Happy Thanksgiving!

We celebrated American Thanksgiving on Saturday with a group of about 20 co-workers. I was so encouraged by our time together!

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Thanksgiving is a family holiday, right? And these people have been our family. We have been celebrating our holidays. . . and all our days . . . with these same people for ten years, twenty years, almost thirty years now. We have watched their children grow up and leave the nest, and they have watched ours do the same. Some of the younger kids are still with our group, and as I listened to them, I kept thinking, "How can you be so mature? I remember when you were still in diapers!" Don't worry, I didn't say it out loud.

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A Very Wealthy Lady

This is about 1,000 gifts again. It has been two and a half weeks since I started my list, and I am up to 67 gifts. At this rate it will take me about 9 months to finish. But my goal is not really to finish it, the joy is in the journey, as they say. I am becoming so conscious of how much I have been given. Gift #5 was "a good night's sleep." Sometimes I just list the gift, with no comment. But that day I commented, "I know that not everyone has the comfort and safety and health that make this gift possible." Gift #29 was "Karim and Eti." This is the student I mentioned in my last blog, along with his precious wife. Every time I see Eti, she gives me a big hug . . . she never fails to brighten my day! I love drinking tea with them and listening to their stories. Gift #37 was "Literacy." Many women my age, around the world, are illiterate. It is normal for our IGSL students to tell me that their moms never went to school. I am one of the lucky ones . . . no, not lucky! It's a gift from God, for which I am profoundly grateful. Every time I open my notebook to work on my gift list, I am just amazed with how much God has given me, and how good He has been. I am a very wealthy lady.

Abdul Karim Miah

I spent this afternoon helping one of our students practice his testimony. He is going to present it later this week in a banquet. This student and his wife have become very dear to us. As he was sharing his story, I wished that you could be here to hear it. The next best thing . . . I'll print it here for you.
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Good evening, everyone, in the name of our Savior. My name is Abdul Karim Miah, from Bangladesh. I want to share with you how God has been faithful to me. Please forgive me because I am still learning English. I have six brothers, my father was a Muslim priest, and all of my relatives are very strong Muslims. When I enrolled in college, my circle of friends was not good, and I did many wrong things with them.

But God changed me through one Christian family. In our village there was a Christian family, they were respected by others, and they had a good relationship with my family. One of their kids was my classmate, and she tried to help me change my behavior. Once I received some Christian booklets in the mail from a Christian organization. I tried to find out who gave them my name. Finally I realized it was my Christian classmate. I asked her, “Why did you do it? You know I am Muslim.” She replied, “It’s an interesting book, and it has questions to answer. You just read it, and if you do not enjoy it, then stop reading.”

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I followed her advice and I enjoyed that booklet. I did it very secretly. Nobody knew that I completed a correspondence course and I got a New Testament Bible. I started to read the Bible and day by day I began to change. I felt a hunger to learn more about Christ, so I shared it with my classmate, but she said, “No, it’s enough; no need to learn more, I cannot help you.” I knew she was afraid to help me because she knew she might be punished by my family. But I forced her and said, “Please do something!” So she gave me her elder brother-in-law’s address, he was a pastor in Dhaka, our capital city. So I went to Dhaka. He also refused to help me directly but he introduced me to another guy who became a Christian from Muslim background. His name was Mamun Taluckder, and he allowed me to meet with him. That man enrolled me in another Bible course. I finished that course very successfully and through that guy I joined a small Bible study group at our national botanical garden. We met in the garden because we did not have any room where we could meet and pray. When I read John 14: 6 this verse touched my heart. I thought about it for two weeks and I realized, “Yes, Jesus Christ is the only truth and the only way,” and at that time I received Jesus Christ as my personal savior. After that in 1996, Nov. 4, I was baptized. My family heard about my conversion from others, but they did not believe it. After that I joined the Society for International Ministry (SIM) as an employee without my family’s knowledge.

In 1998, June 24 I married my Christian classmate, the one who first told me about Jesus. Her parents did not agree to our marriage, but her grandmother and elder brother-in-law permitted us and helped us. My wife’s parents did not speak with us for some time. Finally, my father-in-law put out a challenge, “If Karim comes to my house as a Christian then I will receive Him.” You know, my family and my wife’s family lived same village, so I was afraid to go there, but I decided to take my father-in-law’s challenge and in 2000 December 23 my wife and I went to his home to join with them for Christmas. My wife’s parents welcomed us.

But when my family heard that I was in the village, they came there and caught me and carried me back to my house. They kicked me and beat me and bound me with iron chains. They tried to remove one of my one eyes, (still I have that injury on my left eye), and they determined to kill me. But suddenly, my father said, “Ok, don’t kill him, just ask him to give up his Christian religion and confess his sin, and divorce that girl, that’s enough.” They decided I had to do it in front of their old priest and the whole Muslim community. I did not know what to think. I just prayed in my heart, “Lord I believe you are Almighty God, nothing is impossible for you, please save me and prove here that my Lord is Almighty.” Praise God because that day He did a miraculous thing.

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While they were bringing me to the priest, the rickshaw driver and one of my friends decided to let me escape. They were also Muslim but God spoke to their hearts and they helped me. That day was both Christmas and a Muslim holiday, so there was no transportation. I just ran and walked, as fast as I could, although I was still weak from being beaten. I traveled about 12 kilometers. I was afraid they would catch me and I could not find any transportation. I had no money at all, I was injured, and the distance to Dhaka, where I was headed, was more than 350 kilometers. I just prayed. It was almost midnight, and suddenly two old guys stopped me and said, “Young, man can you give us a favor? We need to go to Dhaka tonight to meet my son who is going to Malaysia early in the morning. We are carrying money and we don’t know the area. Can you travel with us and help us?” I helped them reserve a car, and through them I went to Dhaka very smoothly. God proved how faithful He is. My wife also escaped from our village. When my wife and I met in Dhaka after three days, we praised God together. That year we could not celebrate Christmas with my wife’s family but when the people in my office heard everything, they comforted us and arranged a late Christmas party for our encouragement. I remember one old missionary hugged me and she cried a lot. I will never forget their sympathy.

You know, my family continued to totally reject me. In 2004 December 16 my mother died but they would not allow me to see her body. This was very painful for me. Even my wife’s parents had to move away from the village because of persecution. My wife and I used to cry every night when we did our family prayer but now God has comforted us, and now I have many brothers and sisters in Christ.

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For a long time I prayed for an opportunity to learn about God’s Word, and God answered my prayer. That is why today I am here. I praise God and I thank all of you for helping me. After I finish studying at IGSL I plan to return to Bangladesh and help train other Muslim background leaders for ministry in our country. This is a great need in Bangladesh. Please, all of you pray for me. I want to give my whole life to serve God and his kingdom. Please, please pray for me.

One Thousand Gifts

Since I became a blogger myself, about a year and half ago, I have also learned to enjoy other blogs. A new favorite of mine is http://www.holyexperience.blogspot.com/, written by a lady named Ann Voskamp in Ontario, Canada. She challenges her readers to recognize the gifts God gives each day by making a list . . . and adding to the list . . . until it reaches one thousand gifts. This is not a list of gifts you want, but gifts you have. For many years I have tried to cultivate a grateful heart, so I was very willing to give this idea a go. I've started my list. The first entry is "the taste of honey." It was just the first thing that came to mind, and so I wrote it down and thanked God for it. The next several entries were the names of people dear to me. And then . . . "our recently repaired rocking chair." Whenever I start working on the list, I can hardly write fast enough because so many things come to mind. But I am disciplining myself to slow down and savor each item, and to really express my thanks to my God. I'm loving it.