Urgent invitation to prayer

Greetings to all!

I would simply like to use this blog to invite you to be praying for a few things.

First, our District (where both our offices and the refugee camp are located) has gone into a pretty draconian lockdown to attempt to stem the tide of new COVID-19 cases. This is good from a public health standpoint, but it has also meant that movement around the District is severely curtailed. This has also led to some vigilantism as some community members take their safeguarding from the virus into their own hands. It is difficult for our vehicles to move in order to pick up staff. At the same time we have concerns for staff who walk to our vehicles to be picked up as they might encounter such vigilantism. More and more NGO workers are being targeted as simply ignoring government regulations - and therefore fair game for vigilantes. Please pray for our duty to safeguard the well-being of our staff as well as our duty to serve the Rohingya in this difficult environment. 

Also pray for the sickness of team members and their extended families. We now have some field and base staff who are in quarantine due to either either having symptoms of the virus themselves, or having been in contact with persons who have tested positive. Please pray for protection from the virus and healing of staff members who test positive. 

Needless to say, we would invite prayer for the Rohingya. The number of infected refugees is now in double digits. And the rumor is running rampant through the camps that those refugees who test positive will be sent to this island off the coast, Basan Char, where the government has wanted to move refugees. So they don't want to go to health centers when they fall ill due to this fear.

At this very moment Christine is applying for her passport. We thought that she would get it today without any problem, but there is a minor obstacle - the government won't issue the passport until she pays for the repatriation flight that we took from Dhaka to the US! We have been told that the bills for those flights won't get to us for some time because of how many Americans took those flights.... But the person in the passport processing office is hoping that he will have an answer in the next hour allowing us to pay for this flight. Please pray for breakthrough in this situation!

We so value your support in prayer at this moment!

Phil & Christine