What do you do when "Jesus" is trying to take advantage of you?

Living in Bangladesh for most people is very stressful as you can imagine. Things like pollution, power outages, the heat, traffic jams, the noise, and the poor infrastructure can drive people from places like the USA and UK to go crazy sometimes. One of the things that I'm particularly aware of is how this affects us all differently. Several of my coworkers despise the traffic jams of Dhaka and will do everything they can to avoid them. I on the other hand generally am not too bothered by them. Three years of working in a non-AC office on the other hand has meant that something I really struggled with at first doesn't bother me nearly as much now. Each person's needs are different and people's needs change. In light of this, I have done some thinking in the last few weeks and have come to acknowledge that the most challenging thing for me at this point in my life in Bangladesh is dealing with the beggars here.

You see, I believe very much that as a Christian, we are to treat these people as we would Jesus himself. If you don't believe me, read Matthew 25:31-46. The struggle then becomes, what do you do if the person whom you are to see Jesus in, is trying to take advantage of you or is being taken advantage of? If you don't have an idea of what I'm talking about, go watch the movie Slumdog Millionaire. I assure you, the terrible people that maim others and force them into a life of begging really do exist. Others are hurt in accidents due to poor safety standards and are forced to beg out of necessity. Others, are just regular people who come to the big city to try making a living selling cheap things in the middle of traffic or just asking for money plain and simple because they think they are helping Muslims be more holy by relieving them of their required alms for the poor. Being white makes it double the trouble because as a foreigner you attract lots of attention from these people who think you will give them large amounts if they don't leave you alone.

The tough parts are trying to figure out who is legitimately in need of funds which is pretty much impossible to tell and being kindhearted towards those who aren't legitimately in need. I so desperately want to be a kindhearted and generous person, but it is really hard to figure out how to appropriately be that person here. Why does it seem that "Jesus" wants to take advantage of me? That's a question I struggle with every day.

Uncertainty and Messiness

One of the things people always ask you when you are doing something that has an end date is, "What's next?" Before we got married, Esther and I had a great way around this question as we would just reply that we were focusing on getting married first then thinking about it. Now we are married and it is a much harder question to answer. The truth is that we don't know. We are starting to look into the process of what visa requirements there are for the US and the UK. I think we both prefer one of those two directions at this point as we feel like a time of recovery and reflection would do us well after 5 years each here in Bangladesh. We've even joked that we should do manual labor jobs rather than professional career jobs for  a year. I was talking to a friend going through a similar process the other day and he said that they are hoping to go back home and figure out what parts of themselves they've been neglecting and what parts of themselves they just need to toss out after being here awhile. I suspect we'll do much the same. The uncertainty stinks though. I hate uncertainty but one thing I hold to, and believe we'll hold to, is that we'll go wherever God calls us next. That is comforting to have in my back pocket.

In other less heady news, we've painted another room in our house and really only have one small wall we really feel needs painting left to go. We have internet in our house and I even managed to set up the wireless router without a hitch. Many of our decorations are up but not all at this point. I managed to have a shelf made for the kitchen (getting stuff made properly is a lot of work) only to find that the walls themselves are crooked so I'll have to do some adjusting on that! We are down to just one room that is an absolute mess. We basically took some time out and said, let's get this house livable! The one room was the sacrificial lamb as we just couldn't do it because of issues like, not having a bookshelf for our books or a closet for our painting supplies/luggage. I'm still waiting for one or two things to get hung up, then I'll take photos and we'll post them for all to see how we have decorated (and by we I mean Esther because I am terrible at that kind of thing and she is amazing). Esther is finishing up her first week of teaching this week after opening their new school building last weekend. That has been pretty stressful for her as she wasn't able to do her planning ahead of time because of building prep stuff. We have a 4 day weekend this weekend though and that should help her catch up. As a special treat I'm taking her here this weekend. They've got an offer for Bengali people and foreigners with work permits (us!) that on weekends when they are not as busy you can come for two nights with meals and a Thai massage included into full access to the facilities for a very reasonable price. Add in that this is just across the road from the development we live in (meaning that you don't have to wait for hours in traffic to get there) and this becomes a fantastic deal that several of our friends have told us great things about. Esther says she is taking all western clothes and we look forward to just hanging out and eating fabulous meals.

After leaving the hotel I'll be going and watching the opening weekend of Premier League Soccer with the guys and we'll be hanging out with friends on another night. Needless to say, I'm really looking forward to this weekend!