Four years today

Today marks four years since the Healing Home received its first patient.  To mark the milestone I have launched out into new territory - and put a posting on Facebook.  It was a mission! Old dogs are still up to learning ...

We are approaching 500 patients over these four years - plus the over 300 family members who have accompanied them.  Still, our focus is on the one. 

Here are a bunch of pics of the people who have so impacted our lives - and whose lives have been so impacted by the goodness of God.  Some have received significant healing miracles - others are now with Jesus.  Too many times, good things have happened but I never got to take a pic.

How to meet a journo

You never know what is around the corner out here.  On Tuesday, it was a car that was hesitating, then moving.  The driver was a very nice bloke who was a journalist.  He had studied in the USA and worked in Hungary. I had the honour of paying to improve his little Corolla.  Panel and paint happened the same day.  Nobody was hurt - just a few scrapes and bruises on the Spider moto driver.  It is not in my interests to reveal who that was.

The most fun was in the un-bending of my trusty steed.  I needed it before the un-bending process could commence, so I was mounted on a crab for a bit.  Then, the trick was to find the busiest fix-it place near me, and make some more new friends.

These 'fix-it-on-the-footpath' guys are good.  A mama ran the show, pad in hand as she kept a running total of all the motos that have met similar experiences.  Stripped down, forks straightened, plastic welding on the guards, front wheel made round again, tweak a few things.  Two hours; twenty bucks. 

Naki-ites

It was great to have a couple of lively girls blow in from New Plymouth recently.  Edith and Raewyn's trip out to us was inspired from a conversation that happened (I understand) while they were at my mum's place during a homegroup meeting.  Edith had a 'significant' birthday approaching, and she declared 'I would really like to go overseas to mark this birthday'.  Raewyn replies 'and I will come with you'.

Sorry girls - shocker of a photo of you - but you get to see a couple of our current patients.  Leakanah (in the black top) is a top little lady - receiving chemo and radiation, she has been with us for about three months. We are so impressed with her heart and attitude that we have just offered her a staff position for Sundays!  Sarin (in floral attire) came to us about three weeks ago.  For the three months prior, she had been curled up, comatose-like and close to starvation.  Something traumatic had hit her, that we are still working through on.  Now, she is eating up large, talking, beginning to walk again - and she has just said 'yes, please' to Jesus.

For 10 weeks prior to Edith and Raewyn coming, we had Tash from Christchurch staying with us.  Tash was great - diving into her roles as school teacher (at New Life School) and teaching hip-hop to all and sundry with great enthusiasm and making more friends then anyone before her.  Somehow, I never did get a pic taken of her - sorry Tash!!



Cambodian Cheese

I'm aware that it has been a while since the last posting - but 11 weeks?!!  That was a shocker - some weeks here can be pretty same-same but a lot surely happens in 11 weeks.

So, we can start by introducing you to cheese, Cambodian style.  I had heard of this animal prior, but got a decent introduction a few weeks back, while accompanying Sothea (a church evangelist) and Pastor Sotha (who oversights New Life provincial churches) for five days in Kompong Cham and Kratie Provinces.

Behold the 'cheese'

The beauty of this 'cheese' is that you need no dairy industry.  It is all fish.  There is very little smell.  That is because the smell has been turned inwards.  One finger-nail sized portion will take out a perfectly good plate-sized meal.  It is an amazing concoction!

The time in the province was great.  There was a very real sense of spiritual growth in the Kompong Cham village church that meets under the house of the local nurse.  In Kratie, a team from Canada had been through recently and built an excellent kids playground.  Now, a little school for 60 children is being established.

 Here are a couple of tricks of the local village - 'thermos' (above) and 'electric jug' (below)

We brought a couple of patients back to the Healing Home from this trip too.  The sweet young mum (below) had gone three years with a skin disease that covered her right cheek, nose and lips.  Hey younger brother also came back - he had actually been with us a month earlier, but missed his mum so much, he did a runner on day 2.  This time we brought his mum with him - but there was actually no need for him to come.  His, ahh, male problem, had been prayed for the first time - and things were all now good as gold.  Our staff are getting very brave in prayer!!

Lost mamma

Touch with our un-christened, stumpy-tailed little guys.  The half-length tail is normal here; Rim's kitten had a full tail; the other two have a full tail but divided between the two of them ...

The Healing Home is the proud owner of a litter of kittens.  Our child mamma had a liaison with a nasty piece of neighbourhood work, but the outcome is pretty cute.  There were four; one was washed off the roof where mum hid the litter for the first month; one has gone to Rim's home and the other two went home with Vanny.

Then, Vanny's guys came back.  Her neighbourhood dogs were going to chomp into them.  Two weeks ago mum disappeared - we fear some neighbourhood humans have chomped into her.  We have a new patient tho' who has offered to give these kittens a village life; he will take them home when he leaves here.  That will make the Healing Home pet-less for the first time in over three years.  I can live with that!

Nice bloke

Sue has felt it has been a bit of a drain of late with many of our patients - a number of poor and needy people who have been needy needy without much visible return on time and energy investment.

Therefore, it was extra-nice to have Heng come to us. He's just the sweetest and most grateful guy - and good things have quickly happened in his life.

Heng came to the Healing Home with a few problems: he had lost 10kg of weight in December (and he seriously does not have 2kg available to lose, let alone 10kg); he had no appetite, could not sleep and a swelling in his throat. 

First thing to kick in was his sleep.  Literally from night 1, he slept like the proverbial baby.  Then the appetite kicked in, as in KICKED in.  Sreymom told me 'he eats a lot now, like he eats a real lot'!  I watched him one morning from the balcony; he had gathered three of four mangoes that dropped from our well-laden tree.  He wolfed them down like there were no more mangoes to fall from the heavens!

 

 

Heng at the outside table where our patients eat most of the time.  One of our mango trees is directly overhead; behind him to the right you can see some good jackfruit coming on strong.

A few tests and he was diagnosed with hyper-thyroidism.  That is getting treated now and quickly his throat is getting better.  So, today we lost this nicest of guys - happily heading back to his home in the province.

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.



More!

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

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

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

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

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!