In a few of the slum communities where Rahham has been working, the new churches have been focusing on prayer and fasting. Groups meet every day to pray. When they began this prayer focus in January 2017, the prayer requests centered mostly around their own needs, but during the year they began to pray more for their neighbors as well. Now the whole community knows that the church is a place to come if they have problems, and the group will regularly pray for them.

In addition to praying for individuals’ needs, they have also been praying about issues that their communities face as a whole. In Dhaka, health and hygiene are a huge concern for the community. Lack of toilets and a sewage system are major health problems, and clean water is extremely limited. Typically, there is a trickle of water from community pipes from about midnight to 3:00 am. With no idea how to solve these problems on their own, the church began to pray for God to intervene.

There were no toilets at all to use in the community. It felt like an insurmountable problem. Land is extremely expensive in the slum so, unlike in rural areas where it’s possible to construct their own toilets, that was not an option. So the church prayed. On January 1, 2018, the government completed a block of 12 beautiful, spacious tile toilets with a wash station. The government even provided a caretaker for the toilets. What an answer to prayer! Now the church has started a training program to help people to know how and why to use the toilet and how to keep them clean.

The church prayed about the sewage and stagnant water that was everywhere. Families typically cook outside amongst flies and waste. Stagnant puddles also breed mosquitoes, which spread diseases like malaria and dengue–a huge problem especially for the many people in the community who have compromised immune systems because of HIV. In January 2018 the government sent surveyors to map out a sewage system for the community, which is now under construction.

In December 2017, the community’s water problems reached crisis level. The trickle of water they had been able to access simply stopped without warning. After a week the people were desperate. Again they prayed, and immediately the water came on so strongly that the pipes actually burst in two places.

Again and again, God has reminded these new believers and seekers that nothing is beyond His concern or His power. Please join us in praising God for His faithfulness and in asking Him that even more people would see His goodness and come into relationship with Him.