Big days out

This week has been a good adventure and learning time. I asked Pastor Sotha - who is the pastor in charge of provincial churches and training - if I could tag along on a provincial trip to see what is happening in the provinces. Here are a few pics and comments on my three days with Pastor Sotha and Chea, an evangelist who spends a huge amount of time on the road and in the bush.

First stop somewhere in Kompong Cham province - a group way out in the sticks whom Chea gets to once a month. We spent two hours here, meeting under the house of the family who host the meetings. There is a youngster in Phnom Penh who comes from this village and asked that an evangelist be sent here. That is how the majority of outreach works are established.

Pastor Sotha, a lovely somewhat shy man who has a great sense of humour and a great love for God. He was the very first convert in Phnom Penh, before New Life Fellowship was even a church.

Rubber trees by the zillions - huge tracts of forest are being cleared throughout the two provinces of Kratie and Mondukiri where we travelled. Mostly they ar Vietnamese conglomerates that take over the land on 99 year leases. If you live on the land and have title to your property, then mostly very sad for you.

Timber galore through Mondukiri - many, many sawmills and everywhere stacks of timber like this drying in the monsoon rains.

Stop number 2 - 20km north of Snoul, in Kratie Province. This is an 'emerging church' centre - a step up from an outreach point but not yet fully a church. The couple who live here have six children. He was the village drunk and a feared, violent man. Chea says that when he heard God's Word, he took hold of it radically, just devouring everything he could about Jesus. He is being trained to be a pastor.

Washing line - on Wednesday the twin-cab ute was loaded up with folk from the Kratie team (one ute: 16 people!) to witness in a remote wee village in the hills of Mondukiri. We had some real interesting times there - another story; more pics - I'm tired goodnight!!

Growing Trees Graduation

Last Sunday night was graduation time for the 11 students of the 'Growing Trees' Internship program. This was the first time ever for New Life - and our pastors reckon maybe the first time ever in Cambodia - that students have been gathered for a 10-month course of Bible training (three days a week) and practical ministry work application (the other two days). In addition, they headed out on two outreach weekends - south to Kampot; then north to Siem Reap.

Neth, our weekend cook, and Rim, our two-days-a-week trainee volunteer, were there in the graduation lineup too. Over the last 10 months I've had three blocks of 4-5 sessions with these good youngsters, so it was a special night to celebrate with them.

The graduants (top pic), with Jason Prosser (far right) one of the key men in getting this course flying. Chris Foster is the other key bloke, but he is in Aussie at the moment as his Rhiannon has just had a baby boy. Rim is in the middle with the black long hair and Neth is next to her. The muso's had fun (bottom pic) with the smoke machine blowing Susie out of the second row - she headed backseat to get some clean air!

Unpopular visitor

Just to remind us that this is not clean, green, slippery-crawlie-free NZ Land - upon arrival at the Healing Home this morning we came upon a bit of excitement.

The guy was not so small - about 1.2 metres long. The locals said that it was the mice-eating, non-poisonous variety, but when it went into curling, hissing strike mode in response to my little tickle from a bamboo pole, I decided that Kiwis do not need to be responsible for these matters.

A husband of one of our patient's took over bamboo pole duties and chased it to the front corner of our land - then 180 degree turn and and a rush to the back corner. There, the snake totally disappeared. My suspicion - it knew about the lid over our sewage drain and had gone for a swim down there. 'Tis a good time to keep all toilet lids firmly down ...

Give Us This Day

Sypho led our morning devotions yesterday. She has such a communication gift - there is always lots of interaction, patients leaning forward in their seats, kids shouting out answers ... she is just great.

After her sharing, Susie asked everyone present to think of something that they are thankful for - and to speak out thankfulness to the Lord. We've got seven patients, three kids and two other family members in the home at the moment, so even tho' a few folk were already away at clinics, there was a good amount of thankful feedback.

Two things really stood out to me. Firstly, there was a strong theme of thankfulness for being cared about. It was very humbling, as the direction was meant to be 'thanks to God' but much was directed to Sue, myself and our staff. Our patients and family members were just so grateful to be cared for; to be loved on.

The second theme was thankfulness for daily food. Our food is not flash. On average, we spend US$200-ish on food - per month. Crunch the numbers - three meals a day for say an average on 6 patients (we are twice that this week) and three staff = 810 meals per month - conservatively. Yet, simple rice, veges, meat and sometimes fruit every day is something wonderful for many of our patients. How tragic this is - and how wrong.

Lunch today - rice, a cabbage soup and a veges and pork dish. Three of our present patients came to us obviously malnourished. It is hard for the body to knock over a sickness when the tummy runs months and years on so little.

God's House

Fortnightly, New Life staff gather in the morning for worship and teaching. They are good times. This morning I counted 95 people there (roughly roughly) including maybe 20 pastors from provincial churches in the big smoke for two days of leadership training. Also in the group - the 10 'Growing Trees' internship students - a lovely bunch of young people whom I get to spend an hour and a half with each Friday.

Anyway, one of the fun things about our humble facility here is the number of uses it has. By night, the church is a garage for church vehicles and a real lot of motor scooters - as the women's dorm is nearby and resident parking they have not. I had a giggle today to see Donnie's legendry Nissan Patrol still tucked up in bed during our staff gathering.

A few of the gathering - up front right is Pastor Samdy, our admin pastor. The lucky bloke got to translate for me first service last Sunday - the subject was 'Eight Common Mistakes in Marriage'. The team rightly felt that, with 33.5 years of marriage to date, I was way the best qualified on that subject!!

Enjoying the anointed garage, Donnie's wet-season-no-problem machine was personally inspected and recommended by Mr Marty McKone, world famous in New Plymouth diesel mechanic, prior to purchase.

New kid on the block

Soar is the wife of Pastor Jesse. She has the most appealing eyes and persuasive look when she is in a situation of great need. And I am one big sucker when the problem has to do with a litter of kittens - five furry little problems, in fact.

She sent a bloke around on a motorbike with two little fellas in a basket. I handled the situation with great determination. The black guy with the white tui tuft would not take 'no' from me tho'. So, now the Healing Home has grown another permanent resident.

Kitty - yet to be christened ... has made friends with ...

Feisty, the cat that came back, and ...

Touch, our cook and head of out cat-feeding program. Actually it has been fun to watch our staff change from cat-rejecters to cat embracers. They just needed a bit of encouragement!

Negotiations

We are quietly progressing in negotiations for a larger Healing Home. Our present home is just great, but with our 3-year lease just about up and with the sense that we need to look to enlargement, we've been hunting for another property. A very suitable villa, very close to our present location, is coming available at the end of this month. Of the five places we have inspected, this is by far the best (tho' we found a pretty amazing pad that Sue was drooling over for us!!)

The owners have agreed to rent to us - and to do some needed alterations. There is a new bathroom that we need to have put in and a wee adjustment to the interior stairway to help anyone over 1.5 metres high to keep their scalp, among other things. A contract is being drawn up and, with grace, mid-July should see us re-located.

Very bad pic - pluses here are five or six bedrooms, good street access, ball-room sized kitchen and a really excellent open area upstairs. This will mean we can have 12 patient beds at least. There will be a bit of painting to sort, plus building an outside area for dining - all good fun in the sun!

Shake a leg

Sopheap's latest encounter of the moto kind - courtesy of a young bloke who clipped her from behind. Of course, he stopped and offered assistance ... not!

And some more legs to admire - the magnificent cockroach is a pretty common sight when we get up in the morning and head downstairs. These guys fall out of somewhere and when they land on their backs, they are as cast as fluffy sheep. They are pretty big too - our tiles are almost half a metre across ....