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| From carnival2010 |
It all started off a couple of weekends ago with the local school Carnival. The carnival is a great event for the school community where all the classroom students in their respective grades design games or events for Logos and community kids to play or participate in. Some of the games are as simple as a bean bag throw or a face painting station. Some other grades create games that involve sheriff stations and placing people in jail or games like ”Are you smarter than a 7th grader?”. At any rate, Dan Hein and I were BBQing hotdogs for the crowd – the REAL fan favorite! Ok maybe not, but we actually used a real North American bbq grill that someone brought into the country and borrowed to us for the event.
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| From Carnival2010 |
The bottom of the bbq is missing so all the drippings land on the propane tank. So noticing the front door of the bbq was broken, I placed that on top of the tank and protected the tank. Anyways we had a fun time with that event. The girls had fun playing and participating at the event. Julia’s grade 6ers made mango blended drinks, and Steph’s grade 8s had a wet sponge station. Les helped out putting tattoos on kids at the tattoo station. (You know, the great Canadian dollar store kind that don't exist out here!) The whole carnival was a great success!
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| From Carnival2010 |
At the carnival I actually had no voice and I could not talk. Do I hear an AMEN from the crowd! This has never happened to me before (although has been wished upon me numerous times I am sure). The day before I got some sort of frog in the throat and by the next day I had no voice at all. Les made me a sign tag to pin to the front of my shirt that said, “Sorry I have lost my voice and I can’t talk”. This tag really did help, however, there were many people who thought it was some sort of “silent game” at the carnival. When they realized that I was not joking – they were a bit more understanding and I appreciated not having to try to explain my situation. My real concern was that I was suppose to go to Bible camp in a couple of days and lead and speak at the first session for the camp. I had a couple of people pray for me the next day at church and my voice was restored later that day- although I didn’t really try to use it until I needed it. Praise God!
So on the Monday I was off for the week to the Cambodian Jungle for the High School Bible Camp along with 8 other teachers and all the high school students. We all travel about 5 hours north of Phnom Penh to a very rustic camp area.
At the camp we try to scare the students about the malaria, tigers, cobras and other poisonous snakes in the area but it is more to keep them close to the camp rather than any real danger. Everyone had a great time going through many of the challenging small and large group activities and also taking part in the learning sessions each morning and evening. This year’s camp theme was “Service and Sacrifice” and was based out of the Bible’s Mark 10:43-45.“But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of everyone else. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Mark 10:43-45 (New Living Translation)
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| From bible camp |
I think what I really liked about this year’s camp is the opportunity to place the above scripture into action by sending out a group of students and teachers each morning into some of the poorest areas of Cambodia. Each morning a group of students built 5 latrines and as a school we completed 15 latrines for families in the area. For many of the students this was an opportunity to serve and sacrifice for those less fortunate in a very real, practical and physically exhausting way. One of our Cambodian staff members, Mr. Sokcha, was amazed at how poor some families in Cambodia live and he estimated that these families live on approximately $100 USD annually. Yet even with such poverty, these families are so appreciative of our help that they offer to climb up their trees to give us fresh coconut milk from their trees. I really appreciated and needed the coconut milk myself because my water bottle had some bad water in it and I couldn’t drink all morning- so I was hot and very thirsty and very ready to drink what I could.
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| From bible camp |
A new thing that was added to the camp this year was a compass walk. This was a bit of an orienteering aspect to the scheduled activities at the camp. I really liked it but it meant going through some of the thinned out jungle area. The premise of the walk is to navigate to a number of key points and once locating the particular marker that has a certain picture on it, draw the picture on a sheet of paper before moving to the next point. The first team to complete the walk in the fastest time wins the event. It was great. There was one point in the walk when one of the markers was to be located in a bomb crater! After really thinking about that, there were many bomb craters around that area. As I was walking I was also thinking things like “I sure hope there are no landmines in the area” and thoughts like, “I sure don’t want me or anyone else to lose their legs today”. Not really valid positive thoughts, but it made for an interesting compass walk.
At the end of the camp and during our last teaching session, the staff challenged the students to live a life that serves others and to be a living sacrifice to the Lord. And more importantly, to do this service with a heart of Love, just as Christ loved us and sacrificed His life for us out of a heart of love.
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| Jim and Carrie come to visit |
I returned on Friday and the next day Jim Williams and his lovely new bride Carrie came to visit us for a few days on the last leg of their holidays. It was great to talk and have visitors with us – we really enjoyed their company. Wish they could have stayed longer but they were off to the Cambodian beach for a couple of days and then back to China. Les and I did have a chance to show the two of them around the new school. They were both surprised at the quality of the new school and called it an “Oasis in the Desert”. I thought that the comment seemed very appropriate for the setting. Well the visit was short and sweet and they took off on Thursday morning.
