The following is a journal entry from last month
January 30, 2012
A little girl drowned yesterday… SreyPoa. SreyPoa (pronounced ShriPo) would always say "Hello Orea (becuase they can't actually pronounce my name here)!" and I would say "hello ShriPo!"… and we would go back and forth. Her funeral's today. I have a lot of questions. Why are we here? Why didn't God perform a miracle? Why didn't He save her? Why couldn't we save her? How do we do ministry in the midst of mourning and sorrow? I think this is giving us all a taste of reality. This is real life. There's life and there's death. We can't just do our ministry, programs, say our prayers as if it's just another thing we're supposed to do. Our lives, the fact that we're here really means something. The love and Gospel we have to give is worth life. I don't know what the protocol is for grieving in the Bhuddist religion. i know we're getting a taste of it… people giving offerings to Bhudda, praying, crying out, wailing. Last night they kinda had a wake for her. Lots of crying. It seemed like they were trying to bring her back to life by rubbing her arms– get the blood flowing. Lots of incense burned. A man prayed over her sister, SreyDad, something about spirits because she was there when her sister drowned. We don't really know what to do, but we're present and we cry and mourn with the family too. We pray and try to comfort. We love. I guess that's all we can do. We don't know why, and we'll never know all the answers. However, God continues to be good and worthy to be praised.
