On To CRP

Family and Friends,

Today was our last day at the Missionaries of Charity Home of Compassion and at the Bottomley orphan school. It was very sad to say goodbye to everyone, and it affirmed in our minds just how strong of relationships we had built in such a short time of two weeks. When we initially got to Missionaries of Charity, I have to say that I was a little disappointed that there was not too much medical need besides dressing the occasional wound on the men's side. However, the children there were bored to tears, along with the adults, so we would spend most of our time playing with everyone. This seemed somewhat unproductive to me, being one of those task-oriented types of people that thinks they have to be accomplishing a specific task to feel like I'm making a difference. However, I had some sense knocked into me when we were told by several local volunteers that would drop by and all of the sisters that these poor kids never had anybody come visit them to play and give them a childhood of any sort, and they were so happy that we would come all the way from the United States just to comfort and play with some poor Bengali kids. After handing out some of the jerseys that were donated by APU's Night of Champions program, taking some pictures, and saying our goodbyes, I did indeed feel quite accomplished. I should have known from last year that God had the tendency to take my expectations and turn them upside-down. I've recieved many lessons of going along with whatever is put in front of me, and this surprise should not have been a surprise at all.

I feel that the toughest part of our day was after this, when we went to the Bottomley school and saw our students for the last time. After two weeks of being with these kids, I would walk into the school's gate with the rest of the team, and my class would no longer be waiting patiently at their seats for me to walk into the pseudo-classroom/hallway that I taught them english in. They were all piled up against each other at the gate to the room, waving and smiling at the sight of us. Adam's students were doing the same thing, as both of our class areas were visible by the main gate. When I went to them, they all passed up these notes they had written out of their notebooks in english (in cursive and quite legible, I might add. First graders!) before I had time to write up the ABC's on the blackboard as was my daily routine. I read them all before beginning, and was blown away with the realization of how much my short time at this place had meant to all of these children. Then I started hearing a whisper among the kids, "Jackson... Jackson..." the one and only boy in my class, as this school of orphans was made up of primarily girls, was the only one in the class still sitting in his seat, bawling his eyes out. I told him, almost positive that he didn't know what I was saying, that today should be a happy time and a celebration, because he had become a part of my life and today I would leave and bring him with me in my memory. He came up to the front and grabbed my hand, and didn't let go for almost the remainder of the time I had at the school.

To be uplifting, we spent the whole day playing instead of learning english. Where I would normally write up english words on the board and have them repeat them back to me, I wrote up on the board, "Today is my last day, so instead lets play!" They read it, rejoiced, then ran onto the field knowing what came next: my Bengali adapted version of duck duck goose, cow cow tiger. After some games, running to all the other classes being taught by my teammates to cause some disruption and fun, it was time to wrap it up, take some pictures, and say my goodbyes. "Shesh!" I would tell all of them, meaning finished in Bengali. They would respond with "Na!" and pull on me and give me flowers and ask when I was coming back. Jackson was crying again, and the other kids were being respectful, but kept on letting me know that he was weeping, as if trying to break my heart. When our entire team reassembled and said thank you and goodbye to the Sisters that had allowed us the privelige of working with their students we made our way through the crowd of school children who adorned us with gifts back to our van. When we were all piled in, I saw that Jackson had made his way up to the front of the crowd, reached out for me and I met him with my hand. As the door closed, he groped at the windows and searched through the tinted window for where I was inside the car.

To add to the longest post ever, when we got back to YWCA, our hotel, completely by chance our friend Apollo from last year was sitting in the lobby, waiting on his mother who had come to visit. Apollo was part of the four students from the town of Barisal in southern Bangladesh who had gone with us to the village every day to help build houses for those affected by Cyclone Sidr. Of all the times he had chosen to come up to Dhaka, of all the hotels he could have chosen, of all the times we could have been in Bangladesh, he was sitting in the one-couch lobby of YWCA. In a country of nearly 50 million people in a space the size of arizona, we ran into one of the maybe 20 people we knew in the country. Needless to say, we spent the night in excitement and caught up on what had been happening in each others' lives over the past year. Only Natalie and I had met him before, having been in Bangladesh last year, but we introduced the new team and he even agreed to come along with us on some of our ministry days.

With that, I will conclude this massive post, and give my teammates time to give their experiences. Take care everyone, and your prayers continue to keep us in God's grace.

In Him,

Loren Colson