01st – 21st May

Poipet City


Poipet city from our window


Old market in Poipet at one of the many fruit stores

After a run of rather busy weeks we have finally sat down to write the blog. A lot has happened this month so far, so we’ll try and summarise the main things!
We have now started working with a few more projects and have a more varied schedule. A new house is currently being built at the Safe Haven site for trafficked boys to live in and there are plans for another one next to it for single mothers. We are helping two to three times a week building the house; over the last month we have made and moved bricks and at the moment we’re helping to pour cement into the brick walls. There has been a slight lag in progression with the building due to a lack of money to finance the building so please pray that finance would come for the construction of these two houses to continue; ultimately because the sooner there is finance, the sooner those who are at risk and vulnerable can be rescued and escape the horror of the human trafficking industry in Poipet.
We helped the agriculture and water and sanitation teams build a water filter at the Safe Haven, so that the kids can have cleaner drinking water. We enjoyed doing something a little different from our previous schedule.


Alex, Calum, Paul (left to right) working on the building site for the new boys house.

We have now started working with the HIV/AIDS project, praying for people who are suffering from the virus. It is quite a challenging morning when we go. Visiting people who have had HIV for years, seeing their suffering and knowing how to talk to them appropriately and sensitively is challenging and not easy. But Hallelujah, in Jesus Christ there is hope!
We’ll share just one story from a woman called Long Seenah, who we visited. Like so many women in Poipet, she has HIV. She did not know how she contracted the virus, presumably from her husband who is often drunk and abuses her and their five children. It is horrific at how ‘usual’ it is for men to abuse their wives in this country unfortunately, however, we guess that nothing is done because without him, there would be no finance for the family. All her children are fortunate enough to go to school and Long Seenah has help from CHO to transport her to the CDC (Control Disease Centre) HIV hospital in Poipet once a month so she can receive ARV treatment for the virus. She is one of over 320 people that CHO provide transportation to and from the hospital for ARV treatments.

We said goodbye to Sarah on the 11th May as she has gone back to the USA after being here four months at CHO. She has been working on writing a report for CHO about the Safe Houses in the surrounding villages of Poipet that CHO run, concerning its current condition and future development. The Safe Houses are where children who have been orphaned, abandoned, or at risk of being trafficked across the border, can grow up with a family - which is supported by CHO - in the villages. This was part of her master’s degree from Boston College. She arrived the same day we did in Bangkok and has been with us every step of the way, discovering Poipet, the Khmer culture, language and of course CHO so it was sad to see her go as we have all appreciated her friendship so much. We wish her all the best.

We had a holiday for five days on a Thai island called Koh Chang last week. We celebrated Calum’s 19th birthday here and had a lovely relaxing time on the beach, seeing the island and being able to take a break from the busy schedule we have working at CHO. Long, white, sandy beaches; warm, clear sea; beautiful, picturesque sunsets; and reading a book on an idyllic island we’d only dreamed of going to was an incredible way to spend a holiday.


Calum, Alex, Paul (left to right) at a waterfall in Ko Chang


Ko Chang island beach

In quite a contrast, on our return last week, we went to visit another village an hour from Poipet, where we stayed for 3 days in the village of O’Ompul. We went with Dara and one of the CHO Pastors, Sok Sarouen, and arrived on Tuesday morning to be greeted warmly by Pastor Sarath who we would be staying with over the next few days. We did not have much of an idea of what we would be doing, but trusted in the Lord. After lunch and spending time with Pastor Sarath and some of his family, we walked 1 kilometre to a smaller village community further out. We walked through fields, once covered in land mines from the Khmer Rouge Regime and civil war, just over 30 years ago. This was exactly how the Christian church developed in Cambodia, through missionaries walking from village to village spreading Christ’s gospel, in the early 1920’s.


Fallen down sign warning of a previous mine field – the one we walked through.


