Midnight stars

When, yesterday evening, the opposition declared a countrywide shutdown for today, Thursday, the British Council, and all the students taking their exams today, were scrambling to figure out what to do.
At 10:30 PM last night, we were given confirmation that the exams would happen today, but also that the one our students are taking would start at 11:45 PM.
Please pray for the students, I think they will be awake tonight, but I wonder how they will be doing tomorrow afternoon when they have to take another test after a night without much sleep.
Also do pray for Bangladesh and for the political situation here.

While we can discuss the justification for calling a general strike when 33 opposition politicians are arrested in one day, there is hopefully no harm in taking a little pleasure in one of the common ways objections are shown. I wonder about the hunger anybody will feel after not having eaten for a full two hours...

O Level Candidates 2012

We are proud to have our 3rd group of students take their O Level Exams at the end of Grade 10. There are just four of them and their exams are scheduled to begin on Monday, 7 May 2012. They, their parents and all of us at the school have big hopes for them.

We hope they do well in their exams, we hope they get into good schools to continue their education, we hope they stay healthy throughout the month of exams and perhaps uniquely for Bangladesh, we hope the opposition will not find more to call general strikes over for the time being.

During the last two weeks we have had first three and then two days of shut-downs (hartals) in Bangladesh. They have been linked to the disappearance of a member of the main opposition party.

Our students have to travel 30 km (17 miles) to get to the exam venue in Dinajpur and will be in trouble if we can’t get them there or if the exams are cancelled. The exams are international exams, and while it might be possible to re-schedule to the next day, the British Council and Cambridge International Examinations have informed us, that if this is not possible, we will have to re-register for the next available exams in November this year or in May/June next.

We have other hopes too, for bright futures, lives that honour God, for joy, happiness and all good things.

Please pray with us for Adib, Omika, Oli and Priyana.

Study tours and visas

We are half way through February and thankful and have just been on study tours with most of our children.
The little ones 4-6 year olds went on van-garis (flat-bed rickshaws) to the bus terminal and our potters colony in Parbatipur.
The middle group went to Kantoji Mondir, the Rajbari and Ramshagar in or near Dinajpur.

Grade 6 to 8 saw a Sugar Mill and a church near the site where William Carey first landed when he came to this part of what was then India.
The children had a great time; I am thankful for a good teaching activity planned by one of the teachers in my group, for protection when a construction project on the otherwise safe walk saw our 52 children walk right past a 7 meter (20-foot) hole in the ground and for having all the children return safely to LAMB.

On the bus, one of our younger students wanted me to repeatedly sing a certain song for him; he said it was his favourite. The words are complicated if you are eight years old and English is your second language, but the tune is catchy and the last two lines are easy to sing.

Father God I Wonder how I managed

to exist without the knowledge

of Your parenthood and Your loving care

Now I am Your son, I am adopted in Your family

and I will never be alone

'cause Father God You're there beside me

I will sing Your praises

I will sing Your praises for evermore

After having sung the verse for him a couple of times, he said, 'Uncle, what does it mean?' 


Please pray that all our students will know that God is our Father because He has adopted us into His family.


We give thanks for more visas for teachers, do continue to pray for the remaining three at the school, and for a couple for other LAMB staff.

New Year at LAMB

We are thankful to God for a new year. With it we have received a new five-year approval for LAMB; hospital, development work, rehab, training centre and school.
We pray that we will be able to honour God with the permission and with the resources we have been given to do the work here.

At the school Ken Ford-Powell is back from England and Bani Sharmma is away on maternity leave. We give thanks for both Ken's presence and Aunti Bani's baby girl. It doesn't quite work to substitute a head of first school with an O Level teacher, but with some reshuffling of everybody here we are getting on with a new semester.

We have had farewells for three students who transferred out at the beginning of school year in government schools but have not taken in new students to fill the places. Please pray for the children who are now learning to learn in a very different system.

Thank you for your faithfulness in 2011. Please pray for us this year too.

We hope to get status as a registered school with the government of Bangladesh. The benefits include school books for the children, access to national exams and a lot of administrative work in reporting to the government. Pray with us that the children will be helped as they transition into other schools after LAMB because of this work.

Please also pray for on-going teacher development. We have four teachers who are still new, and all of us benefit from help in teaching well.

Pray for wisdom as we work with families on planning and delivering the best possible education for their children.

Pray that all the children who come through the school will leave with the knowledge that God loves them.

We are also praying for work permits and visas for all foreign staff.

From failures to stars

It is Thursday after our Christmas celebration. The children have performed for their parents, and the certificates have been given out. Tomorrow we will celebrate the victory that saw Bangladesh become and independent country 40 years ago and then the school is out until January.
We have had a couple of hectic weeks with exam preparations, exams and then evaluating the children. One of the last tasks was to print the report cards with the children's results. We did have a few problems with the printer and quite a few report cards failed to print the first time.
My mother has said she wanted a star for Christmas and while she was helping me sort the report cards - my parents are volunteering here at LAMB for three months - we thought of trying to make one.




It isn't quite finished, but the card the reports for the children are printed on worked perfectly and with a few more failures on the printer we will be able to finish it.

My father took the pictures of the process and the (almost) finished star to prove to everyone that failures, even  on a printer, can become stars.

(No children were hurt or failed in the process of making the star.)