Dear Friends and Family,
A big “Thank You!” to all of you who made it a
‘Merry Christmas’ for almost 3000 orphan kids
and widows. See:
http://www.missionreports.com/gifts2004/
Many of you participated in donating funds, so
that each child and staff member in our orphan
homes received a Christmas gift. We allowed each
home to decide how they wanted to spend the bulk
of their Christmas gift money (as long as each
person received an individual gift). They came
up with some creative solutions. The majority of
the homes decided to purchase clothing, shoes
and other items for personal use, some set aside
small amounts of money for toys then used the
rest for something big like a TV set. One home
pooled all their extra funds to purchase a
breeding pair of hogs, and one home added the
money to an already existing account to buy a
truck to go to and from their vegetable farm.
Christmas is the biggest even of the year for
Cambodian Christians, they save for months for
the “Christmas Feast”, and it always includes
reenactment of the Nativity. They always amaze
me with their creativity. Did you ever wonder
how Joseph found out that Mary was pregnant?
Obviously one of our churches did. Their
solution? Mary had morning sickness. Hey! How do
you know it didn’t happen?? My favorite ‘spin’
is they way all the farm animals start dancing
around the cradle to the Cambodian beat of “Joy
to the World”. We did have a Merry Christmas!
More than 1000 showed up for service at the Chom
Chao Church (Phnom Penh) and most churches
reported a packed house. See:
http://www.missionreports.com/cambodia_christmas2004/
A Chinese blessing is, “May you live in
interesting times”. If true, I am truly blessed.
Last year, 2004 was our most fruitful to date,
with almost 500 churches added, yet at the same
time it was one of most difficult years. For
starters imagine 500 new pastors to train and no
money to do it? Then add, first a lack of
government, and then an excess of government,
always with an insatiable outstretched hand
looking for green paper with the pictures of
dead US presidents. We had our hopes of protein
self sufficiency dashed with ‘Bird Flu” (Back
again for the third time with seven new human
deaths in Vietnam.), built more than a new
church home per month, (We just cancelled a
dedication at Pailin, because we brought the
pastor to the hospital in Phnom Penh with a
suspected heart attack, turned out to be
pneumonia) and, to end the year, post tsunami
demand has led to a 25% increase in construction
material. Once more we managed to confound the
critics, and amaze ourselves, by surviving
another year. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind if 2005
were a little less eventful. Dull might be nice.
Sou, Hannah and I spent the day before Christmas
in Bangkok, taking Hannah for a physical
check-up, and got a great Christmas present with
a clean bill of health. To celebrate (so much
for my prophetic insight) I offered to take the
family to the beach for Christmas. Thank God!
Hannah insisted she wanted to be, “Home for
Christmas”. We returned to Cambodia on Christmas
Eve. The tsunami hit December 26th,
had they listened to me we may well have been
celebrating the New Year in heaven. The news of
the tsunami has dominated everyone’s mind for
almost a month. It is difficult to wrap your
comprehension around 220,000 people killed!
Then, perspective is everything, right? It
occurred to me that Cambodia experienced the
equivalent of almost 20 tsunamis under the Khmer
Rouge, and was largely ignored by the world.
What was it about the tsunami that so captured
us? The suddenness? The unpredictability? It is
gratifying to see the outpouring of help from
around the world. We had several foreign NGO
workers leave Cambodia for the stricken
countries, and a lot of prayer went heaven bound
as well. Our disasters are not as flamboyant,
but still deadly. There is something that shouts
of man’s insignificant power when you see such
devastation in an instant.
Slow death is not so dramatic. We’re in the
midst of a drought, many of our churches report
significant numbers of people leaving their
homes to try to find work in, Phnom Penh,
Vietnam or Thailand. Every morning I see new
beggars on my morning walk. They simply do not
have rice to last them until next harvest.
Fortunately, Providence led us to erect the rice
storage bin, and rice mill, before we even knew
of the drought. We were blessed with donors, and
‘just happened’ to build it in one of the few
areas of the country that had surplus rice
production. I received contributions for about ½
of the 400 tons that we can store (‘Thank You’,
to all who helped!) and scratched like a tomcat
on Ex Lax to buy the rest on credit. See (the
site also includes irrigation pictures, below):
http://www.missionreports.com/rice_mill_update/
It is a good thing, as the price of rice in
Phnom Penh is up to $500.00 per ton. Last year
at this time it was under $200. I paid $150 for
my raw rice from the farmers. It should mill out
at about 73-75%. The mill is being installed,
and should be operating by the next update. “El
Stupido” me! I expected to pay for the rice
with our usual year end donations, but I suspect
all of that money got washed away by tsunami,
thus I am in debt for about $30,000 worth of
rice, but very glad of it!
