Saturday - the edited highlights!

This is the last blog from Cambodia. Dear readers, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all of your support during these last two weeks. It seems no time at all since we met at Edinburgh airport to begin this trip; now we are getting ready to come home. Your prayers have been invaluable and God has certainly blessed our time here. In this blog we want to share some of our impressions with you, so that you can share something of the sense of privilege that we feel.

For most of us the real highlight of the trip has been the children we have met. They are warm and enthusiastic; they are biddable; they have taken everything we have given them. At School on the Mat, they have listened to our Bible stories with great attention and played our games with zeal. One of the CHO leaders said to us: "you have made the children laugh and be happy; some of the mothers make the children unhappy." To make sad children happy, even if only for an hour or two - that is a priceless gift.

Not only are the children bright and enthusiastic, they are also intelligent. The difference here is that so many of these intelligent children have very little opportunity to have their gifts and skills nurtured. If parents can't afford to pay for their children to go to school, then there is no other way for children to flourish. At the Safe Haven School, we have watched the children grasp some complicated lessons in technology and learn English. They were learning English from Callum, Paul and Alex and technology from 2 engineering graduates from Edinburgh University, Alison and Chris; we have tagged along. Our Church gives some money once a month to the school at Safe Haven to help pay for one of the teachers; that money is being very well-used to give these children a fresh start in life after they have been victims of abuse and violence.

Then we ran the pastors' conference. This is the best use of £2500 that we have come across for a long, long time. About 50 people came (some of the original 70 didn't make it), some of them travelling 3,4,5,6 hours to get here for the 3-day seminar on Ephesians that Jim came to run. There were 12 sessions in all, each one dealing with half a chapter of that Bible book. These men and women are hungry to learn; they know that the only way for the Church to be strong is to know and understand the Bible, but there is, at present, very little opportunity for them to learn from other, more experienced pastors. They took Jim's preaching to heart; they drank it in, so that they could take what they have learned and pass it on to others. The most striking part of these 3 days for Jim was unpacking what the Bible says about marriage and family life, together with Jesus' attitude to women and children in a society where adultery is common (even among pastors) and where children are treated so badly. Jim says: "at home, I speak a lot about God as Father, but here that is hard to do because so many people have bad experiences of their fathers. They find it hard to see God as Father until you add that He is a good father." The questions at the end of that session suggested that these are difficult issues for the Church - we hope, with God's help, that we have been of some help to the Church here.

The CHO staff are magnificent! Yesterday at their prayer time, they were determined to give thanks to God for the hard work of the team from Scotland. We honour and salute the vision that Chomno has for CHO; we give thanks to God for the management team who have begun to put that vision into practice; we marvel at the faith, dedication and commitment of all of the staff for the work that they do in so many different ways. Mao, Reatray, Rotana, Vuthy, Sokleng - they are all men with great leadership qualities and potential and we pray that God will continue to bless them. Chomno's wife Kim and their extended family run the restaurant where we have eaten nearly all of our meals - they have taken us in and looked after us so well; they are real gems and we are enormously in their debt.

Our team has worked well together. We have shared so many experiences that will stay with us for the rest of our lives. We have worked together; we have prayed together; we have listened to the Bible together; we have painted together; we have sung together (formally, in Church, and randomly as we have painted, though at times the quality has left a great deal to be desired!); we have played games with children together; we have eaten together; we have visited Angkor Wat together; we have made friendship bracelets together; we have taught Bible stories together; we have learned so much together.

Last night, Jim had prepared a surprise for the team. We visited the casinos. We had been there before during the day, but it is an entirely different place at night, lit up. There are lots of huge casinos, where people come from Thailand and other parts of South-East Asia for a good time. You will see a large truck around Poipet, gathering staff from the town to go to work there, but that is the only real Cambodian connection. We went inside one of them, but only to look around: the air-conditioned duty-free shop is in complete contrast to so much of what we see elsewhere in this city. Kim and some of the other extended family came with us for a stroll. The only downside - the van had a flat tyre when we came back to it; the locals had it fixed when Thia went back later, though the new tyre is a different size.

