Maya really is 6, Grand Opening, Signs and Guns

Well, I thought I would try and write today. It has been such a busy time that I have found it difficult to sit down a write a comment on the blog.

From logosgrandopening

First things first, Maya of course celebrated her 6th birthday on Saturday. The one comment I will say about that is -at around 4pm when I got back from work -I asked her what it felt like to be 6? She answered me very quickly and announced she was in fact, not yet 6! I was taken aback and asked her to qualify why she was not yet 6 on her birthday? She clearly stated that she had not yet had any birthday cake, therefore, she was not yet 6! Needless to say we had cake later on in the evening so she is safely 6 years old.

As you may have read earlier with Les, we had the Logos Grand Opening. I think it went well but I am glad it is finished. It took quite a fury to get everything looking good for that morning. You know, asking workers to take down their sleeping hammocks out of the gym, workers to hide their drying laundry off of the trees, and trying to hide all construction type messes and equipment. It worked well- we fooled em all! (2 hours later after everyone left it went back to a construction zone! Fixing aircons, grinding the cement in the gym, placing up metal shade covers recovered from the old school, getting the pool less green- you get the picture).

Actually the Grand Opening all went smoothly. I felt very honored, along with Dan Hein, to be part of and make the final cut on the Grand Opening Ribbon in front of the school. There are quite the emotions that run through me as I look at the new school building. I am so thankful to have been, and continue to be, part of the process and I feel very blessed to watch how God has used so many people and miracles to make this place a reality. Truly- I am so amazed.

From logosgrandopening

As much as there is a building for tomorrow's first day of classes, there are still many things to deal with. As we have been in the building for a short time we have noticed a few things that will need to be addressed. We are not sure we have enough power from the road at this point to run the whole school. We were unable to fill the pool with our water supply and we ran out of water 5 days in a row. (Thankfully we had about 12 water pumper trucks come in to fill the pool. Unfortunately the pool was still green for Grand Opening. However, each day the water is less green!) We paid to have the gravel road in front of the school repaired and flattened again from all the damage of the rainy season. We used it for the move and only about 3 days later, the municipality tore it up and started to place drainage pipes in the side of the road (Good). The bad part is they have left the job and the road for about 2 weeks and the road is impassible for our parents and cars to drop off their kids at the school (Bad). So we will pray that the road gets fixed again and we can have a reasonable way of getting kids to and from the property. As it stands now, most kids will walk about .5 km to get from a main road to the school gates. Doable, just nice and hot and not in the original plan!

One last comment I will leave you with today. Our school is a bit hard to find and so we have made some signs to place on the main roads to help point people in the right direction. We need to get permission from the local authorities and make the appropriate payments to place our sign on the road. We tried to get our one sign standing and cemented in by the side of the road on the Friday evening before Grand Opening. Well, Dan and I were called out to the location where one of the local authorities said we were unable to place our sign in the particular location we had been given previous permission. Part of his argument stands in that he wanted us to pay him $20/month to place our sign on HIS property. Anyways, we said we were going to stick with our plan to place the sign across the road away from his property so we would not need to pay him anything at all. He left at that point. We told our sign guy to start digging and not to stop for any reason and get the sign in before dark as it was already 5 pm. Well as it turns out, within 15 minutes of our leaving a gentleman came back (not sure if it was the same guy) with a number of military police and they all pointed machine guns at the sign-guy and told him to stop or they would "shoot him dead"! Needless to say, we did not get our sign in that night. So on Monday, that sign issue will be one of the many things that will have to be addressed and taken care of. Cambodia is never boring!

Blessings to you all,
Deano

PS Our internet is finally working again after a 2 week series of problems where everything cut in and out. I finally downloaded the Canadian Football Grey Cup Game onto my computer. I have just finished the 1st quarter of the game. It looks like a good one. Not much of a Grey Cup party- just me and an electric fan watching it on a laptop! Woo HOO! Can't really get many people around here to be excited about it. They haven't started living yet!

See all 72 pictures of Maya's birthday, Logos Grand Opening