Facts about Cambodia

I'm just making a quick stop here to share a link to a website. I read this article this evening while searching for information for my upcoming Geography 8 class, and I thought it was a rather accurate description of Cambodia, complete with pictures and videos. I think you'll enjoy it. :)

Note: The guy in the tuk-tuk with his feet up is actually being rather rude without realizing it - you're not supposed to point the soles of your feet at people...

Note #2: His toilet picture is most definitely not true of "most bathrooms." This is a little more like the real deal, though not usually as shiny and white in most public places.

> 21 Fascinating Facts about Cambodia <

Part of our local morning market

These days, teachers and students alike are counting down the days until Khmer New Year (a 2-week vacation). It's coming soon - only a week away!! We are very ready for a break from school. When it arrives, hopefully I can update again on things that are happening here.

Sending love from afar!

A New Beginning

Semester 2 is underway! We finished our midyear exams last week, and I think everyone is enjoying the fact that we are learning new things now instead of reviewing for and taking all of those end-of-semester tests and exams. I am, for sure. And now we're getting closer to the end of the school year! I find it hard to believe that we're this far along already.

Grade 10 at flag raising on Monday morning. Photo: Vanessa

I've had an unexpected challenge and blessing this week: One of our volunteers left and someone was needed to pick up her Bible 7 class. Since I am one of the few people this year who doesn't have a Bible class in the mornings, it was handed to me. I am thrilled because it is my class from last year, and I haven't been able to teach them at all this year. I always really enjoy spending time with them! But on the other hand, it is a big challenge because my schedule has already been rather full! It is exciting though, because I am finally able to have a bit more of a direct influence on their spiritual lives again. I'm looking forward to the things we can talk and learn about together.

This week we've been learning about the Waldenses. It's been a blessing for me, and I think the kids have been understanding the concepts well enough that it's made them think as well. I discovered this article by a good friend, which is full of really good lessons we can learn from the lives of the Waldenses. It is easily simplified, so we've been using it in our class! Today we talked about the missionary efforts of the Waldenses, and the kids drew pictures of the Waldenses going away from their mountain homes to share the Bible with the people down in the cities. I'll share a few of my favorites with you:

Sun

Nak

Seila

Mao

"The spirit of Christ is a missionary spirit. The very first impulse of the renewed heart is to bring others also to the Saviour. Such was the spirit of the Vaudois Christians. They felt that God required more of them than merely to preserve the truth in its purity in their own churches; that a solemn responsibility rested upon them to let their light shine forth to those who were in darkness" (The Great Controversy, page 70).

CAM Campmeeting 2015

Just a couple of weeks ago, we were swarmed with people on the WPY campus... for campmeeting! It was the first campmeeting that the Cambodia Adventist Mission (CAM) has had in several years, so everyone was very excited. The theme was "Footprints of Grace," and we heard many good seminars on this topic.

The Friday before campmeeting, we ended classes early (we got a week-long holiday!) and pulled all of our desks and chairs outside and put them all in just a few rooms. It was a lot of fun because all of the students in the school and the teachers got a chance to work and laugh together for an hour or so.

As with any normal campmeeting, there were seminars in the main tent several times a day. In the morning we had a "777" time of prayer, followed by "Family Worship" which was conducted by different schools and organizations on different mornings.

The mission president, Dean Jackson,
leading out in one of the small groups during prayer time.

After morning worship, we had a break, then the adults, youth, and children split up into different places for their separate meetings. I attended the youth meetings, which were quite good. We had several different speakers: the mission president, Dean Jackson; a Khmer church planter who is a friend of mine; Scott Griswold from ASAP Ministries; Tim Maddocks from our own school; and various others.

We had a break for lunch, then while the adults went back to more meetings, the youth did activities in the afternoon. On Monday afternoon, we took several truckloads of youth and went and did various types of outreach in Siem Reap city. It was great to see so many of our kids getting involved!

This group attempted to trade fruit
for the cigarettes of tuk-tuk drivers.
There were a few successes!

All about NEWSTART, in Khmer.

My rubbish-collection group.

