Blogging at naptime.

Josh and I are coming up on our two month anniversary, both of getting married and of moving to Cambodia. We have been out with teams fairly consistently within this time frame and are now settling into a week and a half "break" before the next team comes. This time will involve normal office hours, evenings to ourselves, sending out wedding thank-you's, and exciting date nights to places like The Pizza Company (perhaps I love it too much. As if this would be possible). Our first official "break" activity occurred yesterday after church and lunch. We had dreamed of this activity prior to our last team, spoken of it often, and anticipated the day it would actually happen. We drove into town, made our way into a parking garage, and excitedly entered the vast air conditioned haven known as "Lucky Mart." It is the Phnom Penh equivalent of a Safeway or Albertsons, and since Josh and I often sit and dream aloud of walking the aisles of Target (I will admit h...

So, I had a date night tonight with Josh and Emily. We whisked Emily away to our favorite Phnom Penh getaway, The Pizza Company. I have no words for the emotions and joys that come as a result of constructing the perfect salad bar creation (small bowl, a limit of one trip through, creative results), drinking from large refillable Coke glasses, and savoring a double pepperoni pan crust pizza. Heaven. We all had seen our teams off to the airport today, Emily had picked up her incoming team who will head out tomorrow, and we simply enjoyed being together and talking. The point of this specific blog entry though is not only to review the finer points of The Pizza Company (there are many. I will e-mail them all to you if you'd like), but to say that Josh and Emily would have a similar forum to this one if they weren't the ones planning for each of the teams to come in :) It is amazing to see all that goes into each project and how hard everyone works to make it happen, both prior to...

Deuteronomy 31:6 “For the Lord your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail you nor abandon you.” Josh and I just finished up with a team that came in from California to go work at an orphan home in the town of Snule. We had the opportunity to paint the home, the cafeteria and the bathroom, along with building a brick wall for the front of the home, laying a cement walkway from the bathrooms to the cafeteria, beginning a fence that will enclose the yard, purchasing tables and chairs for the cafeteria (they had eaten their meals on the mats at the home previously), and getting the chance to connect with an amazing group of kids and adults who call this building home. The team did crafts with the kids each afternoon, which was a huge success, and at the end of the week the time culminated in a carnival that included face painting, balloon animals, a fishing game, bean bag toss, and lots and lots of candy (and free tooth brushes). Josh and I commented often on the fact t...

I am sitting at a table across from my husband in a restaurant called The Blue Pumpkin in Siem Reap. We just finished the work portion of our second team and now have a day to relax. And relaxing it is :) I am enjoying a large iced vanilla coffee in the air conditioned upper level of the restaurant as I attempt to gather some of my thoughts regarding the past week. We had a team of five come in from Iowa who ventured out with us to do a construction/painting project at one of the orphan homes in Kompong Thom. We finished up yesterday working beside a contractor to help raise the floor of the home's cafeteria (to prevent flooding), and to repaint the entire home. The two teenage girls from the Iowa team and I sat at dinner last night talking about the fact that we would never again be able to look at a wall with chipped paint and not want to grab a tool and start taking off the paint, following that up with some plaster, sand paper, and finally a fresh new coat. We haven't quite...

Josh and I went to church this morning at the center here. If I haven’t said this in an earlier post, we’re volunteering for an organization called Foursquare Children of Promise that sponsors over 100 orphan homes throughout provinces in Cambodia. Our job is to coordinate teams who come in from other countries (mostly the US) to do construction work, painting, dental and medical clinics at these homes. The beauty of FCOP and what I appreciate about it most is the fact that it has at its heart the goal of raising up Cambodians to be the ones who extend the love of God to other Cambodians. It is not simply a Western methodology (and theology) imposed on a separate culture in hopes that they will embrace it. The church services are all in Khmer, with worship leaders singing songs in Khmer and pastors preaching to the congregation in their own language. A perk for me is the fact that many of the songs we sing are ones I have known for years that have been translated into Khmer. :) FCOP do...