Music Room Update

Here's a few new pictures with the black and yellow wall in process

Time for a Rally . . .

No, I'm not talking about Wall Street (although a rally there would be nice as well). On Sunday afternoon, after rehearsing music for a wedding, Lora & I (and my mom) went down to show our support for the McCain/Palin ticket by attending the rally at the Omaha Music Hall.

When we got there, the line stretched around 3 sides of the Civic Auditorium. We probably wouldn't have made it in at all, but an older gentlemen came to us while we were in the back of the line and told us that there was a shorter line somewhere else. We followed him, and sure enough, he was right!

We stood in the overflow area, as the Music Hall was already full by that time. Little did we know that we would actually be the first to hear Sarah speak. After watching the Republican Senators and Congressmen speak via a big screen TV and speakers, Governor Palin stepped in and spoke to us in the overflow area first.


One of the difficulties in being "vertically challenged" is that trying to take pictures when tall people stand in front of you is . . . well . . . challenging! I held my camera over my head, aimed the best I could and took lots of shots. The one above was one of the better shots. I could have cropped and zoomed, but I thought that the raw shot gives you a better idea of what it was like to be there.

It was a great time and fun to hear Sarah speak. Just wish McCain could have been there as well.

I guess I've tipped my hand as to who I'm voting for . . . . . . .

Also - we'll have some updates of the music room soon. The third wall has been painted and is currently being striped.

See ya!

Music Room in Progress

Ok - these are the two walls after round 5 of striping

(updated on Sunday night).

Video from Cambodia!

On August 17th, we had a presentation at church about our trip to Cambodia. Roger Eng, our former youth pastor (now Associate Pastor) put together the following video. It's mostly video, but there are also some still shots.

Enjoy - and thanks again for your support!

P.S. We are painting the music room and almost ready to begin "striping". I'll post some pictures in the not-too-distant future.

Updates

I've updated the blogs from Cambodia with inline pictures and have corrected some grammer & spelling (so my brother doesn't pick on me). I will add some pictures to the very first posts, but haven't done that yet.

FYI - I have made contact with 4 of the 5 students in our small group and 4 additional Cambodian students.

Also - couple of links that may be of interest:

The Phnom Penh Post - English language newspaper for Cambodia

International Justice Mission - An organization working in Cambodia to stop the sex slavery industry. One of their books "Terrify No More" is about the rescue of 37 Cambodian girls from forced prostitution. One of the members of our church has a relative that works with this organization. Their is also an artist support page. The organization is supported by artists such as Sara Groves, Switchfoot, Jars of Clay, Bebo Norman and Phil Keaggy.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jig

Ok. So we're a little punchy here.

I sit at my desk at home and write this email as we do laundry and unpack.

Thanks to all of you who showed up at the airport (You too Connie!). It was a nice surprise to have so many folks there to meet us. On our way home we stopped at McDonalds to make sure we re-damaged any arteries that were healed by healthy food in Cambodia.

Hopefully, I'll post some pictures later tonight or tomorrow. Thanks again for all of your support!

Los Angeles

We got into Los Angeles last night and into our hotel room at a little after 11:00 p.m. Slept for about 4 hrs (feel great). Hot shower was nice. Mike, Max, Josh & I leave for the airport at 4:30 a.m., rest of crew to follow at 5:00 a.m.

See ya soon.

Wednesday Afternoon - Singapore Airport

We just arrived and found our departing gate at Singapore Airport. We're letting the kids do a little shopping and catching up on the web.

Last night in Phnom Penh, we had a nice final dinner together at a Thai restaurant. The fruit smoothies were fantastic! Two men played traditional music on regional instruments. One looked similar to a hammered dulcimer and seemed to function the same. The other was like a four-stringed guitar that you played as it laid down.

I talked for awhile with our host - Bill Labazoo about learning the Khmer language and few things about the ministry there.

The guest houses we stayed at (kind of like a small hotel) were very nice by comparison to our housing the last two weeks. Mike and I roomed together and watched CNBC on cable television. We actually had a nightstand to set things on.

Before we went to the restaurant, we went to the Genocide museum. Quite sobering. Thousands of pictures that the Khmer Rouge took of people before they killed them. There were 12-15 paintings depicting the methods of torture used by on those killed by Pol Pot. Very gruesome stuff.

Upon entering there were signs telling you not to laugh or smile during your tour, out of respect for those who were murdered by the Khmer Rouge. Under one set of steps was graffiti in many languages mourning what occurred there. (The museum is actually a concentration camp that was used by the Khmer Rouge - it had previously been a school). Some of the graffitti was sad, other notes were very angry, filled with profanities aimed at those who committed the atrocities.

It is good to be back in a western-style atmosphere, however there were many that were sad to leave. Three of the Khmer friends we had met came to the airport to wish us good bye.

See you all in a few days. (Greensleeves or "What Child Is This" is playing over the speaker system here - weird!)

Tuesday Morning - Last Day in Phnom Penh

Well, yesterday was quite an adventure! Mike Lewis, Max, Josh & I flew up to Siem Reap to see the temples at Angkor Wat. Our flight was great and our Tuk-Tuk drivers were on time and waiting for us.

The 4 Mustketeers and our Tuk Tuk with Driver

The temples and ruins at Angkor Wat are almost beyond description. Truly boggles the mind to understand how it all was done without modern machinery. One temple had a tree grown up in the middle of it, which has continued for hundreds of years. This has caused the temple to collapse. The tree trunks look like a snake wrapped around it.

Panoramic Shot of the back of Angkor Wat

Panoramic Shot of one of the Angkor Wat pools

Before we left, I put fresh batteries in my camera. By about 1:00 p.m. my batteries were going bad. Mike Lewis had the same experience. I think I took nearly 300 pictures during the day.

We had lunch at a restaurant that served an approximation of western food. I had spaghetti with meat sauce, which was good but spicy. Mike & Max had hamburgers with fries. The hamburger was a hamburger patty between 2 slices of bread. Josh ate Cambodian food.

