A letter from Les Morgan on home leave from Bangladesh
March 31, 2013
Newton County, Arkansas
The First Work in the Ministry of Healing
Dear Friends,
We have been traveling since mid-January to visit congregations in the U.S. who support Presbyterian mission work in Bangladesh and the work of our sister church there, the Church of Bangladesh. By the end of May we will have visited 55 congregations in 19 states to tell them about the life and faith of the Church of Bangladesh and to report on our missionary service.
In a Dhaka slum Dr. Les Morgan cared for 7-year-old Ferdosi
During our visits we speak in particular about the ministry of healing, a fundamental component of Christian mission and the focus of our work in Bangladesh. For the past three years we have been teaching a course on this subject at St. Andrew’s Theological College in Dhaka and more recently have started bringing practical training in healing to the congregations of the Church of Bangladesh where the St. Andrew’s graduates are now serving. We accompany students, clergy, and lay leaders to the homes and bedsides of Muslims and Hindus as well as Christians, in both urban slums and poor rural areas. When we return to Bangladesh on June 1 for another three-year term we will help the church develop this ministry further.
Visiting congregations in the U.S. is a vital part of our work because the ministry of healing in which we are engaged is founded upon the fellowship we share with you in Jesus Christ. During our 23 years of missionary service among the sick in Bangladesh we have learned that to be healers we must be able to open our hearts to the suffering of others, offering to them an opportunity to cast their suffering and all their cares upon the Savior who dwells within us and among us as a church. We cannot host such a sacred space within ourselves individually without being in fellowship with the church, the body of Christ. Building up our fellowship with you, therefore, is the first work in the ministry of healing. How else are we to open ourselves to the suffering of a 7-year-old girl dying of heart disease in a Dhaka slum unless you are with us? How else are we to minister in the presence of such suffering without the body of Christ there to receive it with us, without Christ there to bear it for us?
Before returning to Bangladesh, Cindy and I will each spend eight days in solitude and silence in order to deepen our comprehension of the spiritual reality we long to share with you in Jesus Christ. Please pray for us during this time of retreat, April 30–May 7. And know that we will be praying for you, that God will lead you, too, into new and deeper ways of being part of the body of Christ.
May the peace of Christ be with you.
Your fellow servant,
Les
The 2013 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 193
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