The beginning of the work in Bangladesh: Leo and Arnold Eby

Lesson Transcript

Good morning. Greetings in the name of Jesus the Christ. And, um, each time I come back here, I feel like I've learned to know you all better and better. So, well, my friend Daniel asked whether I would, uh, share on the story of Bangladesh this morning. And I, uh, tend to do that, but I immediately got my brother Arnold involved because he knows more about the story than what I do. I, I've only got deeper involved in the more recent years with teach pastoral teaching and things like that.

So, in the beginning, as an introductory, there's a verse in, uh, First, um, First Thessalonians 2, verse 8 that has meant a lot to me. And I want to read that. It goes like this. It says, "Being, so being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you not the gospel of God only, but also of our own souls, because you were dear unto us." And that, that verse has become sort of precious to me because, you know, it takes more than just the gospel to be effective.

It takes your own souls also. Now, that's sort of an oxymoron because when you share your own soul, that is the gospel at work in your own life, presenting a gospel that's effective for somebody else. So I just want to use that'll be your scriptural, uh, uh, lesson, I guess, for this morning. So, uh, with that, I'm going to have Arnold come up. Arnold was involved with this, uh, work in Bangladesh, uh, since its inception.

And our, our family, uh, including my father and my mother, or all, and my oldest daughter, were heavily involved in the work. But the work is much, much broader than just our family. There are scores of other people involved in this work. Just because Arnold and I are here sharing together as brothers, double brothers, we're not, it's by no means, uh, our family's work.

And I'm sure he'll mention some other people involved, and maybe I can mention other people, but there's scores of other people involved in this work. Um, the story of Bangladesh is a fun story to tell because it's one of those stories that it's, it's easy to take your finger and trace the work of God through it. And you'll see that when he, uh, talks about the story. Um, so Arnold, if you come up, I'll get you started with this, uh, apparatus here. Oh, very good. Uh, it's a pleasure for me to be here.

Uh, there's, this is an exciting story that I do enjoy telling. And again, it's not because, um, not because it was, has anything necessarily to do with me, although I, I, it is exciting to be part of the story of God that is being told. And so I enjoy it from that aspect. Uh, this is, it's actually a big story and we don't have that much time this morning. And so I'm going to try to give enough detail to make the story coherent.

But, uh, there are going to be huge gaps that I simply can't fill in for you in the time that we have, uh, to tell this story. Uh, and as Leo mentioned, uh, God's at work in the world all the time. We know that. But there are other times when you can see him moving much clearer than others.

And these are, this story I feel has so clearly the touch of God on it that it makes me, uh, uh, I don't even know how to say, to feel like I'm even involved in it, in any aspect of it, because it's so clearly, uh, God at work using people to do his work. This one is just more clear than many times in our life. Um, so first of all, I'd like to show you where the country of Bangladesh is, um, because for some people, they've never heard of the, of the place to start with. So, uh, this is Bangladesh.

It's, it's surrounded on three sides with, uh, the country of India. And down on the clear bottom right corner over here, it touches up against Myanmar or Burma just a little bit. Otherwise, it's completely surrounded by the country of India. And it has six main divisions in it. Um, where the story actually starts is down here in a little close to a little town here called, uh, Pattukalli is the biggest thing that's named on the map. There's a little, uh, village there called Charakalli.

But, uh, since that, the work has spread, uh, quite a few different places. Uh, we went from down here, up here to, um, in the northern part, up here is a place called Nazipur. There is a church over here close to, uh, Jeshur in Kaliganj. There's one down here, uh, in a place called Bajwa. There's another one up, uh, on the right side up there in a place called Shala.

And then more recently, I've been involved in a startup here in Ukiya, which is, uh, largely comprised of the Rohingya refugees coming across from the country of Myanmar. And so that has all come out of the, um, original, uh, happening. But originally, what took us there was on, uh, November the 15th of 2007, there was a cyclone that hit the, uh, country of Bangladesh. And there are just a few pictures here of what that looked like and the result of it, uh, after that cyclone went through.

And, um, as a result of that, uh, lots of people died. There's lots of graves over that. Here's a picture of, uh, uh, a lot of the damage that actually comes from the cyclone was, uh, the storm surge that came up out of the Gulf, or not out of the Gulf, out of the Bay of Bengal. Uh, the whole country of Bangladesh is actually delta out of the Himalayan mountains, just the, the dirt that, silt that settled out of it. So it's almost all sea level.

And so a lot of the rivers are tidal rivers, like part of the time they're actually flowing backwards because of the tide coming in. And as the storm surge came in, uh, from the storm, uh, the river banks literally overflowed. And so a lot of the significant damage that happened in the country was from water. And if you can see this picture on here, there's a man standing holding his hand on the side of the tree. He said that's how deep the water was that came over top of the river bank.

Uh, it killed about 15,000 people, uh, with wind velocities of 200 kilometers an hour. It was one of the deadliest, uh, cyclones here. For those of you who don't know what a cyclone is, it's a hurricane. The other part of the world, they call them, uh, cyclones there. And I think they actually spin the other way for just the, that's where every information is. Um, this name is one of the 10 strongest and deadliest cyclones to strike, uh, Bangladesh from 1876 to 2010.

It fully damaged 560,000, 560,000 houses, 740,000 acres of crops, and 1.7 million head of cattle died. And that's just the fully damaged ones. There's the numbers are partially were more than double that on top of all of that. So, uh, Christian Aid Ministries decided to do a rebuilding project there. In 2008, with the help of 265 volunteers, we rebuilt 490 houses in 2008. And all those people are significant. All those people matter to the story that helped on that. And I can't tell you all their names.

Um, we worked through some of the most, um, difficult, uh, things. If I ever did a project again in a country that had a, um, a, um, a rainy season, we wouldn't do it. Uh, I went into that a little bit naive. Um, teams put, we had a, a small house, a 12 by 18 house that we put up, uh, made out of concrete pillars. And he swung them up and put them down there. As you can see, they're working in mud right there. This is a little bit of the construction of the houses that got put up.

And, uh, sometimes, uh, like this house that was built here, they walked in there into the morning. And by the time they had the house in, the tide had come up from the river. And because a lot of the levees were still broke from the, from the cyclone, it flooded. And so they actually had to, um, walk back out. They have pictures of guys up to their necks deep in water trying to float the tools back out from the house project. Here's another finished, uh, house that was built, 12 by 18.

Of course, everybody wants to see what the foreigners are doing. But, um, there's more to this story than just that. The God's hand took us to a particular place, uh, for a particular reason. And this is all interesting to me because we didn't actually choose the working area. So it wasn't like some good planning on our part that we knew about a certain spot that we should go to. We were actually working with another organization that chose the area of the country where we were going to work.

