Tuesday

May 31, 2016

Today we are all adjusted to the time change for the most part which is a big hurdle.  The last several days some of us would wake up early and some of us would sleep longer.

This day we went to some village homes to visit and spend time getting to know the families of some of the students here.  Our first stop in the morning was the family of a little boy in the Kindergarten class.  We all went out with Joshua and Sothee who translated for us.  I took some pictures along the way of the village but did not take any at the house or of the family out of respect.

Here are the couple houses across from the Heart for Wisdom School that is run by the orphanage.  We stopped here to pick up Sothee.  You can't see in but there is no front wall.  These are the simplest three walled structures with a few raised wooden platforms for sitting and eating on.  Lots of hammocks are hung for sleeping and napping.

This is a scene from driving on the main road in the village.  It never really expressed what it's like.  Basically it's a free for all on the road.  The bigger vehicle gets the right of way, you use the horn to tell the smaller vehicles that you are coming and they need to get out of the way.  People walk along with bicycles, and motos transporting more than 3x their size of goods, animals or whole families.  And we don't use seatbelts.

At our first home visit, there was a woman who has 4 sons and her husband.  The oldest son is in University, the second son who is in the 8th grade was home using an old stone hand rice grinder.  She had said he isn't doing that well in school.  Here, if a student doesn't pass the 8th grade national exam they usually drop out and go to work in the factories.  Many factories have moved in to use the cheap labor of the poor people here.  These are factories of name brand clothes and shoes that we buy for exorbitant prices in the States.  The workers are loaded onto a truck in the mornings and work for about $150 a month.  They work 5-6 days a week and are still just trying to keep food on the table of their 3 sided houses.  We invited her to church and prayed for them.  Kit will keep contact and make multiple visits to build a relationship and support for the family.

The woman has two younger sons.  The youngest is 7 and in Kindergarten at this school.  However when we asked him how old he was he didn't know.  The other thing common to Cambodia's poor is that they don't know when their birthday is.  They might know a season but not the month or day.  The second youngest son who was 12 does not go to school.  He helps around the house and helps to take care of the youngest brother.  The woman sells snacks from her bicycle around town every day to pay for food and the youngest son's schooling.  Her husband sells manure and also sets up tents for weddings sometimes, sort of like a handyman.  They also had a pig as big as a small car!  It was huge!

We visited for a while and we told the youngest that we would visit him at his class in the school.  So later in the afternoon we went over to see if we could find him in his classroom.  He was waiting with some friends, hanging out the window and as soon as he saw us step out onto the grass he was yelling "Hello".  This is the little man!

And of course, we went back for their play time :)  Took more pictures which they love, and played patty-cake again.  

The girls and I took a ramble around the grounds to visit the animals they still have.  They used to have goats but they sold them a few weeks before we arrived.  Last time they had three, that had multiplied to six.  They also had a catfish pond last time but we were here when they were emptying that to make room for the swimming pool they put in.  I'll grab a picture of that.  It was all hand dug by the kids!  The younger school sits on the field that we helped to clear last time too.  It's awesome to see what we have helped to support.

These barns and storage sheds sit on the back corner of the Orphanage property.  Their total property is 2 acres.

This is a view from the top of the guest house to the corner where the barns and sheds are in location to the younger school.  All the animals have free roam of the property.  The chickens, ducks, dogs.  They do have a few bunnies in the barn where the girls are standing.  They have some pigs in pens across the street in a neighbor's yard and two cows that stay in the barn until feeding time in the evening.  

This is a picture of the Orphanage building and the guest house where we are staying is to the right of it behind the palm trees.  The first floor is completed with ability to build a second.  The guy's side can house 10 and the girl's side can house 10 in the guest house.

The main Orphanage building has the three floors.  The bottom floor has the kitchen, the main gathering room where the kids eat, meet, play games, do homework, have parties, etc and an apartment for another missionary family.  The second floor is the dorms for the guys and girls at the orphanage.  The top floor is Kit and Ream's house/apartment.

This is the inside of our guest house.  It is very nice!  They have done a great job giving it everything that a team would need.  This is the kitchen.