We also got to see the main church here at Siem Reap. Very nice facility, much nicer than here in Phnom Penh. We saw the bass guitar that we helped replace. Yikes! I took a picture. Their main microphone had no cover.

John 3:16 in Khmer on Siem Reap Church Wall

Siem Reap was MUCH cleaner and more inviting than Phnom Penh. We were actually quite shocked at the difference. We talked to someone who told us that there are parts that are as bad as those in Phnom Penh, but overall it is less crowded and the cars pretty much drive on the right side of the road. (As an aside, we were told that up until 2 years ago there were no stop signs or stop lights in Phnom Penh - a city of 1.4 million people!).

While we were gone, they had to take 1 student to the hospital for a minor infection. All went well. She said the hospital looked just like the hospitals at home. All the medicines, emergency room visit and all cost $63.00.

This morning we will be moving to another house so that the Khmer students who let us borrow their apartments can move back. We will go to our final market and then go to the genocide museum. I've read that it can be pretty disturbing. Yesterday the team went to the killing fields and I guess it affected the students quite a bit.

I may not be able to post again while we're in Phnom Penh. The next update may be from the Singapore Airport.

Thank again to all of you for your support, prayers and emails. We'll be back in the states in about 4 days.

Sunday Evening

Had a few good notes from today.

The days events were pretty straightforward. We went to church this morning and then went to eat at the City Kat restaurant. We had a fascinating discussion with one of the other missionaries about some of the work in Cambodia, ponderings on the political climate (past and present) and an interesting story about an old lady who retired from being a missionary, then went back to Cambodia to start a mission for AIDS orphans and widows.

The City Kat Restaurant - Our favorite place to eat in Phnom Penh

In the afternoon, Mike & I helped find and buy another bass guitar, this time for the Siem Reap church.

We then went to a multi-church youth gathering, which was interesting to watch and see the differences and similarities between our youth and Cambodian Youth.

Tonight during our last group gathering, one of the Australians shared that they went to a Vietnamese church this morning. Tan Tan, one of the girls we were a little worried about earlier in the week were very excited to see them. She had also invited a Khmer student from English Camp to visit her church and he was there too. This was neat to see as the Khmer\Vietnamese issues were a real concern early in the week.

I will not be blogging again until Tuesday morning (Monday night Nebraska time) as Mike Lewis, Max, Josh and I are flying up to Siem Rea to see Angkor Wat.

Thanks for reading. Two more days and we'll be on the plane back home.

Sunday Morning

English Camp Ends

Yesterday was a good day and a sad day. We finished English Camp in the moring. We were very thankful that Koem Va and Doeng were there. They were very happy to get their certificates. They had us take their pictures with them. Very interesting.

We were only able to get 5 bibles in the end, but this worked out ok. 2 of our 5 guys had them, so Roger kept one for a person he is meeting today and we gave 1 to another girl in our group who did not have a bible. They were very thankful for them. It has the New Testament in Khmer and in English.

We had lunch with our boys and took pictures. We had dragonfruit again, which is always a good thing.

Roger and I with our boys and 3 other students
(Our boys are the 5 closest to the center)

A Home Visit

Afterwards, Koem Va wanted to give me a moto ride and show me his university. Roger rode with one of the other guys and we rode about 1 1/2 miles to their University. On the way Koem Va pointed out the hospital (in the process of construction) where he will work. Their university looked nice. One of the nicest looking buildings I've seen.

Just past the University, Koem Va turned onto a muddy alley filled with potholes and small ponds. We pulled up to an area with a stone fence where they were either building or renovating a big building. It looked like a construction site in the U.S. He led us into the yard and over to a small building with 3 or 4 doors. There was a plank that crossed some muddy ground to their door. I'm not sure how to describe the building to you, but it was like a small roadside motel with 4 rooms, but about 1/2 or less the size.

Koem Va unlocked the door ( a swift kick would render the lock useless), and Roger and I stepped inside. The room was, at best, 12 x 15 ft. There was a bathroom in the back with a toilet (not the kind we use - what we call a "squatty potty" - I have pictures). The bathroom as big enough for two or maybe 3 people to stand up in, but that's it. There was a shelf in the back used for cooking and a modern looking appliance used for water purification. There was a table, about 1/2 the size of a card table, 3 chests (where they kept their personal belongings), and a shelf, wide enough to hold a small boom box.

The entire contents of the room could probably fit into the back of my Scion hatchback. There were 3 mats and a mosquito net. The 3 boys that share this room sleep on the floor. I wondered what they did when it flooded. It was rather humbling and eye-opening to realize that they would live here for 4 years and that it was actually and was probably an improvement from where they came, maybe not space-wise, but that there was running water, a toilet and electricity.

Roger got video of the trip. Sadly, I left my camera at the dorm.

The Rest of the Day

At 1:00 we went to the Russian markets to shop. Seeing what I'd just seen didn't put me in too much of a shopping mood, but I found some gifts and talked at length with girl in one of the shops.

Scenes at the Russian Market

At 5:30 we went to the same mall we had visited on our first night here. I felt much more at home now. We had pizza (YAY!) and a cold Diet Coke (virtually no liquids are truly hot or cold here unless purchased in a western-style store. This drives some of our folks nuts). At the end of the night I had an ice cream cone. We went home and played Rook.

Today's Plans

Today we will go to church at 8:30. 10 of us will go to a different church (Vietnamese, I think) and the rest at the New Jerusalem Church. We will eat, I believe, at a western-style restaurant and then go to an all-city youth rally in the afternoon. In the evening, we will meet with our main missionary, Bill Lobazoo, for a "debriefing" session.

Tomorrow's Plans

I will likely not blog tomorrow, as Mike Lewis, Max, Josh and I (and possibly Richard and Roger) will fly up to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat. This was an unexpected change of plans, but we're told that it is quite something to see and that outside of the U.S., it is a very well-known site. The flight is about 1 hour (like flying to Des Moines or so). I'll try and catch up on Tuesday morning.

BTW - we caught our first mouse in the girl's kitchen this morning with a sticky trap.

