Wow, it has been an amazing 12 days! First off I would like to apologize for any anxiety that we have caused with our lack of updates. I guess signing off from the last post the way I did, did not help. =P Anyway, we're safe and sound and still in one piece, bodily and with regards to the team. Like I said it's been amazing, I don't know how much of it I can relay to you guys with the time I have, but here goes.
When we arrived in Siem Reap we had a couple days to ourselves to settle in and absorb some of the sights here in Cambodia. We visited the local market which was a vast collection of small booths packed together in a maze of crisscrossing isles under a huge canopy, or perhaps in was a corrugated tin roof. That seems the be the material of choice to cover any structure here. They sold practically everything from bags to shoes to sunglasses, the best part: everything with a brand name was probably a knock off. Anything to make those tourists spend their money. Siem Reap is a pretty touristy city due to its proximity to the ancient temple complex of Angkor Wat, we had yet to experience true Cambodia.
On Friday that week we began English camp. The camp was held at a Church which was about a 5 to 10 minute walk from the guest house. We were joined by about 40 other short-term-ers to form the teaching staff at the camp. We were split in to 6 teams and the 160 or so kids in attendance were split between us. We had a great time hanging with the Cambodian people, eating the food they cooked for us at the Church, playing volleyball with them in the sand court behind the building, and teaching them Screaming Viking and Boom-chicka-boom-boom. Teaching English, however, was quite a challenge because of the various levels of fluency and the range of ages among the students. But I guess they had a good time, after a rough start on the first day we were hugging and crying, saying our goodbyes by the time Tuesday rolled around.
The very next day we were packed and on a 5 hour bus ride the Battambang, the site of the Youth Conference. We got to stay in a hotel situated within Battambang itself and were shipped out by bus every morning to spend the day at the conference grounds near the rice fields on the outskirts of the city. The facility was brand new and still under construction, only the dorms and the main hall were finished. The main hall was a giant building about the size of three basketball courts with a celling high enough to play volleyball under. The kitchen area was not yet complete so we ate under rows of large tents over dirt, but because of the daily late afternoon deluge the dirt had turned to mud. Chairs sank, slippers were lost and some people were not too happy. Other than that we had a great time. The youth were divided into eight large groups which we rotated between over two days. Half of the foreigners (the term the Cambodians affectionately used when referring to us) teaching songs and the other half teaching conversational English. While our teams worked with two of the eight groups at a time, they others were occupied by various workshops and Bible study type things. Because we were separated from our Hotel by a 20 or 30 minute bus ride we had to stay at the conference center the whole day and were pretty drained by the time we got back. But God sustained us and we made it to Friday night. Again we hugged and said our goodbyes as we lingered as long as we could as the bus prepared to leave the conference center for the last time. It was particularly difficult to say goodbye to the kids that had been with us all the way since English camp.
The next morning we separated from the rest of the Short Term Missionaries and linked up with Dave Strong, a CMA Career Missionary based here in Battambang. We started with a visit to a small Meranga orchard behind the house of one of the AIDS patients in Dave's ministry. Briefly, Meranga is a type of tree that grows here in Cambodia that is just packed with all kinds of nutrients and vitamins, including lots of protein and calcium. Dave and those he works with have been testing and promoting it among AIDS patients. They show a considerable improvement in health when they take it regularly and so he has been trying to get them to grow their own trees and take doses of Meranga every day. We then took a leisurely 6 or 7 km walk through the rice fields, OK so it was more of a hike/trudge across mud, wading through knee high water and balancing atop narrow dirt dikes, most of it barefoot (yes even Emily took her shoes off!). The rice field co-op is another ministry Dave is involved in where CAMA has helped to buy land for tenant farmers to use at a minimal cost based on the harvest they produce from the fields. The objective is to take impoverished families and give them a means and the opportunity to get on their own feet.
It's Sunday night for us now. We've had another full day, visiting three Church services (all in Khmer), having lunch with Dave and his family and Sharon, a Philipino nurse working with the AIDS patients, and making a trip out to a village to pray for a baby sick with Denghi. Tomorrow it's off to Poipet to see the Coplands and the CMA surgical clinic. Then we still have a visit to Phenom Penh to see Dave Manfred for a few days. It's not over yet!
If you'd like to pray more specifically for us, pray for health as we've had some minor stomach issues. You can also pray for renewed energy and enthusiasm each day because there's so much to do and so little time. Pray that this team continues to play nice, as things might get a little dicey by the third week. =P Safety as we travel by bus, taxi, truck, moto, tuk tuk, or hand assembled railway carts. Most importantly, pray that God uses us for His will here in Cambodia. Thanks for reading and partnering with us in prayer. Blessings to all of you back home. (=
-Jon
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