A letter from Les and Cindy Morgan in Bangladesh
Late Winter 2014
2013: A Year of Connecting
Dear Friends,
If we were to choose one word to summarize our work in 2013, the word would be connecting. Almost all of what we strived to do this year was either about connecting people to people in faith or about connecting people to God.
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Dr. Cynthia Morgan regularly crosses the Buriganga River in Bangladesh to run clinics for women in Dhaka slums.
We spent the first five months of the year visiting 55 congregations of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to help them better understand the deep spiritual connection they share with the Church of Bangladesh and its various ministries, particularly its ministry of healing. Then after returning to Bangladesh in June, each week we sent a prayer to these congregations—and to many individuals as well—so that they could join us in praying for a particular person or group of persons in need in Bangladesh. Hundreds prayed for Rehana, a garment worker who spent two days trapped in darkness under the mass of steel and concrete of the collapsed Rana Plaza. And many prayed for our friend Rajia, an impoverished woman in Dhaka who lost her 18-year-old son, Saddam, to leukemia.
Much of our work in Bangladesh focused on connecting the congregations of the Church of Bangladesh with their neighbors who were sick or suffering. We taught a class on the ministry of healing to students at St. Andrew’s Theological College and helped carry out this ministry in urban slums and poor rural areas. Cindy regularly held small clinics for women in the homes of poor Muslim families in Dhaka, and I went with Church of Bangladesh ministers and lay leaders to visit the sick in village communities. These experiences—such as the time I sat with a Hindu family in their rural home and held their 7-month-old son suffering from severe cerebral palsy—remind us that mission work ultimately brings God’s servants into direct contact with people in need. Our task is to bear witness to the saving grace of Jesus Christ through listening, touching, comforting, assisting and praying, all the while opening our hearts to the suffering of those we serve.
Because one’s ability to minister to people in need is rooted in one’s connection with God, we helped nurture the spiritual lives of our students and colleagues and practiced certain spiritual disciplines ourselves. Cindy taught a class on spiritual formation at the theological college and met monthly with a group of women leaders within the Church of Bangladesh to help deepen their faith. We have learned that to carry out our ministry in Bangladesh we must periodically step away from the needs of people simply to be in the presence of God. For without this foundational discipline, mission work loses its focus, depth and meaning.
Throughout 2013, as in all our years of mission service, our connection with you has encouraged and sustained us in our work. We are deeply grateful for this fellowship and for our shared mission in the world for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Yours,
Les and Cindy
The 2014 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 221
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