Monday Museums, Memories, Melodies and Marvels

This morning I accompanied the ladies back to the market to gather the supplies needed for today's menus. The streets are crowded between 6:00 and 8:00 with daily visitors all in search of the specific items they desire to make the most out of their meal times. The sight is so very colorful with women dressed in bright colors seated on the ground with their fresh vegetables, herbs, fruits and gleanings or surrounded bylarge silver bowls filled with squirming fish, iced shrimp and squid. Others fan their fresh chicken pieces with strips from plastic bags attached to the end of a stick. There are sellers sitting behind a table filled with various cuts of beef or pork or lamb waiting with a cutting board to customize your order and a scale to weigh your purchase. Some walk away with everything they need in one small plastic bag, but SreyNang and Phalika find a friendly soul who will let them stash their bags behind the "counter" while they gather more than the two ladies can carry at one time. Feeding thirty mouths at each sitting is quite an overwhelming task! And knowing what it takes for each dish requires preplanning as well. ****Back at the institute, I prepared for my morning class of children and sat waiting for them to appear. As I waited, I observed the three ladies carefully preparing each item for lunch. One washed and chopped several fresh green leafy herbs and then, using mortar and pistal, she ground it to powder form. Taking her fresh herbs and a bowl full of fresh fish, she kneaded the mixture for a good thirty minutes until the fish became totally united with the herbs. One by one, she formed small "fish balls" the size of large marbles. This became the base for the soup that accompnaed our lunch. Phalika chopped vegetables, peeled garlic and pulverized the herbs for the stock of the soup. Srey Nang peeled and deveined shrimp, chopped chicken and made rice to serve the "students". Almost magically, everything is ready and on the table as the students leave class for the morning. By the time Sokhom, Joe, Garrett and I are seated and ready to eat, the students come down from cleaning up to gather on the mats and serve their bowls as well. No one at the Cambodian Bible Institute (CBI) goes without when it comes to eating three good meals each day! ****My morning classes did not show up this morning. The internet was down. Everyone was busy with various tasks, so I entertained Daniel with English classes and games. Daniel is the 18 month old son of Phalika and Jon T. They laugh that he will speak English before he actually speaks K'mai. We worked on matching pictures of animals and calling them by English terms. He was enjoying the attention and quite upset when I left to attend Garrett's teaching for the second half of the morning. He is now my little shadow whenever I will allow him to be. We had planned to eat sandwiches in the car enroute to the Genocide Museum in downtown Phnom Penh, but that really made Srey Nang mad. She insisted on frying shrimp and making soup. As soon as we could eat our delicious lunch, we jumped into the car and headed off to town. ***********Sokhom really wanted Garrett to experience the museum before he had to leave Tuesday evening, and our Sunday afternoon had just gotten too crowded. The museum is housed in the Kampuchea Democratic offices "S.21" This was a former high school building that was confiscated by Pol Pot to be used as a detention and interrogation center leading to inhumane torture and killing. The former classrooms were wwwere turned into tiny individual cells for solitary confinement where prisoners were held for months at a time without ever leaving the 3X8 inclosures. Other classrooms were used as individual torture chambers and still house the iron beds on which the victims were shackled and tortured in various manners till they "confessed" and were murdered. The attrocities of the period are way too graphic to describe here in a blog, but walking through the fields on Sunday...fields identical to those where Sokhom and sixteen of his family members were led to be slaughtered (buried alive to gasp for breaths of dirt) and now walking through a prison...a prison so similar to where he was held for four years and the very prison he was forced to give two hours a day to help clean after the liberation from Pol Pot, we were taken back to the reality of the human factor of each soul who suffered here. The video at the Killing Fields had given us the basic background of the historical period, but Sokhom walked us through the feelings he felt, the memories so vivid and the horror so very close. To say our hearts bled at the sights is such an insignificant sumation of the hour we spent growing closer in heart to this survivor of one of the world's most terrible periods. From April 17, 1975 to August 19, 1979, over 3,000,000 Cambodians were slaughtered. Their stories have been recorded...their faces posted and their sacrifice lives on, but the killing everyone in a society with an education and the losses to that can never be overcome. ****In Garrett's afternoon session on I Timothy, he had the students go out two by two to obtain first-hand experience with the training they had been rehearsing in class. Each pair was to find two different people on the streets and share with them information about Jesus. The young men left inthusiastically seeking opportunities to open doors for the first time. They returned with a variety of stories relating their adventure taking "The Word on the Street!" The boys have really enjoyed learning from Garrett, He is so close to their age. He is so mature in his faith. And he relates so well to the experiences of this generation. ****All the children who did not come to the morning class skipped their afternoon class in school to come to English classes tonight! I had 25 children all at once ranging in age from one to fourteen! They are enthusiastic and love to be first to master a phrase or song...learning quickly tospeak the English language through scriptures and stories. Children's songs from back home might seem a bit butchered, but the joy of mastering small choruses is well worth the chhoppiness. Their faces glow as they try to tangle me up with head and shoulders, knees and toes, elboes wrists, hands and fingers! It is such fun to see them repeat the stories in song as with Noah; to play concentration with animal cards memorizing English names for the pictures they have never seen before, realizing that one little boy can change the world around him as the little boy with the two fish and fives breads that he gave to Jesus.. The rewards are worth the physical exhaustion at the end of such a class. ****The students' English class was a review of many famous people in the Bible. After a review of their fame and listing them on the board and in their notebooks before playing a lively game of "I have...Who has...?" It is interesting to see the vast amounts of knowledge some have regarding the people of the Bible while others are completely confused by the unfamiliar names in English. ****The day was rewarding, refreshing and renewing even if it was laden with serious, heavy material.

