tropical microbe world

Christmas Greetings from Cambodia

2011-12-24T03:44:00.001+07:00

Plastic Christmas trees with glittery ornaments have beenpopular in the shops of Phnom Penh this December, but the anticipation and bustlingpreparations are distinctly missing. For me, listening to Handel’s Messiah andreading the lectionary every morning with my housemates has helped bring some definition to Advent herein the tropics.

It is the harvest season in Cambodia, and the rice fieldshave turned that lovely gold that glows in the dusk as the wind brings theweary workers home. But, there is also a somberness this year since so manyfields were destroyed with the flooding. Thanks to donations from around theworld, the Methodist Mission in Cambodia was able to distribute relief packagesto more than 1000 families in November and this week again to nearly 800 morefamilies in the impacted regions. About 10% of the farmers in the communitieswhere we work have re-planted fields with dry-season rice, if they havesufficient access to water. There is a story from Mr. Thy on our CHAD blog about howchurch members in the village of Raksmei have shared their plots of land thatare suitable for dry-season farming to highly-impacted neighbors who otherwisewould have nothing this year.

The morning I sent funds to a new project group in KampongThom to purchase a water pump. Thank you to everyone who has contributedthrough Alternative Giving to support these projects this year. (There is stilltime to make a year-end donation!) While on a church visit last Sunday, Mr. Thygave me an update of another irrigation group that was started 2 years ago inSvay Rieng. We helped the group to dig a deep irrigation-well and purchase awater pump. At harvest, each family in the group puts 100kg of rice into asavings fund for each hector of irrigated land. After 2 years of saving theywere able to dig another irrigation well to expand the impact of their group inthe village.

As this is my fourth year working in Cambodia, the sustaining joy of it is the transformations I am privileged to witness as leaders in the church experience new ways to live out their calling. These last two years I've had the joy of working with Rev. Sok Nora in the Kampong Speu district. I've come a long way from the feelings of frustration on my first monitoring visit to his church. But just as I have learned patience and better communication skills, Rev. Nora has also been expanding his vision. Mr. Thy has captured this in a profile of Rev. Sok Nora on our blog.

I've received several emails asking about how we celebrate Christmas in Cambodia. Local Methodist churches here hold Christmasprograms throughout the month of December and even into January. It is a joyfultime to take a break from the harvest and also to visit each other. This year Ijoined Toul Kork church in Phnom Penh to drive 2 hours out to the Kiriromchurch in the mountains of Kampong Speu. There were games for the children, amodern-day Cambodia interpretive play of the Prodigal Son by the youth of ToulKork, songs by the men’s choir of Kirirom, a sermon from DistrictSuperintendent Hong Phally and the ever popular and delicious curry (both green& red varieties) with rice noodles. We finished off the day with fresh,organic bananas that had been harvested from the lay leader’s farm and thenhung from trees around the church so that children could grab one as they ranby; they reminded me of piñatas hung to tempt children with treats. The harvestwas indeed plentiful!

In the face of adversity and the terrible realities allaround us, I have found hope in the powerful witness of communities comingtogether. Together to re-plant the rice, to eat bananas and to rejoice in thecoming of the Christ Child -- the reminder that God is with us even here, evennow.

With joy and gratitude,

Katherine

NEW Office: House #152 St. 12BT, Phum SanSom Kosal 4, Boeung Tumpun 5, Khan Meanchey Phnom Penh, Cambodia

homesick for what

2011-11-03T22:07:00.001+07:00

Sometimes I get asked if I ever get homesick and usually my answer is no. But today I was reading an article (online) in the New York Times Home & Garden section about shopping for bathroom fixtures and it made me feel nostalgic for the summer when I helped to remodel the bathroom at my parent's house. I remember shopping with my mom to select the fixtures.

Life in Cambodia is quite good. I have running water almost all the time. It is room temperature, which is sometimes warm and sometimes cool, but I don't mind not being able to adjust the temp at the tap. Previously, we lost water pressure every morning, but now we've got a system for switching to the water tank during that period, so no problems there anymore. I even have a faucet fixture that I can push open and closed since I dislike turning faucets.

So what is it that I miss? Polished chrome. Construction is all low quality here. My faucet is often leaking and was rusted and unattractive within a few months of my land-lady installing it. It seems like a minor point, the water still does run after all, but I do miss those lovely shinny metal bathroom fixtures.

a typical day?

2011-10-22T11:33:00.001+07:00

I don't think there is such a thing as a typical day for anyone working in community development, but since I get the question a lot, I though I would start to periodically write about my day (or at least the interesting ones). Here is what I did on Wednesday October 19.

5:30 am - wake up in my apartment in Phnom Penh and check emails.

6:45 am - still a bit sleepy, I stumble downstairs and over to my neighbor's apartment where we have our morning "bible club." My neighbors include 2 other missionaries (from the USA and from India) who are professors at the Royal University of Phnom Penh and my best friend Heng (also our landlady). We are reading through Luke right now.

7:10 am - hoping that the water pressure is back (it often drops off between 6:30 and 7:30am), I head back upstairs to shower and eat breakfast.

8:00 am - I'm heading out for 3 days in the province (country-side), so I pack an overnight bag, charge my phone and my battery lamp (no electricity or running water where I am going). I dawdle over a few last emails as well.

9:30-10 am - I make my way through Phnom Penh traffic (it is crazy at any time of day) to go from my house near Watt Sansom Kosal to the GBGM office in Toul Kork. I stop at the Caltex gas station along the way to pick up coffee for me and Daneth. The gas station coffee is cheaper than at a posh cafe, but a bit more expensive than at a Khmer cafe ($1.40 versus $2.50 or $.50). I like it because they actually have an espresso machine and it tastes more like American coffee. Plus, I can get it with real milk and no sugar. The $.50 Khmer coffee with sweet milk can be a bit too strong.

10 am - at the office, Daneth loads our things into the office truck while I meet with Vannak to go over some administrative tasks on which I need her help. I've asked her to review and update our list of donor addresses and to check for redundancies. My email request to her wasn't quite clear so I give a quick tutorial in how I use Excel. We also touch base about the financial records she has been preparing.

10:30 am - Daneth and I are finally leaving the office. We negotiate the road construction at the intersection of Russian Blvd and Street 271 and are finally off in the direction of Kampong Speu.

11:45 am - arriving in Kampong Speu town, we pick up Rev. Sok Nora, who is the pastor representative on the Social Concerns Committee for this province and stop at a road-side Khmer cafe for lunch. They order Somla Mchu Yuen (sour soup with pineapple and fish) since it is my favorite soup to eat while we are on the road, plus Tom Yum soup and stir fried mushrooms with beef (and of course rice). The meal is less than $6.

