Hot days, hard work, good times February 6, 2010

This has been a week of early mornings. It’s my week to help buy and set up breakfast so I’ve been getting up around 5:30 every morning to try to get my quiet time with the Lord in before we start our day. We’ve been having early breakfasts and leaving the house as soon as we can to try to get to work before it gets too hot outside … and boy is it hot!

This week we finished preparing the beds for planting and saw some newborn piglets at the orphanage. We prepared the ground, raised beds, set up drip lines, and planted corn and beans at a village called Phnom Kol just outside of Battambang. We also set up drip lines at the garden the Khmer Earth Care students have planted near the YWAM base. We built the foundation for a water tank we’ll build at the YWAM base (with some unexpected help from a guy named Regie who’s here on outreach with a team from the Philippines), and I almost fell in a pond. It’s been a hot, busy week of hard work, but it’s also been really good.

We’ve had lots of nice treats this week, too. The hot weather has made most of us quite keen on running to the shop down the street and around the corner from our house for ice cream any time we have some time to spare for it. Some of the girls have also taken advantage of leftover rice and made delicious banana rice pudding (and they are very sweet to always set some aside for me without bananas) a couple of times this week.

The Blakelys (Rob, Jenny, Rachel, Johanna, Jonathan, and Susie) left on Wednesday morning, and we certainly miss them. They had to go for the good of Rob’s health. We were sad to see them go, but we all respect their decision to do what they need to do as a family. Most of us will see them again when we’re back in New Zealand next month, but it was a sad good-bye because the day they left was the last time during this DTS that our whole outreach team would be together.

Thursday was “God Day” at the youth center and Anna and I shared a little testimony/teaching in the two classes we go to. We talked about hearing from God. We believe that God is already speaking to the students who aren’t Christians and calling them to himself. We told the stories of how we each heard the call from God to come here, and gave the students time to ask questions. They have very good questions. It’s so cool that they are so open to learning about Jesus. The youth center is an amazing place. Several of the teachers used to be students there themselves and came to know Christ during that time.

We have just about a week and a half left in Battambang. We’ll spend a few days in Siem Reap (and probably visit Angkor Wat) and then head on to Rattanakiri (a province in the east of Cambodia) for about two weeks for some more ministry there. After that we have a few days of “debrief” time in Cambodia, then it’s back to NZ. Our time is getting short here. Please pray that we will make good use of our last few weeks of outreach. I would also appreciate your prayers that I would be able to focus on my time here and not dwell on how sad it’s going to be to say good-bye. One more prayer request – I’m sharing in church on Sunday and I don’t have it worked out what to say yet. Please ask God to speak through me and give me the right words at the right time.

I’ve added a link to the Earth Care DTS Team blog. Feel free to visit the page to see updates on things we’ve been doing here from others’ perspectives.

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“At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.” Titus 2:3-5a



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