A lot has happened in the last month!VISAS!!
After teaching at the SFC (student friendship centre) for just 1 week, we found out that we had to leave Bangladesh...in 2 days!!...as we were not allowed to renew our visas in the country. This was a bit of a shock and a challenging time for our team as we had to pack up all our things & try to say goodbye to people before flying to New Delhi on 30th January. We arrived on Wednesday & on Thursday headed off to the Bangladesh Embassy. It was really cold as we waited to hand in our visa forms but eventually we were allowed in; normally the procedure is that you hand in the application form in the morning & return the next day to collect your passport, but the official saw that we had already been in Bangladesh for almost 4 months & asked us to go to the main office. We seemed to be questioned for ages about why we wanted another 2 months in Bangladesh - it's not really a country that tourists go to for a long time - and they asked our host to go into another room so that they could question her. It seemed like we were not going to be flying back to Dhaka but instead catching a train to Kolkata but God answered our prayers and we got a new visa that afternoon!!
Although we did have official stuff to do we also tried to make the most of our time in Delhi. We were all so grateful for the generosity of a BMS worker who met us and took the time to show us around Dhaka and even insisted that we went to visit the Taj Mahal!! We've met some amazing Christians since we left the UK 4 months ago and their hospitality and generosity has really challenged us about how we live our own lives.
Amazingly we got a 3 month visa instead of the 2 months we applied for, but we had a 60 day condition that meant we could only stay in the country for 60 days...so our visa ran out on the 3rd April, 2 days short of our flight home on the 5th April. Today we had some amazing news...we've got a new visa (our 5th Bangladeshi visa!) we allows us to stay in the country until the 10th April.
VISIT TO LAMB HOSPITAL: 2 weeks ago we had the opportunity to visit Lamb Hospital, a Christian hospital, in a village in the north of Bangladesh. We had an eventful journey there; we became the centre of attention when we had to stop to change a tyre after it got a puncture from the extremely bumpy road. We were able to look around the hospital, which is really well run, & talk to some of the staff who work there...it gets a lot of support from foreign doctors who are able to train doctors & perform specialist surgery. They recently had a medical team visit who performed cleft lip surgery which is really needed as most people with any kind of physical impairment seem to end up having to beg to survive. It was a good time to encourage the foreigners who work there and also see another side to Bangladesh.
SCHOOL PICNIC: Last Saturday we went with the students who attend the morning school on a "picnic" to the grounds of the old Mongal capital of East Bengal. We all piled on to an orange open-top double-decker bus which had Bangla music playing loudly from the loud speaker and we set of on the 1 1/2 hour journey. Thankfully only 1 person was sick but we had a few problems with trees and cables...at one point there was a Bangladeshi on the roof trying to lift up the cable! We had a good day looking around the musuem, eating lots of tasty Bangla food & playing games. It was lovely to see all of the children running around and having fun in the fresh air as they normally don't have the opportunity to play in open green spaces. We eventually got home after 13 hours, after having an amazing day with the children and teachers.
AG KIDS CAMP: We've just come back from an awesome camp where we saw God at work so many times. About 130 children and teenagers came, and we had 83 girls and leaders sleeping in the girls dorm! Camp was very intense with services, games, team times, activities & water fights but everyone seemed to have fun. The theme was "Mission 2 Mars: A Quest for New Life" so the 8 teams all had space themed names like Mighty Moonwalkers & Radical Rockets. Anna had a special, but sometimes stressful role, as the camp score keeper - she did a really good job. Kirsty, Hannah & I (Vicki) were all team leaders, and we were all in charge of leading the 'action song' and doing evening games. Trying to explain games to 130 children and leaders proved to be hard work but in the end everyone had fun playing ladders, the 'peg game' and some other crazy running around games! God was doing amazing things in the lives of the children, and us, at camp, and it was awesome to see God speaking to the children, many of them asked us to pray with them. As a team it was a great to spend time with the other leaders and build on our friendships with them...the team leaders were all young people in the church between 18 and 30 (?) and they were all really enthusiatic. We came home exhausted but really thankful for how God was at work.