And this is the main bunk room.  You can see the kitchen part in the background in this one.  And this picture cracks me up because of the fun loving group in the foreground and then obviously I made Alfven and Joseph stop something for the picture and they posed :)

This year we go down and eat in the room with the kids for the meals.  It's fun to be with them but it's interesting because we get much finer food than the kids.  They have a lot of rice with vegetables in big pots.  We have meat on our platters.   We also have fresh fruit.  Last night the littles guy, Dara came over and sat at our table after everyone had left.  We were still visiting and nibbling on the Muncuot which is the purple skinned fruit with green stem in the picture.  Dara joined us and I peeled them and he ate them, one after another.  It was so cute!  He seems to seek us out a lot.  He enjoys seeing the pictures in the blog too :)

After lunch came the Pringle Wars!  We had bought two canisters in the city after our flight, then when we arrived Kit had some more canisters on the fridge.  Well, we were down to our last canister and Benjamin started doing the math on how many days we have left and then the ruckus began!   It was a brawl but in the end Alfven won and ate his Pringles before passing the others out!

In the afternoon we did another home visit.  This time we went to the house of a 1st Grade girl who lives with her mother, younger sister and grandparents.  Her father died a few months ago.  The uncle was also staying there and while he was recovering from a moto accident.  He was in a neck brace with spinal injuries.  He used to work at a factory but can't any longer.  The mother works at a shoe factory to support the family.  She shaved her hair off as is the Buddhist custom of grieving and it was starting to grow back.  We had a nice visit and enjoyed getting to know them.  This was actually the schools second visit to the home.  We prayed for them and asked if they had any needs we could help with.  We invited them to church.  The uncle said that he had gone to church many years ago but had gotten out of the habit.  The mother was very happy with her daughters education at the school.  

When we got back it was chore time as the kids returned from school.  Benjamin helped to burn the trash.  There is no trash pick up here.  That is a huge problem.  As you move around the village there is trash piled up in yards and along the roads.  Here they burn the trash in the back.  There is also a young lady who recycles the bottles and cans so that she can put herself through school.  So there is an extra collection for that.

This is one of the cows that gets taken to the field in the evening.  I love these guys.  The other night when we were playing baseball the cows were running up and down this path right near where we were playing with no fence in-between.  It was just humorous to me to be in the outfield watching the cows running around the field.

Grace went out to help in the gardens again.  It's peaceful work but hot!  It's hot and muggy all the time but we actually have gotten used to it, or used to being sweaty.  Nights cool a bit and the guest house does have air conditioning and fans.  Everything else is not air-conditioned like the schools, dining room, kitchen, etc.

Another picture of the garden area.

I thought this was a pretty picture of the kids doing their chores.

After dinner Alfven taught their Tuesday night Bible study.  We went up to the boys dorm and gathered around on the floor.  Alfven did a great job and taught on Romans 12.  He started it and will conclude it during their Thursday night Bible study.  

 I'll end with the picture below.  It's one that I just loved!  The group of kids today kept asking for pictures and I took a ton.  This is one in the bunch that I just shot on the fly but there is something about the expressions that makes my heart smile :)

Baseball and Pillowcases

We started our day yesterday by trying to catch up with sleep from our marathon trip.  Alfven got up early and was out while the kids did their chores and then went over to school for their morning breakfast.  The kids at A Greater Hope schedule usually consists of the following:
   
     5:00am Chores
     6:00am  Breakfast
     7:00am  Morning School Session
     11:00am  Students leave school and go home for lunch and a rest
     11:30am  Lunch at A Greater Hope
     12pm  Time for Chores, Study or most take a Nap
     1:00pm  Afternoon School Session
     4:00pm School Gets Out
     5:00pm Chores
     6:00pm  Time for Study or Playing
     8:00pm  Time for Study, Playing or Bible Study on T. & Th.

I don't know if I explained but the school has grown so much it has needed more land.  So the fix was to move the pre-school, Kindergarten and 1st grade classes onto the 2 acre property that the Orphanage sits on.  This is that school building:

In the morning we walked over to check it out and several classes were getting out for their recess.  They were so excited to see us and then Alfven started giving them high-fives.  They thought that was awesome so as the exited in a line they high-fived us as hard as they could, laughing and giggling.

Then I pulled out the camera and they loved it!  I would take pictures then turn the camera for them to see themselves and then the pushing to be in the picture started :)

Benjamin, Grace and I played lots of games of patty-cake with them which they loved too!  There was no communications between the languages but the smiles, laughs, high-fives, patty-cake and picture taking said it all!  And even when the kids were riding on their family moto to head home later and saw us on the street they were still calling "Hello" to us.  We are totally going to make that a regular stop in our day!

After hanging with the little ones in the school we headed over to the large main school buildings.  This is the pathway from the Orphanage to the main road.  Gotta Dab!

