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Preh'Jesu srlang niak! (5th Mai 07)
That means "Jesus loves you!" :-) Wow, time's going by so fast! It's already been a month since I wrote last and it only seems like a few days... So much has been happening. A lil over a week ago we left Phnom Penh for Battambang, the second largest city in Cambodia. ("Second LARGEST" does not mean it's in any way LARGE though...it's quite small.) We came here by bus, it took about five hours. The bus was pretty nice, though without air-conditioning. There was one not-so-nice incident on the way though, for me anyway. We stopped at one place where people could go to the bathroom and buy some snacks, and I wanted to buy something to drink. So I asked how much it was and the lady said 2700 Riel. (That's about 70 US cents.) So I gave her a 10 dollar bill, and she would only give me four dollars and something back. She claimed I had only given her 5 dollars. One negative thing about Cambodia is that people will try to cheat you, especially if you're a foreigner. Not all people of course, but some of them. So we got into a kind of argument (which was a little strange since she didn't speak any English), and in the end I didn't buy anything and just demanded the 10 dollars back and had to yell at her to do so. And I almost missed the bus because it took so long... So, that's been one of my not-so-nice experiences here, and I think the only time something like that's happened to me before.

Here in Battambang it's very different from Phnom Penh. Where in Phnom Penh it was very crowded and noisy (and stinky...), here it's very open, the streets are a lot wider, there's a lot less traffick, pretty quiet (the city's pretty much asleep after 6pm...) and the air's pretty clean. There's also hardly any western-food restaurants (though I don't think there's a single McDonald's in all of Cambodia), and no supermarkets, though they're building a large mall which will probably be finished within a year or so. The food is still really cheap though. If you go to a restaurants, most meals will be around a dollar. (Which makes going to restaurants very interesting... :-))

Ministry-wise we've been doing several different things. We've been evangelizing, we've gone to two different orphanages, one from the government and one church orphanage (the government orphanage is huge! but it's quite nice-looking; there's a bunch of little houses with about ten kids or so living in them, and each house has one woman who takes care of those ten kids), we've also been to the Youth Center (which is at the YWAM base) where from Monday to Friday they teach English for free, so we got to teach English a few times and will be doing a lot more of that in the next three weeks), we've also visited a hospital where there are a lot of people who have AIDS, and a couple of girls from our team taught Bible Study there, and a couple of people from our team also met one guy while evangelizing who's a teacher, and he let them go to his class and share the gospel with them (!), and just yesterday me and Min Sun (she's from South Korea) went to a catholic church. It was huge! It's like a big park where there's a church, actually two churches, and also a bording school where they keep kids and teens who have some kind of sickness that basically paralizes their legs, so most of them are in wheel-chairs. We talked to some people there and might be able to do more ministry there, playing with the kids or teaching them English or singing songs or things like that.

Our team is doing pretty well, though we had a kind of crisis towards the end of our time in Phnom Penh (just with a couple of guys who weren't really engaging themselves in what we were doing), and one person had to go home last Sunday which was sad. We're doing good now though. Today is Saturday which is our day off, so Koto, our leader (she's from Fiji) just gave us money for food and we could go out and find places to eat ourselves which was fun, and this morning we watched The Holiday (wonderful chick flick...) since this is the only day of the week that we're allowed to watch movies, and it's been really nice for me, just spending time with the other girls on my team.

God's been teaching me a lot lately, about stepping out more, but at the same time that He's there to comfort me when I'm homesick (I was really, really homesick last week), and that even when I'm disappointed with myself, when I mess up, that He still loves me exactly the same, which has been a huge comfort to me as well. (That doesn't mean I'm going to lean back and do nothing though, I want to do more!) We've also been studying the book of acts lately and I've learned a lot from that as well, for instance that you should use every opportunity to share, and that I don't need to be afraid of anything or anyone. I've already given my life to Jesus, so I really have nothing to lose...

I'm sorry I haven't been very good at updating this website regularly, I'm going to try to go back to updating it once a week if possible.

God bless you!

Kniem-ban-aha-te! (12th Mai 07)
That means "no problem"... (Just trying to show off my Khmai... :-)) Wow, another week's gone by leaving not even two whole weeks more! Time's going really fast, and to be honest I'm not that sad about it. I'm really glad to be here right now, the ministries are going great, I managed to do two "big" things (and found out that neither of them was actually all that hard - I shared the gospel with four women, and I taught English for the first time by myself), and I love my team a whole lot, but I miss home a lot, too, and I'm really looking forward to going to Bangkok for a couple of days, and the few days that we'll be in Kona are gonna be great, too. So it's all good, time's going fast and we're having fun. :-)

There's actually not all that much new to write about, things are going pretty much the same, which is good. One thing you can pray for though if you want to... A couple of police men came and asked our leader for copies of our passports. It's probably nothing, but we don't understand exactly why they needed them, so just in case, pray that nothing bad'll happen. When they first came, my leader, Koto, was pretty worried, but our translator, Seang, said that it probably isn't anything, that they just wanted the information for...something. (I can't remember exactly what he said.) But there's a lot of corruption in Cambodia. For instance if they find out that foreigners are living in a certain place, they'll raise the price of the electricity and the water...

So, that's it for now. God bless you!

Soksabai? (22nd Mai 07)
That means "how are you?" :-) Wow, this is our second last day in Cambodia... Where's the time gone?? So much has happened, we've been really busy.

On Tuesday a week ago we took all of the kids from the church orphanage out for a picknick! Ok, this is an experience I'll never forget... We rented a truck for the day, not a huge big truck but a pickup truck, then we squished all of the kids and the grown-ups into the back, about 50 people in all... I didn't believe at first that we would really all fit, but we did. Most people were standing, so every time we hit a bump or went around a corner it was...funny... :-) Those kids are really precious, not one of them gave us any trouble at all (a rare thing with so many...) and I think they had a really good time - we did! :-)

On Saturday we went to Angkor Wat! (I think it's considered one of the seven world wonders from Asia.) We rented a van for the day. It took us about five or six hours (on a really, really, really bumpy road...) to get there (we left at four in the morning), then we were there for about five hours, then another five to six hours (on the really, really, really bumpy road...) to get back. That was quite an experience. :-) Angkor Wat was pretty interesting, it's like a huge, Asian-style castle. I didn't feel that comfortable there though, they had statues that they were burning incense to around every corner and in some places it smelled really bad... But it's still pretty amazing what people can do with the imagination and the abilities that God's given us. Then we came back and went out for pizza!! (That may not seem very special to you, but believe me, it WAS special... :-))

Then on Sunday I PREACHED!! What makes this so amazing is, that at the beginning of the DTS I wouldn't, under any circumstance, have been willing to preach. The idea just freaked me out. It used to be really hard for me to share anything in front of a large-ish amount of people, so God's really been working a miracle in my heart. I WANTED to preach even before I knew I was going to! Different members from our team have been preaching. We took over the sermon's both in Phnom Penh at the Agape Shalom Center (where we taught English during the week), and at the church here in Battambang (that's the church orphanage that we've been working with.) Before every Sunday we would pray and ask God who He wanted to preach or share a testimony or do something else. It's been really cool, God would always confirm it through several people which person was supposed to preach. So, yeah, that's one of the miracles God's been working in my life. :-) I've also been leading the Bible Study, which, before this DTS started, would also have been a big deal for me.

I have one prayer request: A bunch of us have been sick lately with fever, and one person's also been throwing up and another has an infected wound on his foot, and several of us have been having trouble sleeping. We would really appreciate your prayers...

God bless you!

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