Sunday Cambodia Style

This morning we were up and ready for a wonderful day of praise and worship. Little did we know what surprises lay around the corner for us! Sokhom had invited his friends, Paul & Debbie Pinckley, who manage the Ship of Hope to come worship with us. Paul taught Sunday School. I taught the Sunday school for about 20 children. Garrett preached...but not before Sokhom and Srey Nang surprised us with a Cambodian soup for breakfast. Sokhom gives Srey Nang a little break on Sundays, and we ate out at lunch with Debbie, Dian, lLinda and Paul at a fancy tourist-type restaurant downtown. The food was delicious, but we all prefer eating right here at home with Srey Nang cooking for us!Debbie came back to watch me with the children. The children are precious! Their twenty shining faces are eager to learn both English and stories from the Bible. Today we reviewed songs and colors from Friday's lesson. Then we delved into the story of how the butterfly and the frog are born again as the song declares. Srey Nang made her debut translating for my class. It reminded me of Jyoti's debut, but I found Srey Nang to not be as familiar with the stories thus adding to her stress. She did a fabulous job, I think. We talked about the butterfly effect and how one single person can change the life of so many others. I used the sotry of the little boy who had only five breads and two fishes but was wiling to give all he had to Jesus. Then we added Make a Heart for Jesus to their singing repertoir. Debbie enjoyed the sticker storyboards as we retold the story over and over for the cildren to create their own take home version. We hit it off tremendously, and I shared with her ideas that they might be able to incorporate into their programs in villages as the Ship of Hope sails up and down the Mekong River bringing medical attention and Bible sotries to the children of the villages. They usually have an audience of 100+ children for the games and Bible stories at the end of the day. The ship is staffed by Cambodian medical teams with volunteers who come from the States for a month or two at a time. Paul & Debbie sold everything, leaving his career at Pepperdine and the beautiful home they had to commit to a life of service here in Cambodia. After nine months, they are making wonderful strides in the culture and have come to love the people who share their home onboard the ship. After volunteering for a month, Linda went home and sold her belongings to return to Cambodia for an undertermined length of time as well.After lunch Sokhom took us on a very personal tour of the Killing Fields. We walked where a short time back the blood of over 8,000 innocent victims was shed. We found bones, teeth and clothing fragments still protruding from the pathways. WE stood in reverant awe at the edge of the indention which once held 100 women and children and were moved by the precious display of concern from hundreds of school children who have brought hand-made bracelets to adorn the fence surrounding it. Our hearts ached as Sokhom spoke of the experiences he had in a similar field where he too wa and kicked into a mass grave only to be "rescued" at the last minute by a supervisor who felt his youth and strength could better serve the regime in their prison. Tears filled his eyes and ours as we came face to face with the attrocities of genecide...the killing of all the educated, skilled and innocent. Over 3,000,000 Cambodians were killed by Cambodians between 1975 and 1979.From the Killing Fields Memorial we drove back into town to visit the school supply store for crayons to use with the activity books we brought for the children. WE were impressed with all the supplies available, but disappointed to find none of the products were actually made in Cambodia.A quick stop by the souvenir shops was profitable for Garrett on our way to the Cambodia Church of Christ where we worshipped with a packed ouse includingabout ten American missionaries working in various parts of the city. WE met thecousin of Faye Moore, a friend of Stuart Platte's, Julie who is supported by Terry & Cherie Creech, and good friends of Megan & Sean Miller! Imagine the small world in which we live!WE drove through town after dark in awe of teh twinkling lights adorning the trees along the boulevards. The sleepy town was lit for celebration of a wonderful day! We stopped by the supermarket to pick up sandwich supplies for tonight and tomorrow lunch and headed on home.Srey Nang had taken advantage of a day away from the stove to relax, but she snuck time in to take care of my laundry as well! I am set to go again to face a new week of excitement and joy in the Lord!