12:30 - on the road again heading west towards the mountains of Kirirom. We get to the turn off about 1pm and then spend the next hour on the dirt road. Some of the rivers are swollen, so it is a good think that there is enough clearance on the truck. Sok Nora gets out at one point to check the water depth before we try to cross.

2pm - we arrive at the pastor's house where we meet church members who have gathered there. The pastor sends out word to gather community members who want to come and meet us. We tour the pastor's house, rice mill, new hand-tractor, etc.

We then have an introductory meeting with folks from the village. We listen to their experience working on other development projects and try to find out if they have any interest in working together on project with the local Methodist church. There is some interest, but we decide to proceed slowly because we don't want to create any competition between a project facilitated by the church and an existing rice bank in the neighboring village. No concrete decisions are made, but we have been able to meet and start to know each other. I think the pastor feels encouraged and supported to continue facilitating the community towards a cooperative project.

4pm - since the village chief is away at an event, after the meeting we just take a walk with the pastor out to see his farm land. He has a plot of land near the river with mango trees and where he has been growing diakon radish and other vegetables for market. I manage to collect thousands of sticky seeds on my pants and I think the red ants must find me particularly delicious, but I still enjoyed the walk. We learned quite a bit about the economic conditions of the village and also of the pastor (who is one of the more successful families in the village). We walked by the old church location and picked up a few young coconut from a low branch of a palm tree on the property. Back at the house we have a refreshing drink and then decided to go and visit the new church location.

5pm - I didn't realize quite how far away the new church is from the pastor's house. They informed me that we should take the truck rather than a moto because it takes 1-lt of petrol to go there and back. This signifies quite a distance, but I thought they were exaggerating. A bit after 5:30 when we are only about 2 kilometers from the new church, we come up to a temporary dirt-bridge across yet another section of river. However, this bridge is impassable because there is both an over-turned truck blocking part of it and a mini-van stuck in the mud blocking the other half. There is still space for a moto to get around, so traffic is moving, and the observers suggest that we should go down the embankment and ford the river. However, the 4-wheel drive is busted on the truck I was driving and the embankment on the other side is quite steep. A lorry comes by while we are debating and pulls the minivan out of the mud. However, it is starting to get dark, both options look risky and I don't trust the truck, so we decide to turn around and skip the visit to the church.

6:30pm - it is full dark by the time we get back to the pastor's house. Luckily for us, he is quite wealthy and even has a generator to provide some light for us. They have killed a chicken for our dinner. We eat a delicious sour soup with herbs, lemon grass, lime and of course fresh chicken and also a dish of what tastes like liver (or other similar chicken parts) and onions. Both are very tasty.

7pm - a neighborhood lady shows up, we smile at each other, and soon we are gathering in the central room of the pastor's house for vespers. We read Psalm 121, sing and pray, including a time of laying on hands and healing prayer for the neighborhood lady.

8pm - most others took a bath before dinner, but I like to bath right before I sleep, so I went off for my bath. They have a very nice indoor bathroom at the pastor's house. No running water, but a large room with an indoor cistern that fills from the rain water coming off the roof. Bathing involves using a small bucket to dip and pour water over myself. It is very refreshing after a long day on the road and nice to have lots of room to splash water everywhere.

9pm - when I come out, the pastor's wife is explaining to Rev. Sok Nora about her work as a Malaria Control Volunteer for the village for the last 2 years. We discuss many of the local misconceptions about the cause of malaria. Even among those being trained as Malaria Control Volunteers, the pastor's wife was one of the few people who actually knew before the training that malaria comes from mosquitoes rather than from bad spirits.

9:30pm - I retire for sleep since we plan to wake up at 5am (first light) the next morning to travel on to visit another church. The pastor and his wife have given up their room and are sleeping in the common area so that Daneth and I can have a private place to sleep. We even have a wooden bed (no mattress, just a woven mat) to elevate us up off the ground and of course a mosquito net!

A malaria control volunteer in Kirirom

2011-10-22T09:31:00.000+07:00

I just got back from a three day visit to a remote part of Kampong Speu province... actually one of the few "mountain" regions of the country. It was a lovely visit and the countryside is just gorgeous. This is the third month for us to be working with a new cluster of churches in this region. And so, on this visit I traveled out to actually meet with community members at their village - rather than just with church leaders at a central location for the cluster.

One of the joys of meeting people in their home place is finding out small ways that individuals are living out their Christian service to their community. As is true for church members in the US and around the world, people of faith in Cambodia are active in their communities and partnering with various local initiatives to improve lives. Many church members are very active in health care ministry, especially accompanying neighbors to the local clinic or farther afield to the provincial referral hospital. CHAD provides orientation to this kind of service through our Good Samaritan training program. But our training really just builds on what folks are already doing in their communities.

The first night of this trip I spent at the house of the pastor of the Kirirom church, and learned about an example of health outreach being done by the pastor's wife. His wife is the local malaria control volunteer. This region has particularly high incidence of malaria because many people get their livlihood from going into the forest (mostly to cut wood) and this is breeding ground for mosquitoes. Because it is cool and damp under the trees the malaria mosquitoes are also more active.

She has been trained by the government's Ministry of Health in partnership with USAID in a simple chemical-blood test for the malaria parasite and how to prescribe the correct dosage of medicine according to age, size, etc. for those who test positive. She showed us her records over the last 2 years and the growing awareness of people in her village about malaria indicated by the increased number of people who come for testing each month. The malaria medication is provided for free to those who test positive. She has also had some training in women's reproductive health and provides birth control and/or iron supplements to women in the village would like those options for about $0.25 per month. She receives an honorarium of $17 per month for this work.

Flooding in Cambodia

2011-10-18T18:32:00.000+07:00

Flood damage update. I've received several emails with questions and concerns about recent flood damage here in Cambodia. Thanks! I am fine, but there has been quite a bit of damage especially to many rice fields that were so close to being ready to harvest. Daneth Him just went up to visit Kampong Chhnang yesterday to assess the extent of damage to communities we work with there (the link is to her facebook page where she posted pictures). The flood levels have not been as high as during the typhoon in 2009, but the water has been very slow to recede, which is why the crop damage has been extensive.

The Social Concerns Committee (SCC) of the Methodist Church in Cambodia (MMC) has already distributed some funds for immediate food aid to about 1150 families in 55 villages (in 9 provinces) who have lost their harvest, but this is still just a drop in the bucket so to say. The water festival has been canceled by the government this year in order to use those funds also to provide relief. At the same time, I've heard that the flood levels in Thailand are even higher. I can't imagine.

