Bonnevies

Sweet Sothera

2012-01-24T20:36:00.000+07:00

Sothera's wee life does not make any sense naturally. Born blind; abandoned by her overwhelmed mum when she was diagnosed with hydrocephalus at age four months; missing a portion of her frontal brain - life to date is an utter tragedy for her.

She has passed all too briefly through our lives - just three days as she moved from a family who had been able to give her temporary care, and on to the Mary Knoll Catholic hospice here in Phnom Penh. Of course the abandonment and moving is upsetting and Sothera cried 10 hours out of 12 the first night. Susie chose that we take her home for Saturday and Sunday as she needed 24 hour care and our Healing Home staff had a house full of other patients.

Sue with Sothera in the Healing Home office. She really fought going to sleep so we got to spend a lot of time with this sweetest of little ones.

Unforgettable.

Kiwi Team

2012-01-24T16:37:00.003+07:00

Ten Kiwi's (American team leader Brian is fully received as an adopted NZer) were with us for four days last week, getting a good insight into the many and varied ministries of New Life Fellowship. They were reasonably varied in age - 'young' Olivia and Emma; 'senior' Maurice (76 years old) and Derna (25+) and geography (Masterton, Tauranga, Wanganui, Auckland ...) - but pulled together as just one of the best teams that we have had on the ground.

Absolutely; they will fit me fine! Masterton girl Christine Wratt has sewing friends - and now we have some great kids clothing to give away. Sue and Christine figured out over lunch that they were one year apart in the same school - New Plymouth Girls High. Another surprise - her dad is good friend and faithful, fruitful evangelist Weston Carryer. Small Kiwi world!

'Young' Emma with Yart, a much-loved longer-term patient. Yart and her daughter make bracelets, so even tho' she is ill, she has an eye for likely customers! The 'small Kiwi world' continues with Emma - her Auckland church, Edge, is where my little sis Heidi is camped.

These pics come from Maurice. He worked as a photographer for the Bible Society for well over 20 years, plus another five years for Tear Fund. I talked the poor bloke's ear off - working in over 150 nations in his career, plus packing seriously good camera gear, plus being just a fine man - how often do we get the opportunity to suck international big-picture history from a person like this??

Happiness is ...

2012-01-18T09:53:00.000+07:00

After a great family and friends Christmas in NZ, we returned to Cambodia 10 days ago. We returned to the best news of all. Little Sreynut has a life.

Sreynut first came to us about 8 months ago. The little button needed a hair lip and cleft pallet operation but first her nutrition level had to be built up. So, we took her in, fed her up and our staff loved her to bits. The hair lip op was completed and she returned home, awaiting the cleft pallet op.

Sreynut when she first came to us. Cambodian culture is less than graciously supportive of physical deformities, so this wee mite needed a face-lift.

Home has been tragic for this tiny 2-year-old. Dad and mum drink heavily. Dad recently drowned - we suspect, drunk in a paddy field. A neighbour whose wife is very ill strolled across the road and has taken up with Sreynut's mum. Mum has a new dodgy love and Sreynut and her older brother and older sister are now palmed off on poor grandma. But, mum has steadily refused to allow little Sreynut to be taken to foster care.

Sreynut returned to us over two months ago, before and then after the cleft pallet op. Before we left for Christmas in NZ we said to Libby, the great Aussie lady who has brought Sreynut to us 'please, ask one more time and we will really pray'. Sue is in contact with an American lady who facilitates foster care into Cambodian families. So Libby sent a staff member to ask again - and mum said 'ok - for $300' Ahh, no - that would be off the options list! Then something turned and mum happily went to the local official to sign foster care papers. Amazing!

Our staff tell us that a Cambodian Christian couple who have been unable to have children now have Sreynut - and they really, really love her.

With Sue (top) - Sreynut would run to us every morning. She gave us so many laughs as she would mimick everything that we would do. And was she ever hungry (above) - she caught up on two years of little food in her time at the Healing Home!

Party party

2011-12-11T14:30:00.000+07:00

The annual Healing Home Christmas party is a very big deal with our staff. It is only a week until we head to NZ for Christmas with our family - so the party needed to happen on Friday just gone. We really had fun!

This is our fourth Christmas in the Healing Home. We followed last year's pattern: give each of the girls money to buy their own present (it has to be something that 'spoils' them: what they would really like) which they must wrap and put under the Christmas tree. Then we plan a menu according to what they wish for (banana cake from Susie's oven; chook from Kentucky, big fried fish ...), set up a long table upstairs and have a whole lot of fun.

Sokha's first Christmas with us - and like a duck to water ... She is our week-end cook as now Vanny, our previous week-end cook is now promoted to a carer position. Darra the guy works for Donnie and often transports our patients to clinics. Sypho is next to him, with her new curly hair-do, and sandwiched is Sopheap.

We invited Heng to come and join us too. He is such a great guy even tho' life has not been easy for him since he went to a rehab place. Talk about excited - this party invitation has fixed a huge smile on hs lovely face. We're kidnapping him for four or five days now; he loves being among our staff again.

I'm in a girls world - here are all our choice staff. Rin, the girl next to me volunteers two days a week, as part of the 12-month internship church training program she is part of; all the others work for both love and money!

The girls all bought us pressies too - very, very sweet! Here is Touch our cook - she has been with us since Day 1 in the Healing Home.

More!

2011-12-11T14:03:00.000+07:00

One of the cultural mind-sets we have in Cambodia is 'more must be better' thinking. This reasoning pops up everywhere. If two pills are good, 17 must be better. If 70 decibels is great, 145 decibels is wonderful! The list goes on ...

I mention this because I recently came across a very puzzled Donnie. His trusty Nissan Patrol was just back from the fix-it people. One of the jobs - sort out the leaking tyre that is the spare, mounted on the back. Now, here was a quizzacle Donnie: he wanted to open the back door and it would not open - it hit the spare tyre. He had places to go, things to do, so he pulled off the spare in order to sort the issue another day.

Next connecting time, I asked him if he figured it out. Sure did - the answer was: let some air out of the tyre. As in, if 35psi is good, 70psi must be better ...!!

Provincial prices

2011-12-11T13:52:00.000+07:00

I was back in Takeo province recently to speak at a great little country church again. This is about my sixth time with pastor Samdy. He is an excellent young guy who has a recent miracle testimony about his wife conceiving and giving birth to their first child. Docs said this was not going to happen :-).

Samdy has plans for his congregation, which includes moving the 80 or so folk out of their neat but very small church building and into a larger place. There is to be a school, an English class, homes for the elderly ... the faith plans are all on the wall.

Therefore, he was pretty excited this visit - they have been able to buy land just 40 metres from their present site. It is 40 metres in the right direction too, as at present the last 80 metres of access is off a decent country road and down a one-horse track. Takeo Province price: US$6000 for the 2000+sqm plus another grand to shift a few hundred cubic metres of dirt on-site to raise the level.

By comparison, our church in Phnom Penh has been seriously looking for a block this size for over three years now. Land prices in the city are way out of kilter with real value. My take on this is that so much of the money out here is not 'earned' - it pours into pockets by dodgy means. Therefore true values are twisted and some items like city land become enormously expensive. What is $6000 just 75 minutes down the road becomes $1.5-2 million here in the city. Hence, our church keeps on looking!

My buddy pastor Samdy, with Donnie and Sophea's daughter, Naan. That is the new land in the background; all 42x56 metres of it.

Wiggly toes

2011-11-29T17:41:00.000+07:00

Sreynoone popped in for an overnight visit last week. She is one different little lady to earlier this year - looking healthy, happy and hopeful. Over six weeks with us, she has had 28 radiation treatments for a brain tumour. She was unable to walk and looked pretty terrible.

Back for a check-up, the news is very positive. She is feeling well, doing well and really trusting Jesus in her life. One of her big excitement points - 'look, now I can wiggle my toes. I have not been able to do that for a long time!'

Sreymom, Sue and Touch praying for Sreynoone (above) and the big toe wiggle (below). These pics were taken upstairs - Sreynoone got herself up the steps and, leaning on the bannister, got herself into the chair. After being prayed for she did a gutsy, unaided walk around the pillar in the background and then headed on downstairs. We love this girl!

Six months in the saddle

2011-11-29T17:29:00.004+07:00

The born-in-2006-bought-in-2007 Spider machine has just ticked over 20,000k's. 95% of those wee miles have been spent riding all over Phnom Penh. Scary stuff, thinking that I could have almost gone clean around Australia (that would be 24,150km, Google educates me) with those k's; or to Wellington, NZ and back. I would be very lucky to average 20kmh travelling in this city so number-crunching on a 40-hour working week basis has me sitting on this little steed for 6 months of these last four and a half years!

Happy birthday to the faithful machine - today I finally got a round tuit and have given the Spider a new chain and sprockets. These footpath mechanics have Kiwi can-do aptitude; this young guy worked with care and skill.

Da's death

2011-11-17T21:09:00.000+07:00

The longest anyone has stayed at the Healing Home is a year. Da came to us with horrendous bedsores. Paralysed after falling from a palm tree, he was close to dying. He had three more years of life.

Donnie had spent huge time, energy and money on Da since he left us. One of the huge frustrations here can be the fatalistic dependency mindset. Susie was despairing over Da, as he would not follow through on self-care instructions. The bedsores quickly returned from self-neglect and he eventually died from the associated infection.

Da's resting place. Pastor Paulie, the New Life pastor who is based in this area, visited Da regularly also and we are understand he kept his faith firm until the end.

His funeral was not so sad though - as we bumped into two lots of former patients in Da's village. Great things are quietly happening to our patients as they return home, and it was just so heartening to have sadness turned to rejoicing as we witnessed some happy happenings.

I had this lady come to me all excited and say 'you must come to my house and see my husband'. Ahh names and faces ... but as soon as I saw this guy, I remembered him. He had been totally unable to walk; all the time we knew him he was legless and we actually sorted a wheelchair for him. Now he is up and about - and his wife told us how all the neighbours ask 'how is it you can walk now; what medicine did you have?? - and he answers them 'no, it is not any medicine; I pray to Jesus'.

Nite (centre) had been with us at the same time as Da. Literally dirt poor, she had malnutrition and arthritis. Vaan, her husband was the village rat-bag who really got saved. Now, he helps Pasttor Pauly, and runs a smallgroup from his house. I've been to their place once before - then it was a tragic hovel. Now, their home is their castle - I'm not sure of the story but I saw a plaque from Tabitha NGO on the side of the house. Touch, their daughter, is 200% happier these days too!

Funny money

2011-11-14T17:48:00.000+07:00

Burma (or Myanmar; there are very foggy 'rules' as to which country uses which name) has just wonderful bank notes. Like Cambodia, there are no coins. Unlike Cambodia, they do not weed out notes that have reached their 'totally used by' date. Their notes just never die - they just keep on hanging together.

The real advantage of this system is two-fold. Firstly, you are never in need of selotape. There are layers of the stuff on one of the notes in your pocket. Secondly, you feel that you are carrying antiquities of great value, every day. This is ancient art; the stuff that should be framed and hung in the pool room.

Here's a few close-up shots of two or three remarkable survivors:

Bright kid

2011-11-06T20:57:00.000+07:00

Meet Sreynot. She's two years old, tho' we have her decked out in nappies for 3-7kg babies. This little lady had her hair lip sorted the first time she was with us. Now, her cleft pallet has been operated on and she is on a food catch-up, bigtime. Sue makes and meulis and she just sucks in more than you could believe.

Last Friday Sue had Sreynot sitting on the table in the kitchen just like in this picture, spooning the mush into her. Suddenly the little lady became all animated, making noises (she has not yet begun to speak), waving her arms around and then clapping her hands. Sue figured something was happening behind her so she turned around. Strolling into the kitchen from the outside door was Rat. All Cambodian Rats need the capital R - they are not little critters out here.

Rat saw he was busted and made for the back of the fridge. Sue made for her husband. That would be me. I remember the t-shirts; the ones that say 'No Fear'. So, they lie. Rat did exit and the drainage hole I suspect he scampered up and down is now nicely covered in wirenetting. Bright kid tho' - even if she was wanting to play with the monster.

Sue's crack-up

2011-11-06T20:34:00.005+07:00

Sue was looking totally mystified. Sypho had come into the Healing Home office and asked Sue where the special oil was. Special oil? - special for what? 'The one to help the patient with their wind' Sypho says in all innocence. Now Sue is really puzzled - and shaking with laughter too. What is this special flatulence-inducing oil that we are meant to have??

The story slowly comes to light. A day earlier, she had anointed Bin, our sweet guy with severe liver problems, with oil - and prayed for him. He quickly felt relief .... Bin has returned home now with a bottle of anointing lavender oil tucked into his bag!

An earlier picture of Bin (far left). This is his third time at the Healing Home; a long trek from his home in Kratie Province. The last time he came, we got a phonecall while he was on the bus saying that he was also bringing two of his neighbours too as they really needed help also - was that okay?? He's such a great guy.

NextGen

2011-10-26T16:42:00.000+07:00

We're back after a great couple of weeks back in NZ. Number 1 priority was to get introduced to grandchild number 1 - Judah Gabriel. He's a pretty excellent little guy who is in a hurry to get on with life. Sleeping is good - in small doses.

Time with his grandmum (top) and me in male multi-tasking mode: bonding with the little guy and getting my afternoon nana-nap.

NZ spring-time - outside the window at Kara and Josh's house, the tuis are busy in the kowhai tree. This is something I really miss in Cambodia - we have such an absence of bird-life

We all had time in New Plymouth too so that my mum could meet her third great-grandie. Also accomplished - brand new, super-chipped passports. Our old ones were literally down to the last page.

24 Aussie hours on our way home gave us enough time to zip up to Toowoomba in time for Sunday morning church and to watch the AB's final with Melody and Dave. Good friend Adrian joined us around the telly and together we got much older over 90 minutes - not the walk in the park that the French were meant to give us.

