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During our five-day vacation in the small city called Siem Reap, Josh and I were able to re-connect with a lady named Sreang. We worked with Sreang last year at New Hope school where she was the preschool teacher.

 She is now living in Siem Reap working at ‘White Dove’ which is a YWAM ministry dedicated to helping women get out of prostitution. Women are able to come and live at the White Dove centre where they receive teaching about Jesus, counseling and knowledge of a trade so that they may not have to depend on prostitution for a false sense of love or an income.  Many of the girls who come to live at the centre are very uneducated and some are even illiterate. Sreang is currently teaching a couple of girls how to read and write.

On Tuesday, Sreang invited Josh and I to accompany White Dove to one of the slums in Siem Reap. Every week the ministry visits a slum and they put on a class in a straw hut they have built on rented land. They teach the children about Jesus as well as English and about good hygiene. Tuesday was to be a special day at the slum because the ministry was planning to have a Christmas celebration with the kids.

Josh and I had arrived just in time at the ministry centre to help wrap up sandwiches. I don’t know what it is, but I do notice that I enjoy food preparation. Whether it’s baking home-style dinners for friends' birthday parties, molding two hundred heart-shaped chocolate chip cookies for a Valentines day bash at Scott Street Manor, slapping together bagels at Tim Hortons or helping sandwich together one and fifty smores for the campfire at Double H Ranch, there is for me always something oddly therapeutic about fast-paced food preparation. And this was no different as we joined the cluster of Cambodians and helped package the crusty baguettes stuffed with cucumbers and the traditional papaya salad. Frank Sinatra’s Christmas carols was our background music as he serenated from the CD player and there was a jingling anticipation in the air for the mission before us.

After worship and prayer, we loaded the bags of sandwiches, gifts, supplies and people into two tuk-tuks and we jostled down the busy streets to the slum.

In no time, we had our audience of big brown sparkling eyes and dirty smiling faces. The classroom was festivally decked out in balloons and tinsel. The children gathered into the hut and were able to peel their eyes off of the colourfully wrapped gifts as the program began. The staff of White Dove taught the children Christmas songs in both Khmer-English, performed a funny drama about the nativity story, performed a dance, taught the children about salvation and showed a Christmas cartoon to the kids and handed out the sandwiches and gifts. There was definitely never a dull moment and the kids were definitely stoked.

This was a really great vacation for us. Josh and I got to relax and return to the ancient ruins of Angkor Wat to climb the steep steps of the tall temples and stare in amazement and wonder at the fine workmanship.

We got to eat at some pretty cool restaurants which included a Mexican place called Viva, and then an odd place called The Dead Fish (we ate dinner here with Sreng) where the many levels of the restaurant almost appeared to be floating and sitting on cushions around a low table was the norm in this Thai inspired restaurant. I did enjoy some much-longed for brownies and ice cream at a modern hot-spot called the Blue Pumpkin.

As enjoyable as this all was, unarguably the best part of our holiday was the joy of seeing Sreing again only to be encouraged by a Christian who has dedicated herself so selflessly to God and pursues real joy in servant hood over the very temporary pleasures of life. It was also wonderful to see the other ways in which people are serving God in Cambodia, and how He is pouring out His love and healing to the Cambodians.

Tomorrow morning, Josh and I board a bus for a five-hour trip back to Phnom Penh. We will likely arrive in the afternoon, in time to greet a YWAM team of about twenty five people and then teach English class in the evening. Please pray for us that we would continue serving in joy and be a blessing to Cambodian Mission Outreach and that we wouldn’t grow weary in our willingness to serve, that we would grow so much closer to God in a passionate love life with Him, and that in all of this we would by God’s grace pursue humility.


 
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The Bayon temple
 
Making Christmas 12/13/2009
 
Last night, Josh and I watched the movie 'The Nightmare Before Christmas', the tale of a Halloween town where a skeleton named Jack stumbles through a door in a tree into Christmas town, becomes inspired and tries to bring this festive holiday into his Halloween town, with some odd (and scary) results.

This story hits home for me, as the CMO staff hang up tinsel and set up little Christmas trees around the ministry site. All those little Christmas traditions seem a little out of place here in Cambodia and the odd googly eyed ornaments are certainly evidence of the Cambodian's own unique spin on Christmas decorations. Although the effort has been made to 'bring Christmas' to Cambodia, I still have difficulty feeling that it really is Christmas because it just looks so different here.

I think the tall Christmas trees wrapped in silver tinsel standing outside a few of the shops downtown must exist out of the Cambodians' observation of a special season that they know to be part of the Western world, and they have decided to take on as well. The absence of the Christmas that I am familiar with reminds me that it isn't traditions that make Christmas.

I like Garfield's Christmas Special as much as the next person (and will probably make my students watch it) and I definitely enjoy Christmas baking and the blankets of snow on homes, the colourful lights and the Christmas music playing every time you turn on the car radio, but these sentiments don't make Christmas. Once we put aside all of these little fancies and traditions, we see God humbly entering the world as a baby, in a barn surrounded by animals. It was the most joyous occasion in history, bringing hope to a hopeless human race. I do miss the atmosphere of Christmas, but I do pray that my heart would revel in the pure joy of Jesus entering this world to save a sinner like me. The world may find it's happiness in traditions and strip Christmas to a meaningless holiday, but as Christians we know that Christmas is about Jesus.

I was planning on going Christmas shopping for Josh at the market until Josh and I talked about Christmas shopping and decided to just forget about it. We both knew that we'd just be surprising eachother with stuff that we didn't really want or need anyway. This is definitely a relief since I know that Josh could pick out something that he likes, much better than I would be able to. Now we could save that money for something that we both actually need or want in the future.

This Friday, Josh and I will be taking a bus to a city called Siem Riep for a 4 day vacation. We're going to explore Angkor Wat again along with the other very impressive temples, and visit the children there. We'll arrive back at the ministry here in Phnom Penh, in time for team of about 25 people to arrive, and to watch the traditional dance and the Christmas play that the youth are going to put on. So, like I said, it may not feel like Christmas, but my comfort of all comforts is that Jesus is my saviour and He is with those who give their heart to Him.

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I wanted to learn more about the different roles of men and women in marriage. I did some study and then wrote this article as a result of what I’ve learned. Some of the questions explored in this article are: are men and women equal? Should the wife submit to her husband? What does it mean to be a ‘help mate’?

If you would prefer to read the article on a new page you can click on this link:  Help Mate