I didn't know anything about the country to start with. They're the ones that took us there. And that wasn't an accident. But after we got there, even, we couldn't find a place to put our teams in a house. There was no house big enough. So we attempted by our own, uh, volition to try to rent a house that wasn't even finished yet that we thought had enough rooms in to be able to put our teams in. Only discovered when the first team came that the house wasn't even ready yet.

And they were actually on a boat coming down the river. And we didn't have a place for them to actually land when they got there. And meanwhile, a government official discovered what was about to take place. And he's like, you can't stay in that house anyway. That house isn't safe. We have a spot for you. And they took us three miles south of where we thought we were going to work to an empty government building and said, you stay here in that house. So, uh, we stayed there.

So we didn't even choose the, the village or the house where we were going to stay. Somebody else chose that for us and put us there. And also, it's interesting to me that it wasn't a one-man project where you could sneak in and out. We had 265 volunteers come in over a year, which built a rapport, like we became known in the area. And I feel that was very important because that's the government building that we stayed in after we painted it.

Um, and I say that because there's an important man on this picture that, that God wanted us to meet. He's the man on the right-hand side with the white toupee on top. Right beside the building where we were staying in was a school. This man founded that school. There's about 500 students in it. He was the founder of that school. He was a wealthy man, and he invested all of his wealth into his children's education. He would come out to a little hut right beside where we were staying and drink tea regularly.

And, um, come to find out that, um, there was a man in California who was his son, who was the ambassador to the U.S. So if you can start beginning to see this thread of God moving us, why he wanted us at a certain place in a certain building in a certain village, because there was a man there that he wanted us to connect with. Here's a picture of his son. I'll just refrain mention their names, uh, because this man, uh, is still an ambassador, uh, in a different country than the U.S.

right now, but he's, uh, still out there. And his another younger brother is now head of the, of the Homeland Security in Bangladesh. He's like the second or the third most powerful or significant man in the country. And we have dinner with him occasionally. So, uh, it's we need those connections to help us in and out of the country. But, uh, this man met us, uh, in Bangladesh. He said, my father is calling me. Uh, he showed up one day without us knowing. I said, here comes this rickshaw down the road.

And there was this man on the jumped off. I said, I need to talk to you. He said, I need you to come to my dad's house tonight for supper. Uh, I need to have a conversation with you. And I was beginning to realize who this, who this man was. So here he had come from California home to visit his dad. He said, my dad's been calling me, telling me about this group of people that's here in this village working. And he said, our people need more than just houses. They do need houses. They got lots of trouble.

But he said, um, and I'll just make a long story short on that whole thing. But he said, could you come and teach English in our schools? Remember his dad, a school teacher, a headmaster who started a school. And they felt that his, uh, ability to get anywhere in life came because of his ability to speak English, being as an ambassador in a high government position. He said, can you come and teach English in our schools? English is important in this story.

Not because I speak English, but I mean, I do actually, but, um, it is, it's significant, I think. So, uh, we accepted that, uh, that request and started to teach there in the public schools, just right in their system. It's all open in the public. It's not little private classes happening in the back room that creates suspicion about what foreigners are doing. We teach right out in the public school system, um, which has, it's its own set of nightmares, but it places you right in the people.

There's just no getting around it. You are surrounded by people. And, um, before two weeks is out, you're going to be invited home to people's houses for lunch. And you just, you just become, you just permeate everywhere through it. I just love, uh, the English teaching platform as a, as a way to, uh, to spread the word of God. Uh, other classroom pictures here. Uh, some of the classrooms are doable and some of them aren't, but you got what you did. So we started to teach English there.

We taught the English there for two years, uh, in, in the original village area where we were. However, in the middle of this also, there was a man, uh, pictured here on this, uh, sofa. And this is quite a recent, recent picture. But when we were bringing teams in and out of Bangladesh for the work project, this man's name is Sunny. He has a, a Muslim name that's a little harder for you to remember, but he goes by Sunny.

He, uh, was introduced to us by another person as a possible translator for us because we were bringing people through the capital, uh, down to a river, putting them on a boat. And it was complicated. We needed a little help. So, uh, he became our man to help funnel our volunteers through Dhaka City. Incidentally, he was an English teacher at an agricultural university in Dhaka City, the capital. So after he discovered that we were going to come back and teach English, he started putting a lot of pressure on us.

You have to come to my home area and teach English. Well, we said we didn't have enough volunteers to teach English. It would take, it was complicated. But we finally put it, put the, the fleece out and said, well, after the second year that if there would be, I think we needed 11 volunteers and another set of house parents, if we would have that, we would consider coming to his area. And God gave us the exact number that we needed. So we decided to go to his area to teach English, which was in the north part.

We weren't there. That was in 2012, the beginning of 2012. We weren't there in that village a week. And, uh, to this day, this makes no sense to me, but, uh, somebody knocked on our door and it was a family with a piece of paper in English written up by somebody because they could not speak a word of English, but they said their, it said that their son was in the hospital with cancer and he needed, uh, B positive blood and could we donate?

Well, we looked around the table and, um, everyone said, no, they're not B positive, B positive. I don't even know what my blood type is. I've never given blood. So I said, well, uh, I'm not opposed to it. I can go down to the clinic. I mean, wherever we got to go, I can get my blood checked, but what's the chances? I don't know what I have.

And, uh, so they said, well, next day you come down and here this clinic or hospital where this man was, was shared a wall, a boundary wall between the school where we were teaching and on the other side of the wall was this hospital clinic where this patient was that needed blood. So the next day I went down and, um, got my blood tested. Well, let me hope I was B positive. They said, well, would you want to give blood? I said, well, why not? I mean, I'm here.

So I donated some blood, uh, I volunteered to donate my blood. They said, do you want to go up and see the patient while we, uh, we had to check me for AIDS and whatever? I said, sure. So I went up and here was this young man, he's about 20 years old, uh, laying there. And incidentally, he did not survive from, uh, everything. But so I went down and gave blood and I left and I just had a bad feeling. I was like, somehow I should have had a more of a positive interaction with this person just to give him blood.

So then I think it was the following day, our team, which you'll see some of the rest of us on the other side here, decided to go down and, uh, the man in this, in this, this man right here, he was the, um, the head of the, uh, of that clinic hospital. The managing, uh, man there spoke a little bit of English, not a lot of English, but he spoke some. And, uh, so we asked him whether we could go up and, uh, see the patient and pray for him. And he said, yeah, yeah, we can do that.

I don't know if he knew what he was agreeing to. So we, uh, our team went up and, and we knelt around this man's bed and, uh, and we prayed for him. I had to open my eyes up. Um, I'm glad I waited to the end of the prayer because the room was packed with all the hospital staff. I guess it wasn't a normal occurrence in their village to have foreigners, you know, show up in a hospital room and kneel around a bed and pray for people. I don't think that was a routine that they were used to.