Saturday Morning

Graduation Day

Well today is graduation day for English camp. We will meet as normal until noon today. Koem Va has not been here for the last 2 days, which has concerned Roger and I, however we do know that he had a nursing testing yesterday that may have gone past the time we left. Fortunately, I got his address so I can send a Bible if I don't see him today.

Although we have been adjusting well and have come to feel comfortable here, last night's sharing time brought some sad reminders of where we are.

Sharing Time #1

Yesterday when we went to the zoo, the church sent along "lunches" for us, because we were gone so long. The lunches consisted of rice (which we've had at every meal) in styrofoam containers with a little meat. We had romotans for dessert. Because it rained, i ate on the bus, but some ate underneath a shelter. As is common here, when the Khmer were done, they just threw the trash in a pile on the ground.

At our sharing time last night one of the students asked if we'd seen what happened with the trash. I had not. The kids who were trying to sell us coconuts were poor farm children. The student shared that as we began to leave, the kids began picking through our trash pile and pouring any salvagable food into a container to take with them. Very hard to fathom.

Sharing Time #2

Roger had a long list of prayer requests for Cambodia that we talked and prayed through last night. In some cases, Roger would give students additional information that he had learned since being here.

One prayer request was for the sex slavery industry here. In our prayer requests (compiled by Operation World), they stated that 50,000 prostitutes operate here. 1/3 of those are children.

Roger shared about a CMA missionary here named Kim who works with the Vietnamese here. As I mentioned before, the Vietnames are looked down on here. Their children cannot attend public schools and they cannot afford to send them to private schools. (As an aside, we have 3 Vietnamese children in our group - Chum Va, Tan Tan and Tye. Chum Va always sings very strong during song time. Tan Tan is shy to a fault and her English is probably the poorest in our group.) Kim is the one who has been bringing the Vietnamese children here. On Monday or Tuesday, she was eating with Roger and told him of a young 12 year old girl who she had been inviting to church (and I believe English Camp). When she went to see her early this week, the girl would not come out to see her. Kim insisted and eventually the girl came out. When she did, Kim noticed that she was wearing jewelry and that her hair had been dyed. Kim knew immediately what this meant. Her parents had sold her to the local prostitution ring. Kim was very upset, as were all of us.

I cannot imagine the desperation and/or evil that would lead someone to sell their 12 year old daughter into such a lifestyle. Things like this are very hard to take in. Unfortunately, as the statistics above show, this happens to thousands of children here.

A Day at the Zoo

Today was an interesting day. We met for worship for about 1/2 hour this morning and then went to the Phnom Penh Zoo.

The good news of the day is that we were able to procure New Testaments. Roger and I will get 10 for our 5 guys and extras for other Khmer that we've met.

After worship we drove for about 1 hour to the zoo. During the trip, I talked with 2 Khmer students (which helps them with their English) and a lady on our trip who came from Wisconsin. (Their whole family of 4 came at their own expense to help out and generate interest within their church - Wow!).

The zoo was interesting from a Western perspective. Small monkeys roamed freely about as well as some deer.

The zoo was REALLY primitive. They had Lions, Tigers and Bears (oh my!) , Elephants and some of the wildest monkeys I've ever seen. Unlike Western zoos, you can get pretty up close and personal at the zoo. One type of monkey with really long arms grabbed Roger's backpack and another Khmer who was teasing the monkey got grabbed pretty hard. One type of monkey had a call that was as loud and obnoxious as a warning siren in a building. If I hadn't watched the monkey make the sound, I would have thought it was a siren. No kidding.

It rained almost the entire time we were at the zoo, so we were all drenched. Next time I'll come during dry season. (At least the busses didn't break down).

At the end of the first part, we stopped and bought 13 coconuts from a boy who had been following us on his bike. The Khmer cut the top of the coconuts off and put a straw in and drink the coconut milk. It was pretty good - not sweet enough for my taste, but really interesting. Got some great pictures.

Our coconut salesman & Tan Tan enjoying a Cambodian snack

Before we left, we stopped at a "petting zoo". There you could feed the monkeys bananas. They hissed at each other when one got a banana that the others wanted. Really wild stuff. Nothing like you'd see in the USA. We also saw some deer and fed them bananas, and two types of cranes that were both fascinating.

Max feeds the monkeys / Cranes eating fish at the "Petting Zoo"

The trip home was interesting for another reason. I sat next to the Khmer who had helped us buy the bass for the church. (I can't spell his name, but it sounds like Peerom). I had talked to him about the instrument needs at their church, but our conversation went in many different directions. He works for Evangelism Explosion and also does some translation for gospel books from English to Khmer. Neat guy with two kids. But the interesting story came at the end.

Phearum Gneau and his family. The girl on the far left is his cousin.

I asked him if his parents were Christians and he said that they were now and that his dad is the pastor of the largest church in Siem Reap. His father had been in the Khmer Rouge army and had killed many people. While he and his mother and sisters were in a refugee camp in Thailand, a Swiss lady shared the gospel with his mother, who then became a Christian. At the time she was unable to do much more than lay down - she was in very ill health.

When they got back to their home, her husband told her she could go to church as long as her God was real and could heal her. The people at her church and the elders regularly prayed for her and she was eventually healed. At this point his father did not want her to go to church and tried (without success) to beat her. She and the children continued to pray for him.

In the late 1980's or early 1990's (I can't remember which), his father began to have a change of heart and became a Christian. From what he said, there was a big change in the life of his father. His father said now that only Christ could forgive him for the atrocities that he had committed. His father went into the pastorate and is now being used by God to lead and build the church in Cambodia.

We'll be meeting in our dorm in about an hour for worship and prayer. As odd as it may sound (and as cliche' as it may sound), there are things that I will miss here when I leave. Once you begin to build relationships with the people, your view of the culture seems to change a bit. You also see that in spite of the awful conditions, by western standards, they still love their lives, their families and their friends. And they love God - probably more deeply than we do.

Peerom is already asking if we will come back to Cambodia and come to Siem Reap (they have 2 English camps - one in Phnom Penh and one in Siem Reap) to help with English and to provide musical training for their worship leaders. Peerom even asked if my wife would come next time.

