Thursday, 31 July 2008
Houston, Texas

Blessings at the brink

Dear Friends,

The Morgans' son Everett receives treatment at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Since last September, Cindy and I have been caring for our son Everett, 22, as he undergoes treatment for bone cancer at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. In the course of his therapy, he has suffered several setbacks, including three treatment failures, the last of which was due to overwhelming side effects of toxic chemotherapy. Finally, in May, with few treatment options remaining, his doctors began a fourth type of chemotherapy, effective in only a minority of patients. By the grace of God, Everett appears to be responding to the treatment, so he still has a chance to overcome his disease. He will eventually undergo surgery to remove the residual cancer from his left pelvis.

Although we left our missionary work in Bangladesh to be with Everett during this difficult time, I have made two trips back there, one in February and another in May. Each time I visited people who, like Everett, are battling against forces that threaten to undo them. Some of them live in the slums of Dhaka next to the shipyards on the Buriganga River. The first time I explored that area, known for its criminals, drug-dealers, and prostitutes, I was apprehensive. But over time, and in the process of providing small medical clinics and visiting the sick in their homes, I have gained many friendships. I've also gained a deeper appreciation for the degree of oppression under which these people live.

Beauty, age 14, works in a garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

One of my friends there is a 14-year-old girl named Beauty. I met her last year while I was caring for her dying mother. I have often visited their home, a one-room shanty with a dirt floor and no electricity or plumbing. Beauty dropped out of third grade to work in a garment factory six-and-a-half days a week for a salary of fourteen dollars a month. Being the oldest child in a family now without a mother, she does most of the cooking as well. She, her elderly father, and her younger siblings barely have enough to eat, and when I saw Beauty in May, she looked thinner than ever. I am worried that her oppressive circumstances are edging her toward an even deeper level of suffering.

But the Lord will not break a bruised reed or quench a dimly burning wick, whether it be my son battling cancer in Houston or a young girl struggling to get enough food in the slums of Dhaka. As for Beauty, a service program of the Church of Bangladesh is looking into her case. If they can help her learn a home-based, income-generating skill, she may be able to earn enough to support her family and have time to attend school as well.  I will check on her and her family next month when I make another trip to Bangladesh. I have other friends there with similar stories, and I hope to see them, too.

So for the past ten months, whether in Houston or in Dhaka, I have been caring for people at the brink of calamity. They persevere with a degree of resolve that I, bearing much less, struggle to maintain. But there are moments when God reveals to me his special purposes for my being with them. God speaks to me words I would not fully understand were I not here at the edge of life with people I love. In Dhaka, God has spoken to me through slum-dwellers, people whom I once feared but who are now my friends: on my last visit to Dhaka, several of them told me that they had been praying for my son. And in Houston, God has spoken to me through Everett: for every night when Cindy and I place our hands on him to pray for his healing, he reaches out and puts his hand on my head, so that I, too, receive the blessing,

The Lord bless you and keep you;
The Lord make his face to shine upon you,
   and be gracious unto you;
The Lord lift up his countenance upon you,
   and grant you healing, peace, and joy."

Yours,

The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 89