Feb 12, 2012

Pictures, like 120 of them

 In the previous blog I shared about things that were going on.  These are the photos I promised, there are a lot of them.

4 days before teams arrived we were packing our house and moving upstairs.

 After picking up the first team we went to the Toul Sleng Museum the next morning.
We got to meet 2 of the 3 men that survived the murders 36 years ago.  The 3rd man died not to long ago.
   
It is the equivalent of meeting a survivor of Auschwitz I suppose.
His name is Chum Manh.
 

This man is the painter Pol Pot kept a live to paint daily events at the prison.  His paintings are seen in the last building of the museum.  I believe there was 45,000 people that where tortured here and eventually killed outside the city.  His name is Bou Meng. It was a special honor to meet the two.   

On Friday we set up for an outreach. 

People setting up to sell snacks said they wished we had done the outreach for a week because they made so much money the two nights. 

Pastors from surrounding churches coming together to pray and talk about the outreach that was happening.

 It was great to see kids from our school turn up.

 Sothy (Tee) part time stage hand.

 Our girls behind ready to open with the Blessing dance.

View from our roof of a growing crowd

Kids and neighbors watching the set up.


 Father in-law giving the greetings and introductions for the Commune Chief

 Commune Chief loved the dance and later it was said he was very thankful for what was done.

He also commented on Saveoun's beauty, and she was incredibly pretty this night with her hair, make up and cloths she got from Christmas. 

  Our pastor seating.
 

 The growing crowd

 From the roof again

 People loved the fire works.  We would shoot a couple small ones up and a big one to let people know that they were drawing for prizes.  For some it was the favorite part of the night.



 The Missouri team for the past year had been working on the music and scripture dance interpretations for the outreach.  I believe Caleb wrote the music for the 45 minute part, Caleb, sister Hannah and Cameron played the instruments.   

 Laura acted out the scriptures.

Pich read the scriptures in Khmer while Laura danced.


 Most people had never seen something like this, for some it was different and hard for them to fully understand, but many people were intrigued our kids included.  
Sambath
 Darow, SreyRoth, Jon and Sreykyo

Tate and Tong's uncle was there
 SengHo
 SengHi
 Chanly and SreyOwn
 Vanack
 Darow, Yong and Samrang

The event would not have happened if it wasn't for Ly who has been working with us for the past 6 month.  Really a man of many different talents. 

 On and off to keep people for the whole show we drew for prizes.
Rachana's cousin won a fan

Vuthy and former child of ours won an MP3 player.
I haven't seen him in 2 years and he is all grown up now.

 The first night the pastors gave invitations to become a Christian

 Part of the group that responded to the invitation
 The next night the pastors gave invitation for prayer and people were healed.

I really liked when I caught these pictures or out team down praying for people I thought it was quite awesome, they would go down there and be used like that.


This ladies arm that had been numb for 6 months she hadn't been able to use it, the first night she had accepted Christ and her arm was healed, this night she came up to share that what had happened.

 Our kids also did their coconut dance on the second night.

 The musicians for the play

The story was played about the rich man and Lazarus.
Lazarus
 Rich man
 Rich mans brothers





 Before Lazarus died he was begging for food he was so hungry.  I thought it funny a lot of people got up and actually gave him money and food.

 The rich man in hell


The rich man pleading for water and to tell his brothers about hell.


After the play during the give away I guess the fog machine wasn't finished, it scared our kids sitting next to it, and was pretty funny.

 Hannah and Caleb during their worship session.

Where's Rylee (inside joke).  Rylee was probably the tallest white girl the village had ever seen, which often made it easy to find her in the crowd.  She drew a lot of questions from a guy this night.
Rylee was a nurse and was used quite a lot during her stay.  

 Ticket sales with our staff.  Tickets sold for $0.12 cent mainly to keep people from just taking them.  We sold well over a thousand tickets which helped cover some of the prizes.


Sowly and Chenda

Vendors selling fun stuff, this was hard boiled quail eggs.
 This was a large home made rice cake tortilla thing, pretty good accept the occasional hard piece of rice.

 Melor and Chow's grandmother was there.

 I was standing on the post of our fence for a better view of the outreach.  Turned out I would also get pictures of boys talking to my girls that I would later have to ask who was that?

 You can see SengHi's face as he realizes that dad is standing on the fence taking his picture.

 The play also had some comedy skits. 
 Vechi



 Our girls selling mangoes

A couple days later it was baseball.
Yong, the night before he nearly cut his toe off, but the day after Rylee sewed it up he was out playing.  
Sreyroth
Chow
Darow
Veasna and Sambath


Sreyon

 Courtney took Ream for a nice getaway to help her relax.  Our favorite place to go is Rabbit island.
 Bungaloes are $15 a night and the food is great.  If you've been here and have gone to Angkor Wat, the beaches should be next on your list.

 Joe enjoying himself.


 SreyRoth, always the helper that greatly benefits from her service. 

Joe at 5 years old aready knows how to let go.


Besides the outreach the team did a large amount of clinics, much more than I thought they would accomplish.  Very impressed with the time they spent.

 They also saw most of the kids at school.

 With lots of tears the wonderful new friends of the Missouri team that seemed far to short was saying their good byes and off to see Angkor Wat.

 At the same time I was in the city picking up the next team from Hawaii, also good friends of our.


 They spent the first weekend teaching pastors and doing a VBS at the school.
This was kind of follow up and strengthening for the outreach that was done.
Pastor Bud Stonebraker teaching inductive bible study to the 30 something pastors and cell group leaders. 

At the school kids got their pictures taken for one of their projects.
Borin
 My Sam
 SengHo
 Veasna


 My Joe

 Friday we have 140 children at the VBS because school was in.
 We did a lot of singing and face painting and teaching out of Psalms

 Sunday we had 187 children at church that came to play and dye shirts.


Jon with the rubber bands for the shirts 

 Shirt sizes

Dying line

 Final Inspection

 Joe did his own shirt
 

 Again time was far to short but we made lasting friendships and found future volunteers.

 I got to go to Angkor Wat with this team driving and having fun.
Laura from the Missouri team brought me a fish eye lens which made taking photos this time a little more fun and interesting.




A couple days later it was Pastor Mike and Grieg also from Hawaii.
We were thinking about building Wut's mother a house and having Pastor Mike help.  But we thought it would be to much but when Grieg turned out to be a carpenter we thought well God is saying do it.
So we did.  I'll post on it next I have to get out there and take some more photos.
I was amazed how great Pastor Bud and Pastor Mike were with the kids.  What good dads, how awesome are CC Pastors all seem to be it really amazes me, and the kids so easily fall in love with such people.



I would have to say this picture speaks the most about what teams do here with us.

Our mission field here is about reaching the kids, building friendships showing and sharing about why we are here.  We are here because Jesus asked us to tell the nations.
Spending time with them, letting them know we care. 
There is no translation, he speaks no English and Jess doesn't speak Khmer.  You don't always need to, you spend some time, you smile, you play and you laugh.
 
He'll remember Jess for a very long time. 


There were a lot of good people on the last couple teams as there seems to be on each of our teams, not all things were mentioned or every person recognized but you each made a lasting impression on the people you met.  I also think the members of the team modeled Christ well.

thank you