Lora, if you're reading this - don't worry, I didn't commit you to anything.

Friday Morning

Yesterday was a very interesting day in a number of ways.

Breakfast

The area director for our mission took the adults out for breakfast. It was a true Khmer breakfast. The best way to describe it was pork soup with angel hair pasta (noodles) as the primary ingredient. Eaten with chopsticks. It was actually ok, although I'll take the corn flakes that we've been having.

The director talked about the mission here and in Cambodia in general. During the Khmer Rouge, 90% of the church was martyred. At the end of their reign, only 2,000 Christians remained. Today, the church has about 200,000. They have a plan, which is actually pretty realistic, to have a church in every village by 2021.

Interestingly enough, many of the strongest pastors/leaders are former Khmer Rouge. During the end of the days of the Khmer Rouge, there were many refugee camps along the border, divided up by political allegiance to prevent fighting inside the camps. One camp was predominantly Khmer Rouge and no international group would go there and work with them. The C&MA was the exception, and as they worked, conversions began to take place. Hard to believe, but true. Kind of like Hitler repenting and becomng a minister. Wow.

Brownout

We went to lead worship at 8:30 a.m. - the bass guitar had stopped working, so we set Cindy up on the keyboard to play bass using a bass sound. Five minutes before we were to start, the electricity went out and stayed off for 2 hours. We had been warned about this happening, but it was our first experience with it.

Can't Buy Me Love

Well, maybe not love, but amps. We had planned before going to possibly help the church buy some new instruments, strings, etc.... Having the bass quit working was a sign we were on the right page. Mike & I went with a local church worker/musician to "Music Store Row" in Cambodia. How eye opening. Since we've been here Cindy has shared the 15-watt guitar amp with me. [For context - at home I play a 60 watt amp and Cindy uses a bass amp with over 300 watts]. So our two goals were to find a bass and a bass amp. Medium level basses were in short supply, we could generally only find basses that were the same or less quality than the one they already had. We finally found two nice basses, and Ibanez and a Yamaha (the first name brand instruments we could find). They were wrapped in plastic. The owner told us we couldn't try them unless we bought them first. Couldn't believe it.

At a store down the street we found what we believed was a used Fender Bass. I say "believed" because there is so much fake merchandise you never really know. It played well and sounded good, so we bought it. However the bass amps fell into two categories - very small and essentially unusable for our purposes, and used equipment that looked VERY old and rugged for about 2 times the cost in the USA. We finally had to give up on the amp. Just to give the non-musicians some perspective, the age of the much of the used equipment (95% of what they had) was circa 1980. I saw a number of amps that were prevalent when I was in high school or junior high. Unreal.

We finally decided that for some things, we may be better to go back to the states, buy it there and have it shipped here.

The Orphanage

In some ways, I was not looking forward to this trip. I was worried what it would be like and how it would affect our kids and adults (myself included). We drove out into the countryside and parked and then walked down a dirt road for about 3-5 blocks past "farmhouses". Some were seriously bad. My Khmer friends told me that these people were very poor. 80% of the people live in the countryside in Cambodia.

Two homes of poor farm families on the way to the orphanage

Before the last turn into the orphanage, the view was very beautiful. A huge rice field, dotted with palm trees lay before us. Brahma cows were grazing the rice fields. I had written about these trees in my journal as we were landing in Phnom Penh.

What lay behind the girl's dormitory at the orphanage

As we turning into the orphanage, the children were lined up in two lines, on either side of the road, clapping as we entered. They seemed very happy to see us. They greeted us in English.

We had a short "ceremony" where we presented the gifts to the orphanage. The director said this was the largest group of the year. Most of the time 1-2 people come to visit.

The ages represented were primary school age and up. They take children who are true orphans and those whose parents are too poor to keep them. We learned that most of the "real" orphans have lost their children to AIDS or landmines. You may not be aware, but Cambodia was (and possibly still is) the most landmined country in the world. Bill, our missionary, says that there are reports in the news almost daily of people losing a limb to land mines up in the north. The de-mining process is very slow and tedious. Princess Diana had visited here in her crusade to eliminate land mines.

We also learned that Cambodia has frozen all international adoptions. Angelia Jolie got around this by buying Cambodian citizenship for $1 million, but that's a little impractical for the average U.S. family.

Anyway, we played games with the children, and distributed gifts that we had brought (personally) for them - candy, stuffed animals, pencils, whatever. Our boys had sent a bunch of Beanie Babies, which I and some friends distributed.

Lexi Webb with two girls at the orphange / Mike Lewis & Sarah Mellema hand out gifts

They have a heavy emphasis on kids learning English, so that they can get scholarships to the university when they graduate.

I took pictures of the girls dormitories. Much more simple than our "dorm" basically imagine a chicken coop in the U.S. Make it spotless (no dirt/manure) and make two 4 X 8 pallets with plywood. Now put a few desks and shelves, made with 2 by 4's and such and you have the dorm. The kids sleep on the plywood pallets - no matresses.

Panoramic shot of 1 girls dorm room 6-8 girls live and sleep in this room

Breakdown

When we got back to our bus, it wouldn't start. After trying numerous times, we eventually put the two teams on our bus on the other two buses and everyone stood in the aisles for the trip back to Phnom Penh.

The Mall

At 7:00 we packed into a small bus (and i do mean packed - like sardines) and went to the other western style mall. Mike Lewis and I looked around but didn't see anything that caught our eye. We eventually went to a Swenson's (like a Ben & Jerry's) and had some ice cream. A very nice taste of home.