Thanks for your concern. If you would like to make a donation to be used by the Social Concerns Committee, you can give online at http://secure.gbgm-umc.org/donations/advance/donate.cfm?id=3020542&code=3020542 through The Advance and 100% will be delivered here for use in this effort. Please add a note/memo that this is for "flood relief" so that we will know how to channel your funds.

Developing Local Leaders: Children's fellowship

2011-10-18T17:52:00.002+07:00

One of my joys is working with Rev. Hong Phally as a co-facilitator of the Mobilizing the Church bible study for churches in Kampong Speu. She is an amazing young pastor (just 4 years younger than me) and I have learned a lot from her. While traveling to churches I hear bits about the other successful ministry activities with children that she has helped organize, and I wanted to share a bit about that here.

At the time we started working together two years ago, Phally was the Assistant District Superintendent for Kampong Speu and the chair of the Children's Committee for the Methodist Mission (Church) in Cambodia (MMC). Her committee had an annual budget of $100, but the committed pastors on this committee used their own meager resources to meet together and travel periodically to facilitate a "Children's Fellowship" at various churches around the country. A children's fellowship is the Cambodian equivalent of Vacation Bible School (VBS); it is a one day event where children can sing songs, learn a bible story and do a craft project. There is usually also a hygiene outreach such as to wash hair, remove nits and cut fingernails. Many of the pastors and lay people in the Methodist Mission in Cambodia have never experienced a Children's Fellowship, so they have no idea how to organize one on their own. Therefore, it is critical for the Children's Committee to go around teaching and modeling how to nurture and support ministry with children. Phally has also worked quite a bit in conjunction with the Christian Education Committee as they train Sunday School teachers for local Cambodian congregations.

Through my conversations with Phally, she shared that there is potential for volunteers from the USA to complement the work being done by the Children's Committee. Churches in the USA have great experiences to share with churches here about how to provide activities that nurture and enrich the lives of children. Pre-event planning between the UMC church in the USA (or elsewhere) and the Children's Committee can identify a core bible story or theme to be used during the event. Pastors here in Cambodia who are trained in biblical story-telling can prepare one version of the story and the Volunteer Team from the partnership church can prepare another using pantomime or puppets, etc. according to their gifts. The Children's Committee can select appropriate songs (some of which the Volunteer Team may even know already or can learn ahead) and the Volunteer Team can prepare an appropriate craft activity (or activities) for the children. The volunteer team can fund ingredients for a lunch and/or snacks to be prepared by volunteers from the local Cambodian congregation.

The volunteer team can also bring high quality nit (lice egg) removal combs from the USA and other hygiene supplies such as soap, shampoo, nail clippers, etc. can be brought or sourced here in Cambodia that would allow for a hygiene component of the fellowship time.

The whole day-long event can be repeated at several different churches throughout Cambodia during a week-long visit from a Volunteer Team in the priority locations identified by the Children's Committee.

This year, Phally has been appointed as the District Superintendent for the 28 churches in Kampong Speu and has stepped down from her roll as chairperson of Children's Committee, although she will most likely continue as a committee member. Rev. Lun Sokom is the new chairperson for the Children's Committee. He has experience working with volunteer teams from the USA, Switzerland and elsewhere to organize fellowship events for youth such as district and national youth camps and rally's. I am hopeful that United Methodist Volunteer (UMVIM) teams will now have an opportunity to bring their gifts and skills to work through the Children's Committee to organize more Children's Fellowship opportunities.

Esther Gitabu is the GBGM missionary who coordinates UMVIM teams in Cambodia and has worked closely with Lun Sokom for many years, so I am sure that she will help to guide many exciting potentials like this.

I'm just on the sidelines on this, but I get excited when I hear about things like this from Phally and wanted to write a bit about it. I'm so excited by the ways that MMC leaders are stepping up. I think that when Volunteer Teams plan joint events with MMC Committees that it is a really amazing way to support leadership development here. It is not just enough to train leaders or assign them to a committee, the committee needs to be allocated real responsibility and there also need to be events for the committee leaders to coordinate to practice their skills. Planning a joint event is really a great way to accomplish these goals. I've observed it work really well for the Youth Committee and I am hopeful that it will be repeated for the Children's Committee.

Birthday reflections

2011-10-16T15:16:00.001+07:00

I'm not much of a birthday person, but one of the joys of being a missionary with the United Methodist Church is that my name is listed in the United Methodist Women's Prayer Calendar. Every year about this time I get emails and cards from amazing people who are passionate and committed to supporting the mission of our church around the world. It is very inspiring to me to know that so many people are praying for the ministry and in particular for their prayers for me at this time. I hope that others also have ways to know that, in their work for the Kingdom, they are supported by this great cloud of witness. I am grateful for the many birthday greetings and prayers that came to me through facebook, emails and cards.

Many people asked if I did anything special for my birthday. In one email I wrote, "I had a lovely birthday tea with my housemates and some friends which included tea sandwiches with whole wheat bread (a treat since we mostly eat rice and the most available bread is a kind of white baguette)." She wrote back,

"I had tears in my eyes as I read your email. We sometimes forget how blessed we are here in the comfort of the US. Having whole wheat bread is not a luxury for us as it is for you. I live about 5 minutes from 3 different grocery stores and can run out for a loaf of bread of my choice anytime. I'm afraid even those of us who are plugged into missions still don't realize what others live without in order to serve our Savior."

I was actually surprised when I read her reaction. It reminded me of how much I have adjusted to living outside of the USA. I don't actually think of myself as living without anything here in Cambodia, just living differently.

I wrote back, "I'm sure that you have to live without delicious sticky sweet mangoes or rambutan fruit except on special occasions too."

It is nice to be able to have a unique treat on a special day and it does happen to be that whole wheat bread is one of those things here. I eat brown rice to get my bran allocation and so I don't miss whole wheat bread that much. If I really did miss it, I'm still part of the privileged class in this very globalized world and I could get it in the same way that someone in the USA could eat mangoes every day (mostly likely frozen or dried ones) if you really wanted them. But I'm sure that most folks don't feel like you are living without because you don't get mangoes every don't. I eat less bread here because I believe in trying to live locally either California or Cambodia, and we don't grow wheat here.

The larger question posed here is not so much about access to certain foods, but about the choices we make in life. It true that the things we have in Cambodia are different (rice instead of wheat or potatoes), but more than that, life in general is different here. There are things that I have given up in order to have the opportunity to serve in this place, although I find it difficult to actually expose them in a blog post; I've had to spend time with a pastoral counselor to come to grips with some of the consequences of living outside my home culture. But part of that is just growing up and making choices. The sacrifices I have made are, again, perhaps different, but no more or less difficult than those made by others who do not cross salt-water to live out their calling. There are also many joys that I experience here that are more rare in the USA, and that is a real blessing.

