For King and Kingdom- January/February 2019

I am a fourth-generation missionary. I grew up in rural northern Bangladesh with my parents, grandparents, and two younger siblings. I say rural, but the region has a population density higher than that of Toronto. The country contains a population half the size of the United States’ in a land area about equal to that of Illinois. About eighty percent of those people are Muslim, twenty Hindu, and less than one percent are either Christian or Buddhist. This upbringing hewed out the rough contours of my life. My aim since I was about ten has been to become a missionary surgeon and serve the least-reached peoples of the world.

When we returned to the US in November of 2014, I was miserable, bitter at a culture I didn’t understand, and lonely. It took about a year before I had adjusted to not always having people I knew living within earshot and to a culture which was much less social and open to new people. It was a hard transition, but an important one. Through it, I learned to love people from very different social and cultural backgrounds than mine. I laid down my prejudice against Western, and specifically American, culture. I made close friends at my youth group. I tried a private Christian school for a year before returning to homeschooling for the remainder of my high school career. While I was at that school, however, I was exposed to the kind of unhealthy family dynamics that I have since learned characterize most American high schoolers’ lives. Providing support to sometimes-suicidal, always-depressed classmates was transformative and deeply moving. It was hard, but I have seen God’s grace work in miraculous ways in some of those friends lives in the years since I left.

Senior year of high school was hard. My workload was oppressive; I spent around seventy hours a week studying. I ended an unhealthy relationship. I watched some of my closest friends begin to wander from the faith we had built each other up in for years. My family’s relationship with a church leadership and congregation guided by tradition and apathetic toward the Great Commission began to deteriorate.

I was relieved, then, when I matriculated to Houghton College in the fall of 2017, studying pre-med and Intercultural Studies with a concentration in Linguistics. It has been an amazing year-and-a-half, full of exciting classes, deep friendships, and spiritual growth. I spent spring of 2018 in London with a cohort of twenty-two other honors students studying the development of Western civilization since the Reformation.

I spent the summer studying, working, and agonizing with my family over the decision we eventually made (after months of prayer, meeting with the leaders to try to resolve our differences, and consulting with other mature Christians) to leave the church we’d been members of for decades. Our new church is well-grounded in biblical faith and practice, and has been a source of life and growth for my family even as this congregation has been for me.

I plan to use my love of languages and my occupation as a surgeon to support the Bible translation effort. I will go anywhere God calls me. Though the road to the foreign mission field stretches longer than a decade in front of me, I walk it confident of the Spirit in me and the hope of glory ahead of me. Soli deo gloria.

-David Bowers

Editor’s Note: Our congregation, for many years, has been enriched by having college students (mainly from Houghton College, but sometimes from Alfred University and Alfred SUNY ) worship with us, contribute to, and participate in our ministry. Throughout the years many have been involved in the music ministry. Shortly after his arrival in Houghton, David became as associate member of the congregation, blessing us with his fellowship, service, and commitment to this congregation.

*ADAPTED FROM OUR MONTHLY NEWSLETTER. FOR MORE INFORMATION REGARDING OUR NEWLETTER, PLEASE CONTACT THE EDITOR, DOROTHY ACHILLES, AT MDACHILLES@FRONTIERNET.NET