Thursday morning

mike lewis and i came in early again this morning. may not have much time as we have breakfast with the area director. hope to ask him about the bibles issue. last night when we came back from the internet cafe, our guard was reading his bible - i stopped to talk to him and noticed that it was in English. It's my understanding that you can buy English/Khmer bibles where you have both. I hope we can find these as it would serve to benefit in two ways, both spiritually and socio-economically for them (helping learn english).

and now for a few non-linear type of thoughts . . . .

the traffic here is truly amazing. on the streets at night by the internet cafe, countless motos (small motorcyles - main method of travel here), people, cars, tuk-tuk's (a moto pulling a carriage) and people on foot go by. the streets are narrow and you have to walk in the street as there are no sidewalks. people go around each other, cars drive with 2 wheels on the curb, people constantly honk politely for to warn you that they're behind you. it truly is something to see.

in our dorm , the girls live on the second story and they have a nice balcony which picks up the evening breeze (yay!). When we go up to the "main room" on their floor for breakfast, there is a woman next door with 10 month old baby and a 9 year old daughter. the baby is absolutely adorable! She grabs its hand and has the baby wave to us. it has tight curly black hair. her daughter is a cute girl. both she and her mother are a little plump - i don't mean this as an insult, but i have only seen 3 people here who are not slim and they are two of them. i've taken some pictures, but it's one of the high points of breakfast to hope that you'll see her and the baby when you go up.

The two sisters next door

last night we met at 8:00 for worship, prayer and sharing. One of the interns loaned me a travel guitar (a Martin Backpacker) so we could sing. i had brought music and lyric sheets for the kids. as we were singing "God of Wonders" in harmony (the kids really sang beautifully), I wondered what the lady and her family next door thought of our music, since all windows are open and there is no privacy to speak of.

there were some pretty emotional moments during sharing (both from adults and students). a few astute observations by the kids. one student commented at how vigorously the Khmai worship, when they seemingly have nothing or little to be thankful for, and how many of us barely move our lips while we live in luxury. how true. i'm also hoping that this trip inspires the kids to give more to organizations like compassion international, world vision or kiva. hopefully this will breed a lifetime of concern and involvement for the poor.

gotta go.

Quick update - Wednesday night

another bad keyboard so little or no punctuation.

quick update here as we have a team meeting in an hour.

another good day of teaching english. with our students today we covered days of the week, months of the year, telling time, finding locations on a map (the bank is on Elm street, the drugstore is in the corner of elm and 11th street. . . . . ).

found out today that koem va is a christian and has been for about a year. please pray that we can find him a bible in his language. i found out today that they are currently hard to get and cost $10.00 which is 1 1/2 months rent for koem. i would really like to get one for him before i leave. i have given him my english bible, which he can use until then.

we went to the russian market to buy things for the orphanage today. amazing place - one of the neatest things i've seen since coming. it would be hard to explain, but imagine a flea market with about 300 or more shops and the aisles about wide enough for 2 people. that's it. pretty cool.

we had two interesing fruits today. one was dragon fruit which is a big purple fruit that you cut in sections - tastes like kiwi fruit. the other i don't know the name, but it was good.

another funny aside - while american idol is big in the us, they have a 'freshie show' here. it's like american idol except that the contestants merely walk down the ramp acting like a model. totally weird and goofy, but it's all the rage. when we have games, our "3rd world worship band" plays background music. today they had about 6 fresshie shows. we played "play that funky music", "smoke on the water", 'china grove' and a few other strange songs. really bizarre but the khami really get into it. worship has been pretty enthusiastic too.

one sad aside - on the way back from the internet cafe this morning there was a begger laying front of the market. i always get nervous in the states with beggars as you never know if you're being taken or not. this was not the case. the guy looked like he had a broken arm and leg. don't know what happened, but it was ugly. scary stuff.

we are doing well. love the people. love the food. love the ministry. hate the sanitation & poverty. keep praying for us.

btw - one of our girls gave her testimony this morning during the morning program.

tim

Long Update - Wednesday morning 6:59 am.

Monday Evening

I think that finally getting into the ministry part lifted everyones spirits. we started the day with some singing. Çindy Eng, Josh, Richard Eng and i were the worship band. The guitar has the wrong kind of strings on it and they´re pretty rusty. We have a 15 watt practice amp to share between the bass and guitar and the drums are pretty scary too, but it still sounded like us (no smart comments here please) and worked great. We´ll just call ourselves the 3rd world worship band.

View behind the guitar player - who is that masked man?

Then they had 3 testimonies, which was really cool. there are a lot of buddhists that come , so hearing the gospel explained 2 or 3 different times each day is a good thing. We then met to teach english. things went really well except for the vietnamese issue(Ill get to that later). Roger Eng and i had 3 guys that we worked with, Koem Va, a nursing student at the university, Ranny (a christian) going to the university and Sandy, a high school student. all of them know some english and sandy is actually pretty good. As part of our lesson we all shared email addresses.we had 3 students who seemed really shy in our large group.

I found out later that they are vietnamese, and that the vietnamese are treated like lepers here. We heard a horrible stories today about how many vietnamese families end up selling their daughters into prostitution to make a living. one specific story involved a 12 year old girl. Very heartbreaking. One of the interns told us that along the Thai border, girls as young as 6 are sold into prostitution, often tricked by their parents, being told that they are going to work in a cafe but finding out the truth later. It is one thing to read about it, but quite another to look at a little vietnamese girl in your group and wonder if it may happen to her. Our group is praying that we can do our best to make these children feel loved and to communicate to the Cambodians that we are all brothers and sisters in Christ regardless of nationality and ethnicity.

We had lunch together and the food was GREAT! Only issue is that i had to eat with chopsticks. The Cambodians I ate with had a good laugh. One girl at our table said that she was not a christian, but that she had been invited by a friend. she specifically came, not only to learn english, but to learn more about the bible. really cool.

after lunch we went to the grand palace. very interesting. on our ride down we got to see some areas of phnom penh that were more modern. it was a nice change from what we´d seen so far.after our tour we had supper together and talked in our teams about what we could do better, how the day went, etc..

Koem Va and Ranny at the Grand Palace

The last time I came to the internet cafe, my keyboard was very problematic and I couldn't log in and post on the blog so this will represent about 2 days worth of stuff. Today's keyboard is pretty good (the internet cafe is very primitive) so I'll post as much as I can.