It is so heartening to return to the Healing Home and find everything going forward with excellence. Patients being cared for; staff in good spirits. Just the washing machine to sort - mousies have got into the control panel and eaten a kilo of wiring!

Toowoomba Times

2011-10-04T16:46:00.003+07:00

Long time no blog - which can mean that we have nothing happening in our world or that frenetic is our every day - or both. And both of the above is about it over the last few weeks.

We've had a happy invasion from Toowoomba - firstly Jason and Julia who also towed David Geoghegan out for his first Cambodia experience; then closely followed by Toowoomba Christian College teachers Chrissy and Claire together with three Year-12 students (Malita, Ben and Colin ). Unhappily my pics of the TCC team fell off my phone - very sad. They had three full days with us; David G had eight days and Jason and Julia - well they know now that 'three weeks is a minimum' to be here. They leave when the Healing Home is re-painted and the garden fully flourishing, which has a deadline of happening by 2pm Thursday!

David catching up with Dr Mary at the CSI Clinic. Dave used to work with her in the emergency ward of Toowoomba hospital, so he was most keen to connect with this outstanding lady. We have many patients attend this clinic and I'm always very happy when they draw the Dr Mary straw.

P'Chum Ben, the annual ghost festival, has also been over this time. Apart from feeding the ghosts and hitting multiple Wats to keep the good luck flowing for another year, this is a time when the nation slows right up and people head home to the province.

Keeping the ancestors happy - what gave me a giggle about this particular altar (in the local paint shop - we're painting the outside of the Healing Home at the mo) was the serious stack of fake $100 bills just to the right of the incense. It is very sad tho' how fear permeates every aspect of this culture - hence the endless offerings. Another giggle - when Dave picked up a handful of lollies on a plate at a local restaurant and was about to scoff one. Julia tactfully pointed out that this plate of lollies are on an altar, Dave .....

We closed the Healing Home for a bit over a week so that all our staff can have a good holiday and be with their family. Big floods cover much of the area north of Phnom Penh, so when I phoned Sreymom to check on how her homeward journey was progressing, she answered the phone whilst in a boat! Moto had been left with an 'uncle' en-route and she was floating into her flooded village - like tens of thousands of others.

Sue and I took JnJ out to White Elephant, like a motel with a SWIMMING POOL 7km out of town. Three days of r'n'r and knocking over most of a serious biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer was just great.

Workers are always welcome - Jason on the end of the water blaster as we prepare to paint. Not sure where Julia is - somewhere behind the plant ...

Did I mention that the law has changed? - only two people per moto permitted now. The driver must wear a helmet ...

Slowing up Susie

2011-09-19T16:24:00.001+07:00

My girl has had 'the best of weeks and the worst of weeks'. The best would be the joy for both of us - little Judah making his belated entry into the world. He's the sweetest little guy and we are the proudest grandies. Kara is well and Josh is air-walking.

The worst - that would be the little mozzie that snuck up on Sue somewhere, sometime. She got very flattened with dengue all last week. Energy was running at 4%, severe headaches, joint pain, temperatures and a taste in her mouth that was like eating chook manure - not a good week. Now the rash is out and things are going forward, tho' too slowly for my Sue!

A spotty Sue - a good sign that the bad days are soon behind her.

High place home

2011-09-07T13:36:00.001+07:00

After four years and two months living at 8c, Street 460, we have made the move. Our area had become just too noisy. The airport-hanger-sized volleyball centre built on the vacant land directly opposite our front door was surely the last straw. It is nice to sleep at night ...

After a couple of months of looking, Susie spied a great pad - and she found favour with the landlady too. Nice and close too - two blocks straight ahead, then three blocks to the left. Now we are half a kilometre closer to the new Healing Home but the same distance from the Russian Market - on a quiet, quiet street!!

The only wee challenge - moving our houselot of furniture into our third-floor location ...

There are few things in life I find as exhausting as moving house. Neverthteless, onwards and upwards ...

The ground floor is below this pic - we have the top floor, minus one self-contained room where a Korean couple live. They run a Korean restaurant 14 hours a day - mice make 5x the noise of these guys!

Now that we are in, we are happy campers. 64 stairs up saves us ever having to consider a gym membership and the elevation gives us a lovely flow of breeze. We have an excellent, spacious guest room with ensuite too!

A great report

2011-09-07T13:13:00.001+07:00

Chum Yun has been with us for about seven weeks. This sweet young mum came to us with a cancerous growth in her uterus. Over these weeks we have had her two daughters, her mum and her husband coming and going also.

She was told that she needed three lots of chemo, 30 treatments of radiation and then an operation. With a little help, there was money for two chemos and the radiation. Her last radiation treatment was yesterday - and the news has been very good. The tumour has so shrunk that there will not be a need to have the very expensive operation.

The gratefulness of Chum Yun to our staff and ourselves was very touching yesterday. She has so responded to love and to prayer and she left a very different little lady. God has been good to her!

A last hug as she heads home - Chum Yun with Sue yesterday.

Back from Burma

2011-09-04T16:42:00.002+07:00

Burma is like no other nation. Where else can you find a vintage 1961 Vauxhall Velox alongside early 1960's Mazda utes in daily use? The people are poor but wonderful to be among. It was such a privilege to return pretty well a year to the day since we were there last.

Sue and I were based in Yangon for the nine days under the care of Pastor Nung. Nung and I did a quick side-trip up to Mandalay for a couple of days seminar teaching also - overnight buses each way. It was a full-on time that we thoroughly enjoyed - 20 meetings all up and getting to pray for many fine folk. Mostly we did Holy Spirit themes as the church of Myanmar has been taught to death by doctrine - but are so hungry and receptive to the presence and flow of the Spirit of God.

Pastor Nung with a lovely young guy in Mandalay. This boy had been discarded by his family and approached Pastor Joshua (where we were in Mandalay) and asked him please if he would care for him - that he would do whatever was asked of him. He is thriving in an atmosphere of love! Pastor Joshua also introduced me to a lovely young Muslim boy who loved coming to church. Dad was so angry that he shaved the boy's head to shame him. Pastor Joshua bought him a cap! He's in church every opportunity!

Yangon accommodation for the millions is mostly in these Soviet-inspired apartment blocks that are as uninspiring as they are ugly. The basic layout is a living area, a bedroom, kitchen area and tiny washroom and toilet. It is extremely difficult to get permission to build churches in Burma, so congregations mostly meet in an apartment. Thirty or so people can cram in - but the trick is not to annoy your neighbours. One complaint and goodbye church location. Pastor Nung has his congregation on the eighth (top) floor - the higher you climb, the less neighbours to upset and the cheaper the rent!

Waiting for the 8pm bus to Mandalay, Burma's second to largest city. Note the wonderful makeup on the lady seller - it resembles a mud-pack that has not been washed off. I understand it is a combination of mosquito repellant and beauty enhancer, worn proudly every day by pretty well all women and a few guys too.

This guy has eaten one bad apple too many ....

Mandalay - we had 30 or so people gather for two days, tho' that number sure grew when Nung and I started to pray and minister to people ...

Tiki-tour around Yangon on a train (top) and designer top hats heading to market.

Pastor Sompee and his family at a church on the outskirts of Yangon. He is a magnificent man, just 29 years old, who has managed to build a great little church facility - as a preschool. He has just completed a state-required preschool course. This is the guy who we first met last year, who a few months before that had been beaten and left for dead by local youths who had been set up by men higher up the food-chain.

Eat rice

2011-08-18T20:06:00.000+07:00

We've been juggling a few things these last few weeks. Good friends Antonie and Jenny Eggink blew in from India (7 weeks) and Burma (1 week) for 10 days recently, so there has been lots of discussions and leg-pulling. Then there has been the settling into a rhythm of life in the new Healing Home. It must be busier - we used to take an average of 19-21 days to go thru' a 50kg bag of rice. We've been thru' two bags in these last 23 days.

Staff God-time at the beginning of the day. We use upstairs - a great, open area where we've made a staff worship and prayer nook.

It is interesting how different people respond to being cared for in Jesus name. Yun and his wife arrived recently after being scraped off the road. Wifey had a broken collar-bone; Yun had full concussion in his helmet-less head and a decent amount of stitches in his leg. He was a sick boy, wretching with the slightest movement.

Yun seemed a bit of a hard fella. I should have learned by now - so often, these are the softies with defence turned on. I noticed the other day how he, above anyone, locked into the devotion that Sypho shared. He's healed up incredibly fast and gone already - excellent excellent. I'm persuaded that his time with us has been a God-designed stepping stone.

Sue dealing to the stitches with Sypho looking and learning

Out to it - Sreynoone is undergoing a course of radiotherapy. It is wiping the poor little chicken out, but she is plucky as.

Donnie is due to bring a couple of new people in tomorrow. He's been up north in Battambang. Fortunately we've had a wave of people head out over the last two days. Sopheap is in charge - Sue and I head out to Burma in the morning for 10 days. We're among the fine people we were with last year, teaching in two or three pastors gatherings. What an amazing life God has given us out here!

Ahh, that everyone would have this level of wisdom ...

Courageous little lady

2011-08-06T21:28:00.005+07:00

Yesterday Hak took a big step forward into a new future. It is nearly four months since this young mum and her two children came to us. Hak's ankles were busted up and her lower back fractured. Jumping from a three-storey building is hard on the human body.

Hak has been in hiding with us and slowly healing up since April. The hiding has to do with bad guys hunting her as a result of her escape. The dodgy organisation she escaped from both wanted her to keep quiet - and to come back under their control.

She had been recruited by a firm to train as a domestic servant in another Asian country. Once inside their 'training centre' she was locked in -and never allowed out. A friend of hers became ill - and was refused medical access. She became critically ill (appendicitis??). No doc. She died. This organisation is serious about control.

So Hak jumped - literally. She was so desperate to see her kids that she bailed from the third floor. We received her after she had the metal bits stuck into her legs at a hospital.

Here's the little soldier - with Sue as she heads out from our place yesterday. Sreymom (left) and Sypho (right) are part of the farewell team too. Hak is walking so well now - the last couple of weeks Sue had her doing the Healing Home stairs three times a day!

God has done so much for Hak in spirit, soul and body. She's got a good little faith growing in her and a good expectancy as she leaves us to be trained in a real job by another organisation. Her two kids are now in school and love Jesus too. There is a court case in progress but that could take a decade or two as we understand the recruitment agency ownership tracks back to a very influential person here. There is big money to be made from the poor.

5x

2011-08-02T14:47:00.003+07:00

In the four years that we have been in Cambodia, Andrew Smith has been with us now five times. He's had an intense couple of weeks this time, starting with an expat retreat that we organised the Friday that he arrived (going through all day Saturday) and finishing with a visit to the new CSI Mercy Hospital. CSI is a fine Christian clinic that are walking through miracle waters as they near completion of a faith-venture hospital after seven challenging years operating out of rented facilities.

In between, Andrew had a full workload of counsellor training - and fitted in a side-trip to the Thai-Burmese border to scope out a situation there. A large Burmese refugee camp have a school and many teachers - but the teachers have no training. Bethlehem College in Tauranga, New Zealand, have been approached to set up and deliver a training program - and they can do this!

Dr Andres from Stuttgard, Germany (right) graciously gave us a thorough tour of CSI. Canadian Matt is in the background. Andrew and Susie complete the pic!

Paul the talented sparkie - I finally got a picture of this great young guy who has been a huge help to us. Andrew is big on mentoring in word and in deed - every time he has come, he has brought a young bloke out with him. This is Paul's second trip. Beef (or is it really dog??) kebabs at the local night market are a must-do in the dining department. I have yet to convince Sue but the guys always love it!

Furniture removals

2011-08-02T14:25:00.000+07:00

Nearly all our stuff we moved with a church ute, but an initial few loads were done by our good friend, Tuktuk Kim ...

... very tame in comparison to these blokes we came across the other day moving a photocopier or two ...

Settling in

2011-08-02T14:14:00.002+07:00

Touch in her nice, roomy kitchen. It is a similar size to the last house, but now she gets to be in the main house rather than working out of an out-building. She's a great little worker who has been with us since day 1 (August 1 2008)

The cat went back - otherwise all has been good in regards to our big move two weeks ago. It is just great having a lot more space now - excellent living space upstairs, a lot more room for additional people, a good-sized office and even a 'shed' for me.

Heading out to an eye clinic, this patient has a mask on as he started, but never finished, his TB treatment quite a long time ago. We hit this lots - and with TB it is a real problem to not finish the course.

Inside a bedroom - downstairs we have three bedrooms with a total of eight beds. Upstairs a fourth bedroom has two beds - and we'll get a smaller, third bed made up soon. Also upstairs is the staff bedroom.

Still smiling - Sopheap and Rim on the last leg of cleaning the ceiling upstairs. I've just finished painting the last bedroom today so we are good to set up the final two beds and get some more people on the waiting list to come in.

And the big cat? Upstairs asleep on the pillow of the old home is my best guess - we've taken Puss back three times now but she keeps heading the short distance back to the former home. One more runner and I'm donating her!

Move it move it

2011-07-25T21:40:00.001+07:00

'The Move' has happened. Last Monday we shifted all our Healing Home gear over to the new home. As moves go (and I am a man who really, really dislikes the moving process!) it went really well. However, I never took one pic - and still have not got digital pics done. Sorry sorry - I got the trusty film camera out yesterday and clicked away but they will take a while to land on the blog.

Sreynoone, an incredibly sweet young lady who is receiving radiotherapy for a growth in her brain. She has been with us for three or four weeks now, and our staff just love her. She is losing her hair at the moment and wants to get her head shaved. Sue has told her she may grow her hair back as a blonde - she just roared with laughter! Please pray for this little lady.

We have six patients in at the moment plus three kids and two other family members. There are still about eight people on a waiting list. I've got one more bedroom to paint and a couple of beds to source so that we can get properly up to speed.