And so it pretty much attracted the whole hospital, uh, to come in and watch what was going on. And, um, so we did that. And then actually, oh, maybe it was a week later. So we actually went back and sang for him. It was in English, but it was what it was. We did our best. But after this, this happened after this, we had had our initial, uh, prayer meeting there. This man says to me, um, so like, who are you and like, where are you from and like, what are you doing here?

And, uh, we said, well, we're actually teaching English just right across the fence over here at that school. That's why we were here. And he said, oh, okay. He said, well, um, my son-in-law likes English. He said, I'm going to tell him about it. So, um, I think a I was going to check the date on this picture, um, because the man who we're referring to is actually on the right side of this picture when we went to sing for him. He walked up there with us and was standing there.

Uh, this is about the next, I think it was the following morning after that conversation or two mornings later. Um, this man showed up in the schoolyard and said, um, uh, my name is Amon. And, uh, my father-in-law says that you're teaching English and I like English. Could you teach me English? And, uh, I said, well, we actually had a very full schedule. And I was teaching four classes and everything else that was going on.

And I said, well, I hardly have time to have another class, but if you'd be willing to join the English, the teacher's class that I was having at the school for the teachers, if they'll let you join that, you may do that, but I don't have time for a special class. So he, uh, asked permission to do that. And, um, they permitted him to join the English class there. This is another picture of him in the market soon after I met him for the first time, him and his wife and his little daughter.

Um, so he joined the English class and I don't know if we were into it two or three weeks. One morning there was a class, there was a school program going on. So there was only one class period in the morning. And, um, after the class was over, he said to me, um, I have a question for you. Um, I've been going to university and I've discovered that, uh, Christians have an Old Testament and a New Testament. He said, could you tell me what the difference is?

And fortunately, um, I actually didn't know the man, or I would have, I would have just ran. Uh, I wasn't quite that smart. I said, well, that's a big subject. I don't know if we have time for that today. And he just looked at me and said, well, I have time. So, uh, he called me on it because I didn't, that was my best answer. And I had the time actually because there was no more classes. So, uh, I said, well, okay then. So we started, uh, talking.

And it's interesting if, and this is something if you ever can work in the Muslim world, get them to ask you the question. Because when you, they ask you the question, you can say whatever you want to because they asked you a question. If I would go out on the street and on any Muslim country and say, does anybody want to know the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament? There probably would be a single person stop and listen.

But because he asked me the question, he listened to me for two hours because he had asked me the question. Um, I was very hesitant because if you understand the Muslim theology and Christian theology, it all hangs on that very difference and it's Jesus Christ. And so, um, that was where that hung me a little bit. So, uh, so I was told him, I said, we started back in Genesis because that's where you need to start with Adam and Eve and the fall of man and what happens with sin. That's the question.

Uh, and the Islamic world has your way of doing good deeds. It gets you through. And so we walked through that scenario of how that would work or wouldn't work. And it rattled his world. It just completely rattled his world. Like he had never thought those thoughts before. And so, uh, it started out and said, that was about a two-hour conversation. A couple of days later, he had a couple more questions he wanted to ask me. And, uh, so this started a conversation and we had lots of conversations.

School would leave out. He'd come meet me out back of the building and we'd talk about things and we'd talk about things. And it wasn't just me. There were other people, uh, got involved with it too. There was, um, another incident with a couple of other people out back talking. And, um, as time went on, he gave his heart to the Lord. Um, and I don't know how to frame who this man actually is. Maybe Leah can go into it a little bit more too. But I didn't actually know the man. I actually did not know the man.

But a little bit of his, his, um, background. He was part of the Jamaat party in Bangladesh, which would be equivalent to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Uh, a very, very conservative, um, uh, family. Um, so conservative in fact that if his sisters would leave the house, the vehicle that they were going to ride in, like they had these small, uh, uh, battery-powered three-wheel things that would pull inside the courtyard.

The lady would crawl inside and they would wrap the thing completely dark so that she couldn't see out and nobody could see her. That conservative of a, of a, of a, of a worldview. He was Hafiz, means he had memorized the entire Quran. Not only that, that's in Arabic. Not only that, he understood what it said in Arabic. He says out of, out of a hundred that memorized the Quran, 99 don't understand what it says. They don't understand Arabic. They just memorized the Arabic. How you do that? I don't know.

But that's one of the miracles of the Quran that the Muslims hold up, that they'll memorize the whole thing. He had memorized this, the whole thing and understood it, which gives him a strong, uh, lever with his discussions. And on top of that, he was what they call Hafiz, which in, um, Islamic, uh, world, I heard somebody talk about context this morning. It's hard to, to me to start to explain the context of Islamic theory, but it's, it's outside of the Quran.

But they have like 80 or 90 topics that you have to be versed in, uh, and get tested in to be considered, um, a, a, a hoojer or a teacher of authority. He was all of that. He was, um, a leader at a mosque. He was a man who did the prayer calls. And I can still remember the one day when we were sitting there having a Bible discussion and his father-in-law called and said, hey, the imam didn't show up down here at the mosque. You need to come down here and have prayers.

And he did every argument in the world because he was not going to leave and go down. At that point, he was on the fence and to go down and have the prayers just was not something that he was going to do. Uh, and so he worked his way out of that, um, that whole discussion. Um, just, just to fast forward onto that, um, he was kind of alone there and he said, I need a church. I need a church of people that I can discuss my faith with. He said, even in the Islamic world, we have to discuss our faith to keep it alive.

I need a church to get a hold of that I can do it with. And there was not, there was no Christian church even. No, there was a little Lutheran something, um, that I wouldn't have sent him to to start with, uh, somewhere north of that. Otherwise, there was just no Christian, uh, group anywhere that you can even connect him with.

And so I told him, I said, well, I think the best way for that to take place is for you to start sharing your faith with your family and your friends and create a church group to be able to discuss your, your faith with. He said, well, that's a great idea. And so from there, the story of that area, uh, just kind of sprang out of that, uh, of him leading his friends who began to lead their friends, uh, in the way of Christ. I'm going to let off the story right there and let you take up from that.

You got that much time? Um, so, uh, not long after he was, uh, baptized, I had a struggle. Yeah, this was right after he was baptized. Uh, uh, and, uh, he was, uh, pretty wet and he didn't want to go outside till he dried off outside of the building because he didn't want people to ask questions about what happened, what was going on. Um, but not long after, I'm going to say within three months afterwards, we were actually in the area visiting him.

He had went down to his father-in-law's house and, um, for something to get his clothes or something. And he was going to come back through and we were going to have some final words and he never came back. And after a little while, his father-in-law called up kind of all frantic. Uh, he said the police had arrested him and he disappeared for 16 months in jail. Um, I am not to this moment completely clear on everything that was on. Uh, he was accused of, of, uh, murdering someone.

He says actually it was, um, the, the Madrasa religious school where he had studied. There were some students involved in taking out someone who was not, um, um, religious enough. He says he was not around, doesn't it? He doesn't know anything about it. But everybody in that school got named as, uh, being involved because they didn't know who it was. So all the students there got accused of being involved in it.