I received another email recently asking about a typical day for me. In some ways, a typical day here is just a typical day for anyone who does church-based community development. Some days I go to the office and write or prepare lesson plans or do the financial accounting for our 7 person team. Other days I drive out to the rural churches to facilitate a workshop to help a congregation plan an outreach activity with their community or monitor and problem solve with ongoing projects and activities. What is unique about it is that I sometimes I do get stuck in the mud trying to get to a church and that meetings are more likely to happen under a mango tree rather than at a Starbucks, and I fumble through all of it in a foreign language. But despite these differences, the church is the church around the world and fundamentally more similar than different.
Passionate people of faith around the world are actively seeking to follow God's call and to engage in activities that help to realize the proclamation of Jesus that the Kingdom of God is at hand. I am lucky to be a bridge between people of faith in different parts of the world who are working in different ways, but always in partnership and as a part of God's mission.

When we leave our home environment and cross boundaries of nation and culture and language and religion, it is not that we bring God with us. Rather, we find God already at work in the place where we are. I feel very blessed that I have the opportunity to serve God through the church in a cross-cultural setting. It is incredible to witness to the ways the God is acting in this environment and to be working in partnership with those who are committed to announcing the Reign of God in this particular place and time.

Thank you again to everyone who sent greeting and prayers to recognize that I have been gifted with another turn around the sun.

Stuck in the mud

2011-10-09T07:57:00.002+07:00

I was really humbled about 2 weeks ago when I went to visit with a new cluster of churches in the hills near Kirirom (Kampong Speu province).

I got the truck stuck in the mud and it was the one where the 4 wheel drive is busted, so I couldn't get it out on my own. This was only my second time to meet with these folks so they didn't really know me yet nor I them, but they got straight to work pulling out hoes to try and dig out the stuck wheel and machete to cut branches to try and get some traction, all to no avail.

Finally someone went off by moto and came back with a winch which they tied to a small papaya tree and took turns cranking until they had pulled the truck out. I was humbled by the entire experience but not least because one of the most active men out there digging out the tires was an amputee who had lost his leg in the war.

This man is now the leader of the men's group at his nearby church and quite a charismatic guy. While I am still just getting to know him, I heard in his sharing during the workshop that he has faced a lot of difficulty and discrimination and depression. I spent more time chatting with his wife who is a new Christian believer. I can see that she has joined the church in large part because she is inspired by the transformation it has made for her husband. She told me about her job collecting lotus plants and bringing them to market (they live on an island), and how most of the burden of supporting the family falls to her because her husband can't work as hard as other men (which is likely true although he is by no means lazy and was very active with the truck rescue).

Being there and part of the two day workshop and fellowship was very inspiring to the wife. She asked for prayers to strengthen her new faith, which I took also to be about prayers for how she could continue to help her husband in his transformation towards the inspiration for life he has found through his faith and with his leadership roll in the church.

The main focus for the first day of the workshop was studying the story of the Good Samaritan and talking about the question of "who is my neighbor" and "how do we work together." Yet as the facilitator, I was humbled that the group members acted out the story as they rescued my truck even before we started the lesson.

The dialogue was rich. We told the story of the Good Samaritan many times in several ways. Participants talked about the challenges of supporting friends and neighbors with drug and alcohol problems and encouraged each other to continue in this work. One participant commented that as members of a minority religious group, Christians in Cambodia are also outsiders like the Samaritans were. Others were interested when in a modern re-enactment I asked the narrator to substitute Khmer for Jew and Vietnamese for Samaritan. One participant commented that they now knew that anyone, even a Vietnamese, can show compassion and help someone in need. And even I, with my fancy truck, was in need of help.

Droughts & floods, change & challenges in Cambodia

2011-10-08T23:13:00.000+07:00

I continue to be overwhelmed by the rapid pace of change in Cambodia. I missed driving my normal route to the office for a week and next thing I knew they had paved the road in front of the Cambodia Methodist Bible College (CMBS) - how did I miss this? I almost got stuck in a pile of dirt on my way to Srei Som Pong church two months ago and during my following monthly visit there were another 5km of blacktop - cutting down my travel time by about 15 minutes! Of course, it is rainy season now and I still managed to get the truck stuck 3 times last month, oh well - good thing for 4-wheel drive and helpful church members.

And there are new challenges. For example, power outages are more frequent in Phnom Penh as the load on the grid outpaces the ability to predict and ramp up delivery. Likewise, the less predictable global weather patterns were reflected in droughts last year; this year many farmers in the north (near Siem Reap and Kampong Thom) are facing difficulty from severe flooding. The pressures of migration and urbanization and the challenges this pose for the Cambodia Methodist Church were hot topics of discussion at Annual Conference last month. I feel swept up in the frantic pace and long for a moment to pause and reflect. Where is God in all of this?

Despite the stresses caused by the rapidly changing environment, there continue to be signs of hope that inspire me. Thirty-four new rice-banks were established in the first half of this year to address food security concerns brought on by the drought last year. In a move towards greater localization of the development initiatives, the Social Concerns Committee of 16 Cambodian pastors took the lead in this effort with major funding from UMCOR and back-up support from the CHAD program staff. Thank you to all the churches and individuals who also sent in support for rice-banks through Alternative Giving gifts last year to Advance #14916a. A second round is already being planned for this coming January that will include expansion of some of the existing rice-banks and establishment of new banks with groups who didn't quite get organized in time this year and those who have been impacted by the recent flooding.

I was inspired during a monitoring visit this year to one of the previously established rice-bank groups after their first full cycle of loaning and gathering back the rice. It was a big effort by the community to prepare the store-house and to keep records of the rice-loaned. I asked the group secretary how he felt and if he was willing to keep serving the group in this roll for the coming year. He replied honestly that during the days of distribution and collection he was really tired and he wanted to give up, but now with that behind him and as we were reflecting together on the whole experience he could see the benefit to his community. He was committed to continuing to volunteer his time for the next year so that his community could continue to improve their local food security. Stepping back from the day to day hustle to join with Annual Conference and reflecting with visitors who joined us from the USA and Europe this summer, I too am reminded that, in the connections and the working together, God is there. Thank you for your partnership and support in this ministry.

3rd Mission Conference Session of the Methodist Church in Cambodia

2011-09-07T07:37:00.002+07:00

August is "Annual Conference" season in Cambodia. In the Methodist tradition we gather all together once a year to share (report) on how it has been going, to think together about the future, to worship and praise together, and to recognize new leaders in the church through ordination.

