My friend Soeun

This week I been off of school since Wednesday. I invited my friend Soeun to come and stay with me for these days. This friend of mine is from the province Kampong Cham but she is living in Phnom Penh in the dorms of the Bible School, she is in her first year there. I met her the first time in 2001 while I was on my missions trip. I met her the second time at my friend Rachael's house. Now she has been staying with me for the last two days and will leave tomorrow. It has been nice to have another person around the house. We have had a lot of fun with each other speaking Khmi and English as well as hanging out with our other friends Rachael and Srey. Soeun is full of energy and loves the Lord. It has been a delight to have her stay with me. Please pray for her as she studies, it is stressful and difficult for her, but she is being obedient to God.

Pchum Ben

October 11th will be the commencement of a 15 day holiday in Cambodia. The 15 days are days to travel to temples around the country to leave food for the dead anscestors. This day is a Cambodian falls on the full moon and is a kind of All-Saints or Day of the Dead day. This is a time when the spirits of the dead anscestors walk the earth and the living can ease their suffering by offering them food to eat. On the 11th people will go to the temlple around 4am to offer food to the anscestors they do this in the dark because it is said that the spirits don't like the light. So they do have one thing right and what a way to bridge into sharing the gospel. Pray for our missionaries during this time that we would have opportunity to share with people and that our lights would shine brightly in the darkness.

The Mysterious Creature

. This morning I woke up and went downstairs and as I was putting dishes away from my drying rack I noticed the spatula was outside of it and was chewed up as you can see in the picture. I am taking a poll on what kind of creature you think chewed up the spatula. Post your thoughts on the comments section. It is still a mystery to me so I hope to catch the creature so we can solve this mystery. Pray for me as I live with creatures in my house.

Prayer

I would like to share with you a verse and part of the prayer I have prayed today. Psalm 55:17 "Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray and cry aloud: He shall hear my voice." ... God give me patience when it is hard to wait, give me love when it is hard to love, give me understanding when things make no sense, give me comfort when I feel alone, give me peace when things seem out of control, give me words to say when I feel I have none...

The Royal University of Phnom Penh

Today I began studying at the Institute of Foreign Languages which is a part of the University. My class has about 16 people in it 1/2 of them are from Korea. There is a couple from Wisconsin whom I talked with for a while, they are also missionaries, have been here two months (arrived the day after me) and who live down the street a ways from me. I am hoping that this couple and I will become good friends and maybe meet a little coffee shop around the corner from their house that we both visit occassionally. It was nice to be studying with other people I think that it will make learning a little more interesting. Continue to pray that I would have a mind to understand and recollect, ears to listen and a mouth to speak.

My long house: here is a small tour

Internet

Today I will finally have the internet installed in my house. This will hopefully allow me to keep you all updated more frequently via this blog. And soon I will be able to post a few pictures of my times thus far in Cambodia. I thank God for the resources to be able to communicate with all of you often.

Swensons

For all of you icecream fans you will like this one. Swensons Icecream just opened in Cambodia -this is the second American food place in Cambodia the fist-Dairy Queen at the airport. So you can see icecream is a popular treat in Cambodia people want to stay cool. Swensons opened at Sorya mall on Friday and I went with some missionary friends. The icecream is pretty good and they have a lot of choices. There were many Khmi people there eating the icecream in this little place. Cambodia is developing more and more.

Prayer Covering

On Friday the Phnom Penh team had a time of prayer. It was really nice becuase what we did was travel to all the new houses that people on our team have moved into and pray over them. My house was one of ones we went to. Everyone spread out to all the different rooms of my house and prayed over it. It was a joyous event, one that was very important for me.

Ohn!

Ohn who I refer to as bong srey (older sister) is my part-time helper. She is a lady in her mid 30s and always shows up at my house with a smile on her face. She comes every morning Monday - Friday and keeps my house clean, does dishes, and two times a week she will cook for me. The only hard part is she does not speak much English, so I have to work really hard at speaking Khmi and explaining to her what I would like for her to do. So far it has been really positive and it is nice to have another presence around the house even when I am not there.