And so they held him for, um, I think it was 16 months until he was released because they said they didn't have enough evidence to hold him. And eventually, uh, we helped him work through all that. We only discovered that the, the person who actually accused him, um, wasn't even alive anymore. But the judge said, well, he needs $6,000 to write the piece of paper to say that he's, there's no accusation, that things are resolved. But he wouldn't do that without money.

Even though the people who were bringing the case had actually died, it was still hanging on his record. So his, his record is actually cleared now. But during that 16 months, I think was a very decisive time for him. As he sat in jail, he had just all the time in the world to think. And I said when he disappeared, I said, when he comes back out, either one of two things could happen. He's going to be a died in the womb Muslim or he is going to be completely Christian. And that's the way it went.

Uh, he actually sat in the jail and started through all the Hadith, writing down all the stuff that was wrong with Muhammad. And he was hiding it in the, in the, the jail library, his piece of paper that he was writing. He was going to write a book about this. And when he got released, he was released so fast he didn't have time to go get his papers. They just also just dumped him outside, which was very fortunate. I think that his papers got left there.

But, uh, through that time, uh, he became very solid in his belief in Christ and, uh, uh, commitment to walking, uh, that way. So, uh, but yeah, there was about 16 months in there. We didn't know where, what was happening or even necessarily why he was being held. Um, he says the reason it got back, brought back up was because some of his brother-in-laws became suspicious of, of him, uh, leaving Islam and turned him back in and, and fired up the case against, against him.

That I can't quite verify all of that, but that's the part of the story that went with that. So there was a gap from the time of he became a believer. Uh, and then till he began to share with his wife and, um, she became, came to the faith and some other friends. And, and what's really interesting is with, to me with him is because of his, um, um, stature in the Islamic community, he would just as soon talk to the imams because he said the average Muslim walking the street has never been told what Islam is about.

They've been told about the nice things that Muhammad did. He said they know nothing about all the rest of it. So he said, I can't, I have to go and tell them what Islam actually is before I can even talk with them about it. He likes to talk to the imams because they understand the problems with it and the problem of sin.

And one of the things that maybe I could just mention this is as he was on his journey, uh, he went to, uh, 17 madrasas and had a question that he was asking them, um, about sin and the Bible and some things like that. And, uh, he came back to me afterwards and he said, I went to these 17 schools. He said 15 of them told me we don't have the answer and two of them got angry at me. And he said, I told them, listen, I want to be a Muslim. Just answer my question.

Don't try to convince me with the strength of your arm. Just answer my question. Nobody can answer the question. So that began to open up his world to saying there's something more to this in the teachings of Jesus. And another thing that he would come back then as this became apparent in his mind, then he would say, then who is Muhammad? If this is true, who is Muhammad? And don't answer that question. I'm just telling you, if you're getting the Muslim world, you don't answer that question. You just do this.

Say, well, I think the way to know who Muhammad is is by discussing who Jesus is. We know who Jesus is. Then we'll know who Muhammad is. And it's what you'd be right about that because Jesus, even in Islam, Jesus is a sinless person. You can't get around that. And so we would go back and discuss Jesus again. And so one day all of a sudden he walked in and he said, I know who Muhammad is. He's a false prophet. And I didn't have to tell him that because he compared him against who Jesus was.

And that's your only safe way to do it. Because if Jesus can't stand on his own, just destroying something else doesn't give anybody something to stand on. Jesus stands on his own. So I'll let you go on from there. There's a, you know, there are millions of godly people in the world, but there's only, uh, there's a big difference between godly people. Muslims are godly people and the fact that they believe that there's one, one God. They believe there's sin. They know there's judgment, but they're not Jesus godly.

And in, in many ways, their, their system actually, um, encourages sin. Well, my first trip to Bangladesh happened in, um, um, February of 2013. My daughter, my oldest daughter was part of the, of the English teaching program in Charcale where he pointed out where the, where the, the, the flood damage was in the south. So I went over to visit her. She was involved seven winters, uh, between three and six months between teaching English and also learning Bangla. So in 2013, I went in February, I went over myself.

My wife did not go with me that time. And I visited her that time. And then we went together as a, as a family, my wife and I and, um, Skipper went with us in December of 2016 when she was in, uh, uh, uh, she was learning Bangla. And then in 2022, I was asked to go over to be help with the pastoral teaching, uh, in February of 2022. And then again in 2023, I was involved in pastoral teaching as well.

So, um, just for discussion of, of all the pictures I share, I get asked over and over again, are the vegetables as delicious as what they look like over there? And the answer is yes. It's amazing. The vegetables over there that you can, uh, you, I can, the, the, their primary, their primary food is rice, but the vegetables is part of it. And as an American, if you can get those vegetables, which are easily available, they are, they are beautiful and they are delicious.

I don't need, you notice that there's a man sitting in among that fruit there? And that's just one of many, uh, this was, uh, these are just some peripheral things. But when I was there this past in February, our, the place where we were staying in Nazipur, there's a river going by. And I'm not sure what the name of the river is, but there's a government project going on where they're stabilizing the riverbank with concrete blocks. And there's, there's concrete, there's precast concrete blocks.

Um, I think they were, uh, I think they were like 12 inches deep. Some of them were half blocks, some of them were whole blocks. They dug a footer along the river and then they were, they lined the bank, they cleaned the bank up, was putting that there. So I enjoyed watching that project, uh, there. This is, um, this is a man. We were having an after pastoral meeting. We was having one evening, he was there and he was telling me his, his story.

And I, I wish I could have actually, uh, shared some of the video I took of him telling the story, but I decided, decided not to. But, uh, he basically was telling me his journey from, I think his first inquiry, I think he went to a Catholic church, is that right, Arnold? And then they told him that if you want answers, you need to go to, uh, an evangelical church of some kind. And this was all like 10 years, I think, before this story began where, where Arnold started at.

So the time Arnold gets there, the pictures he's showing there, if I got my calculations right, he's roughly 29 years old. God, I just asked him this morning, I said, by the way, what year were you born? He said, I think I was born in '82 and my wife was born in '92. So that would put him about 40, 41-ish. They're not exactly sure because back in those days, the birthdays weren't always kept.

I think more recently there's more accurate, uh, birth details, but it gets a little ambiguous when you go back 30, 40 years ago. I think it was like around that time. This is another picture of a man. Um, this was a, a picture of him. This was a, uh, a year ago, I believe, in Azamir. This was a, uh, they left me get involved in that, uh, government project in a little bit there. They only left me do it for a couple of minutes and then just shooed me away. They said they didn't need my help no more.

