times in the temple

Sooo it's been awhile since my last update. I could try to blame the lack of electricity and Internet but its mostly my busyness with the discipleship training program. DTS is made up of 3 months lecture phase and then a 3 month outreach phase. I'm currently on the outreach. A place our team prayed about and felt like the Lord was leading us to. The community of people we are with now in the south part of Bangladesh are  Buddhist. We were invited to stay among them even though they knew we are Christians since we came as students. Our cover was to say we are just students studying their culture, language, food and religion. Which we are, but we are also prayer walking like crazy claiming this place for Jesus and building relationships to shine Gods light and love on all who come across our path. We got the word from God before we left that He was going to do more than we can ask or imagine on this trip. And He already has! We were only here one week when the temple Guru INVITED us to do worship songs, dramas and even tell a Bible story and he volunteered to invite the people living nearby to come and and watch. After watching us get hard at work cleaning up the temple and it's grounds He asked us if we had a picture of Jesus to look at. He wanted to know this Jesus that we served. None of us actually had a picture on hand of Jesus which was odd to him since all his gods have many pictures and even statues that he bows down to and worships and sacrifices food to on a daily basis. BUT we did have a Jesus film :) He agreed to inviting the people inside his temple to watch the Jesus film!! I would have never imagined seeing a scene like this in my life but we had the Jesus film playing right next to a life size statue of buddha. I was so excited at first, but soon my excitement lessened when in the middle of the movie Guru got up and bowed down to his idol of buddha right in front of the entire crowd of people. It broke my heart to see him turning away from the movie about the creator to worship something that was created. I couldn't believe my eyes, but then it hit me...I was looking at a life size picture of what my heart does every day.  How often do I turn away from God to focus on something lesser? Nearly everyday I do this at some point. I get angry over something small, I stop trusting and worry, I focus on what I need to get done instead of the person needing love in front of me, all day everyday I am confronted with the same situation. Who will I bow down to? People? Time? Pressure? Comfort? Success? Money? Food? OR the one who loves me and gave Himself up for me that I may have life abundantly.  When I allow my mind to be consumed with anything other than Him, I'm no better off than this Guru bowing down to a plastic statue. I was so convicted and pray that the severity of this conviction lasts forever. 
So unfortunately our favorite Guru did not come to know the Lord on our trip. But I have a feeling God isn't finished with him yet.  We built some solid relationships with Rakhine people and the door is wide open for us to return anytime we wish! And next time we have invitation to stay with them in their houses! We shared the Gospel with a few families and more intensely on a personal level, but no one accepted Christ as their savior. There were some hard core strongholds among them that we were not able to breakdown in just the short time  we were there. Pray with me that God will send Bengali Christians to live among the Rakhine people and point them to Christ's light and love on a daily basis.