Bangladesh Mission Update 1

Greetings Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
We arrived safely in Dhaka yesterday/Tuesday morning around 10:30am (about 11:30pm your time Monday). Got out of the airport around noon (all luggage/supplies made it...yay), met two field workers, exchanged money, bought a local sim card, had lunch at the guesthouse in Dhaka that our friends help manage, did orientation to the Bengali people and went to a local University area here that has many young college students milling around. When we got to the area near a couple of Universities, we started engaging people in conversation (many spoke a little English, but understood most of what you said).
Very quickly a crowd gathered, and we had 75-100 people gathered around us, listening to our conversations. At one point, asking about our education, when it was discovered Derek was a music major they asked him to sing. He sang a couple of songs, the 2nd being Amazing Grace. One man, Raju said he had never heard Amazing Grace before and said it was his favorite song of those sung, but it sounded hard to sing.
This prompted a conversation about Grace, and what that was. At the same time, Ben was engaged in conversation about love, Daniel was talking about Christianity (about how Americans are not born Christian) with another man, and Steve sharing his background, each with a crowd of 10-20/30 people around each person. All were Muslim young men.
All of this happened in about an hour, and honestly we were leaving the guest house in order not to fall asleep, so we could sleep well that night. When we arrived, most of us had passed out in the van (in the 20 minute ride to the University), and were very groggy going out to talk. But amazingly, as conversations happened, the Lord gave us each much energy to carry on our conversations. To the point that none of us were tired (even though we had been awake for close to 48 hours by this point - Saturday night your time was the last time we had slept in beds and it was now around 5am your time on Tuesday morning). God gives you grace for the time you need it - because we came back to the guest house for dinner and passed out not too long after that.

TODAY AND PRAYER
We are headed out for our first full day of ministry. We are going to Dhaka University (different place from yesterday) and will be engaging college students. Zach is the strategist here working with collegiate students.
* Later this week (Thursday night - Thursday morning your time 7/8am) we will be showing the Jesus Film in the Noakhali region. We've been told by a local there that there could be thousands of Hindu who show up to watch the film. Be in prayer for this time. Just to give you some perspective of how many people are in this region, here are some numbers for you. Noakhali region has 2.6 Million People (343 Christians - most nominal Catholics). The geographical size is smaller than Chesterfield county in Virginia. So, to break it down for you, there are less than 30 Evangelical believers in this region which has 2.6 Million people (mostly Hindu). That is .00000115%. MUCH less than 1 percent believers.

Please pray that the Lord would go before us. (He already has, but that story is too long to tell, maybe we'll shoot a video and tell that and send it).
Pray for clear communication.
Pray for open hearts.
Pray for our families. We'll probably not be able to skype. They are working on the internet (under the sea) fiber-optic line from Bang. to Thailand. We are able to send email, and that's about it. Praise God for that!
So, we probably won't be uploading video, it would take 20 hours just to upload 1 video less than 5 minutes long.
Pray for the workers here to be encouraged while we are here.
Pray for vision to know how to plan future projects here.

Thanks & bless you all!

Your Parkway South Asia Bangladesh Vision Team
Ben Cornatzer, Daniel Dejarnette, Steve Eddy, and Derek Futrell.