This year I was honored to serve again as the recording secretary for English language during conference session and also to compile all of the reports for the Conference Journal. The bulk of the work for the Journal fell to the CHAD office staff, Vannak, who spent the entirety of August (including several weekends) translating reports. My work was really only a week or two of getting all the formatting adjusted, margins set, headers and footers and descriptors, etc. laid out for the 180 page book. It involved two all night sessions this year making last minute corrections and I still managed to not get the corrections to the BOOM report into the early edition printed for the pre-conference meetings. Daneth, another CHAD staff, was instrumental in helping me make it through these all-nighters (Daneth also helped with translation of some of the reports). She stayed up with me one night to help with Khmer language editing and she made important negotiations with the printer to give us as much editing time as possible. Daneth put in another late night translating one more report for the post-conference meeting yesterday.

I really appreicate these two young ladies for their commitment to this conference and the overtime they put in to give us this wonderful collection of reports to help folks share with each other about the way God is working through the church in Cambodia.

Evaluations with Methodist Church Finland and emergency response by churches in Cambodia

2011-05-19T13:39:00.001+07:00

Last week we had a wonderful visit from a delegation of the Finland Annual Conference (Swedish speaking) of United Methodist Church (aka Methodist Church Finland). It was a young volunteer from Finland, Pontus Fred, who seven years ago thought that we needed to have an agricultural development component of the ministry here and secured the original funding for a Rural Agricultural Development program from their mission board. The CHAD program has grown in those seven years, merging with the health ministries, formation of the Social Concerns Committee, taking on a larger community development and outreach role. The Methodist Church Finland has been a vital partner, and supportive in our goal to localize the development ministries as an authentic expression of the emerging church in Cambodia to reach out to its neighbors in life affirming ways. Therefore, it was a joy to have the delegation visit us for an evaluation. We looked at several successful projects, as well as those that have struggled and reflected together on the lessons learned during our partnership.

One of the churches we visited was in the village of Raksmey in Kampong Thom province. They have 4 successful projects running that include both church and communities members (3 are funded by CHAD, 1 is funded by World Vision). While on a monitoring visit last January, Mrs. Sophal and I were inspired by the initiative of this church. She and Mr. Thy returned to write a story about some of the ways this church is reaching out. Last year, UMCOR's Mellisa Crutchfield facilitated a workshop on emergency response for church leaders where she highlighted the importance of having a plan because it is really the folks on the ground who are the first respondors in any situation. One of the stories that came out of our visit to Raksmey is just that, when a cooking fire destroyed seven homes in a nearby village, it was due to the good stewardship of the rice bank committee at Raksmey and the faithful repayment of its members, that within a day, they were able to mobilize 500kg of rice plus a cash offering to bring to these distraught families. We talk a lot about the security a rice-bank provides to ensure food through the hungry season, but it also provides this other kind of security, allowing the community to respond to disaster in their midst.

There are several new stories on our blog http://chad-cambodia.blogspot.com including the one about Raksmey, a weaving group a Prey Cherteal and hopefully by then end of the week a story about a cancer survivor. Thank you for reading and for sharing in this outreach.

On a personal note, I am happy to report that my visit to the USA was a wonderful success. I joined the Cambodia Consultation for just one day, but was inspired by the stories and the dedication of so many to support this country. I was also able to successfully submit and defend my masters thesis on Bacterial Contamination of Drinking Water in Rural Ghana. I completed the research three years ago before I was called to Cambodia, but the concluding steps were put on the back burner as I engaged with my work here. I am so appreciative to my adviser Dr. Robert Metcalf and the faculty of the Biological Sciences Department at Cal State, Sacramento, that saw me through the process, encouraged me to continue and gave critical and helpful feedback.

peace,
Katherine

Surprise discovery during monitoring visit

2011-03-26T08:34:00.000+07:00

One of my responsibilities in the CHAD program is to monitor and support ongoing project groups. Sometimes these visits are a headache as we negotiate why the group acted in contradiction to the by-laws that they themselves wrote. Sometimes there are surprises and joy when a group moves beyond project limitations to use the resources to reach out and meet real needs in their community.

Last January when Mrs. Sophal and I stopped at the Raksmey church in Kampong Thom province to audit the records of the rice-bank, we didn't know what we would find. There are provisions in most of the by-laws, especially for rice-banks, to account for loss and other costs. Rain can creep in or rodents can get at a bag or a particular family just can't repay this year. Typically if the loss is less than 10% we assess the situation, but don't give them too a hard time. So we wanted to know what was going on when this group in Raksmey was down by 500kg. They hadn't had any loss for the previous two years and had an excellent track record of full repayment even with a community establish interest rate that is on the high end for this type project.

That is when we heard about the fire in a neighboring village that destroyed seven families homes. On a subsequent visit to the area, Mr. Thy and Mrs. Sophal interviewed the leader of the group, the story is on the CHAD blog

Rice-bank project groups are designed to help communities come together to cooperatively store rice so that the poorest in the community will not be at the mercy of seasonal price inflation even though as individuals they are unable to grow and store sufficient rice to meet their food needs for the entire year. If the recent disasters in Japan and Haiti and elsewhere have taught us anything, it is that we must rely on our neighbors in the imediate aftermath of a crisis.

This story demonstrates that rice-banks are also a way to build resilience within a community to be able to respond to disasters immediately and to help each other. I was inspired and I hope that you will also be.

A letter about ARI in Japan and the upcoming Cambodia Consultation Options

2011-03-18T16:11:00.000+07:00

My heart goes out, as I'm sure yours does, to the people of Japan and all those around the Pacific Rim that have been affected by the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis. I have been reading updates from friends and staff at the Asian Rural Institute (ARI) who are located just 130km from the nuclear plants. They have been reaching out with food and spiritual aid both to people in the immediate area effected by the quake and to evacuees who are showing up in their town. ARI is very close to my heart and has also been very supportive of the mission in Cambodia. One of our young staff members, Ms. Daneth, spent last year there as a participant and I am so inspired by her transformation and excitement to serve her people as well as the new skills she has developed since she has returned home.

ARI will be delaying the start of this training term, probably by a month, as we all watch the unfolding nuclear crisis and as they clean up all of the earthquake damage to the school and farm buildings. But ARI is committed to continue with its mission to build an environmentally healthy, just and peaceful world where every person can live to his or her fullest potential. Funds are needed to rebuild and continue this vital training program that provides connection and inspiration to rural leaders of all faith backgrounds from around the world. For those of you in the United Methodist connection, donations can be made through your local church or online using the code Advance #220450 specifically for ARI or Advance #3021317 for the overall earthquake relief. You can also donate through the American Friends of the Asian Rural Institute at http://friends-ari.org where there is also additional information about the disaster.

Life in Cambodia continues with inspiring glimmers of hopes in the midst of constant struggle. I finally posted a few reflections from last January on our blog http://chad-cambodi.blogspot.com, which I invite you to read including the story of what actually happened to that cow I mentioned on facebook. There is also an updated vision page that includes details about our recently completed five year strategic plan.

