Going Home

June 7, 2016

Today is the day we started our trek back to Florida.  The girls got an early morning swim before we went to breakfast.   It's always hot enough in Cambodia to hop in a pool  :)  In fact, sleeping in the cold hotel room brought fog to my glasses and camera lens when we went to the pool.

This is where I hung out and it was very peaceful and beautiful.  You could hear all the traffic and work over the wall but inside was an oasis.

Alfven and I think it's very funny that in the open air hallway in the hotel there is a sauna if you would like to use it.  

We all ate a big breakfast before going to the airport.  Kit, Ream and Adah dropped us off.  They are some special people in the Lord's kingdom!

There are a lot of Buddhist monks everywhere in Cambodia.  They walk along and beg and people will come out and give them food or money for a blessing.  Ream told me that the interesting thing is that Buddha never said he was a god.  He did teach peace and lots of things that we find in our Scripture but he also taught to look for a Messiah coming in the future and that after the Messiah comes the world will burn.

Anna had asked why I keep taking pictures.  I told her I find the people fascinatingly creative!  They take what they have and what they have access to and make what they need.  It's definitely not the "cookie-cutter" approach to vehicles and they are all interesting to me.  Anna said that Jesus is the most creative of all so we had a conversation about that.

After Anna and I were done talking, Ream said that there is an interesting fact.  The Khmer language is thousands of years old, dating back to the Ankor Wat days.  There is a language master that is well respected that basically wrote the Khmer dictionary and it is thought of as our Webster's Dictionary.  She said the definition for the term "create" in the Scripture is translated something like "to be brought into being by the word".  It's totally John 1:1 and Genesis 1:1.  It's like the Lord laid a road map because He doesn't desire any to be apart from Him.

The guy behind the motos is on a very high framed bicycle pushing a tuk-tuk type vehicle.

Adam took the opportunity for a photo shoot in the van :)  She is super cute and has style!

As crazy as the driving is but what's amazing is that no one gets mad.  Everyone is patient and Kit said that if there aren't any rules then no one can really get mad at people breaking the rules.  And since everyone drives that way, no one gets mad.

Our flights went well and on the last leg from San Fransisco to Orlando we were split up, 2, 2 and 2.  Alfven sat with Grace and next to them was a young lady who wound up having heart attack like symptoms.  Alfven was able to help out and calm her as well as walk her out to meet the paramedics on arrival.  We had just heard that there was a medical emergency in the back of the plane.  So upon arrival I was surprised to see the young lady and Alfven heading up to the paramedic!

I sat with Anna and a caucasian gentleman sat next to us.  He was chatty and after the introductions and regular questions "Are you going home to Orlando?" type things he was telling me about his wife.  Then he said my wife is from Cambodia!  It was pretty surprising so I told him the last bed we slept in was in Phnom Penh.  We had a long conversation on Cambodia and Jesus.  It was very cool!  And even though I was dog tired and wanted to sleep I remember the sermon recently that said "Often times the Lord's timing is not our timing and we can feel an inconvenience to do His will."  Thankfully he was tired to since it was a red-eye so I was able to get some sleep also :)

We are so very thankful and realize what a blessing the Lord is allowing us to have in our friendship with Kit, Ream,  and everyone at A Greater Hope Orphanage.  We are already talking about our next trip and will cover it in prayer to see how the Lord leads.  He is so amazing!  He is The Living God!  He wants us to know Him intimately and personally and He walks with us every step of the way :)

"If therefore there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.
Do nothing for selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others."
                                                                                           Philippians 1:1-4

Mission Trip Video

Click the video below to see our video of the trip.  It's short but sums it up!

Cambodia Mission Trip Video

Sad Day Saying Good-Bye

June 6, 2016

Today was the day we had to say good-bye again to the kids.  I hate saying good-bye.  It's like I want to be here and there at the same time.

The morning started out the same way as always.  The rooster crowing, the sun rising and the kids getting their chores done before school.  I did snap a few pictures of the little kids waiting for their school to open.

After the kids went to school the girls got into the dress-up clothes again and played for a while.  We were in the middle of packing and cleaning up and they were done.

Then we hit the pool!  The girls at the Orphanage like to swim after dark because the boys don't like to swim after dark so they get the pool to themselves :)  It was too late for us so we hadn't been in yet.

