A Little Catching Up To Do!

Okay...... so..... sorry....... It has been awhile since we last blogged so we have some catching up to

First- As you may have read our anniversary was quite amazing! Thanks to all of you who wished us a happy anniversary! We cannot believe how fast the year has gone by! It makes us feel like our stay here in Cambodia is going to feel like a blink of an eye!

Second - Our classes are going great! Kristy and I both love our kids! Here are some picture of them doing there stuff!



I am excited to see that my troubles with coloring won't be passed on to our kids, because Kristy can teach them how to color inside the lines!



Thats the same face I give Kristy when she tried to teach me to color inside the lines!



Yep.... just a little bit more dude!
I don't know about you, but I have never seen a green wolf with a white head! What is Kristy teaching those kids?


None of my pictures of my kids will load for some reason, so I don't have any pictures of my kids to show you right now! BUT I will get some up as soon as possible! I promise!

Third - We had a break for a teachers' retreat last week in Koh Kong! (Kah Kong) It was really a blessing to really get to know the other teachers! Especially the Khmer teacher assistants! I have become fairly good friends with on of them name Paseth and we are always joking around! He is really funny! Okay... to be honest... we just we just pick on the girls! Here are some pictures of our trip!



On our trip we got to see Cambodia's version of mountains! They are quite beautiful! However, it did make us miss the mountains in Colorado! I actually went online and looked at some google images of the rocky mountains when we got there! SAD I KNOW!!!



This is the hotel we stayed at! It looks really nice, but by the end of the three days some of our staff got sick from mold! BUT IT WAS FUN!



We got to eat a couple times at a restaurant that was like a dock! The whole eating area was over the water! It was really neat!



This was the sunset from the restaurant! How B-E-A-utiful is that!



The Beach was amazing!



My friends Chris and Paseth and I saw a jellyfish! I have never ran out of water that quickly! It was so cool! Thats my khmer friend Paseth!



Kristy and our one of our friends, Taskeen, soakin up the shade! (If you didn't know... its hot in Cambodia!)



My friend Chris and I went exploring near the Thailand border and had a great time. We met some border patrolmen and struck up a conversation.



They ended up cutting a couple of coconuts from a tree for us and we drank fresh coconut juice! It was awesome!



Kristy and I at the Beach Resort! (This is not where we stayed! Just spent a few hours at the beach!) She is so BEAUTIFUL!


Fourth - For those of you who are wondering about my master's classes! I am doing great! 100% in both classes! I am learning a lot and staying quite busy! Kristy is amazing at home! She is sacrificing her time and energy to cook dinner every night and do the dishes while I am working in class assignments! God has truly blessed me with her! Please pray that she can continue to help me out, by letting me focus on assignments!

FInally! Just another crazy thing we see in Cambodia!



Alright! Thats about it for now! We hope you are enjoying our adventures! God is truly blessing us here in Cambodia and we cannot thank Him enough for it! I hope that all of you are being blessed with our stories! There is so much more going on than we can write and we can tell that God is doing a mighty work here! Please continue to pray for the Kingdom of Cambodia! That the people will hear God's gently whisper of love and turn to Him! Right now it is their Pchum Benh holiday, which is an day to honor the spirits! We are praying that the Holy Spirit will impact their life!

Lastly! We are curious as to who is visiting us in our blog! Please leave a comment if you come and read so we can say hi!

JOYS-

We love our jobs and our time with our students.
We get to fly to China to have Christmas with my sister Anne!
We are having little problems with contacting family members at home! It is always nice to see and talk to family!
God is protecting us in every way we can or cannot think of!
We finally got a care package from Ron and Robin! THANK YOU!!! M&M's are the GREATEST!

CONCERNS
Pray that God comforts us as we are beginning to really miss things from home!
Pray that God will solidify our finances and our worries!
Pray that Kristy and I can continue to look towards Him in everything

Year One Anniversary!

Hello All!

I know we just updated our blog yesterday with several crazy events, but we thought you would like to hear about the latest blessing God has given us! Our ONE YEAR ANNIVERSAY!