On Tuesday afternoon, we headed out into the nearby villages and handed out Bible study guides and more of the health tracts. It was really neat to be able to visit people in their homes and see some of the surrounding places that I've never been to before.

Wednesday afternoon, the youth split up into different groups to play games here on campus. They played volleyball and football (aka soccer), but I opted to stay at home and work on upcoming exams and other school stuff...

On Thursday, the youth took a trip to a nearby mountain (actually just a speedbump, but it really is beautiful) that has a few nice waterfalls. I stayed at home again, since I've been once before and the way they'd be going this time possibly included charging foreigners an exorbitant amount just for visiting. But I saw many pictures and heard many stories. They had a great time together!

These young ladies work as primary school teachers in our school.

The last weekday, Friday, we took an excursion to the "Baray," a big reservoir near Angkor Wat. It's a great place to swim (except for the stories of crocodiles we've heard...)! The junior-teens also went, so there were quite a few trucks and kids. It was a happy way to finish our week! But we didn't just swim: Before we got in the water, we were required to pass out at least 2-3 health tracts to the sellers in the tourist-trap areas. The juniors group also spent time picking up rubbish in those places. 

Of course, every evening we had a meeting all together. We had a visiting speaker from Indonesia, who was quite energetic. The kids all told me that they enjoyed listening to him. (He tried very hard to learn some Khmer while he was here, and at his last meeting, he prayed in Khmer. They loved that!)

A few of our kids and some short-term volunteers
sang a special song during the evening meeting.

Sabbath was a high day, but the afternoon was more relaxed than the other days. In the youth meeting, we split up into small groups for the Sabbath School lesson, then listened to the testimony of the mission youth pastor during church time. 

In the afternoon, we met together with the juniors for Bible games. In the evening, we had a Sabbath closing time, then a fun talent show featuring all of the different Cambodian provinces represented there at campmeeting. Each one definitely had their own twist!

A few of our cute dorm girls.

At the end of the talent show,
Chhorvy and Tim did a cute skit to advertise our upcoming
1-month medical missionary training course.

One last event: All the youth stayed up rather late cooking potatoes and corn over bonfires, playing games, taking pictures, and spending time with each other before everyone packed up and left early on Sunday morning. Many memories were made together!

A Khmer tradition - powder fights!
(I didn't have pictures of the ones with charcoal on their faces...)

Cute grade-6-ers.

A few more of my little guys.

And thus, campmeeting ended. We're hoping that it will happen again next year - Cambodians are very sociable people, in general, and it is fun to see people from all over the country. I really enjoyed being able to see and meet most of the foreigner missionaries who are working in different places around Cambodia, and catch up with how their work is going. I hope we'll have a reoccurrence in 2016!

Photo credits: Facebook - Shannon Maddocks, Khut Ney, etc; and my Instagram feed.

Just three

Here's an assortment of mission stories that I've heard over the past couple of days, from three faithful young men on the frontlines. Be inspired! God is calling!

1. Travis Sharon
Location: SE Asia

2. John Holbrook
Location: Mindoro, Philippines

"Lord, give us souls!"

3. James Ervin II
Location: Dubai

Show Me Your Hands

Lord, when I am weary with toiling,
And burdensome seem Your commands,
If my load should lead to complaining,
Lord, show me Your hands—
Your nail-pierced hands, Your cross-torn hands,
My Savior, show me Your hands.

Christ, if ever my footsteps should falter,
And I be prepared for retreat,
If desert or thorn cause lamenting,
Lord, show me Your feet—
Your bleeding feet, Your nail-scarred feet,
My Jesus, show me Your feet.

O God, dare I show You
MY hands and MY feet.

—Brenton Thoburn Badley

I discovered this in a 1955 Australian missions magazine.

Khmer 101

At the market. (Photo credit: Ely S.)

I always wondered what it would be like to know another language. I figured it would be pretty awesome - you could have "secret" conversations with people and do all sorts of neat stuff. A year of Spanish taught me a bunch of things about how other people speak, but I still never felt like I could really hold a conversation with anyone in a second language. Learning another language for real was ever after on my bucket list!

