Village Adventures...

Cambodia LOVES holidays and festivals (and rightfully so). I am in full support of celebrating with them as I also get the days off work. The most recent holiday is called the Water Festival and I went to Preah Romeas village to spend a couple days. I absolutely love going to Sophea's village! He is the pastor that I work with and I also live with him and his family. I have spent a lot of time with him and his wife, their kids, his brothers and sisters, cousins, mom, aunts and uncles and they are definitely my Khmer family. This time, I also invited another foreigner friend, Eileen, to go with me and see what kind of adventure we could have. Here are some of the things that were on our agenda for the two days:

Fishing (by net and by pole)...
This was purely a spectator activity for me. For the nighttime fishing, I did go down to the water for a few minutes, but there were only two poles, the bait smelled less than appealing (they were using a very potent fermented fish), and we found that experimenting with my camera in the dark and using the flash light was more entertaining to us.

Volleyball...
Once again this was a spectator sport as they are extremely intense about their volleyball, but it's fun to watch.

Various rubber band games...
I must say they are quite creative around here to come up with these games. They make a "super rubber band" by twisting around 5 or 6 together and then you shoot it at a pile of individual rubber bands to see how many you can knock out of the stack. And trust me when I say you don't want to be shot with the super rubber band...it hurts.

I also learned how to kill flies with a rubber band. Yes, you read that correctly. I felt like Mr. Miagi with his chopsticks (still a impressive feat I must say)...when the flies land on something, you skillfully hold the rubber band in a certain way and snap them quickly. It became a quick obsession of ours (Eileen and I) since we had always grown up with the convenience of a fly swatter (which, I gotta say, I still prefer).

Cow rescue...
When we were at the volleyball court, a number of my friends began running back towards the house to see something about a cow stuck in the mud. That was all I caught. So we went to see what all the commotion was about (and I was a little confused as to how a cow gets stuck in the mud quite honestly). We quickly found out that it was NOT mud, but a large hole that had been dug for a septic system of some sort. The cow had managed to walk across the hole and have it's hind legs fall in. This was quite the event for the day. Everyone came with their ideas of how to free the cow...the winning method was a few old tires roped together, strapped underneath the poor animal, and then putting a long stick through the top to give them a way to pull him out. But do you know what happens with you actually get the cow out? The "water" that the cow is stuck in goes flying everywhere and everyone knew what kind of "water" this was. I felt very bad for the guy off to the side that got doused in this "water." Again, I stood safely on the other side of the wall as a curious spectator.
Nature Discovery...
This is the biggest snail I have ever seen. I am not sure what was so funny at that moment, but whatever it was gave me quite a laugh. These are also the biggest ants.
They are huge! And I can tell you from experience, they hurt when they bite you! And just as a side note, they catch and stir fry these bad boys. I very politely declined when I was offered them in the past.

Comparing leg white-ness...
This is a contest that I will always win. It is amusing though...

Photo shoot with massive construction items...
This thing made me laugh...partly because the brand is "thinh phat" which is an oxymoron if you pronounce the 'ph' like an 'f' as we do in America. I have no recollection of skipping, but that certainly looks like what I am doing in this picture. It is what it is.

Harvest Spectators...
{Are you noticing a theme with the things that I "did" ...lots of spectating going on...} We went for a walk through the village and came across some people bringing a portion of their harvest. We stopped and talked with them a while and took a few pictures before continuing on our way...
And these pictures hardly do justice to trying to convey the beauty and peace that is this land...this goes down in my books as a GREAT holiday.

Say and Do...

There are very few days that I can say I haven't learned something..and most of the time it comes in unexpected ways. I feel constantly amazed by the lessons that come my way if I keep myself in a attitude to listen. On the last outreach with the Harvesters, we went to the Takeo province to serve and love and I learned a lot from my students and the people in the village.

When we got there on Saturday morning, we split into two groups to walk through the village and talk with people. At one of the houses where my group stopped, there was a man building a chicken house. A couple of the students offered to come back later in the afternoon to help him and we then went on our way. At another house, we met and spoke for a long time with the village chief and a leader from the pagoda. This conversation was very enlightening for me as the temple leader was sharing with us what he knew about Christians. He said that other religions and groups say that the love and care about others, but then they don't do anything. He went on to say that Christians are the only people he has seen who say they love and actually have actions to back up their words.

At this very time, unbeknownst to me, the other group of students was on the opposite side of the village building a small house for a little old grandpa to live in. It was the first house they stopped at and when they saw them busy building, the students asked my co-leader if they could stay and help. So for two hours, they labored to build a little house addition.
When our free time came in the afternoon, the couple students from my group were heading back to help with the chicken house. I assumed that it was only those two going and the others were staying back to rest. I decided to go with and as we were walking, I turned around to just take a note of which ones came along. It took me back as I saw that all eight students were there. All eight of them sacrificed their rest time to love this family and put action to their words. The fact that it was hottest part of the day and that we were going to have a full evening didn't matter. They wanted to serve.


I unfortunately don't have an "after" picture because we did not actually finish putting together the whole thing, but here is a photo of my students with the family.
Neither of the building projects were planned or initiated by us leaders, but came from the overflow of the hearts of the students. That says something great about this group and I am so happy for the privilege of working with them!

On Sunday morning, I was given the opportunity to share with the adults......while the students were outside leading a children's program with games and songs and skits.




After we finished the program, we brought all the kids inside (about 100) and fed them lunch...
This is one of those pictures that touches my heart and couldn't have been posed. I happen to look over as Seyla, one of my students, had knelt down to talk to one of the kids and the gentleness in his heart as he did this impacted me a great deal.
I love that these young people are being the love of Christ in action. We will be going on our next outreach in a couple of weeks and I am looking forward to seeing what more I will have the chance to learn.