This is the village main street that is pretty much the same as last trip.  There is a large road going through and the markers have been put in place.  The government is making a road that will run from China to Malaysia.  It is going to take a huge part of the playground in the schoolyard as well as the office building.  Local families are starting to move their houses back from where they are going to put the road.  I'll try to get a picture of the markers.

This was the schoolyard with some girls playing a game with the rope between their legs.  Behind them is the school snack-shop and they have added another snack-shop up front of the school too.

One of the things that I love about this country is that the people, all ages, use what they have and enjoy what they have.  A common game on the playground is something where they kick around a flip-flop per person.  These guys are playing the game.  Each player wears a flip-flop and the other gets put in the pile to kick.

We got rain today!  Twice :)  I did hear Joshua (another missionary who lives here with his family) say that there has been a lot of rain lately so blessings are falling!  It's a totally different frame of mind when your water source is rain and conservation is on your mind every time you use water.

During the free time, Joseph and Benjamin broke out the Stratego game we brought.  Sam was the first customer but by the end of the free time before dinner there was a crowd around the table, watching and playing.

This is for Catherine and Thayne :)  The Coffman family fear of snakes!  The girls and I walked out of the room and there was a baby snake, bright yellow with black stripes.  So I called out our family snake slayer, Joseph.  He promptly stomped the little snake and saved his mother and sisters; as we ran away screaming like little girls because it took him a while and the snake kept coming towards us trying to get away.  Joseph's 2 for 2 in our trips, but last trip's snake was huge and very unnerving.

The boys and I went back over to the main school for them to join in on the computer class.  Joshua was teaching and when he heard about what the boys were studying in school he invited them to come over.  On had them try typing Khmer on the keyboard.  The Khmer alphabet is over 100 characters.

The kids were mostly working on their keyboarding skills.  Joseph and Benjamin sat in the back and did a quick drill on the keyboard and over impressed the kids with their speed, which created a ruckus. Then they got up and talked a bit about what they are studying in school and in Civil Air Patrol.  The kids had a hard time understanding the concept of stealing money out of a computer but between Joseph, Joshua and On they figured out a good way to explain the concept.

After the school day I stayed and went to the Monday teacher's Bible Study at the school.  Joshua led it and asked if I would give my conversion testimony so I did.  I have to say that the most beautiful singing of hymns was at the beginning of the meeting.  I just absorbed the Khmer language singing and praising the Lord.  They sang with no instruments and in a circle.  It was beautiful!

I find it interesting that some things in the States that consume our thoughts and worries are not here but the Cambodian people have their own stressors and worries.  But I do find that as a whole they do not seem nearly as rushed or frazzled as we are in the States.  I wonder if the Martha/Mary lesson in Scripture is what I'm seeing played out.  The people here invest in relationship most.

Here is a picture of one of the garden sections.  I will get more as the week goes on but every meal features rice and vegetables from their garden.  Kit was saying that they choose plants for their nutritional value like high iron.

For fun today Kit took the kids out to the neighboring rice field that had water in it after the rain, and played a very muddy and fun game of baseball!  The kids had an awesome time and of course the younger boys started into the mud sliding and slopping.  Benjamin joined in and when they ended I told him there are very few chances in life to play baseball, barefoot, in a flooded rice field.

I'm always amazed at how the older kids nurture and guide the younger ones here.  The little guy at bat is the littlest at the Orphanage right now.  He is super personable and just came in a little bit ago to see what I was doing.  He enjoyed looking at the pictures in the blog too :)

After dinner we gave out our pillowcases.  The kids were very excited and gracious!  Kit had said that once we started calling out their names they would all wait expectantly for theirs.  For those who might be reading and not know what I did, I sewed them each a unique pillowcase for their pillows.  I used three different fabrics on each pillowcase so some have the same fabric but in a different piece on their pillowcase.  I told them that this is because in Psalm 139:14 we are told we are each "fearfully and wonderfully made".  Created by God's own hand, special and unique.  We may have similarities but God our Father created us unique.  

These are the pillowcases that we passed out.  Grace, Anna and I wrapped them in colored tissue paper and ribbon and added a card with their names on them and we had written inside the card "We prayed for you".  We have kept their names on 3x5 cards at home and rotated through the names each night we prayed as a family.  They have been on our hearts and minds for two years now.

