Sun Aug 16

 Fellow Gopalgonj missionaries arrive back in Dhaka, in the wee hours of the morning, after their furlough back home in Canada. Welcome back Doyle and Krystal Barkman, Amaryllis, Raf, Jonas, and Edward!!🤗

Here in Khulna, we’d invited Shantos and Michael for breakfast. Served them cornbread and sausage gravy, boiled eggs, and fruit platter. They ate the different, American food bravely! Discovered they liked it and all had extra helpings😊 Espondant commented that he was so surprised that just 2 pcs of cornbread(with gravy) had Filled him up!😅 We sang a song around the table and Miss Christina and the girls went up to school. The rest of us enjoyed relaxed visiting awhile yet. 9:00 rolled around, Espondant says, “Don’t let Antoor hear, cause he’ll give me such a hard time! But I’m s’pose to be going to school today and I don’t want to!” He also wanted to go with the men to Khulna to the printing office where they spent a few hours going over the details for the Bangali version of Pilgrim’s Progress. Antoor went out to paw thru our recycle bin for treasures😉 Shotti went in to the bathroom, but decided once again, that she couldn’t navigate our western toilet and went outside to use the guard’s squat pot🙃 That was just good Soul Food having them all here. Looking back now as I write this, I believe we have been lonesome, even tho we have hardly recognized it! Because, we are happy here, we love It and are not sitting over here wishing we were at home!

In the afternoon, after Lonnie dropped the men back off at Shantos, a truck was blocking the road home, so he went to Chakrakhali to look up King Kor. He had rickshaw van driver (Dipti’s husband who knew where he lived) take him to King Kor’s home. Only King Kor’s mom was home. So Lonnie had Uttam take him to school where King Kor was staying late helping get ready for a class picnic. The folks there at school thought King Kor should go with Lonnie back to his house. King Kor says, “My mom is gonna be So happy!!” She served some really good tea and then was working on making her masala on her stone while Lonnie and King Kor visited.