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!