Workshop for Church Leaders

This morning we departed early, traveling in Sokhom's private car and a rented 18 passenger van. After three hours on the road including a ferry crossing of the Mekong, we arrived early for the 8:30 starting time. Sokhom walked us across the highway to his elementary school where his cousin has served as principal until her retirement last month. The school buildings have changed very little since he attended there in the early 70's! We toured the classrooms and visited with the new principal before finding his aunt in the corner of the schoolyard at her snackbar..We sampled her wares...bean-filled treats fried in lard. The children were pleased to see visitors on their campus. The first two classes jumped to attention and recited a greeting to us waiting for their teacher to dismiss them to reseat themselves. The other classes continued with business as usual when we entered their domains.From the school yard we returned to the brush arbor meeting area where 82 church leader rs registered for the full day seminar. Joe lead the group into small group discussions to search out the answers to several pertinant questions all Christians should ponder. The cooperative learning techniques were unfamiliar to the group, but they relished the oportunities to learn from each other as they delved into the Word with other leaders they may not have ever met. Questions such as Who is God? How do you know that what you know about God is true? and What does God know about you? filled the morning with active study and lively discussions. I was pleased to see the group composition was quite diverse with as many women as men and almost as many under 45 as over. Everyone participated in the small groups and a different spokesperson reported out from each of the six groups after each question. Each time Joe wrapped up his findings to bring consenses to the group. Just before the mid-morning break, Garrett shared a visual with the large group about how God's love is shared one person to another by beginning with a single piece of paper in one person's hand. By tearing and sharing, God's Word spread to nearly every hand in the room in a matter of minutes. If everyone who knows and loves the Lord simply shares His love with one other person each day, Christianity will multiply in large quantities. I couldn't help but notice the children playing around the meeting area. One little four-year-old girl whose parents took the day off from their teaching positions to attend, delighted me with her antics. At break she was given a fruit cut open by her mother. She quickly enjoyed its sweet taste and longed for more. Having seen her daddy use a long pole with a tiny hook attached to the far end to dislodge the fruit from the top branches of a tree, she set to work to help herself. (I was perched in just the right angle to watch her determined pursuit.) When the pole proved too long for her to manage, she reverted to a shorter pole and settled for the lower fruits, but she managed to maneuver the process to her advantage. Seeing her reap the benefits of her labor another preschool girl, taller and wiser?, joined her team. They returned to the slab with an armload of the fruits and delved into the rich fruits within...extracting the tasty and discarding the rinds. I couldn't help but to see the parable of these girls as it related to the lesson of today. Each time we taste of the fruits of the scripture, we develop an appetite for more study and more knowledge. We do whatever it takes to make or find the time to get more study. When our friends see the rich blessings we reap, they follow our footsteps and become students of the Word. The day was a total success as the participants boarded motorcycles, bicycles, cars and taxis to return to their respective villages to prepare fpr the day of worship tomorrow! Just as we wrapped up and headed toward the car, the afternoon rains hit. The air was refreshed and the ground renewed by the 15 minute shower. We jumped in the car and headed back to the Institue for dinner pausing only a brief few minutes to wait our turn to board the ferry across the Mekong.All along the super highway, we passed interesting sights and fascinating people. The rice fields are lush in multpile shades of green. Some were being plowed and planted today as we passed by. Some by hand-held gas plows and others by -- teams yoked together or singularly. Ttucks loaded to the brim and over with mangoes...bicycles hauling as many as four live pigs upside down and tied together to minimize the wiggles...motorcycles with families including helmitted toddlers standing sandwiched between father and mother...markets laden with fresh coconuts sporting a straw to enjoy the fresh sweet milk within, stacks of watermelons, bananas and numerous other fresh vegetables and fruits inticing us to sample them each and every one. We were especially fascinated with what we were later told was the fruit of the lotus plant...green pods that are flat on top resembling slightly the inner section of a sunflower. Our soup last night was made from waterlily roots, and today's salad had a variety of fresh greens including the stem of the waterlily and straw grasses that grow at the water's edge. But I will save the delicables of the tables for a later post when more time presents itself...(Tonight's feast was fried eel and stirfried squid and zucchini along with sticky rice and our favorite dessert of fresh mangoes!

