Captain Raelene Russell of the Salvation Army returned home to Weyburn from a month-long mission in Bangladesh last week. Speaking of her experiences, Russell observed, "It is obviously a vastly different country than anything you can prepare for."

The main thing she had noted was the difference of population between living in Saskatchewan and visiting Bangladesh. "There are people everywhere there and traffic all the time; driving back to Weyburn from Regina made me truly see the emptiness (population-wise) of our province."

After assisting fellow Salvation Army officers in their projects in Bangladesh, Russell commented, "It was a real eye-opener to the poverty that the majority of the world's population lives in. They just don't have the same amenities that we do."

"I met a lot of people who worked very hard for the money they get to keep, and a lot of families had children going to work instead of going to school to help the family," she said.

"The people we met were fabulous to us, our translators made us sound good and helped us be understood." Russell said the people she stayed with could not believe how far she had traveled to be in Bangladesh.

During her time there, Russell had an opportunity to visit many of the Salvation Army projects underway in Bangladesh. One of the clinics she went to involved a group of teachers receiving health care education so they could pass it onto their students.

"I was amazed to learn that their teachers and ours share a common problem, with cell phone use creating a communication problem." As the land-lines and power are unstable in Bangladesh, cell phones are everywhere.

But no matter what kind of different projects were underway, they all had one thing in common: "they all followed the mission of the Salvation Army, to provide aid to the needy," said Russell.

She added, "If an opportunity presented itself, I would go to another part of the world on another mission, just so I could create a greater awareness to the community at large when I returned home."

The Salvation Army group being sent over found themselves blessed as they had no problems with customs or immigration. "It was a total miracle, the Lord protected our stuff." Russell commented further that another miracle occurred in London, when the group did not have to pay anything extra for two extra pieces of luggage.

Another blessing came in the fact "that no one got deathly sick," said Russell.

One other strange coincidence for Russell was that when she arrived in Bangladesh she had arrived without her luggage and when she returned to Canada, she also arrived back home without her luggage.

"When the luggage arrived, I was not missing anything, it was all intact. But for a while I had to live with what I had in my carry-on and by borrowing supplies and I did have what I needed. But it was interesting to begin and end the trip the same way."