First and most importantly, we thank God for loving us and providing for our needs! One of those needs for Kristy and I was each other! God knew it and brought us together. So, amoungst all of our celebration the most important was giving thanks to God.

Our anniversary celebration actually started yesterday when I (Gideon) surprised Kristy with an unknown gift. Although it wasn't anything big, it was the thought that counted! Kristy was excited, because it took time to find things she had been wanting to get. I had been trying to find a gift for her for a couple of weeks, but had absolutely no idea where to go or what to get!

After this, we woke up at 12:00 am just to say HAPPY ANNIVERSAY! Kristy did not know that I had set the alarm, and was quite surprised. She then quickly went back to sleep! It was fairly anti-climatic! However, now really funny!

When we woke up, I made her coffee and we just laid in bed talking! It was amazing! Then we went to school to go swimming for a work out! This was not part of the celebration, but it sure was fun! We are both starting to get really good at swimming! Its the breathing part that we are bad at! For some reason we cannot breathe underwater and we keep trying! I'm impressed that there is still water in the pool!

After showers we headed out for church at a new location! We arrived at the WORLD VISION builing and was able to attend the ICA service. It was a lot more like services at home, so we felt familiar! We both liked it, except for when they asked for visitors to stand and be greeted! Kristy immeddiately told me that "She would let me do the talking!" I couldn't argue! (she is so sly with those kind of things. I say it comes from Robin!)

After church we went to a Pizza place that we both like and ate WAY more than we should have! IT WAS AWESOME! Then we went shopping and believe it or not, I found a ceramic coffee mug with the DENVER BRONCOS logo on it! I think I was almost in HEAVEN! Then I looked at the price and realized I was on Earth! $6.00 for a coffec cup was outrageous! Even if it was a Broncos one!

After shopping we went to La Bella, a salon and spa.We both got "Traditional Khmer Massages" and WOW! The lady that was giving Kristy a massage was a little bit ahead of mine, and sometime I was scared to do what was happening to Kristy! I did not know some of my limbs could bend in the direction they were bending. After a lot of stretching and popping, I figured we looked like Gumby! Overall, it was amazing! A few rough areas, but extremely relaxing! I feel like a rubber band now! After Kristy's massage, she got a pedicure and the girl the did it compared her bug bits to Kristy's freckles. (Or at least that is what we think she was saying! DARN language barrier!)

Afte the massages, we went to Dairy Queen in the Airport for dessert! It was delicious! I never thought DQ could taste sooooo good!

We finally arrived home, and just relaxed! We got to SKYPE with family and it was much needed! We are soon to be off to bed starting our second year of marriage!

PRAISES -

God has provided for every one of our needs and more!

Kristy has been able to put up with Gideon for a year and has already committed to at least 70 more. (WOOF- big relief for Gideon!)

We met a couple at church and the guy was from Kenya! He was encouraging and we hope to build a friendship with them.

Gideon is passing both his Masters course with 100%, even though it is tiring!

CONCERNS -

Give Gideon strength to continue work ethic in his masters courses.

Pray that God will work through both of us to bring our landlords to Christ.

Our families are comforted by the Lord as we are away!

Photos of our Siem Reap Trip

The very classy restaurant we ate at in Siem Reap. This is a huge platform swing that you lounge it to eat!


Bayon Temple Faces!


Mimicking the hindu gods that are depicted on the walls of Bayon Temple. In the picture order Christine, Kristy, Emily, Carol


Angkor Wat during the sunrise!



Some of the detailed stone work in the walls of Angkor Wat


Gideon standing in a what used to be a pool in Angkor Wat


Angkor Wat at Sunset


Getting our fish massage. These fish nibble the dead skin of your feet and leave them nice and smooth. Sometimes you can actually feel them biting. It didn't hurt but was not that pleasant either. $1 for 10 minutes!


Just one of the crazy things you see on the back of motos. Pigs getting ready for the market!

