A true “Asian” pic of our little team at our house at New Life in Christ Church in Cambodia. You’ve just gotta frame your face with your hands or give a peace sign–what’s a picture without that??
We’re partnering at an orphange here in town and the kids are SOOO adorable. I want to pull an Angelina Jolie and take one home with me too! This particular orphange (we’ve been to lots throughout the year) is very poor and SUPER dirty.
(That’s me leading ‘aruchacha’, a favored kid’s song around the world. These kids even have a Khmer version…hilarious!)
Many of the kids were getting sent to the hospital with fevers and diarhhea and so we dropped about $50 bucks on some cleaning supplies and took over the place with Mr. Clean (or at least the Cambodian equivilant) I’ve washed like I’ve never washed before! (Mom, you would be so proud of me!) We tore their beds apart and did a deep clean on everything, down to their blankets, pillows, bed mats and mosquito nets. I almost spared the details, but couldn’t help telling that on one of the nets I found a huge glob of caked on poop. Unbelieveable. So yes, I spend my days washing feces off of kids beds…how glorious! Cleaning poo for Jesus. mmm…mmm… I just pray that now the spread of infection and disease will slow because of our cleaning efforts.
So after our mornings rangling little orphans we head back to the church and prepare for our English classes that we teach in the evenings. Above and below are pics of the class Steph and I co-teach. We’ve got the beginners and they are stinkin’ adorable and are very eager to learn English. The age range is quite a jump from 8-20 so we try to be as cool as we can for all ages (key word: try). Everyone seems to love singing “Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?” and hey, they learn how to answer questions…and sometimes we really bring cookies. How’s that for cool?
On Saturday’s we have youth group and were asked to lead worship, do a game, and tell about our travels around the world and what we’ve seen God do in other nations. It was an awesome time as we shared a powerpoint with pictures from the trip and had them ask questions. These teens are really on fire for God and it’s awesome to see their passion…even if our worship wasn’t quite the Hillsongs style they’re used to. I don’t think we rock it in quite the same way! ha.
The girls and I have also been leading a small group Bible study with some of the older girls before English class. They’re really into understanding the bible and ask some killer questions. Learning the vocab is probably the toughest thing for both them and us. You try explaining longsuffering, persecution, faithfulness and conceited once and see how fun it is. I think sometimes we look like idiots trying to find new ways to explain words we’d never have to explain in America–but it’s still a lot of fun!
And sometimes we take our new friends out for pizza! Or did she take us? Anywho, Sok Lee has quickly become a favorite among our group. Her English is near perfect and she’s full of stories of Cambodian history as well as Christianity in the South East. I think we’re all sad she’s moving up to Siem Reap this week. 🙁 Boo!
Nevertheless, we’re all having a blast here in Cambodia and we’ve got two full weeks before we head back to Bangkok for our flight to Hong Kong. Can you believe we only have ONE country left? Time sure does fly!