Afterwards we had worship band practice for tomorrow. like i said, a VERY encouraging day. hard to believe you could hit it off so well with people from such a different culture. really helps take an edge of the culture shock that we were all dealing with. keep praying for us, especially the vietnamese issue, which is a big concern and possibility to touch the lives of the unwanted and unloved. the little girl, tan tan is so beautiful and the little boy is such a doll. don´t see how anyone could hate them. will write when i can.

Tuesdays News

Had another good day on Tuesday. People arrived back from the elections so we had more people in our group today. Roger and I had two new guys. We did some review at the beginning of our session.

Today we worked on colors as a big group. When Roger & I broke into small groups with our guys we went over things like Tall and Short, Slim and Heavy (one guy wanted to know what Fat meant - we warned him never to refer to a woman as "fat" - we all had a good laugh about that one). We also took a pen and glass and worked on over, under, beside, next to, in front of, behind, inside, etc... Then we worked with identifying objects on a desk and other stuff.

My conception of what we'd be doing was somewhat wrong. Our English teaching is with older students than I expected and we're not starting from ground zero with most. In general we are helping improve. This is not universal however. Tan tan, the girl from vietnam, has almost no English skills at all. I sat next to her today during the games and helped her with the colors on her shirts, such as yellow and black.

Ministry time before hand was good. The Khmai really sing out well. Their voices are higher pitched and more strident, but it doesn't bother me.

Lunch was excellent. The food was a worry going in, but it has been great. We ate a fruit called a Rambutan, which is a red prickly fruit with a thick skin. You peel the skin off and the inside is like a grape with a seed. Very tasty.

Rambutans

After lunch everyone went to a Cambodian water park. Roger and I called it an American Lawyers dream. Not dangerous per se, but things are different here, for sure. When we got there, 1 minute after we got off the bus a monsson like rain hit. We went for cover and waited about 1/2 hour. Many of the Cambodians went out into the water during the rains. Very interesting. I got a lot of pictures.

Roger gets drenched from the monsoon / Students at the water park

On the way home, I talked at length with Keom Va, the guy in our group I've become closest to. He is quiet and reserved, and I believe he feels a bit self-conscious. I also believe he is poorer than the others. He did not vote because he could not afford the $10.00 to travel 75 miles to his home to vote. He as 4 brothers and 3 sisters. He shares an "apartment" with 2 other guys for $20.00 per month - (about $7.00 per person). He asked me how he could improve his English and we talked about it. He also wanted a Bible, so we're working on that as well. I don't know yet if he's a Christian without a Bible or a Buddhist interested in learning more.

Interestingly enough, many of the Khmai have email addresses, either from school or the internet cafes. The internet cafes are cheap. For foreigners, it is about $1.00 per hour. I can call home via skype for the same rate. So much for at&t.

Last night, after all ministry time was done we had supper (again GREAT! - I could eat here every day) - rice, shrimp, vegetables and more ramatan. (sp?). In the evening we went to another nice store where we could buy some american products. I bought some snack sized snickers bars to share with our guys today. I'm told that they may not like them (too sweet), but we'll see.

Today - Wednesday

Mike Lewis and I came early to the internet cafe this morning. I've been waking up about 4:00 a.m. and can't get back to sleep. I get up and read and write in my journal until we're ready for showers.

Today, after English class, we're going to go to the Russian Market to buy things for an orphanage. We do this as a game with the Khmai. It is a race to see who can buy their things first, and at the lowest price. I believe we need to use english when ever possible.

The kids are doing well. I think most of the culture shock is worn off. I think we as adults are more troubled by the poverty and santitation issues that we see. The kids struggle with short showers, not being able to flush our toilet paper and the lack of A/C. I view it as camping - slightly more primitive in some ways, less primitive in others.

I'm taking lots of pictures, but don't believe I can post them from here. Pray for opportunities to minister to the Khmai today. Pray especially for Koem Va - that we can easily get him a Bible and that I can come up with ideas on how to help his English.

Sunday Night Update

note *** because of a problem keyboard, i will not be capitalizing during this blog

it's sunday night at 7:29 p.m. in cambodia. this morning we went to church for the first time. the elections were today in cambodia and they go back to their home province to vote so phnom penh is pretty empty or so they tell us.

the khmai (the cambodians) are somewhat shy so when all of us foreigners showed up, and they were a little afraid to go into the church. mike lewis and i went to go out and talk to some of them and made some new friends then we all went into church. the whole service, except for the sermon, was in khmer so was unintellible to us. the missionary's wife translated the sermon into english so that we could understand. it was neat to see them singing in their native tongue. the only song i recognized was o for a thousand tongues, but all the rest were unknown. it was both neat and strange to sit by these people who are so different from us in many ways, but yet sharing the same faith.

i talked to a young girl afterwards who was studying in college and will help us with the english camp that starts tomorrow. one thing i've learned already is that it is really hard to guess ages here. because of malnutrition, the people are smaller. the girl i talked to after church i would haave guessed to be in high school. i talked to another girl named aya who i though was maybe 13 or 14 and it turns out she was already out of college. the neat thing is that she now works for world vision, which is a christian relief organization similar to compassion international.

tomorrow we start english camp, which is a little more adventuresome than i thought. we will work on nothing but teaching tomorrow, but later in the week, our english exercises take us to the grand palace, a waterpark, a zoo, and a market. roger and i and two other girls from our church are on the same team. one of the ladies has been here before and is an elementary school teacher and brought some things to help out. my understanding is that things are very fluid, as some will come with some english skills, some with no english at all, and some with fairly good english.

we are starting to get over the jet lag. yesterday during training meetings, many of those on our team were falling asleep during some of the presentations. it was really embarassing, but i heard later that those who were presenting understood our situation.

the culture shock is still something that many are dealing with. it is hard to comprehend so much of what we see. so many different emotions come to the surface - sadness over the poverty and living conditions, love for the people around us and the beauty in their faces. it truly is hard to get a handle on it all.

it is likely that you won't hear from me for awhile as our responsibilities may take us past the point in the day where we are able to get to the internet cafe. i will do the best i can to keep you updated. i was able to talk to lora on the phone today using an internet phone connection.

thanks again for your support and prayers. i hope to write with more info when i can. i'm keeping a journal so that i can remember as much as possible when i return.