This afternoon, we will taking time to talk together about what we have learned so that we will be able to explain some of this to you face-to-face. This trip has been a good thing to do; you can only understand what the world is like by coming to a place like this. We read in Psalm 113 that God "raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; He seats them with princes, with the princes of their people." When you come to Poipet, these words take on so many human faces! You can't learn that second-hand, from a book, or even from your TV screen. Our Church needs to be and become more of a global church; we all need to be global Christians; this trip has helped at least 9 of us see what that means; we hope that we can help the whole congregation see what that means.

Thank you again for your interest and support during these last two weeks; it has been a source of strength and encouragement that so many people have followed our progress through the blog and the facebook group; we thank God for you and hope and pray that something of what we have experienced has rubbed off on you.

Friday - winding down!

Today's got a kind of end-of-term feel about it! We're winding down and saying our farewells.

This morning we were working at Safe Haven again, painting. The white paint we have been using as primer is quite thin; Jim has seen paint as thin as that before but UK libel laws prevent him from saying where! Most of the house is now painted inside and some is done outside with primer ready for the main coat of more orange paint. The work is being done by a man who looks frosty, but we're sure he is a nice man really! Trevor from NZ came to help us.

After lunch, we joined the CHO staff for their prayer meeting. It is significant that the CHO staff leave their work for Friday afternoon to come together in the CHO building to pray for their work. Their prayer topics today included giving thanks for the team from Scotland and their hard work this last week. Their way of prayer is fascinating, because the topic is given and they spend 5 minutes with everyone praying aloud, then one voice prevails and ends that topic. Another topic is given and the process is repeated. Perhaps there were 8 topics and the meeting lasted about an hour.

We said our farewells then, though we are here tomorrow. Saturday is CHO's day off and we will take tomorrow to wind down and try to process what we've learned before going to have tea with Vuthy and his family. Tomorrow's post will be some of the highlights of the trip for us as we reflect on the last two weeks.

The CHO team are so thankful to us for coming. This is a place where people tend not to stop, but pass through and keep going. We have been here for two weeks and they are glad that we've come. We hope to have brought something of Jesus' love with us and leave something of that behind us. We have left a few bags of toys and goodies behind and we hope that the people will remember us well.

PS it's raining, but warm!

Thursday - off to camp!

If you go down to the woods today..... The idea of 200 children all together in the one place for 2 hours - and we're to take part and run some games. Created a certain amount of nervousness. In fact, there were 220 children there and it was like a giant holiday club day outdoors in the forest. This is the camp for all of the children from School on a Mat in its different places.

When we got there, the children were all sitting on their mats, waiting. For all of the morning the children were so co-operative and well-behaved. Chantly, the MC for the day was doing well to keep them entertained. We had to introduce ourselves; Trevor and Mary from NZ were there; the American team came too. To begin with, we all stood at the front being watched, but after an hour, we were sitting amongst the children having fun.

First of all, the games. Sokleng had some very good games that we will copy. There were the skis! Thia had made sort-of skis that were built for 5 people. You have to put your feet in the loops and then work as a team to lift your left ski and then your right ski and so on... and walk together. We were the demonstration. 2 teams, mainly from JG, but with some US assistance, had to race across the clearing; it was not competitive, was it? There is some discussion about who won the first leg, but the second leg was clear! Jim's team won by a mile once we had worked out which left to move first!

Then there was a balloon game. 2 children had a balloon which they were to burst by squeezing their bodies together. It was hard to do. There are 2 reasons for this game: 1)it is fun; 2)it is hard to do, but teaches the children that life can be hard and helping each other can make a difference.

Then Sokleng, with a great big smile on his face, said that he needed 5 people. He then tied 5 of us to a small metal ring which we had to manoeuvre over the top of a bottle of water. It was hard enough to do the first time when we could see what we were doing, but the second time those of us tied by the string had to turn our backs and be guided by other people. We had to do what they told us in order to complete the task. We did it!

