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