The California-Nevada Annual Conference of the UMC will be hosting a Consultation March 31-April 2 in San Jose, CA that is bringing together folks from all over the USA and Cambodia to celebrate the mission and consult on how we can strengthen our work together. I've heard that there are about 150 people already signed up to come. I will be there and there is still time to register and make plans to join together. I hope to see many of you there. I have also received several requests for "Alternative Giving" catalogs and I hope to have those finished in time for the Consultation with details of specific project that you can link in to.

I am not always good at capturing those glimmers of hope that sustain me into words to share with you, my friends & supporters, but they are there. Thank you for your prayers and notes of encouragement even when I fail to communicate regularly.

with hope and a peaceful heart,
Katherine

An open letter Aptos UMC about missionary life

2011-03-03T01:28:00.001+07:00

Anne,
Great timing on your email. Thanks! I've been thinking about writing an update for the last few weeks and feeling guilty about not getting the earlier email to you, but I just haven't quite sat down to put my reflections into words. I've been doing some annual planning this last week and I decided to set aside Tuesdays to attend a bible study in the morning and then to do some writing and reflection in the afternoon. I know it will be hard to commit to this schedule because it is very seductive to schedule meetings or field visits or just to catch up with various crisis paperwork (I probably only made it to bible study 50% of the time last year at best), but I am going to try to take this time and do better with my communications this year. Last Tuesday I was at the beach in Kep because I took 4 day get away with my friend who was visiting from New Zealand and then today my bible study group was canceled so I almost jumped right into working on some overdue financial records instead of taking time for reflection writing, but luckily your email came in, which kept me focused on my commitment to do this writing on Tuesdays! So, thank you so much. As folks say here, it was one of those God things.
peace and love,
Katherine

---
Dear friends at Aptos UMC,

It was a real pleasure to meet so many of you last fall when I had an opportunity to be in California. In December I returned to Cambodia and am so happy to be reconnecting with our Methodist churches here. As always, there is lots of activity among the churches here; these are just a few highlights of what is going on in my work and life right now.

There is a real celebration to be had for the increased empowerment of the Cambodian leadership of the church. In our CHAD program I was so happy to meet last week with the two clusters of churches in Kampong Speu where Rev. (Ms.) Hong Phally had been facilitating the "congregational development for social outreach" lessons while I was away (aka "mobilizing the church"). Last year Hong Phally had been acting as my translator when teaching and I'm excited to see her increased confidence in preparing and facilitating the lessons. She has taken on quite a bit of new responsibilities this year. In addition to pastoring her local congregation and working as the chair of the Children's Committee for the past two years, she was also selected to be the assistant District Superintendent. The Methodist Church is unique in Cambodia that more than 10% of the pastors are women (most churches have few to none), and particularly blessed to have young women like Hong Phally who are encouraged to take on major leadership roles. Please pray for her that she will be granted a visa to the USA when she goes for her interview on January 20 since we are hoping that she will be able to attend the Cambodia Consultation at Wesley UMC in San Jose March 31-April 2. I hope that many of you will be able to attend and to meet her and the other Cambodian delegates (I am also hoping to attend). (post script - Rev. Hong Phally was denied her visa, but two other women pastors, Rev. Than Heak and Rev. Ming Hongly were successful.)

My January and February schedule are filling up fast. My target geographic region has changed a little bit this year. Our new staff member Ms. Sophal will be taking over responsibility for the Kampong Thom region and so I will be traveling up there at the end of January to introduce her and collect our bi-annual project monitoring data. I have also been traveling for monitoring out to churches in my three target area Kampong Chhnang (where I will be working in partnership with Ms. Daneth who just returned from a year of study at the Asian Rural Institute in Japan), Kampong Speu and my new area in the Takeo district. We had a great meeting yesterday with the cow group at Trang Tre Yeung, Kampong Speu where I had been confused for the last year about exactly what had happened to their cows and calves. We sorted things out and I am excited to report that from the initial two cows purchased in December 2005 there have been 9 calves born. One of the benefits of a cow-bank is that it provides increased security for the group members. Chen Han was one of the first care-takers of a cow, and so after passing-on he benefited from keeping the second calf born in March 2008. When he faced some health problem in 2010 he was able to sell the calf in order to pay for his medical care. Of course we hope that families can experience the full benefit of a cow by rearing it until it is larger so as to gain maximum benefit and additional offspring, but I am also heartened when the cows can serve their purpose to provide security to the family that can be used in times of need such as this situation to pay for medical care. Unfortunately, one of the original cows in this group was kill in a car accident and her current calf was not able to survive the loss of its mother, but the other cows continue to produce and the group is working well together.

On January 6 and 7th we had a meeting of the Social Concerns Committee (SCC) where Rev. (Mr.) Pho Phala is the new chair (last year missionary Ken Cruz was the chairperson). This is another exciting area of increased Cambodian leadership. The Social Concerns Committee was awarded a grant from UMCOR this winter in order to respond to anticipated food insecurities in the coming year due to drought during the 2010 rice growing season. As I have been conversing with various congregations it is apparent that this is a real concern since there has been a decreased harvest this December, in some cases 50% of the previous year yield. This is due in large part because of the variability in the rain we had last year. Some rains came early but then they stopped and so many seedlings died before they could be transplanted and heavy rains came very late in the growing season when it is typically time for the grains to be ripening. As you know from my other writing and sharing, food insecurity is already a problem in Cambodia and many families are not normally able to produce enough rice to eat for the year so the end up borrowing rice at exorbitant rates (50%-100% interest).

The Social Concerns Committee plans to use the UMCOR grant for three purposes, one is to provide rice-aid to highly vulnerable families who face severe shortfalls this year, a second is to provide rice-seed to farmers that suffered significant loss the previous year and would benefit from access to improved varieties and the other is to start about 100 new rice-banks (at about one-ton each rather than our typical three-tons), which will double the amount of rice available through rice-banks for low-interest community loans in the communities where the Methodist Mission Cambodia is working. It is a big job for the pastors of the Social Concerns Committee to set up all of these and I have continued to meet with pastors in the districts where I am working to coach them and discuss the details of how we can quickly achieve this plan. One of the challenges to this kind of work is that the pastors will need to travel to visit communities in order to facilitate the planning meetings to initiate the new rice-banks. There are funds in the UMCOR grant to support travel to the initial meeting (about 100 meetings conducted by 18 different pastors over the next 3 months) and to transport rice to the effected areas, but I am worried that there will be insufficient funds left for the pastors to travel to visit the rice-banks for the 6 month and 1 year monitoring visits, so there is a need to raise additional travel funds to support the pastors of the SCC to monitor the new rice banks. The next SCC meeting will be on February 3rd.

