency over 100 degrees here. So when asked if I wanted to teach swimming I readily agreed. I don't always think before I agree to things... In this case our swimming lessons would be held in the local fishing pond. And yes the water was just as murky, green and smelly as you can see in the picture above. Absolutely no problem for my boys. They swim here a few times a week. I had grand plans for teaching them the breaststroke and diving techniques. But after being handed a fourth dead fish, I was really over it. So I retired to the shore as lifeguard more then teacher. And these boys didn't need a swimming lesson, they are practically fish themselves. Probably wont do that again anytime soon, though I get asked about swimming every week. Sorry Bangladesh, my western side won this round. 

Our new logo 

Our youth group in the new t-shirts

On the other side of ministry Alpha and I had the opportunity to cast our net at a youth event with over 400 students. We attended this event with our youth group and were able to have a table to promote our ministry. We gave out t-shirts and played our new worship music. The positive response we got was overwhelming. The youth at the event were so excited for new worship music. We feel very blessed to have had this opportunity and our youth group really stepped up to help us promote this amazing music ministry. 

Our table at the youth conference

I hope you enjoyed a these random stories from the last few months. Life here is never dull and God is teaching me as much as He is using me to teach other.