To give you a little idea of, of this man's ambitions and Arnold gave you the background to his Islamic background. But this is his brother, a little bit younger than him. And I guess in my everyday language, we would call him, uh, an Islamic evangelist. Uh, man's ambitions was to be like his younger brother, be a traveling Islamic evangelist. And to give you a little idea. এই ছেলে মৃত্যু হয় আমার বোনকে একবার নয়, দুইবার নয়, 42 বার তাকে দর্শন করে। This is not English, but this gives you a little idea.

মৃত্যু মহিলাকে দর্শন করা হয়েছে রাজধানীতে 42 বার। শিশু দুই বছরের বাচ্চা থেকে নিয়ে 82 বছরের বৃদ্ধা পর্যন্ত রেহাই পায় না। কথা বলেন ঠিক কিনা?

ঠিক। তবে আমি বলি, জানেন, আমার প্রিয় ভাইয়েরা, বলে দিতে চাই, এই মহাশালী জমিনে জানিনা আপনাদের সাথে দেখা হবে কিনা। 50 বছর, 40 বছর, 100 বছর প্রয়োজন নাই। 50 বছর লাগবে না, 40 বছর লাগবে না, 40 মিনিট লাগবে না, 40 সপ্তাহ লাগবে না। 40 মিনিটের ভিতরে বাংলাদেশে ধর্ষণ বন্ধ হবে। যদি আমরা কোরআন আল কারীম দিয়ে, যদি কোরআন আল কারীম পার্লামেন্টে নিয়ে কোরআনে আইন দিয়ে যদি ধর্ষণের বিচার করা হয়, এ বাংলাদেশ ধর্ষণ বন্ধ হবে। কথা বলেন ঠিক কিনা?

অতএব, কারা কারা জানে, সোনার বাংলাদেশে কোরআন দিয়ে বিচার করা হোক, তারা তারা দু হাত উঁচু করে আল্লাহকে দেখা। আল্লাহু আকবার! যারা পার্লামেন্টে যাবে, 345 জনকে যদি কোরআনের ভ্যাকসিন দেয়, ওরা উল্টাপাল্টা বক্তব্য দিতে পারবে না। বিচারকদের যদি এই ভ্যাকসিন দেয়, ওরা কি উল্টা বিচার করতে পারবে? পারবে না। কারণ কোরআন বাধা দেবে। কারণ কোরআন, কোরআন ইসলাহ করতে বলেছে, তাই না? কোরআন তাদেরকে ন্যায় বিচার করতে বলেছে। এজন্য কোরআনের ভ্যাকসিন সব জায়গায় দেয়ার দরকার আছে, না নাই?

আছে। এ বাংলার ইতিহাসে এমন ব্যক্তিরা ছিল যারা রাষ্ট্রের গুরুত্বপূর্ণ পদে দায়িত্ব পালন করার পরেও তাদের। কেবল আমাদের ধরে দুর্নীতির গন্ধ পাওয়া যায় নাই। কথা বলেন ঠিক কিনা? বুঝে নিবেন, মুসলমান গুরুত্বপূর্ণ দুইটা পদে মন্ত্রিত্ব পালন করেছিলেন। তাদের স্বপ্ন ছিল একটাই, আল্লাহর জমিনে কোরআনুল কারীমকে বাস্তবায়ন করা। ঠিক কিনা?

ঠিক। এই মানুষগুলো বাতিলের কাছে তারা মাথা নত করে নাই। বাতিলের কাছে মাথা নত করে নাই। কোরআনের জন্য ফাঁসির কাছ থেকে ঝুলে গিয়েছে। এরপরও বাতিলের কাছে মাথা নত করে নাই। So when a man, uh, made a choice for Christ, this is, this glory is what he left behind. And, uh, the prestige and a good salary. I think, I think he told me that his brother gets the equivalent of a, of America, uh, $30,000 American salary, which is a huge salary for, uh, in their, in their context.

One of the, uh, there was a man would like to have an opportunity to put his brother, he's, he tried it one time back, I think it was in 2020 or 21, to have my father actually have a meeting with this man. And, uh, the subject, they was going to discuss the Old Testament because one of the things that's interesting about the Muslim, I mean, there's some common ground you can follow, find with, with, with the Old Testament stories.

And that varies depending on the education of the Muslim man, how much he actually knows about the Old Testament. But they know some stories. And of course, there's a big difference in the understanding of Abraham and whose son was being offered, uh, on Mount Moriah, whether it was Ishmael or whether it was Isaac. But, you know, like where Arnold started back in Genesis, there was a subject of sin and creation and all those fundamental things there, you can find some common ground on.

This is, uh, this was our, uh, uh, our ministers conference this past February, just, just recent February. And, um, I think we had, uh, I think there was 18 there. There's two overseers. Um, I think, I think the man in the back with a light shirt is one of them. I think that's Udum. He had Hindu background. And Aman is, I believe Aman's on his face. He, I think he's sitting to my immediate right. Let me see if I have another picture. No. Well, Aman was sitting on the left.

And then the rest of them are deacons and ministers involved in the ministry there. So last year, this is what our, our room looked like. We had a PowerPoint. I had a draw, a whiteboard to work with. Uh, there's another picture of that. This is a picture of Aman and his wife, Mifta. After the one day's conference, we had supper or no, this is a lunch. This is a lunchtime. So that gives you another picture of her. She's 10 years younger than he is. He's right around 40, he's around 30. And they have two children.

And, um, he told me, I asked him this time, I said, could you tell me the story? How did you two get, uh, get together? And so he went in, he joyfully went into a long story because it was an arranged marriage. So when they asked you, one of the common questions they asked you, are you married? And was it a love marriage or an arranged marriage? So they, they're very inquisitive about that, you know? So in his case, it was an arranged marriage.

He told me, he said, uh, that clinic that Arnold was showing a while ago where that boy was, his sister was there for appendicitis or something. And he was in their hospital system over there. You don't have the amenities, the amenities that you have here of food being provided for you and medications and all that. Now over there, somebody has to go get your medication that the doctor orders. Somebody has to bring you food. So if you're in the hospital, you have to have somebody.

If you don't have a family member to look after you, you won't make it. Anyway, he was given the responsibility to look after his sister who was at this hospital. Now keep in mind, this hospital where that man Arnold pointed out, it was his daughter that he married eventually. And while he was there, Mifta's younger sister would come to visit his sister while she was bedridden. But he never, he one day his sister had a birthday and Mifta sent a balloon with her name on it to the clinic.

And he said, I remember that name, Mifta. And he said, I never heard of it before. And I was, I liked the sound of the name, he said. So he said, as time went on, he got into preaching circles and stuff like that. And then he said, I got to the point where he said, I thought, decided it was time to get married. So he said, I said something to my uncles and his father, his father, um, his uncle was best friends with the man that was in charge of the clinic, who was also her father.

And through that arrangement, uh, they agreed to, to allow him to get married to this girl that he has never seen. And he said, I did see, he said, I was at her house one day and he said, I saw her arm come through the curtain to reach for a plate on the table. But he said, that's the most I've ever, ever, ever seen it. So he said, before we got married, my mother went and had a visit with her to give her okay. And then he said, in our culture, he said, uh, the men always buy the bride's outfit.