Winter is a wonderful time to visit Cambodia and I've been so happy to meet many people. Rev. Pa Nou moved in downstairs. He is a Cambodian-American who is retiring to Cambodia and has been volunteering with the church to teach Old Testament to first and third year students at the Bible College and also with medical referrals through the CHAD program. His son is also visiting. A friend from when I was researching water quality in Ghana as well as my close friend from college both visited Cambodia. Amanda, a new year-long individual volunteer (UMVIM), arrived this week and many teams are scheduled for the upcoming year. In February we will have a visit from an UMVIM team initiating from the Louisiana Annual Conference that will work together with the churches in the Svay Rieng/Prey Veng district to host a free medical clinic in three rural villages. These events are a big endeavor for the visiting volunteers, the host churches and the CHAD program, but they can also provide a huge impact to the community with increased awareness of health options, proper diagnosis of ailments and connecting individuals to the available government services for follow-up care.

I was honored when Rev. Hong Phally invited me to preach at her church on December 26th, which was only the second time I have preached here and the first time for me to preach almost entirely in Khmer (Hong Phally helped me with specific words and a bit more at the end when I started getting tired, but I was pleased that the congregation seemed to understand me). I reflected on the preparations that Mary made to welcome the baby Jesus. There are many children in Cambodia (over 50% of the population is 20 years old or younger), and of course there are many preparations to be made in anticipation of a baby. Yet the Christmas story is so strange, I feel quite a bit of pity for Mary and Joseph and Jesus about the situation where they found themselves, and thinking about this story brings up the feelings of pity I have for the families I work with in Cambodia. Pity is a very strong cultural emotion in Cambodia and it is evoked in many conversations I have here. Reading the following poem by John Dunne got me thinking about this question of why I feel pity. I am inspired by Mary, who did not feel ashamed by her situation but rather rejoiced in her opportunity as she sings the Magnificat. She couldn't prepare a lot of "things" for the birth, but she prepared her heart and she was not ashamed by her situation to invite God into her place. We too can take inspiration from Mary to prepare our hearts, to not feel ashamed but to do what we can with who we are and what we have.

I have also started learning how to type in Khmer, which is quite fun. ខ្ញុំរៀនខ្មែ។

with gratitude for your prayers, support and concern for the mission of our church in Cambodia,
your sister in service for Christ,
Katherine

10-fold.org and B1 connect to Cambodia

2010-10-02T16:18:00.000+07:00

So much has been going on in Cambodia this year, but I just haven't been writing as much as I would like. You can read some stories from from Adam Jenkins, our summer intern from Virginia, CHAD Cambodian staff Him Daneth as she studies at the Asian Rural Institute in Japan as well as Ken Cruz and Leng Thy on our blog http://chad-cambodia.blogspot.com

Starting on Sunday October 10th will be the launch of 10-fold.org and exciting 10-day online event. It is a special day for me since it will mark the three year anniversary of my commissioning (and also my birthday), but more importantly this looks to be an amazing mobilization effort to share about work around the world and I encourage everyone to check it out and sign up for the email updates and come back for the live web-events. I taped an interview about water quality that will be part of the program on October 17th. You can check it out at http://www.10-fold.org.

The CHAD program was also chosen to be highlighted next year in B1. B1 is a 24-hour food fasting event for youth, which raises money to empower the poor and disempower unjust systems sustaining poverty in our world. B1 connects youth to the issues facing our impoverished sisters and brothers around the world, and the ways The United Methodist Church can help eradicate poverty through The Advance. Please check out the intro video and get involved.

Thank you for your continued support!
joyfully yours in service for Christ, Katherine

Economic justice in Cambodia

2010-05-08T16:25:00.000+07:00

At our Theology of Development training for pastors last week, I was overwhelmed when the pastors started connecting the concepts to small practical actions. It is so important for our pastors to have fellowship time, to study together and compare notes about what makes for effective ministry in Cambodia. Some great ideas came out about *how* to take a weekly rice offering for the poor, orphans & widows. When we talked about examples of unjust economic situations in Cambodia the pastors discussed how weddings can be a significant economic drain for poor families, yet people tend to give smaller gifts to poor families than to wealth ones (wedding gifts are always cash). Therefore, in living out our faith values on economic justice, we should strive to give an equal gift to everyone so as to reduce the hardship placed on poor families to host a wedding. It is a privilege to walk alongside as our young church is figuring out what it means live an authentic faith in *this* place.

I am also grateful to GBGM in New York for producing a Hallelujah Moment bulletin insert about us this week. This and more are posted at http://chad-cambodia.blogspot.com. Thanks for reading.

with joy,
Katherine

April Updates

2010-04-30T16:12:00.004+07:00

April was a relatively slow month.
On the first of April I met with my friend Lynn who has been working with Gui tribe in Kampong Thom and in particular with one of our pastors there. She was interested in some resources for community needs appraisal which I provided, but I got to learn more about the storytelling method that she and her husband are using and I'm excited to try and implement some of these ideas when I start revising our curriculum. And on Friday the 2nd we saw Daneth off at the airport as she left for a 9 month study program at the Asian Rural Institute in Japan. Friday and Saturday, I also spent in Kampong Spue continuing the LSCC workshops.

On Easter Sunday I was joined by visitors Mellisa and Karen at the international worship service and we had lunch with my housemate Heng. Monday was the final push to prepare for the UMCOR Emergency Response workshop, picking up supplies, translating documents, etc. Mellisa facilitated the workshop along with a trainer from World Vision Tuesday through Thursday.

I had a fight with the bank (which I sort of won) and met again with the auditor. Language lessons seemed to get canceled for most of February and March, so it was good to start meeting regularly with Chantouen again.

My housemate Heng invited me to her hometown for Khmer New Year, but I came down with something just before and spent the holiday resting at home. Daneth and Ady's father died and so Daneth came back from Japan to help the family put things in order and I went to join 2 of the ceremonies.

The third week also continued slowly with a variety of office work, dominated by catching up with correspondence and reports, a visit from our friend Beverly from Louisiana, sending various people to the hospital, and planning for more visitors coming in May and June. I updated my to do list and tried to tackle some of those things that keep getting pushed to the bottom and catch up with a 3 months of back-logged financial reports for 2010.

On Monday of the fourth week all of the GBGM missionaries and staff got together for a meeting and fellowship. I have really missed this, it seems like at least a year since we all got together. Tuesday and Wednesday I was back in Kampong Speu continuing the Theology of Development and Thursday was another LSCC workshop. And then the month was over.