Our First Visitor

Hello Family and Friends,

This last week my college friend Carol who is teaching in Indonesia came to stay with us for the week. I picked her up on our moto from the airport. Even picking someone up from the airport is an experience when you have not done it before. I was expecting there to be a place to park motos but I could not find it once I got there, so I just parked in a parking spot. Carol arrived and we walked to the parking spot to find the moto missing. I had locked it up since there was not any security guard watching it. Carol spotted a place where there were other motos and of course there is our moto. They had to pick up the back tire and wheel it all the way there just on the front tire since I had locked it up. Well the Khmer fellow who didn't speak any English looked pretty upset. The only words I understood out of his 2 minute speech in Khmer was bi pohon which means 2000 so I handed him 2000 riel and they stared at us as we drove out of the parking lot.

We headed up to Siem Reap on Saturday morning with Carol and 12 other friends from our Logos community. It was a fast trip, but we learned alot about ancient Khmer culture and got to see very cool ancient temples. The hotel we stayed at was very nice. Logos teachers get a discount there because the owners son attends Logos. We went to Angkor Wat to watch the sunset on Saturday evening. We also woke up at 4:00 to see the sun rise at Angkor Wat. We visited a couple other temples on Sunday morning but went back to the hotel to eat our free buffet breakfast. We were starved after walking around all the temples. They have some very posch restaurants in Siem Reap. We took some pictures that we will post later. I knew that the religion here in Cambodia had a mix of Buddhism, Hinduism and Animism. After visiting the temples I can understand why their is that mix today. The temples were built for Hindu gods. People from India migrated into Cambodia and built these temples it wasn't until later that those same temples were used as Buddhists temples after Buddhism came into Cambodia.

We left Siem Reap at 2:30 and got home at 9. We had to teach all week so Carol explored the city by herself and with Christine a girl who went to Siem Reap with us and is in Phnom Penh for five months with Action International. One night Carol and I worked out with the Cambodian ladies who do line dancing and step aberoics on the side of the street. It was awesome. Its not really a work out if we just followed the instructors, but Carol and I took it up a step to make it a work out. Carol got some great video maybe i will get it from here and get to show it to you all!

There was one other exciting event this week. Well I got in my first moto accident........in our own drive way. Due to the rainy season we have a pond in our drive way. I, Kristy, was driving through the pond at 6 am to get to school with Gideon on the back. I started to loose control and before I knew it I was in the pond and the moto was on its side. Gideon was still standing. He picked the moto up off my leg and we turned around so we can change out of our soaked pants. Our sweet landlords rushed over because they heard the sound. Sotheare was carrying her fishing box full of first aid gear and doctored my knee up that wasn't bad at all. She left the medicine with me telling me I should apply it two more times. My knee had gotten a little scraped up from the rocks on the bottom of our driveway pond, but that is it. I just felt embarrassed mainly. Gideon's TA told me she has fallen lots of times on a moto and she's been driving one her whole life. That made me feel a little better, and I felt less embarrassed after she told me that. We are so blessed to have such caring landlords. Even today when we drove through the pond on our way back from school Onn was standing in his gate in anticipation hoping we would make it through. We made it through and he motioned to us with his open hand beating back on forth on his heart showing us that he was nervous as we drove.

Here are some prayer requests: This next Monday and Tuesday all of our teaching assistants will be attending some professional development meetings which means that we have our students all to ourselves with no help. Please pray for me, Kristy, as I am little nervous about how those two days will go. Sorphorn is such a great help, and I rely on her a lot. Please pray for extra patience with the kids, extra energy and extra wisdom. Please pray for our relationship to continue to build with our landlords. Pray for opportunities to share Jesus with them. The other day I asked Sopana their eldest son what he learned in school and he said, " I learned a song about the Bible it is called In the beginning." He began to share it with his mom Sotheare. Praise God that they are hearing the good news from their kids.

Other Praises: We are celebrating our year anniversary this Sunday!

We love you all and miss you! Please send us an email or post a comment on our blog to let us know you read or if there is anything we can pray for you about. We will add pictures later this week from our Siem Reap trip!

