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.........