He said, so he said, I went and I bought her jewelry and he said, I bought her shoes and I bought her a dress and whatever thing, never somebody he's never seen yet. And he said, I bought her, I healed the shoes. He said, and so they had a marriage again. She is fully veiled. He said, I didn't see her until after we were married. But lo and behold, here she was taller than what he was. So he didn't need to high heel shoes, he said. So that was just a little interesting part of their life here.

Uh, there's my father and Aman, Aman, Aman, we didn't have, Aman's not really an official interpreter, but he can fill the role. It's difficult for him. Uh, but if you give him time and you speak distinctly, and sometimes he'll ask you again, and, uh, I think he does an okay job. And one of the ways I discovered to learn whether you're, what you're teaching is getting cross is by asking questions. So if I ask a question, if I do some teaching and I ask a question, so he interprets my question into Bangla.

The answers come back from Bangla back into English. If there's a correspondence, I know they're getting it. If there's, if it's an irrelevant answer, I know that they're not getting it. So that's one of the ways I test whether our training or interpreting and translation is, is getting across. Um, also interesting, another interesting fact last year when I went over, they, I, they asked if I would go over to help with some teaching. I said, well, what, what do you want to teach about?

And he said, well, you might find this amusing, but in the Islamic world, there's the, the role of the women or I guess you would call hyper subjective or something like that, maybe. Uh, whereas the women's role in the Islamic world is very, very, very subjective to the point where it's more, he's almost of a property type thing. And, but when you come into Christianity, the, the women have an obtain a liberty that they've never had before.

Number one is for a lady, for instance, this is Udum's wife here, I think, sitting in a service. Uh, the fact of a lady, uh, Arnold, you told me they never, ever go to a mosque, right? In, in Bangla. Now in some countries, there are women's courts, but in Bangladesh, a lady never is in a, a, a worship, uh, Islamic worship, worship service. So the, the cultural freedom of a, uh, of a sister sitting in a worship service is really mind blowing, really. Oh, this is where I was going with a point.

Last year, they wanted to know if I would come and speak to, um, husband and wife relationships because they thought that since they've become Christians, that their, their women have been coming too bossy, they said. They've been taking too much of a, a leadership role in their life. And they want to know how to deal with all this because now they're telling us what to do and all kinds of things.

So, uh, last year's my subject was, I just used Ephesians chapter five and we worked through that of the husband and wife relationship. What? All right. This year they asked me if I go. I said, well, I'll go this time if you let me talk about what I want to talk about. And they said, well, what is that? I said, I want to talk about the two covenants. So that's what you see up here is the two covenants. And I spent a lot of time debating whether I should make a PowerPoint out of it or not.

And I waffled back and forth a little bit. And then finally I decided, yes, I need to do that. I'm really glad I did because I like to say, I think pictures worth a thousand words when in Bangladesh, a picture is worth 2,000. So I, I was able to communicate more effectively by using pictures and words. And also, also I was able to make my PowerPoint. I would use English and then I, I would also use the Bangla.

Uh, if I had a Bible verse, I would use the KM, uh, Bangla underneath of my English so that there would be a parallel all the time so that, uh, because some of them can understand English and some of them only understand Bangla. So I, I really, this was on my heart a lot and I really tried to my best to, to, because I'm, I'm jealous for this subject for a couple of reasons.

And I've been here often enough to know that I have, I have some opinions on this subject, but I, uh, they have a little bit of evangelical influence over there, one of them being a Seventh-day Adventist. And I'm, I'm jealous for them that they have the theological tools it takes to, to, to, uh, resist that kind of influence into their life. And so I'm, I'm a very amateur PowerPoint builder, but, uh, I, I was able to get some things.

I spent hours on this thing here, um, trying to illustrate, um, three con, three passages in the Bible, starting with Genesis and the creation, also Second Corinthians chapter three and Galatians chapter four, trying to build a PowerPoint that illustrates the, uh, the, and so this was a, a beginning one and this was a deeper one. So there's, you have Galatians chapter four, um, demonstrated on top of two other concepts, the creation and as well as the Second Corinthians chapter three.

So, uh, this was part of my teaching here on, uh, this one and this. I think some of you have seen this one before, um, was sort of the highlights of my, my teaching. After our conference there, we spent, um, we went and traveled to a new location where there was a new upstart house church. And here we are, we, we rented a, uh, uh, they call it a, uh, um, what is it called? Mini, mini bus or something. It's actually like a little mini, uh, van.

And that's Aman and this is his little boy, Elijah, Elijah, and that's his daughter, which would have been the baby in the picture that Arnold showed a while ago. And that's Mifta in the back, my mom, me, and I think that's either Cudis or, uh, or, um, can't think of the old man's name. Of course, my father and the driver's on the front, so you can't see that. This is the occasion. And again, I, I'm just wanting to emphasize this, this scene.

Uh, we're having a, we're having a worship service here and they spread out a, a blanket on the floor and the lady sat down in the, on the blanket. The men sat in the bank, the back, and, uh, Aman and Udum, my father and I were sitting in the front. When they, it seemed like when they, when they're sitting, they like us. If they're on their, if they're on the floor, they want us on chairs. And that just seemed like they felt uncomfortable if I was standing and they were on the floor.

So a lot of times if they, if our audience was seated on the floor, we sat on chairs. This is just, uh, something that was on a Hindu temple over there. It says if God didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him. And I kind of faded out there. And then the other sign I saw was morality is religion and practice. Religion is morality in principle, word of law. I thought that was interesting. Oh, another thing I wanted to say was the church over there is made up of Hindus and Muslims.

Most evangelicals only do their outreach to Hindus. They, they would not take the risk of going to the Muslim. But in our, um, um, the context over there, if I was going to guess, I don't know this number exactly, but I would guess it's about 30% Hindu, 70% Muslim background. So you have these two culturally background people coming together and trying to have church together. The Hindu being despised by the, by the Muslim for his idolatry and many gods.

And so even in their villages or there's, there's cultural separation in their villages. Uh, like you have your Hindu village and then you have your Muslim village. And I, I don't think there's much cross, crosses on, uh, mostly there's, there's divided lines. Either you're here or you're here. I'm told that 90% of the country is Muslim, right? And 10% Hindu, something like that. But it seems like when I'm over there, it seems like way more Hindu than just 10%.

But I don't know if that's just where we're at or what it is, because the house that we were actually staying in was actually a Hindu village. And there's, there's idol temples. There's like two or three within seeing distance of just our house. But my point is you have these two culturally background people having church together, um, and trying to understand each other and appreciating each other, uh, who before didn't have much appreciation for each other.