The girls got a kick out of my cannonball into the pool but I was already sticky by 8:30am so it was awesome to get in the water!

Then we walked down to the marketplace.  This is the store where we got our skirts made.  Each little marketplace has a mannequin outside their seamstress shop.

This is the path alongside the fence at the Orphanage.  It look very pretty this morning.

The kids finally came back from school and we got to hang with them a little longer.

 We took a group photo and had lunch with them before we said good-bye.

Everybody just hanging out in the main room.

This is Joseph and Sothee.  Sothee interpreted for us all week on our home visits and he and Joseph struck up a nice friendship.

We got to take a last family picture with Senghi, Cambodian style :)

Just took some pictures while we were hanging around waiting to leave.

Last time we left this custom caught me by surprise but this time we were ready emotionally for it.  The kids come up and say good-bye and hug and all but a lot of them write notes to us individually.  These notes are precious and make me cry.  They are so brave to love well as teams come and go.

Kit, Ream, Adah and the Uys left for Phnom Penh.  The road traffic and scenes are so entertaining!  This trip we shared a piece of the road with this big guy!  They sell the elephant tail hair for medicinal purposes.

This is a pharmacy here.  They are always packed and anyone can come open a pharmacy up.  The owners buy the medicines from other countries for very cheap and then sell them here for cheaper than the States.  And you don't need a prescription for anything they sell.

Normal street wires in Cambodia.

This is a barber giving haircuts.  He's on a sidewalk right next to the road.

After we got our rooms, Grace, Ream and I took a tuk tuk down to the central market to do a little shopping.  I love riding in the tuk tuk!

The market is sort of an outdoor flea market set up with booths along the many, many aisles.  This one was clean and there was a breeze between aisles.  We had a good time!

Grace brought back some roasted crickets for the guys to try.  It was funny because as soon as we opened the door Benjamin was asking if we brought back snacks.  Oh yes we did!  Benjamin was the only one brave (or hungry) enough to eat a cricket.

We all went out for a nice dinner to a restaurant Kit and Ream recommended and it was fantastic!  Everything we ate was very good.  It was beautiful also.

It had these bowls of lotus flowers floating.  Very pretty!  Alfven told Grace it was a bobbing game :)

Grace wanted to take a picture and it turned out very well.  Good food with excellent people!

At night the city of Phnom Penh has beautiful lights everywhere.  It looks like it's set up for Christmas but this is up all year round.  It was wonderful to see.

We headed back to our room and will be getting ready for bed.  Tomorrow we start our plane trip home.  It takes about 20-22 hours to get home.  We are hoping for our sleep to turn around well.

Thank you so much for your prayers!  Please keep the Orphanage and kids in your prayers.  Pray for the village they live in, for the people there to see the Light and Life these kids reflect in Jesus.  Pray that the kids, Missionaries and workers have endurance to persevere, to fight the good fight.  And may we all learn to love well.

This is a verse that was printed on one of the good-bye letters we received today:
"Perseverance, character; and character, hope.   And hope does not disappoint us, because God has  poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us."  Romans 5:4-5

Sunday Worship

June 5, 2016

This morning we woke to get ready for church.  Again the kids were all about doing their chores, the speaker was projecting Buddhist chants, the birds were chirping and the rooster was crowing.

As the kids greeted us they asked as usual if we slept well.  We also asked if they slept well and many said they had sore shoulders and arms from all the rock climbing.

We headed out to church about 8:15am.  When we arrived we sat down to wait with everyone else who was already there.  The guys sit on the right and the ladies sit on the left.  There wasn't much chit-chat and no milling around socializing.

As a side note, when walking to church we got to hear "Achey Breaky Heart" blaring from someones yard and it was in Khmer :)  Very funny!

The picture above was at offering time.  They pass a sewn pouch around to collect the money in.  I love even just sitting and seeing how things are done here.  In the middle of service an older lady took out a leaf, put some small red/tan thing in it and spread it out of the leaf.  Then she folded the leaf and ate it.  Caleb said it's a type of pain killer that is used for tooth pain.  There is not a lot of oral hygiene in the remote poor of the village.

The kids from the Orphanage take lots of leadership roles in the church.  The kids do the praise team and band with singing and another group does the Kids Service about half way through the worship time.

