Adventures WorldRace SethBarnes Sponsorship Giving

| by archiveworldraceblogs

Well… here's how its done folks.

First you take a dirty, dried out coconut shell
 
Then you start to file it.  This is the hardest, dirtiest, and most time consuming part.
 
Then you sand it twice with 2 different grades of sandpaper until it is perfectly smooth and you can see the unique coloring.
Next you attach a stencil and start cutting (This is really easy, unless your me, then you need your new friend Supon to finish it for you)

After that you put some shoe polish on it to make the color more rich and attach either a necklace string or a keychain and Voila!

This is what me and my team spent part of our month doing.  I know, I know… "why did we travel halfway around the world to do "arts and crafts"?"  Well, let me tell you.

The pastor we are working with here is discipling several young men.  He invited them to come live at the church and he teaches them to make these coconut keychains and necklaces to sell at his store near "The Killing Fields" (you can read my last blog on that).  They use this money to support themselves. 

He also teaches them how to paint on canvases.  I bought one of his paintings as a souvenir.  He is very talented 

In the time that the men have been living there and working with our pastor, Thyvenn, several of them have come to know Christ through Thyvenn's witness before them.  So as part of our ministry this month we would sit with these new believers and help them sand coconut shells while practicing English with them, listening to their life stories and just loving on them.  This was such a hard month to leave for that reason.  It was hard to leave behind the friends that we had made over the last month.

Please pray for Thyvenn as he continues to share is life with these guys and pour into them and also for the guys, that they would continue to know more of who the Lord is and fall more in love with Him.  They also were able to go to the villages with us on Wednesdays and Fridays and I hope that they continue to go back and serve the people there.  They were a great help translating for us and so much fun to be around!

I will greatly miss my Khmer friends!