Man of the moment has been Paul, a great young Kiwi guy and a sparkie. Sorry no pic yet - Paul has untangled wiring birdnests, installed new hot points, moved light switches to sane locations, got the washing line up, done half the shifting load and much more. Paul together with good friend Andrew Smith have shot off to Thailand for three days (a mission to a refugee camp on the Thai-Burmese border) - they are back on Wednesday so I'll get some mug-shots then.

Helping Heng

2011-07-25T21:12:00.003+07:00

Heng has a new home! After some rehab time in the province, he returned to our Healing Home for a month whilst a wee home was set up for him in a new skills training project. That was a month ago and we've been out there three times to keep an eye on him and to build a relationship with Sovantha, the man who leads 'Ankor Association for the Disabled'.

Heng (right) with Sovantha and another fella who left his leg behind in a mined field. Heng is doing so well; happily learning to carve jade and happily holding onto Jesus.

Here is what Heng and his project buddies are learning to do. The quality is still a bit rough around the edges but to see Heng's pride and satisfaction as he uses his hands to make and create ... it's just great!

Sovantha is an amazing man. He used to be an army man (a major, I believe) until a landmine took away his legs. He has got a huge inner motivation to care and to help people who, like himself, have encountered physical disability. He has pioneered the AAD Cambodian NGO, built a base in Siem Reap and is now still in the process of building another base in Phnom Penh. The location - literally over the road from the Killing Fields.

Proof-reading a brochure Sovantha has had done in English. I really enjoy being with this guy - he zips around in his wheelchair; flips himself into the driver's seat of his car; has such energy for his work and a sense of humour too. Interestingly, Sopheap said 'I have a really good feeling about this man' when she first phoned him regarding Heng. She phoned four organisations that work (or say that they work) with the disabled - only Sovantha got back to us and 'he has a really kind voice' Sopheap told us. Heng's wee home is in the background; right side.

Everywhere I go ...

2011-07-08T20:49:00.000+07:00

... I end up painting. It's been like that - in fact I remember an offer to paint the house was a bit of a sweetner with Sue's dad, before I asked to marry her! So, no surprises that here we are, paintbrush in hand, working to get our new Healing Home ready for July 18.

My dad taught me that three-quarters of painting is in the preparation. I'm following in the footsteps of some very interesting former painters who found a way to finish their previous job 75% faster. Susie and Rim, who takes a new position as a cleaner, are sweating it out, cleaning ahead of me. This is great on-the-job training for Rim, who is quickly learning Sue's standard of what clean means.

Susie up our 3-metre ladder cleaning the front bedroom with a 3.9 metre stud. She's smiling thru' the sweat - we can ring our shirts out after half an hour of work!

Meet Rim, our sweet new girl. The front windows got put in yesterday, the new bathroom is nearly complete. Meanwhile, a couple of bathrooms upstairs have now been ripped out as they were leaking. I literally found concrete stalegmites (or are they stalegtites? - the ones that hang down!) on the ceiling downstairs underneath!

Here's the house, with alterations well on the way. Our inside colour scheme is pretty basic - cream downstairs to keep things light and to remind us of Tip-Top icecream, and a light coffee shade upstairs to remind us of a real latte.

The contractors bring their families and live on-site for as long as the job takes. These hard-case little ones have a game they never tire of - they stand in the door and shout 'Barang, barang' ('foreigner, foreigner') at me. Then they inch closer in 'who's afraid of the big bad wolf' fashion before running away, squealing! It was interesting to observe them yesterday when a really good storm blew in, with amazing thunder claps. The kids never blinked; never missed a beat - they are so used to electrical storms.

Rock solid

2011-07-01T19:14:00.005+07:00

'Build your house on the rock' takes on a whole new appreciation - here is a very typical foundation of a very typical house in Mondukiri Province.

... and ... the Blog stats tell me that this is 400 postings. Maybe it is time for a layout colour change!

Wonderful Healing Home mark 2

2011-07-01T14:05:00.017+07:00

The new and we trust improved Healing Home is happening. We signed up a 5-year lease at the beginning of this week and plan to move in on Monday July 18. Between now and then there is a lot of dust flying.

Our land lady, Dore is quite delightful and very happy to make our requested alterations. The job goes to a contracter whom she knows, and he in turn brings in an extended family of workers. They come with cooking gear, hammocks, kids and suitcases - and are ripping into the work nicely.

Two shuttered windows have come out from the front, to be replaced with glass windows. The difference in the light into these two bedrooms is amazing (top) - whilst (above) we now have a stairwell suitable for grown-ups. A door has been removed and replaced too - see the Susie pic below.

Sue upstairs - my favourite part of the house as it is so light, roomy and leads out onto a real nice L-shaped verandah. This pic was taken the day before the guy started giving us a real stairway.

That would be me, outside holding some paint charts. I made the kind offer to paint if the owner made the alterations. I've just measured up and reckon there is 80 litres of paint needed - inside. Hmmm, a little more work here than I first imagined ...

Sopheap and Sypho checking out the progress today. We have finally nailed down all the staff changes and hours - quite a few changes with two of our staff moving into full-time, two new positions and some other tweeking. Keeping all the people happy all the time is not so hard ...

A new bathroom under construction, that is built between and accessible to, two bedrooms. The far room will have two beds and a wide door to the bathroom for wheelchair access. All up we'll have 12 beds set up in the new home, plus plenty of overflow room upstairs if needed.

Fixit

2011-07-01T13:21:00.001+07:00

Labour is very cheap in Cambodia, so you tend to repair rather than replace. Fans, a survival necessity here, commonly break down in the Healing Home - we have I think eight fans and there would seldom be a month when one or two of them are not being tinkered with.

I got this one back today - expertly repaired by my usual shop but this time a little guy. I asked him in my flawless Khmer language "how old are you". He replied in flawless English "I am twelve years old".

The fan went in to have the power cord replaced. To my knowledge, that was the only bit broken. I got a new-age rainbow fan back - spot the four colours if you can. It was such a fun Cambodian experience that I just got happier - why object when it is sooo funny??

Snacks

2011-07-01T13:04:00.012+07:00

Cambodians love to eat - as in they LOVE to eat. Snacks are a multi-essential part of every day. With their sense of fun and ridiculous, they will sometimes play on words and say things like 'I really want to eat a snake now' or 'I just go to buy some snakes'.

On my way back from Kratie Province last week, the bus pulled into one of these essential snack stops. I reckon I would take the snake any day over what was on snack-offer at the stop ...

The sweet little lady seller - and what does she have on offer??

Well, there is Jiminny and many, many of his mates (top) - or there are mounds of roasted, toasted serious-sized spiders on offer. I tried the spider legs one time in another location - tasted OK if you like wood. The bodies, which I understand give a gooey mouth explosion, I passed on then - and in all the forseeable future.

Big days out

2011-06-24T19:54:00.009+07:00

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

2011-06-24T19:28:00.005+07:00

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

2011-06-17T21:39:00.003+07:00

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

2011-06-15T20:12:00.004+07:00

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

2011-06-15T19:42:00.004+07:00

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

2011-06-09T19:28:00.009+07:00

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

2011-06-06T20:27:00.005+07:00

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

2011-06-06T20:15:00.003+07:00

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 ....

Monsoon heatwave

2011-05-26T19:42:00.005+07:00

This is the hardest time of year to function in Cambodia. The heat and humidity wipes Susie and I out most days around 1pm. It gets a bit frustrating as where there is a will, there is precious little energy!

Unusually, the rains are also arriving in the middle of the hot season. They are a month or more early, adding some welcome relief to our day. Early rains bring the possibility of an extra rice crop for many farmers, whilst keeping our bit of grass lush and green at the Healing Home.

Room with a view - looking out from our third-floor bedroom level this evening. When the rain falls, it just saturates - drops the size of coins splashing onto our concrete city.

Grid-search

2011-05-18T20:53:00.004+07:00

We have been out house-hunting this week. Our lease for the Healing Home comes up in one month and we are keen to enlarge our facility to double the amount of patients that we can care for.

House hunting is ... interesting. It is in the middle of the hot season here now - 35 degrees plus - so out and about, grid-searching city streets for 'for rent' signs is a warm undertaking. We've looked inside three properties so far, taking Sopheap with us on each house inspection. One is a 'NO'; one property could work and the third one, we're very interested in. Lots more praying and we will keep looking - but expectancy is in the air!

I'm all for trees and greenery, but the paint-job on this new place got a bit carried away ...

Friday 13th: Oh Happy Day

2011-05-15T15:53:00.013+07:00

Friday was a mighty fine day for Phanna and for Puss - and all people associated with these unrelated individuals.

Phanna is just a great young guy who is training to become a pastor in our church here. He worked part-time in the Healing Home for us for the first year, before being snaffled back by the church as he was just so busy. I maintain that good ladies outnumber steady, reliable blokes here in Cambodia, which means a guy of his calibre is a great catch for a young lady. Rattanak is the fortunate girl, tho' Phanna would be quick to say that he is the lucky guy!

Phanna's happy day. I'm not sure what he's up to here; likely promising Rattanak that he will forever cook, clean and wash his own clothes.

Phanna and his bride Rattanak.

But there was more to Lucky Friday than marriage. Puss, missing for a month, was found this day. She was seen to stroll out of a house close to where Sopheap lives. A poor lady had renamed Puss 'Jumroon' meaning 'Prosperity'. From the day Puss ran away from Sopheap's home and chose this lady to live with, good luck had come her way. Work started to flow in. Loan sharks had been repaid. Blessing had followed the much-prayed-for cat!

'Prosperpous', pretty skinny but a marvel to our staff, all whom were sure that she had become curry.

Heng's tears

2011-05-07T11:43:00.019+07:00

Heng

Yesterday morning was our second day back at the Healing Home. Friday mornings are dedicated to staff training when as many staff as possible gather. We spent the first hour talking about what God had been doing in the Healing Home - and in their personal lives - over the last two months. Heng was a recurring tale in these God-stories.

Heng has now left the Healing Home to enter into a rehabilitation program in the province. When he came to us in September 2010, Heng cried every day in despair and hopelessness. When he left just prior to Khmer New Year in April, Sopheap told us how he wept - because of the goodness of God to him.

A Word and worship man - Heng has taken to Jesus like a cat to kawhai. Every day we would hear him singing and reading the Bible out loud. Remember, he only ever did two years in school, so he was amazed that, when he picked up a Bible, he could read it!

We heard the girls tell us how the organisation was not sure if they could take him. On their third visit to see him, an American man accompanied the Khmer staff. He asked Sopheap if she was a believer and suggested that they pray together. They did - and when Sopheap said 'Amen' the organisation leader said 'we will take him to our program'.

First up, Heng spends three months in a village, receiving massage and fitting in. Sopheap went to see him and bring him monthly support for food and necessities. Here's where the fun starts. Every day, Heng has people from the village come to see him. He's full of the Lord and not ashamed. The Khmer doctor doing the massage is now reading the first book in the Christian foundations course. Further, Heng is out and about in the village every day, getting among the people in his wheelchair.

This story started with Rithy, a trainee doctor who lives with Graham and Sue Taylor and Sue Hanna, coming across Heng in a corridor of a local hospital. Newly paralysed from a construction site fall, and without money or family, he was being left to die. We stand on tip-expectant-toes to see where Heng's story will go from here!

Will the cat come back?

2011-05-07T11:24:00.006+07:00

Today Sopheap and Touch are on a Pussy Cat hunt (her name is 'Feisty' but amongst our staff she is 'Pussy Cat'. Amongst new patients, the question often is 'is it a dog or a cat'? 'cos she's a monster cat in Cambodian terms).

Puss went missing in Khmer New Year, when the Healing Home was closed for some days. Sopheap lovingly took her home. Puss, however, did not feel the love and did a runner. Now, she is lost in a big city that is more likely to eat her than to take her in.

There's a bounty on her rat-catching head; $10 alive. We don't do dead cats. The $10 should be sufficient to mobilise children in search parties. Here's trusting that someone has seen a heat-seeking, sleep-loving Siamese out on the town.

The Healing Home is missing a certain vibe since Puss went missing ...

... so I'm taking my comfort in a cuppa Twinings tea (thank you Andrew and Ruth for the Twinings!!) in the Dunoon mug (thank you, Trade Me!)

Bringing back a few essentials ..

2011-05-07T09:27:00.011+07:00

OK, we are back, as of Wednesday evening. Our exactly two months away (a week in Toowoomba, nearly seven weeks in NZ, a weekend in Brisbane heading back plus a few nights) has been a brilliant time in so many ways. Now, we've returned, well prayed out from our home church in New Plymouth, and catapaulted out with a haka from the amazing CVT LinkNZ leadership training camp in Waikanae.

Every trip back is a valuable opportunity to load up on a few things for our life in Cambodia. Sue has enough vegemite to last us to the third grandchild ... so here's a few pics of what has been transported to 8c, Street 460:

With honey on top (thanks, Becs!) - books are very high on our 'bring back to Cambodia' list. Here are 9 of the 12 books squirrelled into our 20kg each airline allowance.

So few of the kids we see at the Healing Home have had childhood toys. We love to bring back toys that we can give away. Thank you Denise for most of these - the brown dog and the white teddy are already in the arms of two great kids who are at the Healing Home now.

Bringing back the family - Kara and Josh gave us this family pic for our mantle piece. Securely bubble-wrapped and boxed, this took up a third of my luggage space. A trusty Briscoes wok also travelled home (so hard to get a wok with a decent steel base here), plus a serious amount of chocolate (we made up bags of specialty choccies for our 8 staff to introduce them to a bit of culinary decadence). Unfortunately, my brie cheeses became pancakes in the journey home ... Oh, and there was a decent hand eggbeater too (pancakes are out Saturday morning ritual).

In good hands

2011-03-02T11:56:00.004+07:00

It is 'goodbye' time today as we hand the Healing Home over to Sopheap and Sreymom for the next two months. Our staff are wonderful and the five patients currently at the home, plus (I think!) three family members will know great grace, we are sure.