We've Arrived

Well, we're in Cambodia. We arrived this morning at 8:55 a.m. (which is 8:55 p.m. Friday night Nebraska time). The local missionaries took us to our "guest house", which is across the street and a little catty-cornder from the church.

I write from a little internet cafe that we use. The young girl that runs it is very nice and has invited us to her church. We've been trying to tell her that we'd love to come but don't have control over our schedule. I think we finally communicated this to her.

The walk to the internet cafe is a real eye-opener for all of us. Street vendors sell fruits, seafood and other things I don't recognize. One vendor is busy re-building shock absorbers for motorcycles.

As I sat on the balcony and wrote in my journal, I counted the vehicles that drove by. 20 of the 20 I counted were all small motorcycles. Based on what I've seen , most are in the 100-150 cc range.

The buildings/houses are all very compressed. Yards do not exist. If a storefront is two story, it seems likely that a family lives in the back on the main floor and one or two families live in the 2nd story. Sanitation seems almost non-existent. As we walked to the internet cafe, the smell on the street seemed familiar, but I couldn't place it. Later on I realized it was the smell I had experienced when taking things to the Fremont City dump. I don't mean this as a put-down, just as a statement of fact.

In spite of the conditions, the people are great. I've had extended conversations with 2- 3 people. Little children are excited to see us and families wave to us foreigners as we go by. I can see already that ministry will be really neat, as the people are easy to love.

We have a 2:00 meeting to discuss ministry plans for the week. Gotta go.

I'll keep you up to speed. Remember to pray for us.

Tim

Cambodia Trip - Arrival in Singapore

Well, we just arrived in Singapore after an 18 hr flight from Los Angeles (short layover in Tokyo). All has gone very well - no incidents whatsover. Folk are in various states of adjusting to different time zones - some have slept well, others haven't.

We have a 6-7 hour layover now but will be in Phnom Penh in about 8-9 hours.

We're now looking to find the much-anticipated showers!

UPDATE 3:32 A.M. Singapore time

Josh & I found the showers. Feel much more human now. I changed in to shorts and a light cotton shirt in anticipation of our landing in Cambodia this morning.

Have finished about 80 pgs in "Killing Fields, Living Fields" - a history of the Evangelical Christian Church in Cambodia. Very interesting. Both encouraging and sad.

The airport in Singapore is the nicest I've ever seen (Friends have told me it's one of the nicest in the world). Looks more like the lobby of classy hotel.

Everyone is looking around and taking pictures. I've given up on sleep for the time being and will just wait till I'm tired. I couldn't sleep much on the flights.

I'll try and update in Cambodia. Not much news for now - just put on John Denver's "Leaving on a Jet Plane" and you'll get most of the picture . . . . .

Bye for now

Tim

Cambodia & Music Room

As I write, we are hearing Josh play drums in the "finally about to be completed" music room downstairs. The drywall has been put up and they'll be mudding on Monday. I'll post some pics after it's all painted.

Also - wanted to prep those who visit for our Cambodia trip. I know that there is an internet cafe near the mission in Phnom Phen. Each day, our assistant pastor will attempt to publish updates on our church's web site. I will also try and add to our blog if and when possible. The church site will likely be the best source to see what's happening.

The church's website is at http://www.fremontalliance.org/ . Go to this site and there's a "Cambodia" menu item. From that item, choose "Team News". I believe that this is where Roger will be updating our daily "diary".

You can always come here if you prefer bad puns and a strange sense of humor. ;-)

See ya.

tim

Lora Gets Her Foot in the Door . . . .

Time for a little update on Lora. We've got two pieces of news from the last month.

First, Lora is sporting some very chic footwear after her recent foot surgery. No they didn't amputate anything - they just removed that 6th and 7th toe that she's been sporting for years. She's healing up ok now, although it was a little rough at first. I don't know if I'm going to be able to break her of the habit of making me serve her breakfast in bed, but we'll see......

On another note (pardon the pun) Lora has a new job!! She'll be starting this fall as the vocal music/general music instructor at Trinity Lutheran School in Fremont. Our previous director, Julie Patchen, left at the end of the last school year to take a job in Elkhorn and after a few generous bribes to the school board at Trinity, Lora was offered the job.

Pop Lora a note to say congrats & get well if you have a chance. We'd post pictures of the wounded foot, but we don't want to scare small children or large adults.........

Tim Davis? Who Are You Really? . . .

Over the last month, our family has made a stunning discovery about a close friend. We now realize that we have had the wool pulled over our eyes for years. It is hard to believe we could have been so naive.

Before I proceed, you really need to examine the following two pictures closely. Please prepare yourself for a real shock.

First look at this picture, taken in the last year, at a fine, upscale restaurant in Lexington, Kentucky. Look VERY closely at the man on the far right in maroon T-Shirt. Does that face look familiar to you ? It should. Read on . . . .

Now, examine this next picture, taken by a private investigator near Washington D.C. Our suspect is the guy in the back with the hat, which he uses to keep you from looking at his hair more closely. Now imagine this guy in a flowered shirt and shorts. Imagine him with his true, naturally curly hair (which he's had straighted to hide his true identity) and a few years younger.

Are any bells going off yet? Hmmmmm.....

Supposedly, this man is "Tim Davis", a minister of sorts who claims to have gone to school in Kentucky and claims to be no older than say 40 or so. When "Tim" lived in Fremont, I always had this nagging voice in the back of my head saying that I knew him from somewhere before.

This last month, as we were watching a video together as a family, it finally dawned on me who this "Tim" really is . . . . .

Do these pictures from Tim's younger days ring a bell?

Can you say "Book 'em Danno"? Yes, back in his younger days, he used to go by the name of James MacArthur (one of his many aliases). As hard as it may be to accept, my friend "Tim" is none other than "Danno" (Danny) Williams of Hawaii Five-O fame. I'm sure this his new identify has been assumed to allow him a little peace and quiet in his personal life and to avoid the pesky autograph seekers and paparazzi who turned his life into a game of hide and seek.