At Adventist Frontier Mission's summer training last year, I spent a week finding out how to learn and become fluent in a second language. It was fascinating! I learned all sorts of things that have been valuable to me here as I try to learn how to understand the jibberish that people speak all around me. :)

It is quite an experience to plant yourself in the middle of people who speak a totally different language (and often very little or no English at all). It is humbling, to say the least; it is quite lonely at times; and it can be fascinating to learn little words here and there until you can start understanding at least the gist of what a conversation is about.

I have a long way to go before I can even hope to be mostly fluent in Khmer. But it's been neat to use the limited vocabulary I have to go to the market and speak with the sellers there, figuring out how to find things and get what I need. I learned important classroom words that often were of more effect with my 6th-graders than any English words would be. I got to visit with some little seller girls at Angkor Wat earlier this year, and that was definitely a brain-testing experience! (I wrote about the experience; you can read it here.) Listening to the Khmer church service and Sabbath School are also great language-learning opportunities, where I can try to look up Bible verses, sing songs, and figure out what the people are talking about.

With that, I will give you a short Khmer vocabulary lesson...

For starters, the French phonetics the Khmer use to spell out words in English are different than what we're normally used to. My student names are good examples of this (Sophall is So PALL; Thy is Tee; Punhah is Pbun YA; Chek is Jake; Pov is Pauw; etc). Everyone seems to have different English spellings for Khmer words. If you're trying to learn new words, spell them the way you think they sound! But of course, the best way to actually pronounce the words right is to know the Khmer spelling. That really adds a lot of understanding, as I've been discovering, while learning the consonants and vowels.

So, when I spell the following Khmer words for you, it's probably not going to be the same as someone else's spelling at all (and I'm exaggerating the spelling even more than how I normally do, so you can pronounce it better). But hopefully it'll give you the right idea!

Formal "hello/welcome" greeting - Jim reap sua (with your palms together in front of you).
How are you? - Sok sabay ot?
Thank you! - Akun!
You're welcome. - Min ay te.
Where did you come from? - Dtouw nek mo bi na? (or just "mo bi na?" for short; less proper)
I'm really scared. - Knyoum clayt (ay = eye) nah.

I like mangos. - Knyoum joljet svay.

What are you doing? - Dtouw nek twer avway?

Happy Sabbath! - Recreeay tngay borisot!

God bless you. - Som Preah pra tiempo dal nek.

Boa - color

Preah vihear - church (building)

Ba aym - sweet (tasting)

Loy - cool, awesome, neat!

Sa at - pretty, clean

Mut payek - friend

Ji moto - motorbike

La ah - good

Daik - sleep

Chngayn - delicious, yummy

Muay - one

Pbee - two

Pbai - three

Pbuen - four

Pbram - five

Pbram muay - six

Pbram pbee / pbram pbaul - seven

Pbram pbai - eight

Pbram buen - nine

Dopb - ten

Ma pbay - twenty

Sam sap - thirty

Sai sap - forty

Hau sap - fifty

Hok sap - sixty

Jet sap - seventy

Bet sap - eighty

Gau sap - ninety

Roy - one hundred

Boen - one thousand

I enjoyed spending time with the girls at Angkor Wat.
(Photo credit: Dan Serns)

Pathfinder leadership campout - a week of
re-culture-shock when I was surrounded by almost only Khmer.
(It helped me to understand more, though.)

Advent Calendar - Day 24

Well, ironically, I don't actually happen to have much interesting to share on Christmas Eve. But it was a lovely time that I did have! I know most of you are still just starting your day, but I've just finished mine.

We had our Christmas Eve program at the Riviera hotel in Siem Reap tonight. The kids did a lovely job singing and playing their songs. They were so cute, too! I'll have to share the video when that happens. :)

On our way home from the hotel, we got to see the Christmas lights on all the other hotels in that part of Siem Reap. The kids loved it, and it felt rather festive too. Fun!

This is probably the most un-Christmas-ey season I've had in my life, and yet it is so happy. I am so blessed to have my students around me. They outweigh any gift I could ever have. :) It's such a reward just to have their trust and friendship!

With that, I will finish this Advent Calendar. I hope you have a lovely Christmas and rest of the month, until New Year! May God bless you all!