Hi All,
Today was our last official day of ministry here. We traveled out to a small village, Churteal, with the health promoters. Sinath has a lot of family living here. She had been evangelizing to them for serveral years. After the health seminar last year, She went out there and taught health & hygiene to them. Through that they began listening to her to her testimony about Christ and several family members finally accepted Christ and are now Christians. PTL! We went out and held a mini medical clinic. It is a very small community. We saw maybe 15-20 patients. After they saw us they went to one of the health promoters for teaching on their specific problem area. It was a good day.
They greeted us warmly and enthusiatically. The kids followed us around everywhere. After lunch (we brought our own food!), we walked around the village a bit and visited a couple of houses. We have decided that if we were poor in Cambodia, we would rather live in the country rather than the city. It was amazing how clean they kept things out there. They even swept the dirt around the front of their homes. Night and day from what we saw in the city slums. Same ailments like back problems from squating so much of the time and leaning forward doing hard work in the rice fields. Craig's teaching on physical therapy, proper lifting, and exercises for the back has been used a lot.
After we came back to Phnom Penh we were able to get some feedback from the 4 health promoters we had been working with the past 3 days. They felt everything had gone very well. They liked the home visitation. They see the value in seeing where and how the people live so they can be specific help to them. It also allows them to enter into their lives and make relationships so then evangelism can happen. They are very grateful for our willingness to come here to teach them, so they can teach others. We accomplished the job we came to do! They really seemed to catch the vision for the H&H ministry after this year's seminar. We will see what they do with it in the next year. Pat, Matt and I had a chance to review the material still left to teach. We have lined out the curriculum for the next 2 years, 2011 & 2012. Start praying for me now. I would love to be a part of this since I started with it from the beginning, but I will have to wait on the Lord for an answer to that. Three years in a row has been a finacial stretching for me. I don't know if I can do 2 more years. We will see what funding God provides.
Tomorrow morning we are returning to one house we visited here in P.P. One of the teams met and ministered to this family yesterday. They are Christians and had been going to a Korean church. The husband has heart problems and is not doing well. He can't work. They have 4 kids. The mom can't work between watching the kids and taking care of her husband. Pat said without heart surgery he will probably only live 2 months-1 year. He is very weak and can't walk much anymore. The Korean church had given them a Bible and hymnal. They enjoyed reading scripture and the wife loved singing from the hymnal. Because he can't walk they have not been able to attend church for some time. People from the church came and took back the Bible and hymnal. Michelle told us one problem with the Korean church here is that there is much pressure from home to have large numbers in their congregations. Resources are limited for their missionaries so they must have felt the need to retieve their material for someone who would attend regularly. So we bought a Bible and hymnal in Khmer and will take it to them tomorrow. We want to go as a team to sing and pray with them. Two of our health promoters are going with us. They will give them the gifts so it is not seen as coming from us but from the church. This has been a burden on our hearts since we met them. It still is not likely that they can attend PPFC either because of the distance, but we hope the church members might rally around these fellow believers. We will keep in touch and see what happens.
Other than that tomorrow is a rest and play day. The team members will return from Battambang by 12-1pm. We have some last minute shopping planned and probably one last foot massage! We are having dinner together and will have our team debriefing in the evening. Then it is packing, get a good nights rest and up and to the airport Saturday morning. Somebody tell my puppies, "Mama is coming home soon!"
Thank you all for coming along with me on this trip, sharing some of my experiences with me, and most of all for praying for me and the team. As I said from the start, I could never do this alone. You all are a big part of why I'm here and able to minister to the Cambodian people. Thank you.
Once I get home, I will put more thoughts from the trip here for you to read and some more pictures too.
Family and friends - I'll see you in a few days!