Walking through the Cambodian fields to a village

We arrived at a family’s home from Pastor Sarath’s church. Ten minutes later half the people in the community had turned up to meet us. A robo-cow that’s cart was full with durians passed by, and being the hospitable people that they are, they kindly bought us some to eat. Durians have a stigma we think is slightly wrong. They are claimed to have an unbearable smell but an amazing taste. However, the pungent aroma fills the back of your throat and they taste disgusting, an unbearable sensation when combined with their raw egg consistency. It has been the general consensus between the three of us that after this durian encounter, we will not eat them again. Ever!
We continue to be astounded by the constant generosity of the Khmer people, those who have so little and yet still giving; though we do not find this easy so your prayers in this would be so very appreciated. We gave a short message about prayer; what, why and how. This was sprung upon us without warning and so a quick minutes brainstorm and we were speaking to over twenty people. Lesson learned; always come prepared with a talk in the back pocket!


The village we visited to speak on prayer

That evening we met with the youth of the church, playing games, getting to know them and having a discussion about the personal relationship God wants with us.
On their departure we spoke to Pastor Sarouen and Pastor Sarath about their lives. Pastor Sarouen (the Pastor from CHO) was once a high ranking soldier in the Khmer Rouge army with 300 soldiers at his command. His life was transformed after the war when hearing a Christian teaching on a Filipino radio station, speaking in Khmer. He consequently found a local church where he gave his life to Jesus. Since 1998 he has been a missionary in the Battambang Province, about an hour from Poipet, until he joined CHO in Febraury.
Pastor Sarath was part of one of the guerrilla rebel groups fighting against the Khmer Rouge. He lost his left leg from the knee down from a land mine and ended up in one of the many refugee camps in Thailand where he became a Christian. There he met the now general Manager of CHO, Rathana. In time his faith came and went until about a year ago where Rathana convinced him to give his life to Christ once again. Six months ago he started his own church in the village which has grown to nearly 80 people. Once these two men were enemies, fighting against each other, but now they sit next to each other, working together to spread the good news of Christ. Only Jesus could bring such healing to a situation!


Pastor Sarath’s son, Pastor Sarath’s wife and newly born son, Calum.
Paul, Alex.
Pastor Sarath, Pastor Sarouen.

The next day, in the afternoon after lunch with some members of the village, we visited a smaller village 1 kilometre away and talked on God’s creation and the personal relationship he desires with us. This community had real trouble and difficulties in their lives, and we were glad that we could speak what we hoped were encouraging words to them. Despite their difficult lives they were extremely happy, joyful and pleased to listen to us. It’s often so hard to encourage these people when they have lives so different from our own; we can’t comprehend the storms they have in their lives, but Jesus can and he calms them. We met people with health problems and families split up between countries due to few job opportunities - many go to Thailand from this village in search of work. We met a boy and girl whose sister moved to Malaysia as a maid, one man we spoke to was once a doctor in the refugee camps but now has next to nothing and can’t support his family. This is the harsh reality of poverty, and it’s so hard to know how to respond to them, but Jesus brings hope, and we pray we brought some of that hope as we talked to the communities.


After speaking of God’s creation and the personal relationship he wants with us near O’Ompul

That evening we continued to talk to the youth about how Jesus takes away our sin and how we can enter into this personal relationship with him. It was good to spend some time talking with them and discussing this relationship Jesus wants from us.
We really felt God blessed us because these talks prepared us for the last day in the village. Pastor Sarouen that evening told us that we would be spreading the good news in a village where people had not heard the message before. So that evening we talked with him, and learnt how to spread the good news of Christ. The next day we were all looking forward to going to the village and when we spoke to a small group of seven people, five gave their lives to Christ (the others were already saved). Praise the Lord! It was a great experience to have had and we learnt so much from doing it. We hope that we can put this into practice in our lives at home but also in our time here left in Poipet.

We all really enjoyed our time at O’Ompul, although faced with challenges we had great food, the church where we stayed was comfortable and we loved the work we did, learning so much from Pastors Sareoun and Sarath. Four months ago we wouldn’t have had a clue how to go about responding to these challenging questions, cultural differences and invitations to spread the gospel of Christ to crowds. But we feel we have so much more of an idea now, of course we don’t get it right every time but we’re always improving. We can’t do this in our own strength, so please continue to pray for us.
We are back to a more regular schedule over the next few weeks. Thank you for all your support and prayers.

