Good-byes and hellos

We waved good-bye to the great team from NorthCity Church, Christchurch, yesterday. They have been here in Cambodia for two full weeks. It is always hard to say 'good-bye' when you anticipate the arrival of good friends for so long.

It appears that aeroplanes are dodgy disease-carrying machines that we need to take better into account. It is pretty common for people to develop good bathroom-seeking skills after they have been here a bit - but quite a few of this team arrived with bugs picked up en-route. Matt ended up spending his last two days in a medical clinic with a fever that spiked over 40 degrees and all kind of stuff showing up in a blood test. He literally walked out of the clinic and took the plane home. He was looking a heap better tho'.

Sue checking Matt's temperature before it really took off. Matt was raised by missionary parents to PNG and just thrived in this culture.

Donald Scott, the church pastor, sharing at morning devotions at the Healing Home on Tuesday. Chantol does great with her interpreting. Tana and Katerine are the other two team members in the pic.

One of the team members, Jan, is a trained school teacher. In her last two days she found her stride in teaching English language teachers in teaching creatively. This was great - as there is very little of this kind of 'outside the box' kind of training to be found here. We are always discovering new ways of serving and blessing the people of this nation. Well done, team! We totally look forward to your ongoing, purposeful and fruitful relationship into this amazing nation.

It was back to the airport the same evening to welcome Yew Meng, Elana and their team of 10 mainly students from Toowoomba, Australia. The neat thing with these guys is that they are all Asians studying in Australia. We have Singaporeans, Malaysians, Chinese and two folk from Brunei (Bruneiarians??) in this team.

They got introduced to Phnom Penh properly - gridlocked in magnificent traffic chaos in tuktuks on the way back from the airport. They have since been watered, bedded, orientated, involved in street-children outreach and last heard of, trying to find a tuktuk that had a remote idea of how to get them back to their hotel. To any members of the Christchurch team reading this - you know just exactly of what we speak ....!!

Tomorrow Jason and Julia from Brisbane hit town for over three weeks. We also have Nicole Willinks from Palmerston North safely arrived last week and with us for two months. I know, I'm blog-behind. Christmas will not be lonely in 2008!