3 April 2004

Dear Friends and Family,

As rice gives way to the planting of wheat in the winter, and pineapples follow the abundance of mangoes in the summer, so does our work here in Bangladesh move through cycles and seasons, with the flavor of the whole lying largely in its diversity. February brought with it a preventive medicine booth at the annual tribal Santali Helmel (Christian fellowship gathering) out in the village of Paitapukur. Under the shelter of a makeshift sari-tent, we screened participants for high blood pressure, over- and under-nutrition, vitamin and mineral deficiencies, visual defects, and the use of tobacco products.

Throughout the month of March I taught nursing students how to assess the various forms of malnutrition in children, and at the end of this month the Primary Health Care Program is to host family planning seminars in the villages of Jhinaphulbari and Khamarmaria. Come June we’ll run a nutrition workshop for malnourished children and their mothers; in August we’ll celebrate World Breastfeeding Week; and in September we’re to provide a refresher course for village women who assist during childbirth in neighbors’ homes.

Paralleling the cycles of the earth’s produce and our work, are the changing seasons inherent in parenting. After years of teaching our children at home and sharing lots of family-time, Les and I are slowly adapting to an empty nest.

Everett graduated from C.E. Byrd High School last May, and after a month out here with us and then working a month as a rodman in a surveyor’s team, he has settled into his studies as a business major at Centenary College in Shreveport, Louisiana. He’s been initiated into the TKE fraternity and plays on the college lacrosse team. He enjoys people, parties, and playing his electric guitar. As a child he was always the one setting up small income-generating schemes, be it with chickens, mangoes or handicrafts. As a career, he’s thinking of possibly setting up a restaurant of his own.

After a childhood of speaking Bengali, and then studying Hindi, French, and Tamil in high school in South India, Laura is about to wrap up her junior year as an intercultural communication and ancient and modern languages double major, studying Latin and Spanish. Last summer she toured Brazil and South Africa with the Centenary College Choir, and she is currently making arrangements to serve as a mission volunteer with the Presbyterian Church of Chile. She looks forward to a future of traveling and relating to people, possibly by serving in the foreign service.

Les went back to the States in November to visit Laura and Everett. It was a wonderful month for him. He saw Laura sing in several choir performances and watched Ev during his lacrosse practices. They shared lots of meals in the college cafeteria and went out for special treats as well. It’s rare that a doctor is able to be 100 percent “Dad!”

Here in Rajshahi he continues to care for adult medicine patients and is becoming especially adept in managing the care of complicated TB patients. He also has numerous friends in the surrounding Santali villages that come to him regularly for treatment. Most recently, Les has put a lot of time into helping the Church of Bangladesh evaluate Christian Mission Hospital and determine how it may best offer its services to the community.

At CMH, my primary ministry is among children and their mothers. As I place my hands on these little ones during ward rounds each day, I realize more and more the sacredness of the opportunity that has been given to me. In silence, I offer up prayers of intercession, asking for God’s healing mercy in each of their lives.

With the return of the hot and dry season come recurrent power outages and an increase in ants, mosquitoes, and snakes; hence, serving here continues to be a daily commitment. Fully aware that what we offer is as nothing in the sea of suffering that floods this land, still we feel compelled to let our two meager grains of wheat fall into this soil, and pray that they will bear fruit.

Thanks for walking this journey with us. By your presence at our side, through letters, emails, care packages, cards, phone calls, prayers, and contributions, you have helped make our stay here possible.

Blessings,

Cynthia L. Morgan

The 2004 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 196