Greetings from Bangladesh. I’m here today as we are doing a food distribution through the Rohingya Refugee Camp. This week, we’ll be providing food, and I’ve just been to another camp where we’re providing shelter. As I sit and I look at the needs that exist and I feel the pride that comes to me as I see the staff at work, it reminds me of the great work that ADRA does.

As I pass through this camp, I’m reminded of the ingenuity of the Rohingya people, their ability to survive and still etch out some kind of a living in these difficult conditions. I came across here to this fish market. And as I looked at the fish market, it reminded me of the story in the Bible of the five loaves and the two fishes, where the people were hungry and they came to Christ, and He blessed the food and He multiplied it.

We are distributing food to 19,000 families. That’s around about 100,000 people. But in all, there’s 800,000 people in these refugee camps, all of them hungry, all of them in need of a blessing, all of them in need of a miracle. And perhaps it reminds me that maybe we can be that miracle, that through our generosity, we can help to multiply these fish, that we can help to bring food to the starving people here amongst these Rohingya camps. It’s a great honor and privilege to be able to feed 100,000 people this week, bringing them food for two weeks. But what about beyond those two weeks? And what about those whom we are yet to touch?

And so as I’m reminded of the way that God blessed in the Bible, I’m reminded that He is still a God who blesses today, that He’s placed us here with a reason and a purpose. I’m also reminded of the woman at the well where she met Jesus, and He offered her the water that will never run dry.

In this particular refugee camp, we have difficulty with the supply of water. At the refugee camp that I visited yesterday, it was more inland and there was a number of wells. But if we sink wells in this region where we are close to the coast, all that we’ll get is salty water which is not drinkable. And so we’re dependent upon shipping by a gravity-fed water system, piping water from the mountains nearby to try and bring clean water. But unfortunately, the water supply is not adequate, and so we actually have a water shortage in this camp.

There’s 20,000 families that live within this camp, around 100,000 people, and we have a great need for water. And so just as we need to provide people with water from the well that will never run dry, we also need water here because water is life. Before we can talk to them about life in general, we have to meet their needs, and thirst is a very real need of the people here in this camp.

And so I just ask you to be generous in your support for ADRA in this work as we try and help these people who’ve suffered much trauma as they have been driven from their homes, where they had comfort, where they had businesses, driven with automatic weapons fired at them, losing family members as they fled. And now they come here to a situation of dire need.

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