We also led some games ourselves. Rosanne demonstrated some aerobics, which the children and some (!) of the team members copied. Then we played a traffic lights game: the children had to stand still when the red frisbee was shown, run on the spot with the yellow one and run in a circle with the green one. Finally we played 'duck, duck, goose' again, with 10 circles of children on their mats; they played the game well, avoiding the on-coming traffic that was other children and the avoiding the trees! Jeanette was chosen so often that she felt she had run another half-marathon.

At breakfast, Mao asked Jim to tell a Bible story; short notice, but the story of the prodigal son went down well, even if the children were distracted by the arrival of the food.

One group of children did a drama about water and sanitation.

They take a sound system into the forest, play music, bring food and water for all of the children. The poorest children were given a present that included a toothbrush, some toothpaste and some soap. At the end, they all piled back into their tuk-tuks, paid for by CHO and went home; 15 children in 1 tuk-tuk - health and safety? Eat your heart out! High-fives all round as they left.

If this is good to to do at home with children for our Holiday Club, it is certainly good to do here; we helped to give these children 2 hours of fun and games; we told them a Bible story; who knows what impression that has left!

We spent the afternoon painting again; even Pastor Jim broke out in a sweat. We were overcome with emulsion! We even had to push the truck twice - the key has broken and it needed a jump-start!

PS happy birthday to Archie, Eric and Sandra's grandson.

pps there is no facebook update yet; it will come later.

Wednesday - we keep working

Painting - the walls have colour at last and so do our hands! The future is bright and the rooms are orange! Mind you, before we started the bricks were orange, so what's changed, really? Thia, the local handyman, was swinging from the window frame and the rafters to paint the high places; it proves the sturdiness of their welding and he was wearing flip-flops! He was also wiring in the mains and Eric lent a hand and gave him some new tools with which to do the electrical work; before we go he will need to give Thia a tutorial in how to work the multi-meter. Fiona's i-pod provided the music; there was some interesting dancing on top of the trellis by Martin; the American group was also there painting.

Safe Haven School - today we were finishing yesterday's windmills and the children took great delight in running outside to make them work in the wind. Eric and Rosanne were making windmills and balloon-driven cars; we can explain how these work when we come home! The identity book asked the children to draw pictures of their family; some children had 3 or 4 pictures on their page (me, brother, sister, mother) and some had none. This is the reality of life in Cambodia! The older ones were singing "Oh happy day" with the actions - a great sound.

School on a Mat - saw Martin (Goliath) felled by Jeanette (David) as she used one of the children's catapults. Guess the story?! The children took to a game called Giant's Treasure in which they had to sit in a circle while one was pretending to be a giant sleeping in the middle; one of them had to sneak in to steal his treasure; when the giant woke up he chased the thief around the circle when the thief would become the giant. The treasure - a giant bag of Haribo! One wee boy was caught 3 times on his journey round the circle, but decided to keep going to steal the treasure anyway. We sang "My God is so big, so strong and so mighty" with the actions: they followed the actions and tried to join in the song. There must have been more than 40 children there.

Pastors' Conference - it was a challenging session as Jim dealt with chapters 5 and 6 of Ephesians for the pastors to take away, in a culture where marriage is not as strong as it should be and adultery is a common thing. Women are mistreated and children are abused and have little value in families. Jim also had to explain why Jesus turned water into wine when Paul said we should not get drunk. Some of the other questions were about big issues and Jim had to try to answer them as fully as possible. "From your experience of travelling round the world, which country is the hardest for the gospel?" Sandra had several requests to have her photo taken with some of the pastors and at the end we had a large team photo taken. It has been a hugely demanding undertaking, but also hugely rewarding. These people have learned a lot during these 3 days, drinking in Jim's teaching because they have no other source, no-one else to teach them.

Tuesday - the work goes on!

Let's start with the painting; it was exhausting, but today there was music to paint to thanks to Eric's portable i-pod. Martin discovered that he likes the Eagles. 2 rooms were completed today, thanks to the fact that we had rollers as well as brushes. The paint is thin, easy to paint with, but it doesn't really cover the bricks very well. Martin stood on the trestle and was getting rained upon by sparks from the welder working on the roof; either that or he was painting so fast that "the sparks were flying!"

