Phil & Christine in Minnesota, USA

Christine & I just wanted to update you on what we are facing in this time of COVID-19. Our teams continue to work in Bangladesh. But shortly before the really serious lockdown began in Bangladesh, the international staff team asked Christine & I to take some R&R in Dhaka (the capital). So we ended up leaving Cox's Bazar on (what we didn't know at the time was) the last flight out of dodge (or out of Cox's). So we ended up getting stuck in Dhaka, and working remotely from there.

After the huge distribution, NUT work is scaled back

After having been there for 3 weeks, and having no hope that we would be able to get back to Cox's anytime soon (given the fact that all commercial flights are grounded into the month of May), we again consulted with our country director and international colleagues. From that discussion we decided to take a repatriation flight arranged by the US embassy in Dhaka to Washington DC on the 13th of this month. We arrived in Dulles on the 14th and drove to Minnesota from Dulles. So we have been quarantining in the basement airbnb of a young couple that live next to our son, Nathan, and his wife Anna.

The plan is that we will continue to work remotely (late in the evening and early in the morning when we can have contact) with our teams from here until we can return to BGD. After quarantine Christine will work at renewing her passport, and we will apply to renew our visas (which you remember were expiring on May 1) while we wait for international flights between BGD and the US to resume.

In a wonderful twist (that only God could orchestrate), our country director feels that it should be easier, because of the corona virus, for Christine and I to get visas for BGD because we both have our Master's in Public Heath (shout out to Tulane University!) and the government of BGD is more open to people with such degrees given the crisis.

I want to give you some resources that I have been collecting over the last month or so that you can look at if you want to find out more about how the refugees are facing the crisis (the first is a link to an interview that our country director gave to Tearfund New Zealand):

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=220079196103162 - you can follow this Medair FB page if you want to keep up with what Medair is doing around the world.

https://www.msf.org/rohingya-refugees-left-starve-sea

https://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/news/virus-can-cause-havoc-rohingya-camps-1882162

Thank you so much for your support!

Praise:

1. Safe travel to Minneapolis
2. The understanding of our Bangladeshi colleagues as we took the decision to leave BGD for the time being. 

Prayer:

1. For the peace of mind of our colleagues, a few of whom have expressed dismay that we have left a country with a few hundred reported cases of the virus, to rejoin a country that has 3x more than any other country of the world.
2. For our visa application process.
3. For our world in the time of this crisis (this probably goes without saying).
4. For resolution of some existing health issues that Christine has been dealing with. 
5. For the Rohingya refugees who face a multitude of crises, including the corona virus. And that God would continue to operate this miracle of no confirmed cases in the camps. Divine intervention is the only hope of this remaining the case. 

Your resiliency during a time of COVID-19

I was recently led to re-read these questions that I posed to you in our post of the 23rd of November:

• How would you respond if you were forced from your home? 
• Would you be able to find joy? 
• How would you combat creeping despair? 
• What would be your strategies for resilience?

Rather than being forced from your homes, most of you have confined to your homes. But I think those questions are quite pertinent for all of us in this time!

This article by NT Wright helped me to crystallize some of the lament in our hearts in this time: https://time.com/5808495/coronavirus-christianity/?fbclid=IwAR3zPKoEDoQBYVsPE4uGsOzAKEPmFx9SK_YCqGBv8BUCG9_fnGeFGBVe9Ss

I have these laments (among others):

1. That a people so marginalized already are only marginalized more by COVID-19;
2. That we are separated from our biological extended and nuclear family during this time;
3. That I find it so difficult to see past my own inconveniences caused by COVID-19 to be able to perceive the dire consequences for others;
4. That Christine has not been able to shake illness for the last month or so;
5.  That this illness could be what forces us to leave this place where we feel called to work, and this people with whom we feel called to walk;
6. That the poor are made poorer by such circumstances. 

I have been drawn to the biblical laments for some time (those of you from Emmanuel Mennonite in Minneapolis might remember us bringing our laments to the altar some years back). These writers cry out to God because they know him as He who acts on behalf of His people. So their lament is an act of faith, not an act of despair! In fact, the flip side of the coin bearing the image of lament is an image of faith! The Biblical writers didn't write out of abject despair wondering whether God even exists - they rather wrote out of their relationship with a God who they existentially knew and experienced.

Jesus, in the very travails of death on the cross, quotes from one of these Biblical songs of lament - Psalm 22 - when "...about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, 'Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?' that is, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'" Maybe you feel a bit like the psalmist, who continues on by saying, "Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?"

I am certainly not smart enough to understand what God is doing, or allowing to happen, through COVID-19. NT Wright suggests (to those of us so influenced by the Enlightenment) that we may find no rational answer to to this question. In Stanley Hauerwas' book Naming the Silences, he suggests that the question we would be asking ourselves is whether or not we have a community surrounding us when we suffer, rather than why God allows suffering.

Psalm 46 is a place where I have sought comfort in these nearly unprecedented days:

1 ¶  God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

2  Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;

3  though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult. Selah

4  There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.

5  God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns.

6 ¶  The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts.

7  The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah

8  Come, behold the works of the LORD; see what desolations he has brought on the earth.

9  He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire.

10  "Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth."

11  The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah

So I come back to my questions: 

• Are we able to find joy in these difficult circumstances? 
• Do you have strategies for combating creeping despair? 
• What are your strategies for resilience?

We would love to hear what your strategies for resilience are as you yourself - and all people around our globe - face these cataclysmic changes to our daily existence. What ways are you finding to love your neighbors (next door or around the world) at this time?

My prayer is that the God of all comfort will share His with you - that you, in turn, can share this comfort with others!

(c) Medair / Hailey Sadler