He may have been hiding . . . . but we've been seeking . . . .

Yes, some plastic surgery, a change of hairstyle (to get rid of that natural curl), and a few touches here and there, and you can see how he almost pulled it off.

If you still don't believe me, rent some old episodes of Hawaii Five-O. Watch the facial expressions carefully. Watch the little lift of the lip as he talks. Note the rise and fall of voice as he speaks. Once you see it, you will have not doubts that Tim Davis is actully Danny "Danno" Williams.

The Cat is out of the Bag.

Can anyone say "Book 'em Timmo"

Fiddler in the Pit

As if our lives weren't busy enough - last week I spent 5 days in my old stomping grounds - the orchestra pit at FHS.

Me in the pit with Mandolin and my trusty Ibanez Pat Metheny Hollow Body

The director asked me last December if I knew how to play Mandolin, as they would be putting on "Fiddler on the Roof" this year and the book was for Mandolin & Guitar. Thinking I could pull the old studio guitarist's trick of tuning the instrument like a guitar and wailing away, I said "sure"!

After the music arrived and I a student loaned me a mandolin, I realized I had made a big mistake. Given the tuning and string gauges, I couldn't tune the thing like a guitar. Yikes - what to do now? After trying to learn all the chords from scratch (ok if you're playing 3 chord country songs, but not for a broadway book), I visited my favorite guitar store in Omaha (Russo's) and asked for help. My old buddy Ned looked at me like I was an idiot and said "Hey - it's just like playing a guitar upside down".

At first I didn't follow him, but then I saw what he meant. The guitar is tuned (from thickest string to thinnest) E - A - D - G - B -E. The Mandolin is tuned (from thickest to thinnest) G - D - A - E, each string being in pairs. If you ignore the last 2 stings on the guitar, it is the same notes reversed.

So, with this newfound knowledge, I sheepishly went back home and started to try and think "upside down". This made things a lot easier (until I started looking at the single -note lines).

If I'd been really smart, I'd have found a left handed mandolin, and played it backwards, so that it was playing it like a guitar forwards (yes - your head should be spinning about now). But there wasn't time to find left handed mandolins - not even with Ebay.

Pretending to read a D7b9 chord.

So, long story short, after about 5 weeks of practice, I got the point where I could fool most of the people most of the time. It was really interesting - even during production week, I found new voicings for various chords and played things differently as the week progressed.

I actually got to the point of enjoying playing the thing, but not enough to keep me from posting it on Ebay tonight. I also have a newfound respect for Chris Thiele of NickelCreek.

Lesson learned: Next time I get asked to play an instrument that I don't really play - go to the music store first, pick the thing up and try and tune it to a guitar. If you can't - say no or plan on some time for woodshedding . . . .

;-)

Only Visiting This Planet - Larry Norman (1947-2008)

Yesterday was a very sad day for Christian Music. After struggling with health issues for more than a decade, Larry Norman died yesterday (February 24) in Salem, Oregon.

For those of you who are of the younger generation, Larry was to Contemporary Christian Music what Elvis was to Rock and Roll. If you asked the average CCM fan today what the first Christian Rock album was, they would not have the slighest idea. However, back in 1968, a young 21 year old created a groundbreaking album called "Upon This Rock" on the Capitol label, which was probably a decade ahead of its time. "Upon This Rock" is often referred to as the "Sgt. Pepper's" of Christian Music.

Most CCM critics and reviewers regard Larry's "Only Visiting This Planet" as the best, or one of the top 3 Christian albums of all time.

I was a huge fan of Larry's in my younger years and saw him in concert 5 times, once driving with some friends to Norman, Oklahoma to the "Boomer Theater" to see him. When I bought his albums via mail order in late high school/early college, Larry's dad would write nice personal notes on the packaging when he sent things to me.

Many people also are not aware that a mini rock opera written by Larry during his days with the band "People!" is credited by many as the inspiration for Pete Townshend's writing of "Tommy". (The Who was on tour with People! and saw their performances night after night in the late 60's).

My personal favorites of Larry's are:

• Nightmare (from So Long Ago the Garden) - [one of the best Christian lyrics ever written]
• Reader's Digest (from Only Visiting This Planet)
• The Great American Novel (from Only Visiting This Planet)
• I Am the Six O'Clock News (from Only Visiting This Planet)
• The Outlaw (from Only Visiting This Planet)
• Forget Your Hexagram (from Upon This Rock)
• I Don't Believe In Miracles (from Upon This Rock)
• Unlucky Blues (from Something New Under the Son)

For those in our youth group, we listened to "In Another Land" while setting up for the Valentine's day banquet a few weeks ago. Kind of ironic, isn't it.

Larry was also eloquent in interviews, magaine articles and in liner notes. I'll close with my favorite sections of Larry's liner notes to "In Another Land"

"today there was no bomb scare . . . just the reality that something exploded long before we knew it, and now we are living in the fallout. all of us are crippled and mutated from the radiation of that moment, but from the outward appearance we look normal, at least to each other. the earth is a dying planet, man a dying race. there are strange things in the sky at night. some people say that it is help from other planets, but i fear that it is evil let loose, vaporizing and streaking across the universe.

funny sad place we've turned this world into, the courts free killers on technicalities, people are starving and we burn and bury food because the economy would fluctuate if we fed them, women seem to be trying to rule the world now that the children have proven themelves incapable of establishing love and world peace; only a few generations ago women started dressing like men and now men are starting to dress like women, the world sems to be crumbling and yet people are eating and drinking and living unnaturally as though there were no right and wrong, as though their lives will never end.

Some people say there is no God, others say that we are all God. sometimes i look out over the city late at night and all the lights look like diamonds and rubies on a black jewelers cloth, all set in straight little rows and sprinkled on the hillsides - and i wonder how we have ever fallen so far. and then i look up in the sky with its far superior jewels; i look up and find myself waiting. and smiling." - Larry Norman, September 1975