our best, their worst

Had a change of pace in the evening service. The Goulds are a couple reaching out to the student Muslim community in Bangladesh, a nation nestled east of India, about the size of Wisconsin and a population larger than a nation with 13 time zones (Russia).

The Goulds operate an internet cafe that offers computer training, a full cafe, and english courses. It's highly relational and the fruit of their creativity is paying off. The internet cafe scene is exploding because people are too poor to own computers yet young people are becoming increasingly pc savvy.

Bangladesh, though 99% muslim are considered moderate muslims which is the residue of a fundamentalist sponsored war between a neighboring country that was an immense failure (among other complexities).

We had a contextualized service similar to a muslim gathering. The women covered their heads and sat behind the men, while the Goulds led us through liturtical call and responses followed by a insightful message.

One thought that stuck in my mind was: "how you view muslims is how you view 1 out of 4 people in the world."

It's easy in western society to match our best against their worst.

We had the opportunity to do some construction work on a mosque in Edinburgh several months ago that had been vandalized post-9/11. We were hoping a missions team from the states would be able to help. Unfortunately, a few didn't feel comfortable with the situation so we were unable to offer help.

That's a situation that may draw a degree of tension or discomfort at first, but the more you think about it, there could not have been a better opportunity to non-verbally show the love of Christ. It really felt like a failed opportunity to serve the muslim community. Hope to learn from some of those experiences and learn to stretch ourselves outside our boxes.

Powerful service though.