School on the Mat - the road into it was an adventure in itself, travelling at 5mph, with the van at a 45 degree angle at some stage. Today we were in Poipet itself. The teacher was presenting a lesson about water purification and then the children had to draw a picture of where their water came from; for some their water supply is rain water coming down a corrugated iron chute into a big clay pot. We did some singing: the "Hello" song and "Jesus love is very wonderful" but that was a bit difficult for them. The Bible story was Jesus and His friends and then in 4 teams we played a game with hoops, over their heads and under their legs. There was an action song in which the children were meant to copy us, but they started taking the lead, pretending to swing a hula hoop, jumping, stamping their feet and tickling.

Safe Haven School - we were with Chris and Alison again, and Martin worked with the older children and Jeanette and Karen went to the younger class. They remembered us from yesterday. In the older class, Chris was teaching them about energy in its different forms, then started to teach them to make windmills. The children were given the basic shape to fold and colour in, but Chris had forgotten the sticks; that's tomorrow's task. Martin tried out his one Khmer phrase - "what is your name?" Dan itch mohivay? That's how it sounds; it is written in an almost indecipherable script. We were energised and blown away by the children! Jeanette and Karen had a similar experience in the lower grade: the answers the children gave to the questions were brilliant, showing a level of understanding that is good to see. One little boy created a rocket shape with his ruler and it was so precisely drawn that we think he has a future as an engineer. Karen was standing a one point and one of the children brought her a chair! Around 3pm the two classes came together for their identity book lesson that started yesterday. The children had to pick 2 friends and say 2 nice things about each of them; the team had to join in - they picked each other. Just the same kind of thing that the Nursery School in Juniper Green has the children do.

The Pastors' conference - today was better than yesterday. 2 things were different: first of all, we introduced a question and answer session, so that the pastors could ask Jim questions, either about what he had been saying, or about anything else. Secondly, there was a measure of interactivity today as the pastors seemed to respond more openly to what Jim was saying. Fiona was Jim's sidekick for the day and she was amazed that the people are trying to pastor churches even though they don't know the Bible very well and are not all spiritually mature. So early in their spiritual journey, they are given responsibility as church leaders. It has been good to reaffirm what the Church is, that we are the people of God and are all the people of God together. We have affirmed so many basic things and hope to have these people take this message back to their churches. Some are pastors of more than one Church; some have other jobs; 5 of them pastor churches that have fewer than 10 people. This is an immensely important 3 days: all of these pastors say that they want to know the Bible better, but there are fe wopportunities or resources; they are valuing this more than we understand.

We are making connections. With the pastors, with the children, with the CHO staff, with other visitors to Poipet - we are making connections. Who knows where these connections will lead, if anywhere, but we get a sense that this is a trip of great value!

PS Happy wedding anniversary to John and Beverly, Rosanne's mum and dad.

Monday - the work begins!

It is working week! We've begun to get seriously involved in the daily work of CHO. Today, we have been doing a variety of things, so the blog is, even more than usual, a set of group stories.









School on the Mat - Yvonne, Karen, Fiona and Rosanne were in the clearing in the trees. We were told "what do you want to do? It's just you!" We started with an action song in which the children copied the actions and sang the song back with us, mainly the "Hello". Then we introduced ourselves and showed them Scotland on Yvonne's inflatable globe, together with some postcards of Edinburgh and a highland cow! One little boy was scared by the hairy cow, and they learned that thistles were jaggy. As they gathered round the globe Fiona showed them where they were and where we come from! Karen told the story of Jesus calming the storm as the teacher translated it for them. Then the parachute came out! We played at waves - spot the link! The children took to the parachute with enormous joy; it went down a treat - and up and down and up again! We had to stop when one little boy was being lifted and dropped by his friends in a dangerous way! We gave out smiley-faced stickers to say "well done"! The lesson finished with the teacher doing a piece on snake awareness. We went in the truck with the American group who were observing.









