R'nR

If it has been a bit quite on the blog lately, it is because we headed south to Kep over Easter. Khmer New Year is almost upon us, when the nation all but closes up for a week whilst people head to their families. Most of our Healing Home staff will be heading off too, so we thought that we would hitch a lift with Graeme and Sue Taylor and take an earlier break.

If Christmas is almost invisible in Cambodia, then Easter is wholly invisible. Even within the Christian community, Khmer New Year gets 25x the airplay compared to Easter. In the leadup to Good Friday we spent time to explain to our patients - and staff - of the significance of this season.

We hired a couple of motos for a day for a tiki-tour. This pic is on a hill overlooking Kep and up the coastline towards the town of Kampot 23km away. We took the motos into Kampot, a quaint pretty run-down town that was formerly the French governing centre for this area of south Cambodia.

Susie relaxing after dinner at the Verandah - a place with a great sunset view

Undercover Kiwi

Testing times

Every morning except Sunday we have a time of devotions at the Healing Home that includes a 20-minute or so Bible-based teaching followed by prayer. Friday mornings are a little different - first we have 'staff training' - around 45 minutes of teaching.

Over the last five Friday's I have been on a mission to help our staff navigate God's Word by learning the books of the Bible. I noticed that some were hunting in Genesis for John's gospel, or checking out Psalms in their hunt to find Ephesians. So, we did the two hands thing; learn OT and NT by their five sections and then fit the pieces together.

Dtouch, Neth and Sopheap with their heads down. Neth is our weekend cook. In addition, she has become our 'on call' staff girl as well as covering two nights per week. She has a gorgeous 3-year-old son. Her husband did a runner with a lady from his work 18 months ago, totally gutting her. She is super capable and caring - and we're very keen that she comes on full time when we get a second Healing Home.

With every test, there must be a reward! Sreymom has developed an appetite for the trusty chocolate brownie so Sue did a bit of cooking.

Friday was The Official Test Day. The results were just excellent - well above my expectations. We scored by one tick for each correct Bible book; two ticks for right book, right order - then crunched numbers for percentages. Our lowest came in at 82%; then an 86%, a 92.5% and two 100% perfect. We are proud of our team!!

Num6ers

I have just returned from the annual New Life Fellowship staff camp - three days at Sihanoukville with 125 folk. That's not the church - it is the staff, kind of. Included were 10 people from Phnom Penh Thmei Church (established out from NLF), three pastors and their wives (as in one wife per pastor) from churches in Takeo Province, and a bunch of kids, wives and possible second cousins once removed of the staff.

Two of our staff were able to come too - Sreymom and Dtouch. Sue stayed back with Sopheap and Neth to keep the home open. The retreat was held at a (in name ..) resort - quite adequate facilities with working aircon and a toilet that was eventually coaxed into flush mode. I shared a room with Donnie. Donnie travels with a serious amount of chips and medical supplies. Unfortunately the knocking on the door late one night was not a dream but one of the sweet wee dancers needing a pill of something. I think I dazzled her in my boxers, perhaps 20% awake, when I opened the door ...

Pastor Mara (front left) and his wife, Leah (great with child) at one of the meeting sessions. Mara is just a lovely man to get on with. He has pastoral oversight of the Healing Home and regularly comes to visit and encourage. To the right of Leah, in the aisle, is Nite. Nite is a teacher at the church school and often translates for me when I'm running a class of some sort.

There was a good mix of social fun and focussed teaching sessions. Some of the stats that I learned:

New Life School - grades 1-6 - has 170 students and 20 staff
94 - the number of homegroups in the church

12 - churches established in the provinces from NLF, all with pastors. In addition there are 35 'emerging churches' (villages with weekly homegroup-based ministries establised) and 20-something 'outreach points'7 - evangelists working out of the church (and all at the staff retreat)
178 - sponsored children in the 'Children at Risk' program

70-ish - staff in NLF covering a heap of ministries that includes childrens work, community enabling health (CEH) teams, visitation to sick, media, office skills training, English classes and much more.

Food is a very serious affair with Cambodian people - and when you are at the coast, seafood is what brings joy to every heart. Here are the crabs and prawns on the table - lots of squid too. For the few white folk among us who do not do seafood, there was rice for them ....

Jesse, the senior leader of NLF, continues to amaze and inspire me. He is a remarkable mix - energetic and focussed, yet unswervingly relaxed and easy-going. He lives at an incredible pace yet does not grow weary. On our second night, Pastor Samdy took us thru' the 'session you have all been waiting for' (NLF Policy and Procedures review) that inevitably over-ran the alloted time. It finished at 10pm - and then Jesse rips into a message! A very good message, may I say.

Meanwhile, good things have been happening back at home. I returned to find two patients healed and gone home; a lady with bleeding issues whom the doc said 'nothing the matter with you' and another lady who was exhausted, wheezy and coughing thru' the nights - all healed.

This morning our devotion was about 'rejoice with those who rejoice''!

Cruising gently

There's a patient request from Kandal Province that Susie was not quite sure about so she headed out today to do an assessment. Sopheap said that she was keen as to be part of the posse so she mounted the mighty Spider steed with Sue as pillion and they headed out on the 90 minute trip.

Ready to ride - Sue and Sopheap about to leave.