Two of our patients are little ones. Here they are:

Sreyneth, who needs to get physically built up and get rid of her chesty cough before she can be operated on for the hair lip and cleft pallet. She is such a smiler!

Ping - full of beans and mischief, despite the growth behind his eye. This is his step-mum as his birth mum was, we understand, completely unable to care for him so this neighbour stepped in. She is desperate for work as her husband has run off on her, so little Ping has actually been accepted to go to a Christian orphanage soon.

17 Tick Day

2011-03-01T17:59:00.006+07:00

We have just two more sleeps before heading down under once again. It has been over a year since we've been back to NZ and to say that we are looking forward to hugging our kids and connecting with friends would be an understatement. We arrive in Australia on Friday morning and a week later start our 6-week NZ time with four days in Christchurch.

So, today was a 'let's get everything done with a day to spare' day. For me, a '10 tick day' is extraordinarily successful. Today busted all records - I got to tick off stuff that had not even made it onto the 'to-do' list. Now, I've just got some shirts to iron (so that they can get scrunched up in the bag - why do we do this??), a bag to pack and just possibly, a Susie-list to knock over.

Can we help you ... not! Susie was buying supplies at a local chemist shop, but Tarzan was in full flight on the telly ....

Off to market - it is always interesting what you get to meet on the road while running around the city. Here, a motorbike is towing some happy pork to a local market. I pulled up behind these guys at a set of traffic lights.

Some changes we notice

2011-02-19T07:25:00.007+07:00

We've been out here for three-and-a-half years plus now. Our city is changing. Here are a few outward things that I am observing:

1. Cleaner - a most excellent plus. Three years ago most of the city looked like a rubbish dump and many people treated the streets as one big garbage disposal centre. We are not pristine yet but there has been a quantum leap forward in city cleanliness.

2. Car dealers - not so long ago and you had to be in the know to track down a place to buy a car. Now, dealerships abound - as do home-grown street corners with a line-up of vehicles for sale. Toyota rules here. If it is not a Camry (hugely popular) it is a Corolla or a Lexus. Most vehicles are second hand imports from the USA. A very high percentage of them are accident write-offs or flood damaged. Chop shops abound. We have a dodgy place a block from here. Cars come in in pieces, and appear glued up and newly painted, opposite the chop shop a few weeks later!

A block from the Healing Home, this place is now functioning. If you can spit over the road, you would hit a new site for yet another petrol station, coming soon - and this is a minor connecting road!

3. Petrol stations - there are three 'levels' of acquiring petrol here. You can buy a litre at a time from pepsi bottles filled with 'interesting' petrol. You can buy from a guy who hand pumps from a 44 gallon drum. And you can go to a petrol station.

Up until very recently, I would mostly go five blocks from here to get real petrol. No longer. In the last three months, three petrol stations have opened in our home/Healing Home immediate vacinity, and one more is being built! Crazy crazy - but it speaks of the car ownership explosion happening right now. Phnom Penh is already in serious gridlock many places now - and it will be getting pretty horrible in the future as very little roading infrastructure is happening.

'Goldtower 42' - the big Korean project that has turned into 'concrete tower 29'. This monster towers over everything as very few buildings here are higher than 8-10 stories. All work abruptly stopped three months ago and the site is locked down.

4. Construction wobbles - there continues to be a huge amount of small-scale housing going up. Apartments are the building rage now - they are popping up like petrol stations. There is a large over-supply of this up-market accommodation but that does not stop the surge. It seems that is someone has an uncle that is gettng $1000 a month for an apartment, then 50 people with money to blow jump on that bandwagon.

However, big commercial ventures have taken a very big hit in Phnom Penh since the financial wobbles of two years ago. Much of the big development here is Korean-driven, and Korea has been pulling the pin on a lot of big projects that are already well under way. Office space is already in major over-supply too and the wild speculative days of yester-year have hit a major reality check.

More power so pics part 2

2011-02-18T21:49:00.009+07:00

Off to work we go - it would be fun to just spend a day sometime to photograph the infinite variations and configurations of what a moto moves in Cambodia.

A local driving my future wagon. The humble Lexus 4wd is the essential mobile status symbol here. Don't be fooled that Cambodia is 'poor' - these machines abound by the mega hundreds. Cambodia is not so poor - but many, many of the people are.

'Open market' - fish, pork, beef, chicken - they are all sold in the open (and very often in the open sun, too!)

We've just been thru' Chinese New Year here. Phnom Penh is pretty well run by the Chinese, business-wise. We had a week of delightful quiet and calm in the city with the majority of businesses shut down - even tho' this is not a Cambodian holiday. These flowers are a part of the festivities.

Yeji lady weighing and collecting scrap metal in an area not far from us where mainly Vietnamese people run streets of wood milling and furniture shops. Directly above is where this young mum and her child live (below)

Not even trying - three adults, a babe and a child on one moto is reasonable but not head-turning-worthy. The best I have seen is six teenagers on a bike. That would be boys, of course!

Pics from our world to yours

2011-02-18T21:09:00.013+07:00

Sorry sorry - the blog has been left lying like a winter lawn these last few weeks. We are still alive and healthy, but there has not been a whole lot of stuff happening to inspire a blog posting for a bit.

However, I've taken my trusty old film camera for a few walks recently and enjoyed handling a serious piece of photographic machinery instead of the baby Sony digital. There is something about the clunk of a real camera shutter on the old Canon EOS 1n that pulls me back to my old happy hobby.

Films and developing are incredibly cheap here (develop and print 2x 36exp rolls of film plus bought 10 rolls top quality fuji film just out of date - US$14 all up) and it takes nothing to scan across to digital - so here are a few pics. I would put up a bunch more shots but tonight the internet is hardly crawling and every pic is taking soooo long to download ...

In Cambodia, the family car is very often a moto

These old girls are usually ok on the road. It is the little ladies in their smart office get-up that you have to be wary of - so often they have the road-sense of a pickled lizard, cutting you off without a clue of what they have just done!

These little piggies went to market ...

Dr Sue

2011-01-22T14:01:00.008+07:00

I was approached by one of our church pastor's recently. He told me the story of his sister-in-law, who for over two years had been sick. Like the lady in the Bible, she too had seen many provincial doctors and spent all available money - with no improvement. Hopelessness now pervaded the family home. Please, could we help?

The sweet lady had a fever, a cough and significant weight loss. In Cambodia, that is as plain as a Kiwi kid who is covered in red spots. Yet, in two years, there had been no chest xray; no TB test. It gets a little disheartening - talk about 'take the money and run'!

TB was confirmed within a few days. It means a 6-month course on some pretty mean medications, but there is light again.

Inseperable - Kamein and Srey became best buddies when they met at the Healing Home. They were inseperable from both one another and from the little fluffy toys that Sue gave them - to keep. Kamein's mum had the 'mystery illness' that was plain as day to Sue. Srey came with her mum and brother; her brother is also a TB sufferer.

Abandon house!

2011-01-16T16:28:00.005+07:00

Left, right and centre - top pic, we have the wedding in progress; 'kitchen' is in the foreground. Middle pic is party 2 - and right outside our front door is the chuka-chuka-chuka generator!

Weather-wise, the last couple of months have been mostly wonderful. Global warming which buried Europe under snow and shut down a hunk of eastern USA has also blessed us with wonderfully cooler temperatures. It makes such a difference, not living in a private, sweaty bath day after day.

However - and there is a however - this is also wedding season, housewarming season and generally 'let's roll out the tent on the street and have a party' season. There are plenty of businesses here that do just that - raise up a tent outside the hirer's house (they do it in sections, so it can be 5 metres long; it can be 45 metres long), fill the tent with chairs and tables; then raise up a second tent that operates as kitchen central. No street-party is complete without a generator and a sound system that is amped to shake the moon.

On Wednesday we saw that a double-blessing was coming our way. We were sandwiched in, with parties happening left and right - and generator outside the front door. I think there was a wedding to the left and a business-blessing party to the right. That was a serious party - a good 30 metres of tent there. I had to walk my little spider scooter through the middle of that gathering to get to work, as that's just not good form to do in a wedding tent!

Thursday started bright and early - 4.46am to be reasonably exact. Party 1 sound sytem kicked in with a yodelling monk. The amplifier was set at a modest 110 decibels. A couple of minutes later and Party 2 fired up their system. Party 1 still had plenty of knob-wind on their decibel dial. The competition was on. Sue was less than delighted.

We survived that night ok. Parties must not be hurried. Friday night, and the speakers were getting tested for maximum bass output. Sue had this hunted, haunted look in her eyes, like a lady not to be messed with. We abandoned house - off to friends who live just far enough away to be safe. Ahh, the serenity!

The fight for Saroun

2011-01-14T19:53:00.003+07:00

These last 10 days hav been very difficult for a sweet young lady, Saroun. She is just 35 years old and suffering from serious heart failure. Sue's guess is that she has had high blood pressure for a couple of years at least, leading to heart enlargement and her present condition.

Saroun came to us with her sweet, poor village mum. Eight nights ago Saroun went into unconsciousness, resulting in a mid-night dash to an ICU. We got her back the next day and have continued to care for her. However, today Sue rightly judged that she was too sick to continue with us as we continue to live under the 'no dying permitted' ultimatum.

We succeeded in having her transferred thru' to CSI, a most excellent Christian clinic here in Phnon Penh. Now, CSI believe that her heart is so weak, it is unlikely she can continue to live. Late this afternoon Saroun has been taken by ambulance back to her home, about four hours from here. It is tough.

Sue with Saroun last night. We moved her into the front room so that our other patients did not get too disturbed.

Happy hearts

2010-12-28T12:46:00.008+07:00

That would be us - happy happy as we see grace at work among the folk who come to our home. Meet our present patients - and let me tell you a little of what is happening with them:

Here is Heng - the man who fell from a building site and has been paralysed from the waist down. From weeks of weeping in despair, Heng is now so animated, talkative and hope-filled. He has had two years of schooling in his life - but found that he could read the Bible. He reads it - out aloud - pretty well every day and sometimes for hours. He is just now able to get out and about in a wheelchair too (below).

Bin, Yun, hubbie and Kon who are all with us at the mo. Bin has liver disease and Yun is now minus a piece of foot from a bad diabetic sore. Kon and her husband can smile too, despite a terrible ordeal that they are in the midst of that I can't speak about on this blog.

Meet Yart - the lady who came to us to recover from an op. She was such an anxious little lady when she first arrived two week ago. Some real good stuff has happened in her heart as well as in her body - here she is just as she was about to head home yesterday.

Silent night

2010-12-28T11:58:00.007+07:00

The parties are over and everyone has gone home. For the first time since about July, the Bonnevie hospitality pad has altogether emptied, leaving Sue and I home alone and thoroughly disorientated.

Christmas lunch - Frank (he's the bloke mostly hidden behind his wife Allie) runs Caterhelp; a restaurant and catering company. We contracted them for the lunch - which included Frank- hand-carved turkey and lamb. That's the Roberts at the table too, and good friends Mark and Jo Dennert who are doing brilliant work here in business training and counselling. In the background - the great bit of art given to us last Christmas by Sopheap, and painted by her father. We cleared out our furniture to get four tables into our downstairs room - no worries!

It has been a fun and active month that has included two home invasions - a mid-week staff Christmas party over lunchtime and a Christmas Day celebration that succeeded in getting 30 people into our place. Present on Christmas Day were the Scott family from Christchurch (Donald, Janice and sons x 4 and fiance x 1) and the Roberts family from New Plymouth (Craig, Loretta, Sophie and Katie) - plus assorted Kiwis, Aussies, three Khmer and one American .

Staff Christmas lunch (sorry Donnie; terrible pic of you but I wanted to get baby Naan!) - top - and pressies time. Rather than girlie smellies, we changed things around for gifts this year and gave money for them to buy what they wanted. There were two motorcyle helmets, clothing, shoes, a streaky hair-do, handbag, teddybear and other assorted goodies in their choices!

Donald, Janice and family stayed at a flat a couple of kilometres from us during their two-week family time here in Phnom Penh. They headed out to Vietnam early on Boxing Day. Craig, Loretta and girls left us that afternoon for Aussie. Susie promises not to go anywhere ....

Mum in the sun

2010-12-01T14:51:00.005+07:00

Actually, my dear mother has been trying hard to keep out of the sun since landing in Cambodia 13 days ago. It's a sweet 31 degrees most days here now - just a bit warm for a girl who has spent the last months in a Taranaki winter.

We are having such a good time together, even tho' things have been pretty intense from the time she arrived. There has been a bit of custard to negotiate with a serious visit at the Healing Home from some local authorities, but we'll not go there on the blog! In 42 hours (yes, that would be me counting down ...) we plan to head to the coast for 3 days of r+r with her.

Mum heads off with us most mornings to be with our patients. They love her and Heng has asked for her by name to pray for her one morning when she did not show. My mum is a real good sport too - at 77 years old, she's had her first and second spin on the back of a motorbike. Just two weeks left and so much to still introduce her too - why does time move on so relentlessly??

Mum with our 'precious' - little Naan whom we first met as a 3-month old weighing 1.2kg. Now adopted by Donnie and Sophea, Naan has started to walk right on normal development time! She is bright and happy - a true miracle kid.

Wedding shoes

2010-12-01T14:38:00.003+07:00

It is well known that impossibility defined is to understand a woman.

One of the great mysteries to mankind has to be - what is it with women and shoes?? For example, this Saturday Sue and I attended William's marriage to Prum. The first part of the wedding ceremony is called the 'fruit walk'. This happens early in the morning, whereas the afterdo celebration happens in the evening.

William led the fruitwalk procession to the church, riding on an elephant. I was so taken with the elephant that I later realised that I did not have one single pic of either William or his bride. But I do have a pic of the little lady's shoes!

