Welcome to Our Home - Part One

We've been wanting to give you a tour of our home for a while, but were waiting until we were able to "rip-jahm" (organize) a bit more. But if we were to wait until everything was where we want it and neatly arranged, you'd probably never get to see it! So, just like I would say if you were here to take a tour in person, "Please excuse the mess!" and enjoy photos from House 0A, Street Tapun, Phnom Penh, Cambodia...

This is our first-floor living room, facing out to the street.

Here are Juliana and Kai playing in the living room (looking in from the front doors, with the dining room in the background)

A family meal around the dining room table

Our wonderful housekeeper, Ming (younger aunt) Nyaw, cooks a meal in the "outside kitchen" (which isn't really outside, but in a tiny room at the back of the house). It's separated from the "main" kitchen by a door (photo on right taken from that doorway facing in toward the front of the house.)

(Side note: the clear, glass cupboard on the right is where we keep our pantry/dry good items, and we call it the "ant cupboard." We don't keep ants in it - the name comes from the fact that this type of cupboard stands in "ant cups" which are filled with water or talc powder - which ants won't cross - to keep ants from getting into one's food supply. The ants here are a very determined bunch, and will get everywhere and anywhere if you're not careful!)

This shot is taken from the back of the "gonline da lan" (place to put a car), standing right outside the screen door from the main kitchen. It's big enough for 3 cars, we're told, but we mostly use it to park the EMM van; keep the trash and recycleables until they're thrown to the street for the trash men or given away to the recycle collectors, respectively; and to have visitors park their motorbikes inside.

Well, that's enough of a tour for this week, since we really do need to clean up a bit in some of the rooms. Also, the kids are napping in two of them! : )

But I thought I'd leave you with a photo from a recent outing to a Bubble Tea restaurant. Bubble teas are pretty popular in Asia, and usually consist of a milk-based, flavored tea with large, black, tapioca pearls in the bottom of the glass. I've never been one for things floating (or sinking!) in my beverages, but these are really tasty drinks. They're served with enormous straws through which one sucks the tea and tapioca pearls. Juliana especially likes these teas, and we've been to three different BT resaurants already! (The ones you see in the photo below are (L to R) honeydew, coffee, and almond.)

- Bethany

Muddy Roads, Pure Hearts

As many were rolling out of bed in Phnom Penh this past Saturday, I was rolling out of the capital in the EMM van. Destination? Kompong Cham, one of Cambodia’s rural provinces. I proudly drove the group of 11 university students and Sophal, the women’s dorm director to visit the family of Chairon, a third year student. What incredible young people I had the opportunity to travel with! The eleven hour round trip was filled with loud conversation, laughter, and the singing together of a wide selection of Christian worship songs. The purpose of the trip was to strengthen the relationship between Chairon’s family and EMM's dorm, to recruit potential dorm students, and to discern ways in which the current students can be praying for her family and her home village.


Highlights of the trip include:
--Having my first taste of fried tarantula. I am being truthful when I say the little bugger’s legs actually did taste good. Hungry, anyone?
--Driving for 2 hrs. on the worst road I have been on in my life. (Not an exaggeration). This road made PennDot’s workmanship look good. The rainy season had created a muddy, bumpy, puddle-filled semblance of a road. Thankfully we only had to stop once on this road because the spare tire which was located under the vehicle was dislodged from its home.
--Most of my interactions with the dorm students have been in the setting of a worship service or a brief conversation at one of the dorms. Therefore, I was grateful for the opportunity to have an extended period of time to relate with them in a context where they could “let their hair down.”
--Coming home to my lovely wife and two children was the closing highlight of the day. It’s rare that I spend the whole day away from them, so it was good to be back home.

Enjoy the pictures below,
Ryan





Chairon's Family's house with the EMM van parked in front.





The stundents enjoying the noon meal on a traditional Cambodian rice mat.

Posing for a picture before we departed. Chairon's family in back and university dorm students and I in front.

The Latest Edition

We realized recently that we're due for some updates on various situations and experiences we've written about recently. Sorry to keep you hanging on the household plumbing saga and the family's health! As far as the indoor flooding, we are back to being on dry land when it rains - the worker came while we were in Thailand and cleaned out the clog in the pipes. (Not to get into too many yucky details, plumbing here is generally pretty wimpy, and it's very typical to put used toilet tissue into a wastebasket in the bathroom instead of flushing it - sometimes the septic system can't handle it. We hadn't needed to do that at the other house we lived in, and were hoping not to have to here. Pray that our system - with a little TLC - will handle its load from now on!)

Photo above: Our new home (the AC unit you see is not ours - we use fans and sweat!)

And our family is healthy again, though it was a rough ride. The day that Ryan wrote about needing to take Kai to a doctor, we went to an international clinic (the doctor and nurse we saw were Khmer but spoke English) at 9 pm, concerned that Kai was dehydrating since he couldn't keep anything inside. He received good care and recovered in a few more days. So, after the sickness that started with Juliana, went to Kai, was passed to Daddy and then on to Mommy, we are all back to good health (PTL!).

Three-quarters of the recovered crew

Kai has some more milestones to report. He's been busy cutting more teeth - the total count is up to 6! He was not himself the weeks when two or three of the top four were trying to come through the gums almost all at the same time, but he's less cranky recently since they're almost all in now. His other big news is his new mobility! Our days of just sitting him on his play mat and knowing he'd stay there are over - he's very happy to scoot on his well-padded bottom to explore places that look interesting. We just had a "jee-ung" (worker) here this morning to talk about installing gates for the stairs, in hopes of avoiding a tumble down the concrete, non-carpeted steps!

Showing off his new teeth

Being mobile has interesting moments (getting stuck under a dining room chair being one of them!)

Oh, and he's learning to drive a tuk-tuk, too! (Sok, another tuk-tuk driver/friend, and Kai)

Thank you for praying for us and asking how we are when we forget to give updates. - Bethany