Blogging at naptime.

Josh and I have been going through this great Bible reading plan that Jaime sent to us, and the other day it took us into the book of Leviticus. If I’m being honest, I’ll admit I waited until after I finished my fried eggs that morning to read the section entitled “Regulations About Infectious Skin Diseases,” and even then I skimmed it… As I read on however, I got to a section talking about the requirements for an “unclean” person to once again become “clean.” And the further I read, the more emotional I became, which surprised me (and surprised both Josh and Jaime when I told them the cause of my emotions was Leviticus..). The people during this time who had a disease had to go to tremendous lengths, including living alone away from others and yelling “Unclean!” when approaching people. Multiple sacrifices had to be offered both by the infected person and the priest in order to make full atonement. And as I read through the requirements, I became nearly overwhelmed at the reality (...

On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to experience what would be my second time to ever drive in Cambodia. I've felt it has been in the best interest of everyone on the road to avoid this activity until it was deemed absolutely necessary. Driving in Cambodia will test your mental capacities, your hand-eye coordination, reflexes, skill, agility, and other words and phrases people like to use when talking about the benefits of video games. And it is like a video game really….like Grand Theft Auto meets Mario Kart. You have your fancy Lexus SUV’s driving directly toward you in your lane (of course), and you also have your little Mario-like moto’s driving in front of you with coconuts and other random items falling directly into your lane (like a Koopa Troopa shooting a turtle shell at you...you know). All this to say, I normally let Josh drive. Only on Tuesday, as we were on our way home from hosting some in-town guests, Josh reached for his wallet and quickly realized that it was in his...

It's hard for me to believe that it has been more than a week now since Josh and I saw off our 3rd team of the summer! The group was comprised of 7 students and 4 adults from Ireland, America, Scotland, South Africa and Malaysia, all of them currently residing in Hong Kong attending Union Church. We worked together for 4 days doing what we will call a "generous" amount of scraping and painting at the Pdau Penh Church Orphan home in the Kompong Speu province :) We were grateful to discover that what we anticipated being a 3 hour ride in the back of the truck, became in reality a 45 minute ride to the guest house...don't tell the Santa Rosa team about this :) "Whitening creams" can be found on any number of supermarket shelves throughout Cambodia as well as Whitening Deodorants because you just can't be too thorough when striving for that perfect pale complexion so highly sought after in Southeast Asia. Dale, however, has found a cheaper alternative to suc...