Engaged with Engage

I'm excited to replace my fake pearls with real ones!

A view from outside the Home of Hope school

On Saturday, I went pearl shopping and out to dinner with a couple of ladies (the one I'm hanging out with and another with AGWM). Pearls in Bangladesh are extremely cheap, and I love jewelry, so I was excited to be able to buy a few strands for myself. We had dinner at the American Club. It's exactly what it sounds like, a club with a monthly fee that is mostly filled with Americans and that has a restaurant and athletic/spa facilities. Dinner was delicious, and I had root beer to drink and mango cream pie for dessert (yum).

Simon Says, "Turn around!"

Jack fruit all ready to eat, all but the almond-sized pit that is

The real adventures began early Sunday morning. At about 7:00 am, two members of the Engage team game to pick me up. Engage is a ministry that allows undergraduate students to do overseas ministry for up to two years while working simultaneously on their degree. They spend about half of their time in the field and the other half studying. Bangladesh currently has five. I enjoyed hanging out with them (most of them are my age or younger), and I really like the program. The three of us met up with the rest of the team and drove to the Home of Hope compound. The Home of Hope is an AG orphanage, but on location is also an elementary school. Most of my morning was spent watching the team work with the kids at the school, teaching them the alphabet, sounds, and songs. At one point, they let me play Simon Says with one of the classes. In the afternoon, we had lunch at a college and waited while one of the girls taught an English class. (By the way, if you don't know, people in India and Bangladesh, among other countries, eat with their right hand. This lunch was the first time I did it. I was always the messy one growing up, so I didn't mind haha. It might even taste better this way...) I also tried Jack fruit during lunch. It's about the texture of mucus and tastes a little sweet, but I didn't like it. They grow everywhere around here (as does everything else). You can see from my picture that Bangladesh is extremely lush and tropical.

Jack fruit on the tree

From there, we went to an AG church service. During the drive, it started pouring. I'm used to pouring rain/thunderstorms from the East Coast, but I've never seen such terrible flooding before. In some places, the water along the sides of the roads was about a foot deep! At the church, someone with AGWM spoke in English, so the service was translated. I'd never heard a sermon translated before, so it was helpful to get this experience before preaching with translators in Mizoram. I enjoyed the service, but it was definitely harder to engage since I don't know Bangla. After the service, we had Pizza Hut. Apparently, the Engage students like their American food. It was actually delicious, but I do like try local cuisine too...

After dinner, I went home and crashed. I had another full day ahead!

PS Mom, b-ah-ngladesh is more correct. B-ah-ngla is the language and desh means country, so Bangladesh is land of Bangla. B-a-ngla means frog, so B-a-ngldesh would mean land of frogs haha. That's how she explained it, but she admitted that the English pronunciation is like France with an English vs. French accent.