During this past week we have been preparing for the school fund raiser, “Jog-a-thon” that ran this past Friday. This is a chance for our school to raise funds to help get our playground in a bit better shape. However, the real immediate need is that our school does not have enough electricity and so we need to buy a transformer. (Something we did not anticipate). We have been told that the price is $40,000 and heading into the hot season with no power will be very difficult. The school raised $12,000 with most of the money coming from North American sources. This is a good help but we still need some help getting that transformer.
The jog-a-thon ran well and we had the older kids ran outside around the community while the young kids ran inside the school grounds. We ran the whole thing first thing in the morning before it gets too hot for everyone. As part of the fun we also agreed to give all the students in the school free hot dogs. Well for some reason I agreed to get the hotdog wieners at one of the expat type stores. What I really didn’t think about was the fact that, in my mind, I thought I was getting a few hotdog wieners like I did for the carnival (around 200), but in actuality, I was buying almost 700 wieners for the whole school! This enlightenment didn’t really hit me until I got to the closest thing we have to a grocery store and started to pile in all the wieners in a cart.
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| From Maya Running Hard at Jog-a-thon |
What made this whole idea challenging was that I had purchased them all and now realized that I had to somehow bring them back to the school (some 6 km away)- on my moto- through busy traffic! Well, I thought I was up for the challenge. (I have seen all sorts of Cambodians take absurd things on a moto, [3 large pigs, 50 live chickens, 6 people] so I thought I could do a few wieners.) After taking nearly 10 minutes to figure out how to pack these packages of wieners in every possible place; I had wieners under my motoseat, hanging off my mirrors, in my bag, pockets. However, I had most of them secured against my left leg piled in front of my lap. I was ready and I set off for Logos. Needless to say, I was getting some stares from some people. Some large white guy with a whole lot of bags piled everywhere is not a sight you see every day here.
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| From Grade winners for Jog-a-thon Race |
I got about 1 km away when I suddenly realized I forgot my Helmet. The idea of going back almost made me say I should forget about it and I could buy another helmet. However, if I continued on towards the school, the likelihood that I would get stopped by one of the many cops along the route made me quickly reconsider. So I slowly meandered back to my starting point. My helmet was on a guard’s side table waiting for me. The Cambodian guard chuckled at the sight of me with those wieners everywhere. He gave me my helmet and I quickly left the mocking area.
So off I tried again, I got about half way through all the hot busy traffic when I suddenly felt one of the bags resting on my left leg was slipping. I quickly went to the side of the road to try and pull up the bag. When I stopped, I looked down and noticed the bag upside down. I quickly grabbed the bag and noticed only one package of wieners in the grocery bag. I had a bad feeling as I notice the top of the grocery bag had ripped. I looked back into traffic to see if maybe I had lost some of the wieners and sure enough, saw two packages (20 wieners each) laying in the traffic. One package was already squished and wieners were everywhere. As I watched the other package still intact, I was trying to figure out how I could turn around to save them. As I was trying to maneuver the moto around against the raging traffic, a car ran over the package and wieners went everywhere. In the mad scramble and chaos, Cambodians were trying to go into traffic and pick up some of the squished wieners. I left the area in utter disappointment.
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| From Jog-a-thon2010 |
I drove slowly to school and was exhausted, hot, and disappointed. I got to the school and one of the Khmer teacher assistants, who saw all the stuff hanging from my moto, said “wow, you are as good as a Cambodian woman!” She was referring to my ability to get all that stuff packed on my moto. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I lost 2 packages- something a Cambodian woman would never have let happen.
Take care and I hope you are having as much fun as we are!
Dean
P.S. Just to let you all know I had a spill on my moto this past week too. While Dan and I were running around trying to figure out the route for the middle and high school jog-a-thon I ended up hitting a patch of soft road. Well with Dan Hein on the back of my moto, I took a tumble off the moto and onto the road. Don’t worry, Dan and the moto landed on me – so they were all safe. Thankfully we were not going very fast, so outside of some road rash and bruises I am OK. Dan had a bit of skin loss too but seemed OK. Actually, my pride was hurt more than anything else.
When we got back to the school one of the guards saw me all dusted up, bloody and with ripped pants and shirt. His eyes were big with questions and I tried to tell him I got hit by a cow on my moto. It seemed like a good answer at the time and certainly a better reason than hitting a depression of soft dirt. He seemed to really like my answer and his reaction was very accepting- like “getting hit by cows on motos” happens every day. I only let that answer stay for a moment and then I told him the truth- he looked at me with disappointment. Like I said, my pride hurt more than anything else. Sorry no pics of that. Below is a list of lots of different pics from the events I talked about.
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| Jog-a-thon2010 |
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| bible camp |
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| carnival2010 |
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| pieinface |
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| jogathon2010-our family pics |
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| Carnival2010-our pics |
2 comments:
Okay Dean - this wins the prize. I was howling out loud and desperately searching for pictures of the wiener fiasco - but no time for cameras, huh? Oh my goodness. Thanks for blogging that one!!
Yup, I wrote this one with a heart of humble pie. Good for the soul to have a bit of a wiener and a moto fall.
Good Week,
Good Week!
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