Safe Haven school - Eric, Sandra and Jeanette went to teach tower-building as part of a science lesson. We introduced ourselves; they were fascinated by Jeanette's Edinburgh t-shirt. Alison (a student from Edinburgh university) had 3 piles of drinking straws with the challenge to build a tower 1 metre high that could support a plastic bottle with a little water in it. There were only 2 rolls of sellotape and 2 small pairs of scissors amongst 40 children so there was plenty of to-ing and fro-ing. The towers rose higher and higher as did the excitement! They were given 15 minutes in which to complete the task in groups of 5. End result - some interesting shaped towers, some that could stand and some that fell down. The winning team was led by Jeanette but it was the kids who did the work; they were brilliant.









Safe Haven painting - most of the team spent the morning painting a bedroom in one of the new houses at Safe Haven. The white undercoat is now on and Tia says the second coat will be red. It was extremely hot and extremely sweaty but great fun! Fiona tried to climb the scaffolding but Tia's Health and Safety concern made her come down again. The singing of "How great thou art" was a substitute for the radio, a bit like singing in the shower and almost as moist. Lots more to be done tomorrow, 2 more bedrooms to go.









The pastors' conference occupied Jim and Martin all day. It was amazing to see so many pastors, some who had travelled 6 or 7 hours to get here. Jim and Mao formed a formidable double act, Jim's excellent teaching with Mao's excellent translation. They are working through Ephesians, equipping the pastors to take it to their churches. When Jim asked them to describe their churches, it became obvious that most of the churches are very young both time-wise and spiritually. When asked about their hopes for the future, most pastors replied that they wanted leaders who are better-equipped to handle God's word, which hopefully this conference will begin to help to address. It was encouraging to see such a great appetite for learning, a great fillip to CHO as it prepares to set up a Bible School in the next 2 years. We had sessions in which Jim covered Ephesians 1 and 2; the target is to get to the end of chapter 6 by the end of Wednesday. One highlight which everyone else missed was Jim sitting on the kitchen floor having a Cambodian lunch with some of the pastors and CHO leaders. There was also a power cut towards the end of the morning session: it lasted about an hour and the heat soared amazingly quickly; an early adjournment was called for!

If you want to see more photographs of today's business, go to facebook and the Juniper Green in Cambodia group.

Sunday - Church with a difference

Today was church day and the Juniper Green Singers (!) did their bit to enhance worship.

Church takes place in the upstairs room of the CHO office; there were lots of people there, arriving gradually from 8.30am as the local version of the praise band led some singing. When the service began, there were some Khmer songs, but we also had the bizarre experience of singing the same song in both Khmer and English - "Because He lives...".

There were members of the CHO staff, with their wives and children. We met Vuthy's wife, Tangear, and his 2 boys, Watana and Winjee; Mao with his wife Mahleng and his son Stepan (he has a younger son Jonathan who is 3 months old); then later Reatray and his wife Lucky, his boys Rechant and Sandy. They are all such lovely people.

We sang "The Lord's my Shepherd" as a choir. We managed without too much trouble; Rosanne and Fiona even added the descant. Vuthy remembered it from 2005 when it was the theme song of the previous group. Martin wore his kilt and got some funny looks from the locals.

"Pastor Jim" is Jim's new name. It is a title that carries respect with it. The sermon today was from 2 Corinthians 5:11-21 on the theme of "ambassadors for Christ"; it won't be repeated here, but some of the team should be able to give you a full description (at least Pastor Jim hopes so). Preaching in bare feet was a different experience - a tad soul-searching!!! If some of you think the sermons are long in Juniper Green, they are even longer with a translator; Mao is a star.

There was also an American group in Church, who are here for a few days looking at some issues of cultural tourism; some of them are based in Vietnam.

The pastors for the conference are also starting to arrive. Jim was crossing the hotel lobby when someone said "hello; someone on the street had told me that there are some Scottish people in the hotel working with CHO and I am here for the conference with Pastor Jim."

The rest of the day was spent relaxing: some of us were reading, some were writing, some were studying for exams, some were wandering the town markets Eric and Yvonne bought new watches), some were rebuilding a laptop and Jim was preparing for tomorrow.

Tomorrow the work begins; we're not all sure what that means yet; so watch this space!

We had a bit of a hiccup last night when the laptop crashed, but it has been restored to its basic settings; photos have been reinstalled and we are back on-line again today.