Our time in Oxford is coming to a close. We put on our backpacks and head to the airport tomorrow morning at 3 a.m. (8 a.m. on Sunday morning for you US Central Time folks). Our flight to Bali leaves around 7 (with a short layover in Melbourne, Australia).
We’ll be in Bali until Jan. 2, learning lots – about tropical farming and agriculture techniques, as well as building water tanks and filters – and making new friends. We’ll be helping out with a Christmas celebration around New Year’s time, too. We’ll be without internet access during this time, so don’t worry about me when you don’t hear from me.
We head to Cambodia in January. After a couple of days in the capital, Phnom Penh, we’ll be in Battambang (NW Cambodia) for most of our time (we’re hoping to have internet access about once a week here). Feb. 14 through March 6 we’ll be in Ratanakiri in the east in a more rural area.
Our debrief time is the following week (location TBA), then we head back to Oxford, NZ, March 12, arriving late in the evening of March 13. We spend the next week in Oxford, and Anna and I have plane tickets to go home March 22.
That’s the next three months in a nutshell! In case you’re curious, Cambodia is 6 hours behind NZ in time, and 13 hours ahead of US Central Time. So for example if it’s 5 p.m. Sunday in NZ (that would be 10 p.m. Saturday in Kansas), it’s 11 a.m. Sunday in Cambodia.
I want to wish all of my family and friends a very Merry Christmas! It’s been strange listening to my Christmas music during the summertime here in NZ. It won’t be the same celebrating Christmas without my family … in the hot climate of the tropics … but it will be good. Christmas isn’t about shopping or snow or even family or music. It’s a celebration of love. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). I miss my family – so much!! – but Christmas is still Christmas.
You’ll hear from me again in January!
