Home alone

Susie and Sopheap have headed to Singapore this week - to soak in a great conference led by Randy Clark and Bill Johnson.  They left Tuesday evening and return on Tuesday, so it is half-way already for two girls determined to have fun! 

We are very excited about Sopheap having this opportunity to stretch and grow.  She is the one who steps up and takes responsibility for the Healing Home whenever we are away, so we told her a year ago that we would get her a passport as an extra 'thank you'.  The break comes for a good time for Sue too - she has been finding the constant drain of giving out to person after person a little wearying lately.  God knows!

Brand new passport in hot little hand - Sopheap has been trying not to appear too excited about her first-ever time outside of Cambodia! She is such a great girl - full of mercy and love and faithful to the uttermost. 

The days are flying past very fast and I have enough to do to stay out of trouble.  I'm guessing no news = no problems regards the girls.  There is a big extra God-bonus in this too: Christian and Becs head out on their big OE in two days.  First stop - Singapore!  Sue and Sopheap will get to connect with them Tuesday morning.  It must be 'the luck of the Lord' (thanks for that line, Chris!!)

Wake-up call

There's a bit of travelling in my world at the moment.  Last week was the annual 3-day staff retreat at Sihanoukville for New Life workers.  Today, I'm back from an overnighter in a wee village in Kompong Cham Province.  Thursday is back out to Kompong Cham town for a two-nighter mens camp.

Chea, one of the church evangelists, invited me on the road trip to what is termed an emerging church.  Sister Sitar and her hubbie head up a group that meets under their house for church. Chea travels there once a month to take discipleship studies and conduct training.  These trips are great, seeing what God is up to in the hidden little villages and getting to have a bit of input too.

Decidedly my least favourite guy in the village - Mr Strutter sets his alarm clock for 4.07am, and has no turn-off knob.  I hope I get to eat him on the next visit ...

Chea has the group having lots of laughs during his training.  The uncle here has had a difficult dental history - four of five remaining teeth, and none of them are of any use for the local beef.

An excellent lady - Sister Sitar is also the local nurse, together with her husband.  Chea tells me that, before they became Christians, her hubbie was very much the family boss.  Now, it is her who has emerged to lead the 'emerging church'.  She tells me that they have 48 adults and 30 children gathering now.

There are a couple of little things that I have found are really quite important on these provincial stays:

1.  Eat whatever is served with a smile.  I never take any of my food: I'll only eat what is served up.  It is such a little thing, yet it is such a big deal to these lovely locals, that we do not dishonour them by sneaking in our private culinary supplies.

2.  Sleep where they sleep.  That will mean on a mat, on the floor.  Sure enough, I was the first westerner to sleep in their house.  Sinar says that all the foreigner like to sleep at the hotel.  The hotel would be an hour away.  It's hardly heroic stuff, this eating and sleeping thing - but it is important.

Chea encouraging the local economy - stopping at a roadside mango stall on the way.  The young lady was hardly ripping us off - at 20c per kilo for these.



Power less

We are marching steadily into the hot and dry season.  April and May are usually the months where we crack 40 degrees, so the two months prior push well into the 30's.  That's just life here - except for reasons of mystery, prolonged power-cuts are abounding.  Seasoned Westerners here say that this is the worst for 10 years.  For us new kids, that would mean the worst in coming up 5 years.

Nevertheless, life goes on, even if that means by candlelight some nights. 

Another night; another powercut - looking north from our place.  The lights-on building is about 2.5km away, as the mosquito buzzes.

Sweet Sothera

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

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 ...

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

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.