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| XP Staff Night Out |
Hello from Cambodia! Destiny and I are here for a few more days and this is the lovely group of people from XP we get to see daily. This picture is taken at the one mall they have in the city. It was recently built with bowling alleys, ice-rinks 3-4 stories high - surrounded by poverty but exudes wealth inside. As I wondered the stores looking for toys to take our kids in our children's home, it was so weird to see lavish toy stores with baby bassinets that rock themselves, plush comforts of life, etc. after seeing babes/toddlers with no clothes on and wandering the slums just prior.
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| Nita is sitting by Lori |
We have also joined up with a team from Korea of 9th and 10th grade kids and are really enjoying time with them. Today we had such a lovely treat - high school friends of mine, Rob & Lori, from Oregon had brought a team to Cambodia for ministry and I got to meet up with them for breakfast. So lovely! I was in their wedding over 25 years ago. :-)
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| Destiny making quick new friends! |
Then this afternoon Destiny and I along with the team from Korea, visited the city hospital. In Cambodia, like many third world countries, if you are in the hospital you will need your family or friends to take care of you and bring you food, otherwise you may go hungry and unwashed, have no bandages changed or hygene needs met. Can you imagine going to the hospital and not having anyone care for you? This particular hospital just recently started feeding one meal a day to it's patients. Today we took in a bag of food for many of the patients and then we would pray with them. I was told that one lady who could not walk, left walking away from the hospital with her family. We saw her waving at us as she went. Miraculous! It was a very touching day and I was looking forward to this outreach. We broke up into teams. Some patients we would kneel by their beds and pray, others we would gather around them and hold their hands and one I sang over. One lady was
sobbing as her father/grandfather had not eaten in nine days and was wasting away. He was burning up on the inside. We prayed over him, shared some about Jesus with him and he said he was feeling better/peaceful. The language barrier can often times keep us from fulling understanding what is happening with them, but our lovely interpreters do their best to explain. One lady had heard about Jesus before and when we prayed she felt such peace that she wanted Jesus - Destiny led her to the Lord. I would have loved to capture some photos, but out of respect for the patients I did not pull out my camera. This photo I took from a distance, when a patient was sitting outside. Before we left I took a small team into a building we had not entered yet, and it was full of women laying on beds with babies beside them - the birthing area. I quickly ran out of food bags and wished so badly I had more. I would have loved to pass out food and pray over these new mothers. We gathered around outside this building before leaving and prayed as a team for the new life inside and for a great value for life to be released to each mother/family unit.
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This is our little kitchen but breakfast
is the only meal I have to clean-up! |
We are eating wonderfully here! Every meal (except for breakfast) we eat out, as it is less expensive for the most part to eat your meals out. I love it as eating out is one of my favorite things to do. :-) Tonight was salad night . . . the restraunt we went to had run out of chicken, beef and pork, so that left only a few items on the menu and we were a team of about 15 people. It was quite comical and a cultural experience to say the least. I often am about to leave the restauran without paying becuase we pay at the cash register. At home when we get up from the table at a restaurn it almost always means that we have already paid the bill. Many times I have almost left the restraunt forgetting to pay on my way out. Saddly this morning, it really happened. I
was headed back to XP on a Tuk Tuk with my daughter when I remembered I had not paid for our breakfast. I had no idea how to get back to the restraurant and could not speak Kami to the driver. So, our friends from Oregon weres tuck with our bill. Thankfully my french toast was only $1 but I think my fruit lassi was a bit more . . . ahhh! :-O
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| Ladle in Hand! |
The guy in this photo so totally cracked me up! He was fixing about 15 meals we had ordered for street kids and he would throw spices in the pan, stir, and then take the big ladle and taste it and then put the ladle back into the pan/soup and continue. He did this several times. Reminded me of my Grandma Stella in the kitchen - a wonderful cook but always scooping her finger into whatever she was fixing for us to do a little taste test. :-) I used to totlly gross out as a kid watching her do this. Now, I do it all the time when I am cooking for my own family. I'm always scooping and tasting and double dipping but NOT FOR COMPANY!! :-)
Tonight we did a prayer ride on Tuk Tuk's through some of the "hot spots" in the city. I was doing okay, praying over different areas until we started down a familiar street with girls standing in the shadows of trees and sitting on street corners waiting to be purchased. I looked for any familiar faces from the other night when we took food to the girls. Then I saw her, the girl I had previously blogged on who had been burned with acid in one of her client situations. I
desperately wanted to stop the Tuk Tuk, but we had a caravan of three and were were the last Tuk Tuk in the caravan, no interpreter in the entire caravan and a need to stay together as it was getting late in the evening. Her eyes met mine as we passed and suddenly she recognized me - I gave her a look like I wished I could have pulled over but could not, waved and felt so helpless in reaching out to her. She is so young. So alone. So vulnerable. Yet, I continue to pray for these treasures to be pulled out of dark places (Isaiah 45), for the girls to have a deep sense that God is near and they are not alone, for angels to surround them as they try to meet quotas. I pulled a snack pack of trail mix out of my bag as many of these girls have not had a meal all day, praying that we would take that street again and I would be prepared to yell at the entourage of Tuk Tuk's to pull over, but we never went down that street again.
Tomorrow is a new day and we will be washing people's feet, I know that it will be a set-up for divine LOVE moments . . .
was headed back to XP on a Tuk Tuk with my daughter when I remembered I had not paid for our breakfast. I had no idea how to get back to the restraurant and could not speak Kami to the driver. So, our friends from Oregon weres tuck with our bill. Thankfully my french toast was only $1 but I think my fruit lassi was a bit more . . . ahhh! :-O 
desperately wanted to stop the Tuk Tuk, but we had a caravan of three and were were the last Tuk Tuk in the caravan, no interpreter in the entire caravan and a need to stay together as it was getting late in the evening. Her eyes met mine as we passed and suddenly she recognized me - I gave her a look like I wished I could have pulled over but could not, waved and felt so helpless in reaching out to her. She is so young. So alone. So vulnerable. Yet, I continue to pray for these treasures to be pulled out of dark places (Isaiah 45), for the girls to have a deep sense that God is near and they are not alone, for angels to surround them as they try to meet quotas. I pulled a snack pack of trail mix out of my bag as many of these girls have not had a meal all day, praying that we would take that street again and I would be prepared to yell at the entourage of Tuk Tuk's to pull over, but we never went down that street again. 