I kept thinking of that old hymn "Redeemed how I love to proclaim it, Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, Redeemed by His infinite mercy..."  These kids have come from some very broken and rough home lives.  Yet, their love of Jesus has changed them from the inside.  They have been redeemed!

Ream's father is the pastor and he is always working, greeting, meeting with people trying to share Jesus.  He and his family were the first Christians in the village.  The service sermon was out of Genesis 37 & 39 and about Joseph and how the Lord blessed Joseph's faithfulness through times of hardship.   There were two testimonies before the sermon.  One was from a gentleman who teaches preschool here.  He said that the Lord has grown the preschool class.  When the kids came they were not well behaved but after learning they have become very well behaved.  The second was from a lady who teaches at the preschool.  She said that she was very poor and trusted Jesus.  She began teaching but they didn't have a salary for her.  She said lots of teachers ran away because they weren't getting paid but she chose to stay.  Then the Lord provided a salary for her and she is so blessed because of His provision.

After service we chatted for a minute then came back to the Orphanage.  Today will be our last full day at the Orphanage and it's already becoming sad to think of leaving again.  I think we are leaving pieces of our heart here over the time we come and leave.

Wut caught us after lunch, she and several girls walked us to the market to pick up the skirts we had made.  They turned out lovely and Anna wanted to wear her's out of the store.

The guys stayed back helping Sothee try to upload a program on the Orphanage computer that will make videos.

After the girls and I got back, Wut, Soryia, Vanack and Mangju went into the country side to do a children's church club.  I wanted to go and see what they do so I tagged along for a beautiful bike ride!

We got to the little church building and across the street was rest spot with a wooden cover.  There were two women waiting there for us.  They were part of the women's Bible study group that meets when the children meet.  We talked for a while and one of the ladies had a question about the seven lamp stands in Revelation 1.  It was a fun conversation!  Then the other lady asked for prayer for her ear that is hurting and her back that is hurting her.  We laid hands on her and prayed.  Please pray for her healing.  When we got back I was telling Alfven and he said she was the house visit they had done on Friday and she was super nice.

Some of the kids showed up, mostly on bikes.  I was told this was a smaller group than normal but there were still about 10.  First they went inside for a Bible lesson and then they came out for games.

You can see the boy in the air on the right side jumping and holding a shoe.  That's the game they would play.  They would jump into the jump-rope and try to pick up a shoe while jumping.  If they did get the shoe without stopping another child would would jump in, the one with the shoe would jump out and then the new jumper would try to pick up a shoe.

After children's club we headed home.

If you look at the picture below, the lady had made a tool to scoop water from the pond there into her rice field on the other side of the berm.  It swings back and forth on the sticks so that she can scoop and fill easily.

When we got back a bunch of the guys had pulled out some games.

The girls were hanging with Ream looking at the pictures from her trip.  The little ones were working on the top toys that had been given to us.  They loved those!

Kit broke open a new game of Munchkins and the guys played for hours.

At chore time, this reminded me of helping to clear and level the back lot by hand last trip :)  

This is a brick oven for pizza and a grill that one of the mission teams built for the Orphanage.  Chenda's chore was to clean it.

This is the swimming pool that the kids hand dug.  It has three steps for depth and is also used for baptisms by the church.

After chores, we went with a bunch of the kids to go berry picking.  We went over to some more rural streets to pick Pring-Pring.  It is like a small grape but not as sweet and it has a big pit.  It was what one of the ladies served to Joseph and I at a home visit.

The kids loved climbing the trees to the top as well as jumping over barbed wire fences to get the berries.

And the berries turn your tongue purple/blue :)

These kids are amazing!  They know what to eat and when it comes out.  When walking home they grabbed some leaf tops off of a vine growing in a lane and had me try it.  Many of them have had to survive in some very tough circumstances.  When I came out of the room a little bit later one of the small girls was eating berries off the tree right outside our door.  These were my favorite wild taste of the day!

Below is a picture of a hand dug water holding pond.  These are in many of the fields so that in the rainy season they get filled for water when it's not raining.

When we got back it was time for dinner.  We had another delicious meal and hung out visiting for the evening.  We are sad that the end of this time in Cambodia has come.  The kids are asking when we are coming back.  We answer that we are praying that the Lord will allow us to come back soon :)

"As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, And at the last He will take His stand on the earth."
Job 19:25