And incidentally, the way it worked out, the two overseers, Aman being Muslim background, Udum was a Hindu background. So you have this balance there in the church right now between, uh, that can help understand each other's background and have one body in Christ. And, um, so I, I take some pleasure in just observing that kind of thing. Uh, this was actually from a year ago. This was a pot of, uh, rice soup that they was making for us. Uh, this was from last year also.

We went to a one, um, location and this, this was actually a Catholic leprosy, uh, compound. It was like a 150 acre, 100, 150 acre, um, um, place was actually for leprosy. And they, they left us, the Catholics just left us use their, their, their building there for a service. Um, this was the sign that's on the outside of our gate there where we stay. That's salt literacy, what we call SFL, FLI International, which is our NGO for the country of Bangladesh. Uh, this is the same spot.

Uh, I had done a, a, a teaching on the Lord of the bread and how that compared to John chapter six. Uh, this is, I think this was a, a salt, a salt thing going on here. And I think that's about it. And I'm about out, amount of time. So there you go. So do you have any questions for Arnold or not? Yes. Arnold, come up here because I can't answer these. Yeah. Uh, can you give us an idea of how many churches and how many people, uh, that's there? That's one question I wasn't supposed to answer.

That was the only question I wasn't supposed to answer. You can ask him. Um, it's a very short video. It could be cut out. The only reason why I hesitate to do that is because, um, it can, it can, I don't know how to say it, but there's, well, the evangelicals put so much, uh, emphasis on numbers over there. It's almost like a business practice. Like they'll hand out blankets and whatever and baptize people just to get numbers to send back to America to collect more money to send over there.

Is the success of a mission based on a big number to you or is the salvation of one soul worth it? So there is a probably 10 churches in the north, three, four, five. There's probably about 15 churches there, um, over 300 members from the different areas together. And I think Aman told me that, that they had a hundred, uh, asking for teaching and baptism while when we were there in February. Yeah, that are under like they're meeting with and having regular contact with and besides that. Right. Second question.

You guys, how do you guys work with them? Is it the local leadership? You guys, how do you guys relate or do they run all their own leadership? How do you involve? Okay. So let me give, let me give a little bit of context for that. Recently, I have some places, somebody asked me about how our experiment's going in Bangladesh. And I wanted to know it's not an experiment because we're doing things a little different than maybe the conventional, uh, Anabaptist world that today does missions.

And it's not about a, a, um, an experiment. We are trying to, uh, let them be completely indigenous and walk beside them instead of being, uh, being their church for them. And the reason for that is we are in the middle of a Muslim world. It's only a matter of time until you have stepped over the line and you get kicked out. So if that church is built around us, when we have to, we can't come back anymore, how do they go on?

So from the beginning, our goal was to prepare them to go on without us because I don't know how many days we get to be there. And it's only by the grace of God that we're even still there because if you knew how many times my dad has been turned into the police, just for example, and God keeps us there for some reason. It's only the hand of God. I'll just give one example of some down in the church of Village Church, Charcot Lee. One day, a, uh, police, a, the sergeant from the police station showed up.

He said, "I need to come out here and tell you that there's been a complaint filed against you at the police station for handing out Bibles." He said, "I want you to know I'm a Hindu and I don't care." He shook his hand and walked back out the gate. So why was it that the sergeant at the police station was a Hindu instead of a Muslim man? That because they could deny our visas tomorrow.

So to me, it's only the hand of God that keeps us there because if you're going to do what you're supposed to do, sooner or later you're going to cross lines and wires, and you're going to have unhappy people with you. So it was from our goal from the beginning to walk beside them and prepare them to just be completely on their own, not because it's an experiment of how to do missions differently than everybody else does. So, so it is completely run on a daily basis by them.

Now they consult with my father a lot if they have questions about something or if there's some major issues. He's had what he's a lot of the major issues has surrounded marriage issues because marriage in their country is just a completely different world than what we are. I mean, what do you do? Uh, what makes a marriage? If you got married to someone you never saw or ever met before you got married and they turn and walk away, like, are you married or aren't you?

You know, like we have certain things that we think define what a marriage is and, uh, all of a sudden discovering that here a man had a second wife someplace that he had left years ago, uh, suddenly just, you know, and some things like that, you know, they've, we went over and walked along beside them, but tried to prepare them to be in charge and to move forward on their own. So, well, it should, but let me just give a little bit of difference.

And this is why I think, I think it was the hand of God that, that brought Aman sort of as a leader there because being what who he was had gave him a lot of leadership skills to be able to step right out and he was used to being a leader. He just suddenly had a different gospel to share. A little bit like Paul. Yes. Paul was well versed in the Jewish thing, but when he became a follower of Christ, he had all the same ambition to promote that as he had when he was promoting the Jewish thing. Okay.

I see a lot of churches and this is just, please understand what I'm saying, but, um, more people have become the majority of the members and they don't have the leadership ability to start leading a church. And so it takes people, I'm going to say from our understanding to be able to lead until a generation becomes that understanding. But with Aman and his leadership ability and reaching out to other imams of the leadership that's sitting at the table, six or eight of them are also ex-imams.

They have leadership skills. That's able to take that church forward in a way that they can go on their own. And some of the other parts of the country where he's, he's, his presence in there, it is not as vibrant as where he is. And getting able to have a scattered group of college students who are in various different places to try to get together and make a cohesive church has been a challenge. Whereas up there with his leadership and a lot more families involved, it has been a lot more of a stable thing.

I don't know if that's answering your question, but I saw some more questions. So yeah, thanks for sharing. Um, I've heard this story. I've, I've, uh, my sister, my wife's sister is Megan and her husband, Elijah Zerman. And so I've heard this story like snitches here, here and there for a long time. And to be actually here, especially your, uh, just summarize everything.

Um, and one thing that has been, uh, really inspirational for me for the last number of years is hearing Aman, that's how you pronounce it, and how nailing one influential person like that made the church just explode. Like, and I noticed you didn't weren't really saying numbers and all that, but that has been to hear the testimony of when, when they moved, went to that village, there was only him. And then now there's this the big vibrant church.

Um, so yeah, thanks for sharing that and filling in the gaps on, uh, the story that. Yeah. And one of the things I just want to point out is sometimes on our English teaching teams, some of the girls feel like maybe they didn't really contribute that much. You know, all they did was they taught, you know, English or in their classrooms. But what it did was it gave us a legitimate presence to be there.

So while we had that legitimate presence, then somebody else could be down on the riverbank having a spiritual discussion with somebody because we needed, we needed to be unquestioned and we needed a reason to be there. I can't just go into a community and plop down and put up a sign and say, "Christian service held here, come on Sunday." It just simply isn't going to work. So we have to have a legitimate reason to be in that community.

And sometimes for some of the team members that taught English, that's the part that they contributed. So there's lots of people that involved in this that aren't named that are such a huge asset to making it happen. So for everyone out there who knows someone that went, whose name wasn't mentioned, they play in a very important role with the whole, um, story there.