Cambodia's sadness

2010-12-01T14:00:00.007+07:00

Footbridge to Koh Pich, an island in Phnom Penh that has recently been developed as a function centre and entertainment area. The final night of the annual Water Festival had drawn a huge crowd for a night of free entertainment. There is a larger vehicle bridge maybe 200 metres from this footbridge.

Whilst New Zealand has been greatly sadenned by the mining tragedy at Pike River, Cambodia has been rocked by a bizarre disaster that has killed close to 500 people. An evening of celebration and fun inexplicably turned to carnage when a crowd crossing a footbridge turned into a senseless panic. In the demonic stampede, people were stacked up to seven high. Hundreds are still in hospitals with crush injuries, including the brother of one of our staff. The three cousins he was with all died.

Out of the senseless horror of this night has emerged so many stories of God warning His kids away. I have heard tale after tale among people we know - including 'our' Sreymom who was warned by a friend on that night 'do not go on that bridge - walk down to the other bridge'.

Just yesterday Bhopal, who directs the 'Centre of Peace' children's home, told me an amazing story. Three groups of the older children were heading to Koh Pich. One group changed their mind when they got there, and went to the Riverside. The second group decided to go home early and walked over the bridge just 10 minutes before the disaster. The third group was just three girls, all aged 16 years. They stepped onto the bridge, felt uneasy, and stepped off. After a bit they again stepped on the bridge. Again, they felt uneasy for no apparent reason. A third time they stepped forward - and that was when the disaster unfolded just ahead of them. Bhopal positively glowed in gratitude to God as she shared about how He had protected her girls!

This is Cambodia. There will be no commission of enquiry. To their credit, the government have made US$1250 payments to the families of every deceased person as well as promising to cover all hospital bills. To his credit, the prime minister openly wept on television. Over 360 people died on the night, plus a further 90+ died of injuries in hospitals up to five days ago. That number is still rising. Weeping parents spoke of how this was like Pol Pot era revisited - searching for their family members amongst hundreds of laid-out dead bodies.

Even a human stampede amongst the millions at Mecca some years ago did not produce the intensity of death that little Cambodia produced on a little footbridge. It is a stunning tragedy for this nation.

Occupational Safety and Health

2010-11-11T19:46:00.005+07:00

Making a glass delivery - not an uncommon sight at all ....

Feeling the love

2010-11-06T20:33:00.003+07:00

Trust, or should I say mistrust, is a huge issue here in Cambodia. Behind the friendly faces and smiles lie generations of abuse, betrayal and harsh control. It really takes consistency and long patience to win child-like trust from the hearts of the people of this precious nation.

I mentioned to Sue earlier this week that I felt we were entering a new level of trust with our staff. Some of our girls have been working with us for over two years now. Sopheap had initiated a conversation with me where she really opened up about her heart concern for what was going down in a friend's life. The way she had so opened up really encouraged me that trust is growing deeper.

Then yesterday we were wonderfully ambushed by love. We had communicated with our team that Friday was a very special day - 33 years since our big 'I do' day. We were taking the afternoon off to do stuff together and go out for dinner. All our staff thought that this was great! In the late afternoon we received a phone-call. Please would be come to the Healing Home - they had something to give us.

Flowers for Sue and I - and a pressie too. It was the card, with a note from six of our staff inside, that really amazed us the most tho'.

Five of the staff were waiting for us like excited kids. Two red roses emerged from the fridge and a wrapped pressie produced. They could not find an anniversary card, so a card with two big hearts and 'Happy Birthday' was pretty close!

Inside the card were handwritten notes that were so delightful and loving. Our hearts were made very, very glad indeed. Little Rim, our newest girl, was just delightful. She wrote some lovely stuff and signed off 'from me. Rim'! I just loved it!!

Communication and kindness

2010-10-30T07:42:00.006+07:00

I'm of the opinion that we just cannot over-communicate out here. The number of times that something has fallen over because the 'communication loop' did not actually fully loop ... ahh, it has been many, many times. Now I often text and phone too much, just to really make sure.

In the Healing Home we really encourage the girls to think ahead and communicate what we need - before we need it. Do we need soap? Please tell us before we have been running a soapless ship for the last week. Rubbish bags? Tell us while we still have a couple - not when the rats are feasting on uncovered food.

Sreymom has been doing great on this. She often gives me a list for shampoo, floor cleaner, toilet duck and all the other stuff that keeps the home supplied. Her note yesterday tho' had us all in a giggle.

A Sreymom classic communication posted on the fridge on good kiwi notepaper kindly left by Robyn.

Here is another living legacy from Robyn's time with us. Robyn came to the Healing Home on Thursday afternoons to do crafts with our patients. Sreyda has hooked into necklace and bracelet-making like you would not believe - and she is selling some too! Soon she will leave us, and for her to have the capacity to earn an income while in a wheelchair is a very big challenge. We are so thrilled at how she has enthusiasm and creativity for this and all the potential craft-making may have on her future.

Home almost alone

2010-10-26T20:18:00.003+07:00

Good-bye good friends - Robyn may have the hydration essentials but Marty has a Cambodian treasure in his arms there - a superb piece of hammock!

Three months can fly when you are having fun.

Marty and Robyn headed back to the subtropical sunshine of Taranaki yesterday morning after being with us since late July. With this being their third time in Cambodia, they have established a real network of close friends here now - and lots of these friends are Khmer. It's been a neat time and they have been of huge value to different ministries and people here in their willingness to serve and to bless.

We are almost alone - Supei the Taiwanese lady from New York now gets the superior suite on the second floor. She will be gone before my good mum flies in on November 18 for four weeks with us.

Our staff

2010-10-22T20:01:00.010+07:00

I am sometimes asked if I miss being the a church pastor. Of course our lives are very, very different here compared to life in New Plymouth - and it is a very fair question.

The short answer would have to be 'no'. I am so glad that Sue and I let go of a life and a people where, mostly, we had tremendous years and sack-fulls of happy memories. The letting go process was difficult but as I look around at the people and the opportunities that fill our life now, I am so glad that we now live here.

One of my greatest satisfactions here is the wonderful opportunity we have to focus down to just a few choice young people and to purposefully build into their lives. One of the very first words that I felt God speak to me when we came to Cambodia was about how the future of this nation belongs to a new generation who carry a different spirit. We get to build into some of this new generation. How amazing that is!!

Here are five of the nine staff that currently work for us at the Healing Home - bright eyed and bushy tailed this morning. I run a staff Bible-based training hour each Friday. Today we focussed into the subject 'beware the leaven of the Sadducees and the Pharisees' - all part of raising young people who are real, not religious!

OK - introductions: Sopheap our mercy-hearted little responsible carer and Sypho who has just joined us - one very fine lady. Front row is Dtouch our weekday cook who is so hungry and growing so well; Sreymom who is structured, quick to learn and a heap of fun, and Bunthorn who teaches the neighbourhood kids.

Missing are Bonna (she works Mon, Tues and Fri afternoons and all day Saturday), Neth our weekend cook and Sarah who is on deck Sundays. We also have young Rin who volunteers two days a week and sleeps at the Healing Home. With two staff sleeping over every night, there is a roster of all the girls that rolls along amazingly smoothly.

Tioman

2010-10-15T14:00:00.005+07:00

Sue and I are still purring after a great break away. It turned out that we made a smart move by taking our first four days at Tioman Island, two hours boat ride off the south-east coast of Peninsula Malaysia. We were pretty tired, so a spot of island time was just delicious.

Room with a view - we stepped out of this simple bungalow, a few steps onto the beach then waded knee-deep into the water; flippers and facemasks on and the tropical fish were literally there. We found Nemo but happily not Bruce.

Restaurant with a view - life is very much laid-back island style at Tioman. One evening we went into a simple beachside restaurant and waited and waited ..... Despite open doors and billboard outside, there was neither cook nor staff to be found. We gave it 15 minutes and wandered down the path! Another time Sue had almost finished eating the iceblock from the outside icecream freezer before the shopkeeper showed to collect the loi.

Not wanting to be breakfast - around the wharf a serious school of these little guys were being preyed upon by a few garfish. Where Sue and I snorkelled there was an abundance of tropical fish - a bit like swimming in an aquarium. There was a huge variety too, but nothing bigger than 1kg, except for the little blue-spotted stingray.

Growing trees

2010-09-28T20:33:00.004+07:00

New Life Fellowship has begun what they call 'Growing Trees'; an internship-come-Bible school. It is an opportunity for young people to really grow in God over an 11 month course. This is a first for the church here - and sadly, it appears to be a first for in-house training within Phnom Penh churches.

12 people have signed up for what is the inspiration from Jason Prosser (a great Canadian guy who, with his wife Angie and now three kids, have been here six years) and Chris Foster. Chris and Rhiannon are Melbourne Aussies and for Aussies, are real good sorts.

Here are four of the students, plus a couple of stray legs from some others. Veasna (centre) used to volunteer at the Healing Home when we first started two years ago.

The way the program has been set up, students are in a classroom setting Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays and working within a church ministry on Wednesdays and Thursdays. I'll get to introducing Rin to you soon - she's in the class and she has been snaffled by us for those two days. Also in our class is Neth, our weekend cook. She's growing so fast!

I've had six hours with these folk over the last two weeks, doing stuff on character. She's very much a different ball-game in this culture, approaching this subject. It would take a few pages to explain - but there is something about generational transfer in a culture, where values are adhered to and understood in an over-riding sense.

That simply is not the case here. Say the word 'truthful' and you are not on the same page at all. What I understand and what is understood is like playing with the remote control with the tv. It takes patient explaining and many daily life examples to begin to approach the same channel. They are great young people and keen as to learn - but no longer am I fooled by bright smiles and nodding heads. I continually ask questions and draw out responses.

Chris and Jason are pioneering something very valuable. There is a lot of input from the Khmer church leaders too, so this is not a foreigner-dominated thing at all. It is always good to be purposeful in equipping the young generation!

Skills

2010-09-28T20:06:00.006+07:00

Skills is the name of the most hard-case little fox terrier you will ever meet, who has established his home base with Dave and Melody in Toowoomba. His name came to mind the other day as I sat in the middle of the best bit of traffic gridlock that I have had the pleasure of encountering for a very long time.

I was scootering back from a dropoff of a patient and his daughter at the CSI Clinic. Street 271 is a main ring-road, commonly known as 'Dike Road' as it has been elevated a little, lifting it out of flooding chaos in the wet season. Dike Road is wide single lane each way, wide enough for three lanes of traffic to jostle in each direction in a busy period.

The view behind me (top) and coming the other way as things start to slowly move ...

The fun started with a concrete truck sitting in the middle of the road for a while, as it slowly positioned to reverse onto a building site property. This is where local skills kick in. The obvious way to get past a blockage is to go around. When that starts to block up, one just keeps going wider and wider ....

Of course, this works both ways. As the truck slowly manouvered into position, the scene was hilarious plus. We now have traffic six lanes deep on both sides of the road facing each other. No kidding, no arm-pulling. Susie has seen these same skills on a bridge spanning a local river - rush-hour, blockage and wall-to-wall traffic in a head-on standoff. It really is fun.

Within 15 minutes we had some action - a lonely policeman and his trusty whistle. Happily, he was blowing it on my side of the road. By sheer lung-power he opened up a 400mm gap. Hallelujah! I eventually slipped through happy in the knowledge of two things: some days all people are created equal (there were 200 Lexus 4wd's in that mess!) and that it would take at least an hour before the next concrete truck could get in position to create the very same skills-enhancing situation over again.

On Patrol

2010-09-28T17:58:00.005+07:00

Marty has been so helpful in so many areas since he and Robyn joined us for another 3-month stint here. One of the things he has done has been to give Donnie the thumbs-up on a machine that has been designed with Cambodia in mind - a 1993 Nissan Patrol 4wd.

Here is Kunn, a lovely young security guard who is posted 12 hours a day outside the church, monitoring everyone who comes and goes. He gives a duplicate ticket for every bicycle; every moto that parks. Lose your ticket and you have a most serious problem. I got him to pose with the little Patrol that gets to be parked outside the church by day - and inside the church by night (honestly!)

Donnie got some funding from a couple of guys he knows in Canada to buy a vehicle. This has long been a desire - to get a machine that will pull sick people out of provincial villages any time of year. Donnie has been flat out for the last three years or so, so Marty and I did the homework and turned up this beast. It has a great history and is ready for more!

I've had a couple of drives, including the delivery trip through rush-hour traffic. Talk about a quantum leap from the baby Daewoo - with this animal even the Lexus boys show you respect!! What a huge blessing, now to have the means of better serving the precious poor people of this nation.

We've turned up another way of strengthening Donnie too - by working to get him free of the never-ending admin tangle. Sypho will start work for the Healing Home on October 11. Half her 32 hours per week we are giving to Donnie, as his PA. In her job description we have called Sypho up to a 'left brain' role (get stuff organised and functioning) and 'right brain' function (figure out ways to do the admin areas differently and better!)

Flipping out

2010-09-26T16:12:00.004+07:00

I think Susie and I are a little tired. It has been a full and rewarding eight months + back in Cambodia, following a NZ Christmas and all the fun associated with Kara and Josh's wedding. Stuff that we usually cruise over has been wearing us a bit lately, especially the level of inconsideration of others. There's been a few promises made to our patients by individuals and organisations that results in them being continually let down with no communication as to what happened. I think that, before I move into nose-bending mode, we may need a wee break.

Yesterday we went shopping for holiday essentials - snorkelling gear! I'm so looking forward to this time coming up that I plan to go to bed in these new pyjamas tonight!

Happily, many months ago my good friends in Air Asia knew that this would be the case . For the price of a bus ticket around the North Island, we are winging our way to Perth next week. On the way we have 4 days in Malaysia on an island that promises us giant lizards on land and sea turtles in the water. To say that we are looking forward to floating over coral reefs in fish heaven would certainly be an understatement.