With our love
Peace out from Cambodia...

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16th May

This is only a quick blog to say that we continue to be well and are enjoying our time in Cambodia.
We have just returned from holiday; there was another national holiday in Cambodia as it was the King's birthday, and so this time we went to a Thai Island called Ko Chang and had a laovely time relaxing on the white sandy beaches and living the island life for a few days. It was great to have a break but are pleased to be back home in Poipet ready to work once more at CHO.
This coming week (17th - 20th May) we will be visiting and staying in another village to do work there. We do not as yet know what we will be doing, but we predict it will be similar to the last time in Bos Thom.
Please pray for us as we stay there over the next few days; for our health and safety, our Khmer language, for wisdom and knowledge of what to teach in the Bible and that we would continue to learn more and more, not least, about God and his heart for Cambodia. We want to see peoples hearts and lives changed in Jesus' name and see the gosepl of Jesus brought in his great love, joy, grace, peace and power. Please pray with us.

We will follow this short blog with a more detailed one on our return from the village towards the end of the week, hopefully - internet can be somewhat sporadic in Cambodia at times!
Blessings,
Alex, Paul and Calum x x x

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24th-30th April

We were fortunate enough this week to stay in the village of Bos Thom. After a quiet weekend sorting things out after our holiday in Singapore and an ever improving STREET on Sunday evening, we were looking forward to a change from our Poipet home; and it couldn’t be much different. So much happened in the 3 days we were there, it’s difficult to summarise in this blog so we’ll have to tell you more on our return, now just over two and a half months away.
Monday: We left for Bos Thom with Dara (our translator for the time away; he was invaluable, and we could not have achieved what we did without him, we are so grateful for his help). We stayed with Pastor Saruet, one of two Pastors at Bos Thom, with his family of eight. We were honoured and privileged to be the first foreigners to stay in the village. He is comparatively well off in the village of 1000 people, with a moto, house, toilet (squatty potty), pond, chickens, pigs, ducks and geese. We arrived late morning and were introduced to the Pastor and his family. We had no real idea exactly what we would be doing over the next four days; as is the case so often in Cambodia, you just need to dig a bit deeper and ask the right questions!


Pastor Saruet

CHO helped this village hugely by building a school, water pond, and started the church that Pastor Saruet runs. Many people used to get very sick before the pond was built; now they have access to clean fresh water. We learned on the last day that Pastor Saruet’s eldest daughter collects water from the pond every morning at 4.00am to replenish the family’s supplies. She carried two 20 litre buckets hung on a bamboo pole over her shoulder; we struggle to lift one on our own.
That afternoon, we taught English and did a bible class in the local school. Teaching at safe haven was good preparation! The majority of children had not learned English before, so we made a start with basic words, numbers and phrases. Everywhere we go the children are so similar, happy, smiley, and keen to learn, we love working with them! After some games, we started our bible classes with the creation story; we then asked the children if they had heard any of this before. Not one hand went up, out of a hundred. This knocked us for six. We wanted and knew we had to share the good news with them. Though, how do you tell anyone of the good news of Jesus and God’s unfailing love in just five half hour slots over three days? And that said, really only three/two sessions (there were two different classes in the morning and afternoons). It is such a privilege to serve and worship an unchanging God who is the same yesterday, today and forever; sharing the message with those who have not heard of Jesus’ name is what it’s all about. We got them to shout out: Preah jibijah slor’lang knhom! (God loves me!) It was a start that we would build on later in the week.