Cambodian Bible Institute

The day begins early here. The eighteen students and two staff join in the main room at 5:30 for worship. Since this is just outside my bedroom window, it serves as my alarm clock this morning. Several praise songs and a devotional led by the students begins the day with the perfect focus filling the entire building with the Spirit of the Lord. Breakfast follows with coffee, egg and French toast! Srey Mang, Sokhom's daughter,has mastered the arts of culinary skills. She juggles responsibilities maintaining a three story home/dorm/school, shopping, cooking, cleaning and laundry for twenty on a daily basis plus multiple guests from foreign cultures who come to teach for a week to a month at a time. This three-week period she has moved onto the floor to share her 10X10 room with me and all of the paraphernalia I have brought with me!her sweet spirit and welcoming smile instantly won my heart last night! Watching her in the market this morning calculating quantities and recipes in her head for the next two meals...four menus! She is careful these first days to consider the three new Americans and our dietary needs. Srey Mang has experienced a variety of likes and dislikes in serving the multitudes who have come in teaching and medical teams from all over the world. Soon she will see that we will be happy to eat from the menu she prepares for the students!Sokhom gave me a tour of the fabulous facilities here. The view from the third floor veranda of the Mekong River is phenomenal! A more beautiful place to study, worship or meditate would be difficult to find. The back yard of the New Zealand Red Cross building directly across the street slopes down to the banks. In the distance away from the river, the encroaching skyline is constantly growing as skyscrapers advance further and further into the clouds. A panoramic shot from the rooftop would amaze us all. The open verandas and dog trot style construction allows a constant breeze to cool the tile floors and walls offering a welcome contrast to the high humidity and stifling sun beating down. Three bedrooms are equipped with window units to provide comfort for sleeping for Americans including Sokhom!Survey Mang, Phalika and I drove down to the market returning in time for my first children's English class. After lunch I taught the students English and gave them their backpacks. I "helped" with dinner by taking pictures and entertaining Jon T and Phalika's son Daniel who is about 18 months. After Bible class Sokhom drove us around town before dinner. We returned to a class of ten children before dinner. Then I wrapped up the day with another English class on Family. Saturday morning will find us on the road by 5:00 to reach our destination for the house church seminar on the Vietnam Nam border.Blessings overflow!

Travel Day

We never saw Wednesday's night sky! Early in the morning I left the house traveling east, but in Dallas we turned back to the west and followed the sun across the Pacific Ocean into Thursday! As our family enjoys the last dark hours of sleep this morning, we sit in the Seoul, Korea airport watching the sun set on Thursday evening! It's sometimes difficult to know where the day went when we are home, but this day really slipped past me! We will soon board yet another six hour flight and cross back over two time zones to arrive in Phnom Penh at 10:00 this evening...all before you have lunch on Thursday. Needless to say, my sleep pattern is a bit confused! I will definitely appreciate the bed this evening! We enjoyed a King's March through the airport here as we trekked to our transit gate. Then Joe gave Garrett pointers on using the iPhone overseas.

The Word on the Street

Today I am waiting in the Midland airport for the first leg of a twenty-four hour journey to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Joe and Garrett Crabtree will meet me at the DFW airport to launch our international flight and mission to share God's Word on the streets of Cambodia. We will be guests in the home of Sokhom and Phaline Hun, survivors of the Killing Fields. There we will work with Bible students teaching scripture, English and computer skills. I will study with women in the mornings and teach Bible/English to children in the afternoons. Join us as we share God's love through the gifts you have sent with us. May God's richest blessings fall on you today.

Pepperdine

Today I have arrived at Pepperdine. I am praying that there will be many opportunities to learn, to draw closer to the Lord, to worship, to fellowship with close friends and to meet new family members!

Last night I had an amazing opportunity back home to testify to the leadership of the Holy Spirit through the paths and over the years. Oh, what an amazing tapestry He weaves!