Marty and Robyn have beaten us to the beach. They are taking 10 days off in Vietnam right now. Last I heard, it took them half an hour to cross the road in Saigon - the traffic was so volumous. The Healing Home will actually close for 6 days during our absence, as it is annual ghost festival time again. All our staff have a well-earned decent break too!

Dogs do better

2010-09-13T18:54:00.002+07:00

Ti found Heng in the corridor of a local hospital, abandoned and left to die. Heng had fallen at a building site and was now paralysed. Without family and without money, he was wheeled to one side and left alone.

Ti is part of a new generation; the hope of Cambodia's future. An orphan and hugely bright and motivated, he is studying to be a doctor. He lives with Graeme and Sue Taylor and Sue Hanna, in their commitment to raising up Cambodia's youth to be a people of love and care. Ti was doing some training at this hospital when he happened upon Heng. Like the good Samaritan, he dug into his own pockets to buy food for Heng and to have the hospital cleaner to care for him.

Sue getting dressings of Heng's feet where pressure sores were forming. She had a gathering crowd of Khmer folk watching her every move - until she cleaned him up in the poo department. Funny how people bail then. That's Ti at the head of the bed.

Heng was absolutely emotionally distraught. He just wept and wept constantly. His only friend, also working on the same building site, had visited once but was so pressured to come up with $ - and he was so broke - that he dared not return.

We've got Heng at the Healing Home now. Miss Mercy Sopheap has poured her heart of care into him and his tears are now much less. Today Sue explained to him what has happened with broken disks in his back and how, in any nation, he will be unable to walk without a miracle from God.

Then we told him about Da - how Da came to us with a broken back and just wanted to die - and how Jesus gave him a new life and a new hope so that he became the encourager and friend to every new patient at our home. Da, by the way, is now at a rehab unit where he is being trained to fix mobile phones. We keep in contact with him still.

Church family

2010-09-06T16:14:00.007+07:00

We've felt a bit punch-drunk these last couple of weeks. Sreyda, our sweet wheelchair-bound lady who has been with us since January, was due to return to Kratie Province this week. However, a sudden infection flared up in her left leg on Sue's birthday (Aug 25). Long story made short - the infection was so aggressive, she has had to have her leg amputated above the knee. She's back with us now, courageous and sweet.

Therefore, it was pretty special to sit in church yesterday and look around at those who were literally surrounding us. Immediately behind us was Long, the little crippled guy who now walks just great, and his family. His dad had been in a moto accident and got pretty bad concussion. One Long's legs had a sore too, so we said 'bring the family'.

One of my favourite kids in all the world - little Long. We were heading out to a hospital appointment this morning and I asked Long (in Khmer!) to please open the gate. He scooted out so fast with this big happy smile on his face!

To our right in church, one row behind and one aisle over, was Sreyneth. She came to us with a back injury and broken heels after her spirit friend whom she called 'my king' encouraged her to fly off a balcony. For weeks, we could not get any response from this lady: she was deadpan as. The light slowly entered as she saw that maybe the king fella was not such a good friend - what friend wants to kill you? She later gave her life to Jesus and now, three weeks after leaving the Healing Home, is sitting in church.

Alongside Sue, fast asleep in a pram, was Naan. Donnie wheeled her there and left her with 'auntie' for the service. If our kids don't get something happening soon, we may just take Naan on as an honorary grandchild! She is adorably beautiful and developing into such a wee character. The 1.2kg malnourished 'hopeless case' is a blossoming miracle.

Sreyda leaving the Healing Home for the hospital. There, she was pumped with very high doses of antibiotics for three days. We were so gutted when neither believing prayer nor medicines turned the infection around.

Finally, sitting on our left was Phong and her fat baby, Ritsar. Phong is the abandoned mum who came to us from a slum community, heavily pregnant and with very high blood pressure. She too appeared so shut down to the Lord. We were so happily surprised when she asked if she could keep coming to church when the time came for her to leave the Healing Home. Our staff pick her up every week. Her countenance is so different now; a wide smile and a happy heart. She has work in the Elim Church daycare and life has become altogether new for her.

We needed a couple of blood donours for Sreyda and I had been a bit sick, so we asked English friends Nick and Elaine to come. They are amazing 'ordinary' people, full of faith and the Holy Spirit. After praying his heart out for Sreyda, Nick looks around the ward and offers to pray for anyone. He literally prayed his way through the big room!

Sreymom leading a study in the afternoon, with a little help from puss. The lady on the right was a Buddhist nun. She had so many questions about grace and forgiveness. Dara (far left) is still with us. He appears to have had some kind of mild stroke. Married for just five months, we are greatly exercised to see his situation touched.

Some comparisons - Myanmar tales part 2

2010-08-28T14:18:00.009+07:00

I did not expect Myanmar to be so different to Cambodia. By day two I started to take stock - what was so different, and why? Here are some random generalisations of my observations:

Christian believers - deeper. Two things that spring to mind here - Cambodia's church is very young. Almost all the Christians we are among in Cambodia are first-generation believers. Many of the folk we mixed with in Myanmar are third-generation Christians. Further, there are very few Western-based non-government organisations and funding sources in Myanmar. Under very difficult circumstances, believers radically hold on to God. There is not the same temptation to mixed motivations. Cambodia has a high zeal level - in Yangon I saw a higher joy level.

Pagoda kids - the majority people group of Myanmar are the Barma people. They are seriously Buddhist whereas in Cambodia the emerging generation are much more secular Buddhist and token animist. The big moves of God have taken place among the tribal minority peoples, including the Karen, Chin and Kachin. Today, government stats are that Myanmar is 9.7% Christian - Cambodia's stats are 2%.

City layout - spacious! The Brits make room when they design cities. The roads are so much wider; there are parks and open spaces; many houses have a decent block of land. Yangon is much larger than Phnom Penh (approx 5 million vs 1.2 million).

Traffic - no motorbikes! They are outlawed in the city - some fancy reason but the truth will track back to control issues. The masses move by public bus system in Yangon. Phnom Penh does not have a bus system - buses are only for inter-city. Another major difference - order. Yangon drivers stop at red lights, keep in their lane and even use indicators - all very bewildering! Myanmar is drive on the right - but most vehicles on the road have right-hand drive steering wheels ... Everything we travelled in ran on natural gas tanks - even a dog of an old bus ticked along on a dozen old tanks strapped under our seats!

Also - no Toyota Lexus's. A Mitsi Pajero was about the top of the order in a nation where vehicles are so ridiculously expensive that they are never permitted to die. Vehicle imports are strictly controlled (what is not??) and an imported vehicle that is landed for US$3,500 (say a 1995 Toyota Corona) is sold for 45,000,000 kyat (US$45,000.) For a nation where the ordinary person has zero access to a banking system and where the highest 'trusted' denomination note is 1,000 kyat, that is a lot of loot to stuff in a mattress if you want to save for a vehicle!

Postman or military policeman? This was literally the only motorcycle I recall seeing in nine days in Yangon.

The food is most definitely spicier. I wept my way through a 'hot and sour' soup. I never did get to taste the sour - whoever supplied the chillies for this dish should lodge an application with the Guiness Book of Records!

Food - best meal by far was from a street-seller; curry soup samosa vege concoction that was so healthy and tasty that Susie broke her 'I never eat street food' rule. Myanmar is more akin to India food-wise; Cambodia milder like Vietnam.

Upmarket taxi (honestly!) - in our first visit to Myanmar 30 years ago it seemed that every second antique vehicle was a moonlighting taxi. This has been all straightened out now - I did some counting and my figures are the same but now taxis are all licensed. The majority of them have non-working bits (door handles that will not open; windows stuck open or closed) and best of all - monsoon-cooling systems (as in leak like a sieve).

Housing - Phnom Penh has experienced a building boom over the last decade. Thousands and thousands of 'p'teah l'vengs' - blocks of narrow, two or three storey brick homes such as we live in - have gone up for the emerging middle class. By contrast, it appears that Yangon's building boom was in the 1930's with the last maintainance work carried out some time in the '60's. Not the same evidence of slum communities in Yangon. Outer areas - very similar to Cambodia and right thru' Asia with simple wood and bamboo structures.

Typical Yangon housing - eight story apartment blocks with steep, dark stairwells. Note the security screens on the outside which surprised me as Myanmar has a very 'safe' feel and lawlessness often results in headlessness for the perpetrators!

The poor - less visible in Yangon. There does not appear to be a recycling industry, so gone are the thousands of folk we have in Phnom Penh who pull carts or sacks and scavenge in rubbish bags. Very few and very discrete beggars - I got the impression it must be illegal in Myanmar to beg. I think a greater industriousness in Yangon - I did not observe the groups of men gambling over cards like you can see on almost every street corner here.

Why are we waiting??

2010-08-28T13:45:00.006+07:00

August is moto-registering month. You get a little window to accomplish this. The alternative is to spend the next 11 months getting pulled over by every cop in town and paying a $1.25 fine per time. The $1.50 rego fee is a much better alternative.

The trick, tho' is to get your hands on the little sticker. You have to look for a table set up on a footpath with a good crowd of people around it. Once located, it is into battle.

Year 1 was something of a nightmare. Once I located the said table, I was part of a mob that had great skill in elbow manouvres. After 30 minutes I figured that Christmas would arrive before cracking this nut. I returned the next day. This time 30 minutes and some good elbowing got me to the front. 'Sorry, we are registering cars this morning - come back this afternoon for your moto'. I did. Unhappily, they did not. Their lunch break lasted all afternoon. I forget now, but it wasa multi-week affair of four or five attempts and some unexpected paperwork before the mission was accomplished.

Year 2 and I tried a new tactic - send out the staff. Sopheap looked slightly worried and took Bonna for backup. They were successful - but it took four hours for two staff. Hmm.

This is year 3. I spied the table. I stopped and approached. There was a worrying lack of multi-elbowed people. The nice lady smiled. I asked for a rego for both the Healing Home moto and my machine. She said '12,000 riel please'. I'm living the dream. 32.4 seconds - unbelieveable! Today, I love this country!!

Ok, so the rego says '4,500 riel' (a bit over a US$1). The extra bit is a happy service charge. Once apprehended, local advice is to cut the rego up and apply in pieces. It makes it less attractive to steal off the bike.

Myanmar tales - part 1

2010-08-20T20:14:00.005+07:00

We are fresh back from nine remarkable days in the remarkable nation of Myanmar. Sue and I originally visited this nation for a week in 1980 - in the days when one-week visas were issued and the nation appeared to be in a 1940's time-warp. Thirty years has changed the country a great deal, and Myanmar has since surged into the 1970's.

Pastor Nong (left) and his dad at the 3-day seminar. Nong has a wonderful spirit and a huge heart of love and mercy. Dad is like joybells on steroids!

Myanmar currency is called Kyat (pronounced 'chat'). Like Cambodian money, it is totally worthless outside the nation of issue. Here is a pretty typical 200 kyat (20c) note.

The thing that has not changed is the beauty and graciousness of a people living in extreme challenge. There is way too much to cover in a two-minute blog-read posting so I plan to dribble on for a few weeks about the time in Myanmar - but just to say, when you walk in Myanmar, you walk among giants of faith.

Phil Howan and his daughter Olivia, together with Anthony and Jenny Eggink, were our trusty Kiwi connection people for this time. Phil and Anthony are deeply commited to Myanmar, working with pastors to establish micro-businesses and bringing great encouragement and wisdom. Jenny, who had never been to Asia, 'had' to come this trip to understand what had so totally undone and revolutionised the life of her man. Now she understands.

We'll get to introduce you to some of the people and their stories in due course. Over the nine days we got to visit with children's homes, speak in churches, lead a three-day pastors and leaders training seminar (that got closed down by the powers-that-be, but without repercussions to the locals), meet the leader of a micro-church planting leader (6,381 micro-churches averaging 4-5 people in 10 years, not counting the 400 micro-churches that got swept away in the Nargis flooding of 2008) visit Bible schools and both see and do far more than what I ever could have expected.

Phil praying for Pastor Sompee, a delightful leader who also runs a children's home. In 2006 he was beaten and left for dead by a gang of 15 muslim men. He has since led three of these men to Jesus!

Going AWOL

2010-08-09T12:26:00.003+07:00

If the blog goes quiet for 10 days, that is because we are off-line. In a couple of hours Sue and I head to the airport, enroute to Myanmar.

Once, long ago when we were very young, Sue and I visited Myanmar (then called Burma). We spent time in four other nations of SE Asia at that time, too. Myanmar was the nation that gripped my heart the most. I still remember having a strong impression on our flight out of that country, that we would return in the future. That future is 30 years later!

We will be meeting Phil Howan and his daughter Olivia, together with Antonie and Jennifer Eggink (all Kiwis) upon arrival. Phil and Antonie have been there fairly recently and will be our connectors to church leaders and various ministries. Our time there kicks off with a three-day pastors conference.

Cambodia is so close to Myanmar - two flights of one hour each (Phnom Penh - Bangkok; Bangkok - Yangon). In the next ten days I am eager to test the waters for long-term relationships in the future. Establishing Healing Homes within that nation is one of my dreams.

Check-up

2010-08-09T12:14:00.002+07:00

Bunthon with Kov last week.

Together with Bunthon, Susie and I drove the 40 minutes out to see Kov last Thursday. It is over a month since he left us, and we were keen to see how he was doing.

Life is going well for the little guy, tho' very different. He is in school six days a week, eight hours a day. So much study and structure must come as a shock for him as he had zero schooling prior to Healing Home and no more than two hours per day during his time with us.

He lives with a house mother and nine other young guys in a sweet little house. The house mum loves him - she says that no other young guy is as helpful and obliging. That's the Kov we know - eager to help; eager to please.

This coming week we are hopeful of seeing his sister come to us at the Healing Home. We really want to help Kov's family and I felt so moved by the sadness in the eyes of his 15-year-old sister the time I visited the family. Heng's brother is in the village now with an offer to the family to bring the girl to us. Once she comes, we have an offer from another organisation to take her into care and training.