In the time whilst we were at the village they cooked us great meals. We found it so difficult however, to eat their food when they have so little. They insisted though and it is rude not to eat the food they’ve prepared. That said, the thing we found the hardest was how they fussed over us. We were honoured by their generosity which we couldn’t refuse but it was hard to accept sometimes. On Monday evening we spent the time playing endless games, drinking a lot of water and sweating! We brought a Frisbee with us and taught them ‘Ultimate Frisbee’ which they loved and despite playing some very odd Khmer games we had fun. The evening was lit up by the most amazing lightning storm we’ve ever seen – quite incredible. Our bed for the next three nights was a few wooden planks with a small, thin mat separating us from the boards, surrounded by a mosquito net – not the most comfortable nights we’ve had but how could we (how dare we) complain when this is what they have everyday of their lives.

Tuesday: We woke, Tuesday morning, to the embarrassment of having fifty children ready to learn English at 6.30am – we were not due to start teaching until 8.00am and so was quite a surprise! We washed and dressed, ready to teach in the Pastor’s home where he had brought 14 desks especially for us from the local school. His house is all open-plan with dirt floors, with both corrugated iron and thatched roofing.


Calum teaching English

We taught the basic English phrases and words, played games and after talked about God’s grace which the Pastor had asked to do (10 minutes prior to doing it!). It’s a simple concept for us to understand with our upbringing, but how do we explain God’s grace simply? You can’t explain grace until you explain everything else! But how can they understand that without first explaining who Jesus was, and is? And more to the point, we feel many of you reading this now would be far more qualified to teach on God’s grace than us! We followed from yesterday’s creation story and used John 1v14 and 3v16 to introduce who Jesus is, what he has done for us and his incredible grace for us. We had them shout out once again Jesus loves me! This thus started the beginning of a series of talks on grace over the following days. It’s good to know we can prepare a talk in a couple of minutes though.

We talked about the Good Samaritan to try and further explain God’s grace in the afternoon, as they were a younger class but had similar English lessons. Over the 3 days in Bos Thom we believe we taught nearly 150 children English and the bible, all the desks were filled, with children spilling outside the building in both lessons. We sang songs and both taught and learned new games with the children. By the time we left, Ultimate Frisbee was played continually and a game called ‘Ninja’ was played everywhere we looked! It was so much hotter in the afternoons, playing games was exhausting and none of us had sweat quite like we did in Bos Thom, with such a relentless thirst for water. We drank 50 litres between the three of us, and Dara, whilst we there– in a neighbouring village, Khvai Thom, people have just 5 litres of water between two people per day in which to drink, wash, cook, everything. And yet, without drinking that water we would have been dehydrated very quickly.
We looked around some of the village with the Pastor walking through fields. We visited a family who had made their home in just three days from bamboo and grass thatched roofing; amazing.


The Bamboo home we visited


The family who live there


Alex scaring the family

Other than a few plastic items, both here and across the village, we recon that the village would have looked little different 500 plus years ago; and we are unfortunately not joking when saying this. Everything is so simple, not over complicated and resourceful – the bamboo and thatch were all from the surrounding fields. There is such a contrast in the world in which we live and in Cambodia (indeed any third world country), the contrast between poverty and wealth is so great and it hits us even more so as we live it and even then, it seems unreal that we live in a world with such contrasts like this.

Wednesday: Today was our 100th day since leaving home for Cambodia! We once again woke this morning to the sound of children eager to learn English at 6.30am. We continued with the English basics and then had the children act out Jesus healing the paralytic man in Mark 2 and later that afternoon acted out the story of Zacchaeus.


Paul teaching the Bible

We visited some of the Christian households in the village near the Pastor’s house after teaching in the afternoon and we met a woman who was making roof thatch. A 2 metre strip, which takes a good hour to make, sells for just 500 riel, about 7 pence. Another women we met earns 2 ½ US dollars a day, under 2 pounds. There are next to no job opportunities and so at least they are earning something. We paid Pastor Saruet $90 for the four days we were there; a lot of money, we first thought, when living is so inexpensive. This was somewhat short sighted as that money will be able to be used in the village to help people who really need it. We only hope they didn’t use too much for our short stay. One lady asked if we had houses like hers in our country, a small bamboo/grass thatched house. The answer we gave was hardly adequate but we couldn’t just lie. Our lives are just so different – all because we were born in Britain and she in a remote Cambodian village. One man had had his land invaded by a family and was writing a handwritten letter to the police and village chief seeking justice to have them removed; though what happens to those people once they are removed with nowhere to live, we don’t know.

