Hi All,
We are 2 days into our final week. Sunday worship service was fun. It was good to see familiar faces. Pastor Sokah spoke (phew! the team was off the hook this year). We were asked to come up front and introduce ourselves. After which, we say the chorus to Shine Jesus Shine through twice. It was a special moment for me. I remember 4 years ago on my first trip to Cambodia, the team met with the church elders. They took us to see the new property where they were going to build a church. It was literally a bare weed lot surrounded by a cement fence. The gates on the fence had already been stolen twice. We gathered in a circle with the elders to pray over the property. We could feel God and His power in that place. After the prayer my team sang that same chorus, Shine Jesus Shine. It was a great moment. I reminded Pastor Sokah of it after the service.
We got to see Rattanak(the baby who came to the US for heart surgery after our visit last year. Pat VanWinkle was able to give him a check-up yesterday. He is doing great. Even for a Downs Syndrome baby, he is very alert and interactive. If his parents will get he help, he could be very high functioning. His smile could light up a small town. He is a happy boy.
Yesterday we had a clinic at the church for the church people. They requested it of us. We made it clear on Sunday that no medications were going to be given. That gauranteed attendance to be light and it was. The clinic was 9am-7pm. They saw a few people from 9-11 then no one until after working hours at 4:30-7:00. I did not attend the morning session. I had a bad morning that day after a fitful night filled with dreams of being chased. I woke up one time in the night kicking at something that had caught me in my dream. Pure spiritual warfare! That morning I proceeded to slip on the slick tile floor and bruised my knee and cut my hand. I stayed home that morning to rest. Lois prayed with me before they left. I'm doing fine now. No more bad dreams last night. Our missionaries deal with this 24/7. They need our unceasing prayers.
Today was home visits in the neighborhood around the church. We split into 2 teams consisting of 2 of us, a translator (Matt or Lois Kuffel) and a health promoter. Sinath is our main health promoter here in Phnom Penh. She pretty much is our program right now. She picked the homes for us to visit. She has already been teaching health & hygiene (H&H) in these areas. We are going out to support her and give her validation in the eyes of the people there. It is sad a white face is needed for that. It is a testament to her evangelism skills just how many people she has touched so far in her efforts. Some people are open but many are not. Prayer is our best and only weapon at this point.
I don't think any of us were fully prepared for what we saw today. I was teamed with Sinath. In the morning we started into one neighborhood behind the church. Very poor by our standards but Matt reminded us that anyone with a roof over their heads is not bad off here. I can't imagine anything worse that we saw today. The houses started off okay. Wall and dirt floors but kept up fairly nice. Definitely not hygienic though. No bathrooms. No trash disposal (other than throwing it on the ground). Mostly 1-2 rooms. In the afternoon we went farther back into this neighborhood. These houses back up against the black water. Basically, the black water is a river of raw sewage running behind their houses. NO ONE should have to live like this, let alone pay $35/month for the privilege! The smell was awful! One house was one lower room with an upstairs bedroom. More than 10 people lived here. At another house, the woman complained her husband has had a bad cough for several months and spits up blood at times. She said all of her children (5) had colds and fevers. We want to go back tomorrow with info on a TB clinic where they can all be tested. Where do you begin teaching h&h when they live next to sewage and garbage dump? Again prayer is our only weapon to bring hope back into these peoples'lives. It will not change over night. Progress is going to be slow. The other group reported that of the 5 homes they went into, 2 of them had AIDS patients there. People are so poor they are selling their children into prostitution to survive. If you have already reached that point your enviornment is not going to be a priority for you. Where do we begin? How do we help? The task seems so large. Jesus Christ is the only answer. Again, prayer is our only weapon.
Four of our team members left Sunday afternoon to go to Battambang. They are doing the same thing there, a clinic for the church and home visits. We have had a few good reports from them. I'm sure they will have much to tell us about the things they have seen when they return on Friday.
I will need quite awhile to absorb and process all I've seen and experienced on this trip. And it isn't even over yet. Tomorrow we continue with the home visits here in Phnom Penh. Thursday we are going out to a nearby village where Sinath, Matt & Lois have been working. since Matt and Lois moved to Kampot, just Sinath usually goes now. We will go by car but she usually takes a tuktuk. It is a much longer ride that way. God bless her and her diligence and perseverance to do what God calls her to do!
It is almost 10pm here. I better get to bed. The morning starts early tomorrow. Pat just has to have noodle soup once while he's here. It is a true Khmer breakfast (other than baabaa, rice porrige). So we are going out for a team breakfast. Matt assures us it will be a clean restaurant but probably on the low end of clean. Don't stop praying! No one has gotten sick yet.