Nevertheless, we are blessed! A great amount of
help has come to us via Glad Tidings Church,
Yuba City, CA, and Gleanings for the Hungry. We
received a container of dried fruit and rice in
early January. See:
http://www.missionreports.com/feed_the_orphans2005/
And, that is just the beginning!
Glad Tidings was able to secure over 125 tons of
rice from California Rice Growers. May God bless
them richly! That should keep our orphan homes
in rice until the mill comes on line. A big
problem is the price of all food is higher.
Vegetables are double, meat is up by 50%, even
fish are expensive as the Mekong is the lowest I
have ever seen it at this time. We decided to do
what we can, so we are putting in irrigation
(pictured in rice mill site) on 20 hectares (44
acres) of our rice land, which will give us two
crops per year. We’ve already planted some
second crop on our irrigated land near Phnom
Penh. What’s added to our problems is that
orphans, who were taken by extended family, are
now being given up or abandoned, due to lack of
food. We opened seven new homes, they are not
full yet, but one has 35 kids in less than a
month. We need sponsors. Here is an example:
http://homes.warmblankets.org/pumprammoiy/index.cgi?theme=unsponsored
I welcomed in the New Year at the Emergency room
of the S.O.S Clinic in Phnom Penh. We had a
visiting team of 32 from Teen Missions
International Australia and New Zealand here
building a cafeteria and doing general repair at
our Church/Home in Phadoa Penh. See:
http://www.missionreports.com/Teen_Missions_2005/index.htm
Unfortunately, Ho Chi Min’s revenge hit most of
the team, putting them down with a combination
of amoebic dysentery and various and sundry
other intestinal maladies. Six of them were so
severely dehydrated
that they needed hospitalization. Our doctor
Lena, Nurse Ryan Taggart, Ma Sou, and Anna Blake
helped treat the rest of them on site. We lost
tract of the number of liters of IV fluids they
went through. Ma Sou’s mandate, “You sit down
and drink water until you pee, if you don’t pee
in fifteen minutes we put needle in your arm!”
got a lot of them re-hydrated. All survived!
They were great sports and did a wonderful job.
I “Forrest Gumped” my way, ever so slightly,
towards self sufficiency. We need tractors for
our rice land, which lead me to buying some
obsolete Case DC’s in the US (the only thing I
could afford, and simple to work on), which took
me to a web site with information on them. That
lead to a revelation that there is a need for
obsolete tractor parts in America which
motovated us to start a niche industry for
manufacturing small runs of old parts. It is a
way to put dozens of our unemployed youth and
older orphans to work and make some good money
for the homes. We sent our first 40 foot
container of fenders, PTO shields, and battery
covers to the US two weeks ago. And, we are
moving along completely rebuilding 6 Case
tractors. We’ve removed every bolt and bearing
in the machines, updating a couple with Mazda
diesels, and personally, I am having fun. The
staff don’t like my greasy clothes, and I have
to admit, I do spend too much time in the shop,
but I’ll get over it, just a bad case of “Farm
Withdrawal”.
We took a week off and went to Laos for an old
IVS (International Voluntary Services) reunion
of “old” Vietnam era volunteers.
We did have a lot of fun! The old USAID compound
is in tact, now the Prime Minister’s office. My
friend, Frank Manning, and I made it down to Ban
Thouie, where our friends Dennis Mummert and Art
Stillman were killed in an ambush, and found the
daughter of the family Dennis stayed with, her
parents are in Florida. We will contact them, as
they have been searching for news of Dennis for
35 years. Then we traveled to Paksane where we
found the neighbor of Dennis’s girlfriend
(Dennis told me he was going to marry her) and
the neighbor had her phone number in the States.
We will call. We saw all the old sites, drank
some Laolao, (Bad Missionary!) bought a jug for
the “Last Man’s (person’s) Club”, ate too much,
and really enjoyed ourselves, so much so, that
several are talking about doing it again, next
year. Who says, “You can’t go back” ?
Have a great month!
Ted, Sou and Hannah,
Cambodia