Saving Soy's foot

2010-08-03T20:32:00.005+07:00

Sue attending to Soy. The bright light is a flash-light that Sue often has on her head (like a coalminer!) when she cares for his wound.

Soy has been with us for around seven weeks now. He's the guy who has a diabetic sore on his foot. The sore was an absolute shocker when he arrived - black toes, black skin and about half a foot ulcerated away to the tendon. We were his last chance before amputation. The progress from day 1 with us, and the acceleration of this progress in the last 10 days, is just wonderful to behold.

Every patient is a training-ground for our carers, Sreymom and Sopheap. They have learned so much in caring for Soy, as Sue walks them thru' wound care and prayer. Remarkably, we discovered that Soy was a doctor in the Pol Pot regime. With all doctors and other educated people killed by the Khmer Rouge, they basically rounded up some likely lads, had the Chinese give them a few days training in acupuncture and turned them loose to be the doctors to a nation. I can only imagine the impact of this time of grace in Soy's life, where he receives that which is so totally far removed from that which he used to give.

Bunthon's back

2010-08-03T20:18:00.009+07:00

Happy kids - the teacher has returned! That's Bunthon in the background and our classroom-by-day, motorbike-shed-by-night behind him. Sreyda is in her wheelchair to the left. Susie has wisely got her doing her own washing and helping in the kitchen each day now - in preparation for her to return to Kratie in the beginning of September.

The Healing Home has been pretty full-on this last month, but it has actually been quieter. Bunthorn, as the big brother, is responsible for funding his Year 11 sister through school and on the mornings he was teaching at the Healing Home, there simply was not enough income for him to make ends meet. So, armed with $50, he bought a supply of plastic-ware from a wholesaler and set up a small business at a market.

His is a very typical situation - both in the pressure to provide for a younger family member, and the attempt to start a small business. We hugged him, blessed him and released him. The poor bloke made zilch in his new undertaking and when I checked in with him about two weeks ago and reaffirmed our standing offer that he could return to the Healing Home anytime, he jumped at it. In the last week he has also picked up three other part-time paid jobs as well.

Apologies, but ....

2010-08-03T19:53:00.005+07:00

Yes, I know that I've been away from the blog for too long. I've simply been having too much fun, with Melody and her fine man Dave in town for the last 12 days. We've got three kids, and since coming to Cambodia we have had three marriages. Now, we have also had all three of our children come out to visit. We are purring with parental gladness!

We took four days/three nights away to Sihanoukville, on the southern coast, during their time with us. I got the first semi-proper body-surf I've had in Cambodia on day 1, with a 'cold front' putting a bit of a swell onto the beach. Poor Melody got a little overwhelmed by the kids hawking pretty useless stuff on the beach. She bought something from one youngster, and another kid burst into tears because 'you never bought from me'. Poor old soft-hearted Melody!

Downtown Phnom Penh, on our way to Melody and Dave's very favourite place in all Cambodia - Swensen's the deluxe icecream shop. They have, I believe, three shops in the city. Here, we are completing the circuit with a visit to outlet 3!

Inside Central Market, an amazing art-deco-style building that is home to 5,000 stalls (and that is hardly exaggerating). Melody shopped 'til Dave dropped - she has her father's appreciation of fine bags and went home with genuine designer-ware packed inside genuine designer-ware! Dave meanwhile went home with 40 t-shirts he sourced and had printed here for a young guys group he co-leads at TCC - getting all set for the big canoe trip coming up soon.

Dave and Melody flew in via Kuala Lumpur. They are sitting there now as I write, waiting for their overnight flight back to the Gold Coast. Oh for a real beach and a real bodysurf!! For Kiwis, there is the promise of a new el-cheapo way to visit us soon - Jetstar start flights in March 2011 to Singapore with a connection to Phnom Penh for cheaper than a flatscreen telly.

Prospering slum

2010-07-19T17:54:00.003+07:00

It has been about eight months since I last went out to Udong Village where Pastor Abraham has based his remarkable ministry. Kerry was very keen to connect with this fine leader so we made the trip last week. The change I witnessed in such a relatively short time was absolutely astounding.

This is a slum community who formerly lived in the city. As is the all-too-often case in Phnom Penh, the land they were squatting on was earmarked for development. The 800-1000 families were literally herded onto trucks one morning and driven to a location on the outskirts of the city, about 5km from the airport. They were dumped there - without water, sanitation or shelter.

Eight months ago, things were still pretty rough in the slum community that grew out of the soil. Garbage was piled high. Water pooled along the mud footpaths and inside the shanties. There was very little employment activity - mostly people sitting in their homes. Alcohol abuse was rife and many families were existing on one meal a day.

Pastor Abraham is a man of prayer and action. He is leading the village to help themselves. The transformation I witnessed made my heart sing. Every house now has a (non-leaking) tin roof. Garbage trucks are paid to come weekly. Abraham has initiated a drainage system, in which he leads the locals to build the concrete pipes ($20 each and strong versus $35 for inferior bought ones) and together with the locals, big drains have been hand-dug. Everywhere, there is industriousness. This is the first slum that I have ever walked through where the spirit of poverty has been displaced!

I do not have pics as other groups have gone thru' snapping away like a visit to the zoo. What I do have is a song in my heart, seeing what one God-raised local leader is capable of initiating in a few years. The school is about to double (from 200 to 400 children, all from the slum community) and much more is bubbling in the heart of this outstanding man.

The boys are back in town

2010-07-11T20:41:00.004+07:00

This week has seen two blessed invasions - Andrew Smith with Paul, followed five days later by Kerry Hartley together with his missionary mate Alex Ship.

Kerry teaching at our staff training Friday morning. Tears are good!!

Andrew has been very involved training counsellors in the Hagar organisation all week. This is his fourht time in Cambodia and he is now received so well that Hagar staff are asking for him by name. Every time he comes, Andrew brings a young man. Paul the sparky has been a hugh blessing to Graham Taylor, bringing wiring skills into Graham's soya milk factory. Tomorrow the two guys head up-country for a three-day explore around Kratie before returning to us for a few more days

Sunday service at New Life Fellowship this morning - Andrew, Paul, Alex and Kerry.

Kerry was the very first kiwi friend to visit us in Cambodia. This is his fourth time of coming out here to encourage us. He actually launched our staff training Friday mornings back in 2008 - and we had him share with our staff again on Friday. He did a brilliant study on 'Honesty' that had Sreymom in tears as she translated, and Sopheap crying as she took it in! His good friend Alex is a Kiwi who has been 15 years in the Philippines as a missionary. He has come over to connect with Filipino's working in Phnom Penh.

Swensens icecream shop - Kerry and Andrew are return customers to this nicest of little places. They are honest folk too - I've just been back to pick up my bag with Bible and camera inside, after realising that my blog pics had not made it out of the shop this afternoon ...

Early Christmas

2010-07-02T13:47:00.005+07:00

Sue and Sreymom unpacking the wonderful treasure-trove of supplies. The sardines to the left are not part of this - that's 3 weeks supply for my con-artist cat.

Maggie arrived on Sunday, together with 9 Aussie compatriots. They are a medical team, about to head out to the provinces for two weeks. In the months (literally) prior to arriving, Maggie sent us many emails, asking us for a wish-list and clarifying what was do-able.

Today, Maggie came visiting with enough goodies to make Sue smile broadly. There were four pressure-cushions for wheelchair patients. They are the real McKoy, at a minimum of $900 a pop. There are wound-care dressings galore. A steriliser unit. Sue had lost a pair of surgical scissors. Maggie brought 100! There are three specialist pressure mattresses to be shipped here, donated from somewhere. All amazing stuff and all a huge, huge blessing to us and the many people who will benefit in the future.

Straight to the dogbox

2010-07-02T13:37:00.004+07:00

Puss is a good asset in the Healing Home. However, she's also a con-artist. I buy 10-packs of sardines for her food, to be mixed with rice. One can is to last two days. I have just discovered that she's conned Dtouch our cook into three feeds a day, sucking up one can.

Life in the dog-box. A delightful English guy named Nick has taken a genuine interest in our patients and comes twice a week to give them physio massages. He's left the bed in the front room rather than take it every time. Between visits, the bed is fully occupied ..

Five bob watch

2010-07-02T13:25:00.006+07:00

'Copyright' is a word we make endless jokes about out here. You would have to search extremely hard to find a legit dvd, Rolex or Windows program - and most things in-between.

So, when Susie went looking for a new watch with numerals large enough to not require glasses to tell the time, this little copied right Gucci caught her eye. She came home very pleased with herself - another shop wanted $18 for the same little timepiece.

For $5, she did pretty well. Two out of the three hands worked very efficiently. It was just a matter of making the right guess of what the hour was ...

Sue's $5 watch - plus an extra $ for a real leather strap. The friendly seller pulled out the guts, swapped them with another watch and now we have a copied right working timepiece!

Mighty Daewoo

2010-07-02T13:04:00.005+07:00

It was back to Takeo Province last Sunday for my third time with Pator Samdy and his lovely folk. Susie was happy to come as long as there were four wheels, so I took Pam's little bubble for a drive. It turned out to be a litle miracle machine.

En route we had a call to say that there was a spot of roadworks. In a nation of broken roads, the side-road for the last 2.5km was not actually broken, so why the powers deemed it needed fixing beats me. Anyway, the last 1.5km was serious Landrover 4wd material with deep boggy mud.

Sue had a prayer-life surge, calling on pushing angels and other heavenly powers to lend a hand. We made it through. I now have a renewed respect for my praying wife and a new respect for the humble Daewoo.

For the blokes out there - this is the church construction; concrete floor, steel framing and thatch panels for walls; thatched roof. There were about 60 people in church and another 15 kept away by the mud road - so the church is looking to buy land over the lane and increase. Land in Phnom Penh is around $50 per square metre on the outskirts to $1500 sq m inner city. In the province, $1500 buys a decent land block!

Some of the congregation - a good mix of ages and just delightful, huble and hungry folk

Goodbye to our little guy

2010-06-22T16:08:00.006+07:00

Kov, our bouncing little helper, moves to 'Rescue' tomorrow. It is fully five months since he came to us, so sick and sad. He's a totally different little guy now.

Party in the front room - a good choice of location as the rains came just as we sat down to eat.

Susie organised a party for him today with the other six patients, one family carer and our staff all invited. Dtouch cooked up a feast of fried fish and chicken and Susie made him a birthday cake and bought him a set of building blocks for a pressie. It was high excitement for everyone, complete with masks and blowie-noisy things!

Blowing out the candles - it's not his birthday (as no-one knows his birth date) but this kid has never ever had a party in his honour before.

Charles and Margaret

2010-06-22T15:52:00.007+07:00

We have really enjoyed a 5-day visit from Charles and Christine Newington from Brisbane, who have been Jason and Julia's pastors for three years. They and the church they lead have shown genuine interest in both the Healing Home and Centre of Peace orphanage. En route to Turkey and England, they came out of their way to spend time with us in Phnom Penh.

Praying their way through our staff - and then all our patients. This is Dtouch our precious cook that Charles and Christine are praying for.

Kids love to have fun - three of the 73 great kids at Centre of Peace. A highlight was having lunch and a quality two hours with Bhopal, the amazing director of the orphanage. Charles and Christine were so heartened by the heart quality of this little lady

Inside Orissey Market, located in the Chinese heart of old Phnom Penh.

Shoes come in all styles here - this is a great line for my Sue ...

We had not been down to 'Riverside' for a few months. Now, all the mud and mess has gone from the flood control project and a wonderful wide walkway has been put in. This city is really starting to scrub up good in some places!

Heavenly language

2010-06-12T20:04:00.008+07:00

Many days here seem ordinary. Today surely was not. It was a God footprints day, hugely!

Kov, the young guy whom we have become so fond of, comes from the same village as Heng, a great young guy who works in the Phnom Penh church. He has such a genuine heart for his village and for Kov's family. Dad is an abusive drunk and the whole family is a story of tragedy.

Kov's dad and mum and three of his brothers. The youngest is still being breastfed. I also met a sister (aged 15) and another brother who looked so thin.

Today Heng and I took the 90-minute trip to his village to ask again (Donnie has been previously) that the family sign Kov over to a ministry that will love and care for him. Dad was rotten drunk when we arrived at 10am - but at least he was mostly happy drunk.

Quickly we realised that God footprints were all over this day. Kov's mum said 'last night I had a dream'. She explained her dream - that Kov was playing in the village and he went close to a big hole, like a deep well. Suddenly he fell in. She ran to the edge and cried out again and again for help. In the dream, Heng's father came to her and said 'do not worry, I have already rescued him'.

The dream ends - and now, in the morning, Heng is standing in front of her. Mum instantly understands - this is the rescue. Amazingly, this is also the name of the ministry Kov will go to - 'Rescue' run by Marie Ens.

Heng at his parent's house today. On his own initiative and cost, he goes each month to run an outreach meeting in his village. Heng is mild mannered and soft - and I'm encouraged to see such a genuine, sacrificial young guy among his people.

With the village commune leader, signing the paperwork. Kov's mum has no literacy so everything was explained to her and she signs by the mark of her thumbprint. The commune leader was more than happy as he knows the issues surrounding the father. Dad was too drunk to be present for this time

Mice are nice - it's been a while since I've eaten well outside the usual menu. For lunch today there was rice, pork, fish - and mice. These little critters get zapped as they brush under an electric wire en route to the rice field. Heng's little brother collects an average of six per day of these little critters. They taste just fine, as long as you think some far away happy thoughts as they go down ...

We will take Kov to Marie's next week. He will start school there - in a class with one other girl (aged 15) who also has never been in school. He will join 100 kids at Marie's community. He has been rescued by our mazing God who has already spoken to him (remember a former blog? 'Do not worry about your liver any more. It is now healed') and spoken to his mum in a dream.

