Home Alone

Phil and Anita with their friends Katherine and Sam, as they were about to head towards Downunder yesterday

Anita and Phil have been just the nicest folk to share our house over the last three months. We should have asked them to write a pamphlet on how to be the perfect houseguests! It does help with our house layout here - they lived out of the second floor mostly which has lots of space and light.

For such a delightful, quiet couple, they did manage to leave with a bang - of the power variety. They plugged the toaster in AND the electric jug at breakast time - almost do-able maybe except we also had the jug on the boil upstairs. Had is the operable word.

Once it was established that we had our own little private power cut happening, the mission was on. All power board buttons up. No blown fuses. Call in the sparky who established no power coming in. We had tripped the overload switch, which is conveniently placed on a lampost 50 metres away if you are a bird, but 200 metres away if you have to walk around the block. So now we know!

As for being home alone - that lasts just another 36 hours. Andrew Smith arrives on Saturday morning with Jonathan, a good young guy Andrew assures me. This is Andrew's third time to come over. He moves into first place!

Flow river

Some good things are quietly happening at the Healing Home. We have some very sick, needy people with us and they are getting better.

Tomorrow early morning I will take Samrek to the van pickup place so that he can head home. He came to us very weak and what my dad would have called 'yellow around the gills'. His kidneys and liver have been poorly for a long time. Now - well he's looking just so much better and he wants to go home.

Daa, our horror pressure sore guy, is doing really, really well. The sore is steadily healing from the bottom, up (so to speak ...). He says that he feels pain in his buttock and that he can wiggle his toe when he sits up. He is not meant to have any feeling or movement below his waist.

Then the is Yun. She came to us with a very sore knee and ears that were almost deaf. She got her knee healed - right as rain. Then - and this is the best part - when we were beaching down south, Phanna felt to pray for a miracle in her ears. The staff prayed - then Sopheap checked her out with softly talking from behind. There was an instant huge improvement. Yun has headed home, all smiles.

We have been training our staff every Friday morning. The last five weeks have been focussed on the work of the Holy Spirit and how He is like a flowing river of life. A few weeks back we taught them on the prophetic gift - and then said that next week they were going to prophesy. Talk about a look of possums caught in the headlights!

But they have taken the practical teaching - and stepped out. With Phanna and Sopheap especially, it has been like taking the kink out of the hose. Life is flowing out of them in a new measure. It is 1 John 3 stuff - the joy of seeing your (spiritual) kids walking out this life.

Phanna (centre) and Sopheap (right) - a river opening up in Cambodia's young

Pigs have landed

Swine flu has made it safely to Cambodia. A team of recently arrived young people are currently quarantined with one girl confirmed as Cambodia's first case.

Unhappily she has succeeded in passing it on - to a good friend of ours working with the team. Happily she has been let out of gaol (well, hospital isolation) and now is feeling pretty bright and perky stuck at home. She was brought back in an ambulance complete with flashing lights and staff decked out in gear designed for a nuclear fallout.

Of course, there are umpteen people who have been in contact with the affected folk. The chain leads directly to two of our staff members and therefore to us and the Home. Time to pick up Psalm 91, we reckon.

Sorry, I don't have any pig pics but I have lots of my pussy cat ...

Pastor Buck

Pastor Buck would be the name given to those pastors who are gifted at passing the buck. Today we met two of them. Well, we did not exactly meet them - their skill level was such that, in the passing, they stayed invisible.

We were only just back from beach-time today, to have a vehicle turn up with a 12-days overdue pregnant lady and her hubbie. She is unable to give birth naturally and has need of a caesarian op and no money to pay. Her village pastor sent her to us. Yes, we are still wondering 'why us'??' Half an hour later she reported contractions. Sue and I got to thinking that maybe things had not been planned too well in the last six months ...

In the midst of this the gate opens again and a lady with not one, but two, carers appears. She is shaking and black and blue. Her pastor wanted her to come to us. The problem? She has been drinking and blotches appeared on her skin. Drinking for how long? Two or three days.

Rule one - we will love and serve. Bonna and Sreymom praying for our new needy little lady.

Rule five living in Cambodia is 'nothing is as first stated'. It honestly is a very important principle of life here. Old lady patients have turned out to be young men. A brother has turned out to be a neighbour. In this case, two or three days appears to be five months and the skin blotches just may be something to do with the tree she fell out of two days ago. The carers - well one of them is a neighbour who actually is sick too ...

Watching Sue carve through all this is poetry in motion. Cheapest caesar hospital sourced - here is the truck; please go now. Carer two; sorry you cannot stay - you have an auntie in the city; yes? God bless you; goodbye. Sreymom and Bonna were cracking up - we were literally praying for the pregnant mum in the back of the ute as it took off, leaving our hands clutching empty air!

It is all good, I am sure. One difficulty tho' with drop-in needy people is that people who are waiting to get in (we currently have two as we are pretty well always full) are unfairly shunted sideways.

R&R

We headed south last Friday to get a bit of sea and sand for a few days. Sihanoukville lies 225km from Phnom Penh, around five hours by bus to white-ish sand, blue-ish sea and a whole lot more greenery than here in the city. Those five air-con hours landed Susie with a head-cold that she has been nursing since!

On the beach in the evening - sea breezes and sand between the toes!

There is no prolonged opportunity to lie and laze on the beach tho'. Where there are white bodies, there are sales to be had. Massage?? Buy sir?? Manicure, sunglasses, fruit, bracelets, crayfish, crafts, cards - all are in continuous circular motion. Many of the sellers are delightful young children, out to supplement family income and to keep themselves in school.

Susie with three of the craft-selling girls - such delightful youngsters

Daa

Phanna and Yohannes, a visiting pastor from Singapore, praying with Daa

Daa is the young paralysed man who came to us with unimaginable gaping pressure sores in his buttocks some months ago. He became one of our rejoicing stories - admitted to Sihanouk Hospital against all odds; operations to fill his wounds - and released from hospital (during Selena's days here) after only five weeks instead of the projected 3-5 months. Our staff were at his bedside at least four times per week and the impact of their love and faithfulness overflowed to the ward and to senior hospital personnel.

Life has been challenging for Daa. His wife's parents have been urging her to leave him. He is still paralysed and trying hard to hold on to faith and hope. Recently we heard that a sore was breaking down. He is now back with us, together with his little sister Channy who is caring for him. And yes, we are back in challenge land with him.

Wee Miss Miracle

Alisa, Navy her blind mum and Susie in the background at the Healing Home yesterday

Navy came calling yesterday with little Alisa. What an awesome change we see in this little button now. She used to be the most miserable, undernourished baby - and now she is doing what one-year-olds should be doing; sitting up, crawling, reaching for bright objects and making happy noises.