That evening we spent the night learning to write Khmer and colouring with the Pastor’s children. After three days, everyone was so comfortable with us around and despite having a very evident language barrier we had great fun with them. So many of the children are very confident, joyful, servant hearted and could go so far, however we wonder how they can when growing up in a place like this. One boy, called Lee Hua, in particular shone out to us, a natural leader and spoke some good English already. We later discovered he was once a Safe Haven child, but one year ago he moved to live with his grandmother in Bos Thom. It is so good for us to see a child leave the Safe Haven and fit so easily back into ‘the real world’, so we were delighted to see that, but it just makes us think about his future, how different it will be living here. We played endless games and sang songs all evening and finished by praying for all the children, the Pastor, his family and the village. The Pastor asked that we prayed for: his church (its growth, finance and a building), an English teacher, help with making the ground higher at the school as it floods in the rainy season, the family who had their land taken and medicine. What an incredible evening and three days.
Just before going to bed Pastor Saruet asked us how we thought his church could grow and have more money in the collection. We have been challenged by so many questions the last few days but this we just did not know how to answer. How do you? He will know more than we do in running a church. How can you expect people to give when they have such a small income which is so precious, integral to their survival? God asks that we give a tithe and what we can, so even if they do just that – there’s still hardly anything to make any real change. All we knew to say was to pray and to know to trust in God that he will always provide in the best possible way. So often with questions like these, we don’t know what to say and so refer to what we do, but please pray that when we are challenged and faced with such difficult situations and questions, that we would know what to say. We are all called to be the hands and feet of Jesus, but we cannot do things in our own strength. We need the Almighty, Holy and living God by our side.

Thursday: We unfortunately left on Thursday on a bit of a low note as was Alex ill. At a time when Alex needed to keep his fluid levels up, with nearly no water left, Paul went to buy a 12 bottle pack of water from the local shop. This cost just 3 dollars for 12 bottles; he had to walk past the woman who earned just 2 ½ dollars a day – she could never afford that and yet we needed it. We finished teaching English and spoke on Jesus walking on the water in Matthew 14. We wanted to speak to everyone about how walking with Jesus and being a Christian is a leap of faith. As Peter did, we need to step out of the boat and know that even when we are in trouble, Jesus will immediately catch us. Following Jesus is a risk, but it’s worth the chance of eternal life. Just because we can’t see God, doesn’t mean he’s not there; but we’re not going to see unless we come to him. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed, John 20v29.
When we arrived on Monday, the children could hardly speak any English. When we left on Thursday they could say: Hello, Goodbye, Sorry, Please, Thank you, How are you?, I am fine, What is your name?, my name is ... , How old are you, I am ... years old and count from 1 to 20. We were so thrilled with their effort. As we left they didn’t want to say goodbye and didn’t want to see us go, nor did we. If Alex wasn’t ill we would all have loved to stay longer, we hope the Pastor didn’t think it was his fault. We had the most incredible week. Our eyes have been widened further both mentally and spiritually. Living in a village which would be little dissimilar in AD 1500 and seeing Jesus in Bos Thom village through the children, the church and Pastor Saruet. Speaking on God’s grace has shown us how God’s grace and love reaches everyone. The world would consider this village to be the least, the lost and the last. But Jesus loves them, his grace reaches them and they are some of the most amazing people we’ve met.

On our return to Poipet, Paul taught at the Safe Haven in the afternoon whilst Calum stayed with Alex, who is now fine and well. The following day we had a quiet morning and in the afternoon we had the weekly prayer meeting at the Safe Haven where we had the staff write prayers on coloured pieces of paper and put them around the site as a sort of prayer walk. In the evening we had a home church, spending time with Emily and Sarah, praying, worshiping God, listening to a talk and catching up from the past week. It is so great to have fellowship with each other.

Please continue to pray for us as your support is so very appreciated.
Blessings,
Alex, Calum and Paul

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