For nurses eyes

2010-06-10T21:06:00.003+07:00

Sue is on a mission to save Soy's foot. Soy has diabetes and his foot is a shocker. He's been given a week before the axe literally falls. Today was that week - and the progress has been so excellent that an amputation is being postponed ...

My girl is not a happy camper tonight tho'. Soy started getting a fever this afternoon. A bit of digging uncovered that he had not been holding to his antibiotic course because the medicine made him feel sick. Sue firmed up a bit on that one. She told him feeling sick was better than being dead.

His blood sugar level is half of last week's readings and his purple toes have regained colour and feeling. Sue has taught the girls how to do the foot dressings and she has been hacking away with her scissors, removing dead skin. It's just so frustrating when our lovely people go and do dopey things!

I get no respect

2010-06-10T20:44:00.004+07:00

We've been left holding the baby - baby car that is. Pam has gone back to the UK for up to 6 months and her Daewoo needed babysitting.

Her wheels do nothing to lift us on the motoring pecking order. In a nation where the law is measured by a complex equation of wealth and size (a Lexus 4wd trumps a truck), driving a Daewoo with a motor the size of Sue's electric toothbrush gets us no respect at all on the roads.

Behold the wheels, tucked into a third of the garage. Note that even the Spider moto has tyres of greater consequence!

Embracing the humility of it all, I've been out and about these last two days. Sreyda had a hospital appointment and today I went with Bonna and Susie to visit our girl Sreymom at Marie Ens community. I've got the pic so I'll get a posting on that visit done soon.

Happiness is ....

2010-05-31T19:35:00.005+07:00

We have not yet been so brave (or foolish??) as to buy our meat from the market. Fruit and veges - yes - but meat hanging on hooks all day long (and wasn't that piece of beef there yesterday too?? ...) - no thanks. So, we do meat at Lucky Supermarket. 99.3% of the time it is either beef mince (if you got to chew a piece of the local water buffalo, you would quickly understand why we only do mince!) or plucked chook. That's pretty well our meat menu - mince or chicken.

Therefore, it was an event of considerable excitement when Sue Hanna announced that a leg of lamb had been purchased for our homegroup to knaw on in celebration of Graeme Taylor's birthday yesterday.

A picture to be framed and hung in the office - the smell wafts past me even now!

I'm in a girls missionary world here - Libby from Queensland, Pam the Pom, Colleen Banks from Tauranga, Sue Taylor (Te Awamautu) and Pat (Auckland). Missing from the group pic is Sue Hanna (also Te Awamutu) and birthday boy Graeme Taylor. These are the folk who meet as a homegroup weekly Sunday evenings at our place.

Kratie

2010-05-28T20:44:00.010+07:00

Kratie is the name of both a province in Cambodia and the main town of that region. It is about 160km to the northeast of here by carrier pigeon, or precisely 348 km by the main highway that does some serious tiki-touring to the east before turning northwest. There is a third alternative route - head off up the Mekong River. The town is delightfully situated on the banks of the Mekong.

I had headed up to Kratie for two reasons - to make contact with our patient, Sreyda's, family and also to scout out this part of Cambodia. Sreyda has actually no living direct family, just her mother-in-law and mum-in-law's family. Tracking them down was not too difficult; maybe 20 minutes of door-knocking the suburb and they had a white stranger outside their door.

Talking to Sreyda at the Healing Home for the first time, mother-in-law openly wept. I gather that the dear lady thought that Sreyda had died, as she had been basically abandoned as a paralysed lady with hideous bedsores in a hospital. Now mother-in-law's son has contact phone numbers for two of our staff.

Sreyda's home, at the top of the nice wheelchair ramp. It is actually spacious with two large rooms, and very clean and tidy.

Bucketing down - the rains have reached Kratie about ten days ago. Sellers in the open market hopefully wait for customers (yeh, right!) above, as some of the local lads are rained off the job (below)

In the years ahead, we desire to see Healing Homes planted through the provinces. Kratie is a region that has really got my attention time and again over recent months. Sue and I are persuaded that much of what God is doing in Cambodia is happening under the radar in provincial villages. I plan to do more scouting in the future.

Mekong sunset with a boat heading across to Koh Trong, an island about 5km long by 500 metres wide across from Kratie town. The Mekong is a seriously large river!

A fan for a man

2010-05-17T19:38:00.005+07:00

OK so we've already talked about this - but it continues to be ridiculously hot out here. Last Friday was our coolest day - at 36 degrees. Even our staff are looking like possums in a bush fire.

Usually we have our only aircon - located in our bedroom - on for up to an hour to help get to sleep. The little fan goes all night, 11 months a year. Recently we've got the aircon going for pretty well half the night or more - and within 20 minutes of turning it off it is just nasty hot again.

I went to give my girl a hug the other night - and got an armful of legs. She had turned around to stick her head hard up to the fan.

What is a bloke to do in this eternal heat-wave? I went out and bought a real fan today. Funny, the things you don't really notice when you buy from a shop with most of its stock on the sidewalk. The propellar blades should have warned me - this machine sounds like an aeroplane on the tarmac - and that is on the low setting! Click her to number 3 and we've definitley got lift-off happening in our sitting room!

Our three girls

2010-05-13T20:44:00.006+07:00

At the mo we have six patients at the Healing Home. Three of our girls come from Cambodia's very rotund underbelly. One is a former bar-girl and now a full follower of Jesus. Another was sold by her step-father into prostitution and the third girl was orphaned at 11 years old and taken off the streets and into sexual trafficing at age 12 years.

Outwardly society here is refreshingly modest. Prostitution and the selling of girls into the sex trade is just huge, however. Coupled with that is a never-ending supply of scumbags who promise young girls unending love, and dump them at a moment's notice. Our pregnant girl managed to run away from the brothel that her stepfather had sold her into and was living with a guy like this. The moment he found out that she was pregnant, he told her that he had a wife and two kids - goodbye.

Sreymom (the patient) Sue, Sreymom (our carer) our pregnant girl whom I will not name and Sreyda on the far bed at devotions this morning. Sreymom has perfected the pout - she is 22 years old but much more like a 14-year old. She seems to be turning a corner these last couple of days, no longer constantly pining to return to her scummy home town near the Thai border and her ever-loving (not!!) boyfriend there. She had lost 26kg before she came to us. Note her pyjamas - normal daytime wear on the streets here. Her pj's have 'the dog have go home' printed on them. Reminds me of the t-shirt in the market of a happy puppy with 'Happy God' printed underneath ...

A couple of pics for the nurses out there .... Sreyda had very mean bedsores on both hips. Our girls are very happy to see sudden real progress on these wounds. These pics are taken a week apart of the same wound.

God speaking

2010-05-06T13:54:00.002+07:00

What is quietly happening in the lives of the people we get to work with often astounds us. Take little Sreyda for example, a young lady who came to us over three months ago with really bad pressure sores. She became paralysed from the waist down in an accidental fall. Basically abandoned, she was a skin-and-bones wasted woman when discovered by an NGO group in the province.

The change in this lady has been wonderful. She has gained weight, has embraced a muscle-building exercise regime and has fully come to Jesus. Earlier this week when we gave an opportunity for testimonies, she shared the following:

'I never knew how to pray but last week God taught me to pray. When I was praying He told me 'try harder and you will be able to do it'. So I tried harder ....' and now she is doing stuff she never could do before; turn herself over; sit up on the edge of the bed by herself and very nearly get herself from her bed into her wheelchair by herself.

Sreyda in the tuktuk outing during Khmer New Year last month

Kov, our little Tigger bouncing kid, also testified that same morning. He said that he had been praying and praying a lot (I understood that this meant over many days) and then he said 'Jesus told me that my liver is healed; not to worry any more'. There was like an awesome shine on his countenance as he was talking. He's been given an all clear from TB also. Bunthorn who teaches Kov every day said this morning 'he is really different now'. Go, God!!

Let it rain

2010-05-06T13:36:00.006+07:00

Cambodia has three seasons; summer mild, summer turbo and summer with rain. Summer mild is the time to come for a short visit, but you have to be quick; it can come and go in a couple of weeks any time between mid-November and early January. Temperatures plunge to 25 degrees, sending the locals into their winter wardrobe for ski jackets and such like.

Summer turbo starts around January and happily builds up in heat, peaking in April and not letting up until the rains come in May. 'Peaking' means 40+ degrees often; high 30's in the shade always. Sue and I are kinda 'over it' in the heat department, and longing for monsoon rains that help pull the temperature down a few degrees.

We've had a couple of good downpours recently, and yesterday again we had rumblings and lightning - that turned into a lot of hot air. A typical 'summer with rain' day is hot and muggy, with cloud buildup in the early afternoon and then 30-40 minutes of torrential rain around 3pm. June until October is our rainy time, when trips into the province can turn into a mudslide and trips around town can be like wild-water rafting with the road somewhere underneath.

Today was my first 'more power' experience with a motorised, bladed weed-eater that I bought from a nice American guy. No more hedge-clipping the lawns; 5-10 minutes of raw power did the job. The pic does not quite show it, but I was one drenched bloke after just these few minutes. Once the rains come the lawn needs a buzz every 10 days or so.

Our favourite kid

2010-04-29T19:56:00.006+07:00

Kov (pronounced similar to 'cow') continues to bounce around our home. I grew up on 'Winnie the Pooh' (and so did our kids) - so I can readily spot a Tigger. Incredibly, this little 12 or 13 year old guy (no-one really knows) is a bouncing Tigger every day.

We've talked a bit about this little guy earlier - how he comes from a really poor family; an older brother who died needlessly last year from worm infestation; a raging alcoholic father and other kids at home who have a horrible life. That Kov can have such bounce and fun every day is just incredible.

Always busy, he has constructed every wheeled device known to boys out of the blocks we have here. That is Sreyda behind him.

Always wanting to learn something, this week it is 'I want to learn to ride a bike'. He's such a social little guy who is ever keen to do things with others, whoever might be keen to play ...

We won't let him go home, as his parents do not want him. A Khmer friend who comes from the same village visited his parents last week to talk with them about their son. He told me 'if you see how they live, you would cry. Every night they fight and yell so much, even tearing their clothes off each other until they are naked'.

We're still looking for a good home for Kov - and until that happens, it is just delightful having him around. His brain should be stunted from years of malnourishment, but he's actually really smart and constantly learning. At this time he's a sponge for English language. Bunthorn is his main teacher. 'Good morning, how are you?' is our daily greeting. He'll ignore a response in Khmer - he's got to hear 'I am fine - and how are you?'

Working the angles

2010-04-29T19:45:00.006+07:00

Cutting the corners is everyday normal here. It is far from adviseable to be sitting like a lame duck in the middle of the road waiting for a gap, so taking the first available gap, even if you are 50 metres from the corner, is simply the way things happen on the little moto.

The same skills are often used by cars too. When you get to truck size, it is a little trickier ...

Woopsie - remember, traffic is (mostly) on the right here. My best guess is that the blue truck, carrying a load of watermelons, cut across at around 30 degrees and hit the brakes when he suddenly saw the Camry car. Unfortunately, that big white truck, laden with rice sacks and trundling down Monivong Boulevard, was not going to stop in half a metre ...

A few recent pics ...

2010-04-21T14:48:00.007+07:00

High excitement - Donnie organised a couple of tuktuks to take our patients to the fireworks display on the final night of Khmer New Year. They were so excited all day in anticipation of this event!

Room with a view - we slept upstairs in the Healing Home for a couple of days over Khmer New Year, as most of our staff were away on holiday. Here is the view from the balcony - of one of my favourite buildings in Phnom Penh. Note the chooks bottom left - there is a rooster in full working condition amongst there, to!

Kiwi girl - this sheepskin went thru' the wash and came out in four or five pieces. Sreyda uses it every day to help allieviate pressure sores - so here is my multi-talented Susie administering a bit of healing to the poor old skin

IT Central

2010-04-21T14:36:00.006+07:00

I popped into church yesterday looking for some mail - and saw an interesting sight:

So I followed the lead, so to speak ....

This is Karen Hanna, an Aussie who is the administrative hub of teams; when, where, who, what etc. She tells me that a very healthy virus has established residency in the NLF IT system; that they can get on-line (kind of) by mornings but the plugs are pulled every afternoon whilst war is waged. At least Karen can keep smiling!!

Surprising turn

2010-04-21T14:24:00.005+07:00

Happy now and heading out to a new future - Phiong and baby Ritsar leaving yesterday

Our little lady had set her heart - she was returning to the only life that she knew at slumsville central. As miserable as it is, that has been Phiong's security.

Katrina, a fine lady who works to see single mums make good choices for their baby, said 'fine - we'll take you to your old home - and we will take you to the community that has other single mums too, just so that you can see what it is like'. Pulling into slum central, the old landlord was not a bit happy to see her. He had no hovel for her to rent whatsoever. Moreover, the ladies in the slum started to give her a hard time, saying that she was crazy not to take the opportunity for a better future; that they were poor and had no help to give her. Phiong was snotted. Wheels were wobbling in her world.

24 hours later and she was better than fine - heading out to a simple Khmer community where she will share a room with another single mum and receive training to support herself and Ritsar. We are amazed and thrilled - here was a non-drinking horse at a water trough who has been turned by a set of God-circumstances!

To keep

2010-04-18T11:57:00.005+07:00

Phiong has decided to keep her little treasure. She has named her Ritsar (Khmer for 'to keep') and Ritsar looks to be very happy with mum's decision. She is an incredibly settled, contented wee baby who rarely cries and often sleeps!

This coming week will be big decision time for Phiong. She has a wonderfu opportunity to go to a Hagar women's home and to be taught new skills and have Ritsar in childcare. However, poverty does terrible things to the capacity to envisage a better future. Phiong is talking in terms of returning to both her slum hovel and labouring on buildings and roads. For little Ritsar to have a better future, we need to see mum turn.

Ritsar weighing in at 2.9kg on my 'fish scales'. To the right of the scales is a Cambodian life essential - the humble mosquito-frying electrified bat.