I think this was partially answered already, but I just, I was thinking through the whole thing and kind of waiting, nothing, not much was said about like the backlash that, that maybe you've experienced or the, the converts have experienced from their families, the community. Um, or did they just kind of stay quiet about it? What, what kind of response to the, to they give from their families? Well, Aman's mother has threatened him on numerous occasions claiming that she has someone hired to come kill him.

That's, uh, Bangladesh is by large part, uh, a peaceful version of Islam. They're not super radical, but it's there. The elements stick around. There are people that get taken out by other Islamic, uh, radical people.

I think it's God's hand that protects him from being there, uh, protects him from that the church still needs him for whatever reason, the reason that that hasn't happened with his brother being the person that he is, uh, and he knows what Aman is, how that continues to go together other than God's hand. I don't know. Um, but there, but the idea of the, uh, there is oppression, but it, it can be useful. And I'll just give you one example of this.

So there was a Hindu man, uh, in the village of Kaliganj who made idols. He was a little silversmith, made these little, uh, yeah, the items that they worshipped when he became a believer. So he's not going to make idols anymore. So he, he quit that business and he decided to open up a wholesale food, uh, thing where you bought rice and different things like that. Probably there's nobody to come. Nobody in his village was going to come buy rice off of him because after all he left the religion.

So that's more of the typical way that they get persecuted. Like you can't use the well in here anymore. We are not going to have you contaminating our water. So in that way they can just like force you right out. So in the middle of all that, COVID hits and this man just barely survived. He can't hardly get any customers to come. So we gave him enough money to go out into the village and give 80 families food.

So suddenly the man who they were oppressing reached out to them with a gift and it turned his whole business around because suddenly people started showing up saying, "Okay, what's different about you?" Because, um, there was no mosque that came and gave us food. There was no Hindu table that came, uh, Hindu temple that came and gave us food. Why did you?

And all of a sudden he started to have this trickle of people start to show up at his shop, not just to buy food, but to have a conversation with him about why did you do what you did? Because we were beaten up on you. We were all boycotting your store. And then you turned around and gave us food. What'd you do that for? And it just like changed the whole thing. So if it, I think those, the, the, um, I won't recall persecution, but maybe the oppression that happens if used properly, I think can open doors.

If they can understand what Jesus' thing was of the, the going the second mile. The second mile idea is, is that that Roman soldier knew that the man that he had forced to carry his bag would have killed him if he could have. And when he gets to the other point, the man says, "I'll carry it another mile." And he says, "Why in the world would you ever do a thing like that?" Because he thought the man would have wished to kill him.

Now all of a sudden challenges everything he thought that he knew about this person who was forced to carry his bag. So when that same thing starts to happen where you, you're oppressing this person and he turns around and gives you something, it's like, "What are you talking about here?" That's going the second mile. Not just that somebody overcharged me. So I just get, you know, I think we, we misunderstand the second mile thing just a little bit in the way we use the term most of the time. Interesting.

Like when we have a meeting like that, nobody carries a Bible to the meeting. They have phones. It's an interesting world over there. Well, the other thing that they would do on a lot of me. So, so like Aman is, is very, um, uh, he's very cautious about how he presents himself and who he talks to and how he introduces his subject to prevent backlash. But one of the things they've done on numerous occasions is we have the salt program over there, which is a savings loan program, which they're involved in.

They'll take salt manuals along. Yeah, right. And the one time, so what this is right here, a service, all of a sudden my dad was facing the other way and all of a sudden this guy started talking about something to do with the salt manual. He's like, "What in the world is going on here? Like where did we lose, where did we lose this conversation?" And he just covered back two police that showed up at the corner of the building.

And just very discreetly, he just switched over and he started talking about what was a certain thing on a certain page. And after a while, um, that then they said up, "Oh, this is a, oh, they wanted to bring a news reporter in." Well, by the time the news reporter got there, there was no meeting anymore. They just like dissolved that thing. So, you know, you use some wisdom on, on how to, to work in the culture. This book right here is what they carried to our meeting. This is a salt manual. Okay.

Now they all have Bibles and they all have personal Bibles and we, we've handed out thousands. I wouldn't even know how many Bibles we've given away. My father's given to imams and hundreds and maybe even thousands of Bibles. But when they come, when they're walking to the meeting, you see them carrying this thing and they have a phone. A lot of them have two phones. They have a cheap flip phone, which is cheap service.

And then they have a smartphone that they just turn on when they need it because I think they pay as they go or something like that. So a lot of them have two phones. I mean, they'll use one, the other. So yeah. Yeah, you do need wisdom to work in the, in the country. You can get yourself tossed out tomorrow if you, if you wish to. And that's also why we, we kind of decided from the beginning we've, we're not going to purchase any property.

We're not going to have any, use all public transportation, uh, rent any apartment we have so that we have no permanent, we have nothing to defend there as far as ownership, uh, material laws. Yeah. If I need, if I need tossed, well, you that, or the other thing is, uh, if you do get backlash, what are they going to come to? Burn your building down? They're going to destroy your vehicle. What do you, what do you, what's going to happen? You're going to want to protect all of that.

So as you make your decisions in life, you start to think about, well, if I'm going to go down to this certain place, uh, what's going to come out? You know what? I better not go because what would happen if it does not matter what happened if, because there's nothing that they can, that if they burn down the building that I'm standing, it's the government building that they're going to burn down. You know what I mean? It's not my personal thing. So I feel much more at liberty to just share Jesus.

And I wish I could count how many times my dad came around to me and said, you know what? They're asking me to come down here by the river to have a discussion. Do you think I should go? I think it's a setup. Well, I suppose it is. And it's never been a setup yet, but it's been some really suspicious looking times and places in the middle of the night that we've had meetings. But if you are carrying any hesitation about what are we going to do about this organization?

What are we going to do about this, this, this compound that we owned in the, in the vehicles that might get burnt or trashed? If you don't have any of that weighing on your mind and you can just walk out and share your, your story, well, what free? What happens if you, if you maintain that mindset that you got things to take and protect? Now you got to build a compound with wire around it, locks, keep everybody out. Suddenly you're a whole different defense mechanism because it's totally different.

So, um, and even that building where we were standing and had this meeting here, we have the salt, the, uh, SFLOB, uh, uh, offices in the basement. And when the, the government is almost overprotective to the point of being annoying sometimes. And when they discovered that we was there, Aman was going home one, uh, one evening after, and he has to walk past the police station to go to his house.

And the police would say to him, he said, if you don't put two guards there, we're going to take your, uh, NGO away from you, which I think was an empty threat. But anyway, two brothers had to stay in the basement, uh, where I should say in the, in the salt office, just because the government said there had to be two guards there to, to watch out for us Americans, you know? So it's a little bit, sometimes you like, come on, let us alone by that stuff. Well, if that's it, uh, we'll wrap it up.

And, um, yep, I guess that's all.