My girl ice-packed tonight - the notoriously bad road into the village was having some road-works. Patches of water made things even more interesting and the girls took a couple of low-speed dives. Sue has a beaut bruise but she is pretty tough. I am encouraging her to milk this for all it is worth!

Sue says the lady appears to have suffered a stroke after child-birth 12 months ago. She will be coming to the home next week. This turned out to be the village where we've had three patients from previously so there was a bit of a reception committee waiting!

Interestingly, Van who came in as a carer for his wife over a year ago and who was a young Christian is now really on fire for the Lord. We had another carer story this week - a guy who recently came to the home to look after his wife. She had all the care and an organisation paid a lot of $ for her to get an operation - and physically she's doing good. He, meanwhile, has come to the Lord and is eating the Bible in major chunks. You just never know what is going down in people's lives!

Poor Phiong's choice

Sandwiched between the new Savannah Shopping Centre and the nicest church facility in Phnom Penh is a wretched slum. Here, somewhere between 200 and 300 people subsist. This slum has a reputation for alcohol abuse and gambling. We hear stories of parents sending their children out to collect recyclable garbage while they play cards and drink - and then beating their kids when they return for not working hard enough.

Phiong comes from this slum. She is a building labourer, earning between 6,000 and 7,000 riels a day (NZ$2) for long hours and hot work. For 15,000 riels a month she rents a shanty room. Vimean, the children's church pastor at our church, runs an outreach into this slum. That's when he discovered Phiong, over eight months pregnant, really sick and totally destitute. Her husband has just done a runner, taking their two children and his new lady off to his provincial home.

Phiong at lunch today. This afternoon she reported that baby has dropped!

It is remarkable how much her countenance has changed in these last two weeks. Love, prayer and care has relaxed her so that her high blood pressure has come right down. She came to us having signs of toxemia but that has all gone. An Australian team has left her with enough money to have a hospital birth. The big issue is what happens after she gives birth.

I sat at Phiong's bedside yesterday and talked with her. She feels that she has no options. This is how life is for the poor - their options become so very few. Without a husband and with only one place to earn daily bread money, she says that she must give her child up for adoption. She sees no alternative.

Kov, our resident gate opener and active English learner. He has such a hard-case grin!

We are alongside her in this process, asking the Lord for His way. At the same time, we still have little Kov with us. He is 11 years old but looks eight; the loveliest, brightest little guy who is often thoroughly naughty too. We just can't let him go home to his family. Dad is an abusive alcoholic and his parents indicate that they can't afford him and don't really care less. His older brother died recently from worm infestation - hardly a difficult thing to diagnose and treat. Donnie is to explore foster family options for him.

Weddings

It is hot out here - like 38 degrees under a tree with chirping birds. Replace the tree with inner-city cement and unrelenting sunshine and it is certainly 40-something. Of course, this can mean only one thing - it is wedding season. We've just been to two weddings in three weeks, with wedding number three landing on my birthday a bit later this month.

Raksmeay and his wife (on the right) are the delightful folk that we buy rice from 50kg at a time for the Healing Home. We were delighted to be invited to their son's lovely wedding last Saturday.

Weddings can be an extremely complex affair here. Families play a central role, with the young people often having minimal - if any - say in things. Social standing is a very big deal. It is usual for the man to pay a dowry - and to then have the joy of moving in with his inlaws for some years. After that he can get his own home so that the inlaws can live with him.

Choosing the wedding present could not be easier. You say it with money - every time. Your envelope (the one you received the invitation in) is noted in a ledger with the amount you give. Intensive wedding seasons like the present can be pretty demanding on people as you are fully expected to say it with money whether you attend or not. If you have an invitation envelope, you give. My mate Phanna says that he budgets one wedding per month (maybe $15 - on his $120 monthly salary). This month he has three wedding invites. He says the other two invites must come out of his food budget.

My bride looking stunning in her Khmer silk dress. The silk material was hand woven by the wife of Srourn (a former HH patient) and then given to a dressmaker at the Russian Market here to make up.

We are having very interesting discussions with our staff - and Susie with her girls smallgroup - over love and marriage. Companionship and agreement are foundational to our thinking, but like another language to many here. Parental pressure is often very great on Christian young people. It is another area that we trust that we can be a blessing in to those we are privileged to rub shoulders with here.

No doc needed

Kunsalia came last week with hard, sore breasts (I am told). She had recently become a Christian and was full of zeal and beans, all excited about being in the Healing Home. Her sweet shy daughter accompanied her. Shy and sweet is the Cambodian norm, but Kunsalia certainly was not shy - she is a real goer!

She was to head off to CSI clinic on Thursday - but instead she happily headed off home, all healed. Sreymom was quite excited as she told me that Kunsalia's breasts were not hard or sore any more - they were soft and pain free. Sreymom cracked up when I told her that I was more than happy to take her word on this!

Sreymom with Kunsalia and daughter. It is always wonderful when we see God's hand change things .... something I cannot ever imagine getting tired of seeing!

We had another good story come in this week from Sue Hanna. We received an SOS 'please pray' text from her Thursday night - one of their girls had crashed her bike into a wall, had a really sore stomach, writhing in pain and then went unconscious. Sue had taken her to hospital and she said 'things are scary here'. Next morning we got an update - the girl came out of unconsciousness and was totally pain and problem free. They bailed from the hospital straight away - and Sue texted in the morning 'God is amazing - I'm still enjoying it!'