Blessings! Kristy and Gideon

Bad Pronunciation and an Encounter with the Cops

We've had some fun and interesting experiences these past couple of weeks. The first story involves my Pre-K3 students and my TA. Every friday we play "Starfall". It is a computer website that helps kids learn the phonetic sounds of the alphabet. We have one computer in our classroom so all the kids sit on the carpet next to my desk, we turn the computer and put the mouse and keyboard on the floor. Each kid gets a turn to pick the letter they would like to learn about. Well one of our students chose X. During the various activities there is a picture of a fox. They computer says the word fox and asks the students to repeat it. Well my TA repeated the word fox, but in the Khmer language there is no such letter sound as X. She pronounced it more like fok leaving out the s sound that we say at the end of an x. Well all of our 3 year olds begin to repeat the word fox just like my TA pronounced it. As you already know it sounded as if they were swearing in an English accent all at the same time over and over again. I giggled inside and let Ms. Sorphorn know the correct pronunciation! :)

The second story involves our moto. We were so proud of ourselves that we had been driving around on our moto for three weeks and still hadn't been pulled over. You see our friends that are also new to Phnom Penh bought a moto and the second day they owned it they were pulled over, and have been pulled over two or three more times since that. The police here are very corrupt. They pull people over and ask for bribes instead of writing them a ticket or who else knows what they are suppose to do when someone does something illegal. Well when they see foreigners on a moto they think we can get a lot of money out of them. They don't know anything about our laws and they are rich. We thought for a while that the cops just thought I was the foreigner and Gideon was a motodop drive, a moto taxi driver, due to the color of his skin. Well that wasn't the case with these two cops. We were downtown and the one cop steps in the middle of the rode and waves his bat to pull us to the side. We sit on the moto starring at the cop and all he does is wave us over to his friend standing on the sidewalk. We get off our moto, walk over to the other policeman and continue to stare because he isn't talking either. Finally Gideon says, What is the problem?. The policeman pulls out his rule book all written in Khmer with some pictures of a stop lights and says, You were coming south and you turned right and the light was red. We said ok, we didn't know that was illegal. He says I need to see your cambodian drivers license. Well we don't have one. Nobody really has a drivers license. They can not pull you over for not having a license but if they find out you don't have one you have to pay a fine of 3500 riel equal to 80 US cents. The policeman says well i have to take your moto down to the police station. Gideon said no we won't have a way to get back home. I guess they always threaten to take your moto but they never follow through with it. We were waiting for him to ask for money, but he never did. So fianlly Gideon says we will pay the fine and be on our way. He says how much will you pay? I said 2 dollars, because that is what we heard is a good amount to pay the cops. We always hear don't pay them more than two dollars. The cop says, no not enough you should pay 5 dollars, really it is 100 dollars for Americans but for you five dollars. We knew that we shouldn't pay him five dollars, but we were nervous and we just wanted to be done with cops. So we slipped him five dollars; he hid it in his pocket very fast and told us to be safe as we drove away.

I talked to my TA who is Khmer about our encounter with the cops and she got soooo mad. She said it makes me want to hit them when they are like that. She said it is legal to turn right on a red light. She said do not be scared of the cops when you know you did nothing wrong. Next time ask them why everyone else turns right on a red light and they do not get pulled over. And then tell them you have 1 dollar or 2 dollars and that is all you have. Hold it out so they can see it and say this is all I have if you want it you can take it and i'll be on my way. If you don't want it I will wait here with you. We have learned that you keep one or two dollars in a separate part of your wallet so that when you get it out they can see that is all the money you have. It makes me want to read their traffic laws so that I know what is legal and illegal but i'm not sure there is any translated into English. It is so ironic that they pull you over when nobody follows any kind of traffic laws here and the streets are chaos. I guess we will learn by experience what is legal and illegal. I would rather follow the rules so when I do get pulled over I know I was not in the wrong. Also they must give you a reason they pulled you over. If the cop pulls you over and either can't speak english or can't give you a reason why you were wrong you have no obligation to sit there. You can just smile and say have a good day and drive off.

I hope you enjoyed these few stories. I hope it gives you a better glimpse of our life in Phnom Penh. We continue to thank God for your support of our calling here. We are so blessed to know you are praying for us as we think of you all and miss you all very much!