Good day after a great weekend - Jeff

Sorry I haven’t blogged in a bit, the last few days have been quite busy, so ill give you an update on what has been going on in the past 2 days

Yesterday we started off with church in the morning. Church in Cambodia is, I don’t want to say more powerful but maybe it was just the timing. There was a praise band that led the service; they almost had a mosh pit in front of the church. The Christians in that church were just so enthusiastic about being there and praising God that many of them would just dance when they heard that music playing and would sing their hearts outs. The service was all in Khmer, though there was a white guy preaching (he was fluent in Khmer) but they had headsets and a translator in the back of the church who would translate the service into English. This was really neat because they had a good mix of foreigners and native Cambodian people there. After the service though is when the real action happened =P Right after the service I was approached by two girls. One who was 15 (I don’t remember her name, sre…something) and the other was a 20 year old women named Candi. Now Candi who wasn’t unattractive, quite the opposite actually, anyways we started talking for a bit and all of a sudden she starts talking about marriage. Now I'm not quite sure but I think she was building to a proposal of some sort. Though I don’t think it would work out.
After church we went for lunch and then off to visit “Place of Rescue” the organization run by Marie Ens. When we got out there we were greeted by Marie’s two dogs Toby and Suzie. We got a tour of place of rescue. It has grown quite a bit since I was there last. There are 10 more residence buildings going up and a school as well. We walked along and I started to recognize many of the children. Many of which have grown about a foot since I saw them last. We were also able to see Lido, the boy whom our family sponsors at place of rescue. I remember last time we were there he was very tiny (even shorter then Sokna if my memory is correct) but now he’s grown up into quite a “strapping young man” as some would say. This weekend was probably the most fulfilling part of the trip for me. Being able to go to ARC and then Rescue. Those two places do such amazing things in a place full of horror and poverty.

Now today we started with breakfast and then we were back into the routine. When we got to Svay Pak we got right to it. It really is coming along; I’m surprised how well we have been doing. The kids started to come by after a while (I think most of them thought we weren’t coming back seeing as we haven’t been there for two days). Even the little bottle collector girl came by who of course I gave my empty bottle to and also gave her a couple pieces of candy. She was quite pleased, gave me a smile and ran off. We also had a couple of boys help us with the sweeping and cleaning which make my job a lot easier (I got to sit in front of the fan while the helped me out) which they found it like more of a game then work (I’m glad I could let them have some fun). We also brought out some toys for the kids to play with. They children had LOADS of fun when Tim gave them a soccer ball to play with. I also was able to hand out some Cambodian style hacky sacks which the kids thanked me and played with them for the rest of the day.
When we got back to the hotel I immediately crashed and had a good nap, until we met before dinner. Overall a great start to the week.

PS: I heard that many of you liked my post about “squishy” and I would like to tell you that I think I found his little brother today after coming back from dinner. There was a little rat (road kill of course) on the road by our hotel. I think I’m going to call him Gregory =D

God bless
Jeff