We all headed to bed exhausted and blessed :)

First Days of Cambodia 2016

So it's been a wild ride so far!  We left Jacksonville area on Friday, May 27th and headed to Orlando to catch our flights to Cambodia.  We boarded our first flight around 6pm and that one took us to New York for our first lay over.  The cool surprise about this flight was that as we were boarding Benjamin called out and said hello to someone near the back of the line.  I, of course grilled my son to see who it was he knew and how he knew them.  Come to find out that a kid in several of his classes at Switzerland Middle was on our flight with his family!  So at New York we stepped up and visited with his family.  And we discovered, they were traveling on all of our same flights, heading to Phnom Penh to visit family!  So we got to meet a new family and travel with them for the couple days on the planes.

We had a good time getting to know them and the kids had a fun time playing games and hanging out during our layovers.  There was a loud a wild game of "Heads Up" as well as computer games, snacking and napping.

In the middle of it I thought we are raising a bunch of airport rats!

So after being in the air for over 20 hours, we arrived safely in Phnom Penh with new friends and total lack of sleep.  We touched down on Sunday at 11:30am local time which would have been 11:30pm EST, Saturday night.

We were impressed with the updates Phnom Penh has made to it's airport.  When we arrived two years ago we went downstairs to go through customs and it was a bare concrete floor with long tables set up in a large empty room.  This year, the basement floor had been covered in nice tiles and there were aisles between counters for check in.  Kit said that Cambodia is changing very fast and there has been a lot of new building.  The draw back is that there are no regulations or code inspections so everyone sort of does it their own way and safety is an option.

Kit met us at the airport with our son that we sponsor, Senghi!  That was a wonderful surprise!  Please excuse my crazed look from sleep deprivation but this was the best picture we got of him from our ride back.

We enjoyed the ride back to A Greater Hope Orphanage and just finally being back in Cambodia!  It is always an adventurous ride with questionable safety depending on the driver.  We took in the scenes along the route full of the Khmer people (which in many cases we were only inches from).

We got back to the orphanage about about 2:30pm and Kit showed us into the new guest house the orphanage built.  It is where the old water towers stood which were moved to the very back of the lot and they were upgraded too.  They collect the rain water and use this for all their water needs.  There has not been enough rain so please pray for the country to get the rain they need.

After that we helped with kids with their chores.  They have gone from having several varieties of animals to growing a massive amount of food.  Kit and Ream are wise in getting the kids trained in making a living by local means so that when they are grown they know how to farm the land here or raise animals for income.  Their gardens are beautiful and I'm sure I will take more pictures of them.

Grace, Anna and myself helped a group empty out their tomato bed.  The plants were ripped out and composted in plans of new crops being planted.  There were vine supports mended also.

Joseph helped sweep with one of the littlest guys and Benjamin helped to cut the grass with a sickle-type hand tool.  

I think the best part about the day was seeing the kids faces light up when we greeted them and called them by name!  It was precious to see them process that we remember them and they are not just one in a group of kids to us.  We chatted and remembered things from our last trip and it was a blessing for all of us!

We got to meet Joshua from the other missionary family that lives here.  They have been here for years but when we came last time they were in the States and we actually stayed in their living area.

After chores, a bunch of the guys went out to play soccer.  Kit had them gather up and bring their cleats if they had some.  He had them sit in a line, oldest to youngest and we brought out the cleats we had to give them.  Thank you so very much to those who donated these for us to give!  Kit, Alfven and Joseph helped pass out the new cleats with the oldest deciding if they wanted some new cleats.  All of them took the new cleats and passed their old ones down the line.  By the end of the process all of the guys had cleats for soccer and even some of the girls who play came over and got a pair.  They were super excited!

After that we pulled out the baseball mitts and bats we brought.  Kit had asked for one of those big, red plastic bats and a regular bat too.  So of course we had to test them all out :) 

It was very fun and I quickly realize why they needed the red bat.  Otherwise the ball would have been in the village with the way some of the boys hit!  

We had dinner and this time we are eating in the dining hall with the kids.  We are at a different table but we are all together.  It wasn't as awkward as I thought it would be.  I guess we have gotten used to the fact that the kids here find very normal, the guests eat "nicer" food.  Our food has some meat included and big chunks of veggies.  The kids did their Bible verse and prayer again which is beautiful to hear in Khmer!

After dinner we had just enough energy to take showers and drop into bed.  It was the first bed we had slept in since we left Florida so we were all ready! 

Please pray for Kit and Ream to have wisdom as they make decisions on the kids and school programs.  This is an amazing amount of responsibility and wisdom from the Lord will guide them.  From teaching the kids the Lord's love and forgiveness to guiding them in what to do when they graduate and how to build a family, it's all encompassing.