March Updates

2010-03-29T15:40:00.000+07:00

March continued to be dominated by various workshops. The first week of the month is scheduled as office time, but I still sliped away for an LSCC workshop in Kampong Speu on Tuesday, but got back in time to meet with the auditor that evening. Wednesday I finally got the financial report off to Finland (although it still needs some work). I was also asked to take over coordination of an Emergency Response workshop that the Cabinet had requested UMCOR to provide. Thursday we had our monthly staff meeting.
Saturday the 6th, Sunday and Tuesday I continued LSCC workshops in Kampong Speu and Kampong Chhnang. Monday the 8th was International Women's Day and the office was closed, so I'm fairly certain I spent the whole day sleeping. I love facilitating workshops in the villages, but the driving is quite draining for me. Thursday through Saturday I attended a workshop on coaching, which has provided a really helpful framework for me in how to work to empower our SCC pastors and churches. I was really excited both by what I learned and with the people I got to meet. I also reconnected with some folks that I met last year in another training program on Wednesday and some of them joined the coaching training also.
I slipped out of the training on Thursday afternoon to attend the Cabinet meeting with the CHAD team where we presented some of the ideas from the Social Concerns Committee about how to organize the Emergency Health Care Funds. This needs some more follow-up including a formal written proposal. And Sunday I headed back up to Kampong Chhnang to continue LSCC workshop there.
During the third week I started preparing for the UMCOR Emergency Response workshop (budget prep, roster, etc.). I continued the Theology of Development training with pastors in Kampong Speu on Wednesday and Thursday and LSCC on Friday.
The last week I tried to block out a few days to keep working on my Thesis, but also met with two missionaries from Singapore. We talked about how the CHAD micro-enterprise projects are going and about potential funding for the women at Emmaus and about some of the challenges with the huge amount of staff support needed to run micro-finance within the church and how we could better partner on this. Finally on Sunday I went to Kampong Chhnang for an LSCC workshop and also had a farewell party for Daneth who left to study at ARI in Japan at the end of the month. We got involved with a mother whose daughter went to Malaysia to work and is having difficulty coming home.

February updates

2010-02-28T15:36:00.001+07:00

I am continuing to try and write a review of my activities each month; February started off at a gallop and never let up.
The first week in February we held a special 3 day Social Concerns Committee (SCC) meeting for a Health Training at the Hagar conference facilities. There was a long discussion on the importance of the church participating in relief work. The highlight for me was learning about some of the traditional Khmer methods of raising funds to meet an emergency disaster. In some regions, other NGOs had helped to mobilize community-wide multi-religious efforts using these methods. In other areas, churches themselves had adopted these methods. In a few of the districts they have established bereavement funds, either among the pastors or with churches. But for many of our churches they still feel outside of mainstream culture and they neither organize local church fundraisers to meet emergency needs or bereavement and they participate in wider community events to a very limited extent. On the third day we got down to setting some nitty gritty policies about how the funds from Advance # Emergency Health and Medical Welfare could be used. We also set policies about reimbursement rates for SCC members going out for project monitoring visits and received 1st trimester project proposals.
Friday, CHAD staff continued the discussion about how to proceed with the MOU with various government ministries, and then I had a meeting with my friend Joyce about a curriculum she has developed about spiritual gifts and using Nehemiaha as a model for community development. These have been very helpful and I've been incorporating her ideas in with our Mobilizing the Church curriculum.
It was then out to the village. On Saturday, Monday and Tuesday I started the formation of Local Social Concerns Committees (LSCC) through the use of the Mobilizing the Church curriculum with seven churches at 3 locations in Kampong Speu. Sunday I was up in Kampong Chhnang continuing the same. I headed back down to Takeo (next to where I had been in Kampong Spue on Tuesday) for a wedding of one young woman staff members on Thursday.
We had a large number of visitors come through in February, starting on Wednesday with my dear friend Juanita from Aldersgate UMC, Alexandria, Virginia and her husband Steve, followed soon after by another member of the church, Dave. I spent a few days catching up on emails and trying to make some headway on our financial reports.
Since it is the dry season, farmers are a bit more free to meet, so I continued to pack in as many workshops as possible. Tuesday through Thursday was spent in Kampong Speu with one day of LSCC workshops and two days teaching a continuing education class on Theology of Development with most of the pastors in the district. Juanita gave some very helpful feedback about the workshops and a framework for improving our lessons.
The Bishop from my home conference, Bishop Brown of Cal-Nevada, led an evaluation team to look at possible ways to improve our partnership and the first visitor, Steven, arrived Friday. We had dinner together with the Virginia folks. I tried to spend a little bit of time every evening one on one with the different visitors over the next week, but mostly with my dad who was also here as part of the team. My calendar indicates that I was still trying to work on financial reports and the reports from the SCC meeting, but as these items are still not satisfactorily completed, it is all a bit of a blur. Wednesday I took the Cal-Nevada and Virginia team of visitors out to visit two churches in Kampong Speu. We did project monitoring visits at 2 churches and heard a variety of stories. My dad and everyone departed on the 28th. It was a short month, but plenty of activity.

Reflections on January 2010

2010-01-29T18:16:00.006+07:00

According to my Grandfather Wendell, one of the Methodist traditions for pastors is to keep a weekly journal. I think John Wesley kept a very detailed daily journal, which prompted this tradition. I keep a day planner with my notes for meetings and notes from meetings, workshops, etc., but I haven’t had the discipline of sitting down and reflecting from time to time about what has been accomplished. Actually, I don’t do a very good job of writing up reports from my field visits either. I just trust that I get enough down in my diary that I can later remember. But I’m trying to do better. As a trial, I am reporting on this month’s activities here on my blog.

So, January. I've moved into a new shared housing arrangement with my friend Heng, a professional Khmer woman who is about my age. This has been a lot of work, since we had to make a lot of improvements to make the house more livable. A contractor came in to install three new sinks (How can you build a bathroom without a sink?) and a better shower, etc., as well as mosquito nets for the windows. The nets couldn ’t be installed right away so there were two miserable weeks where I would coat myself in bug spray. It was also a bit disturbing because birds kept flying into the house. A mouse also came in. All of that has been fixed now and the house is much more comfortable. One of the missionary families here has moved on to another country of service, and I inherited some things from them, including a refrigerator, washing machine and some rattan furniture. I still need to hook up the washing machine and get new cushions made for the chairs. We are waiting for the power company to come and improve our power supply so that we can run these appliances. I am also still borrowing a gas burner from my cook Sochiet, and I need to make arrangements to get one for myself. I’m not great at managing my own house, but I am making do and I’m glad to have a friend living in the apartment downstairs. I don’t feel quite so alone.

In January, I also started working on all of our reports during the first week, especially preparing our financial records for an audit. Unfortunately, I haven't been working fast enough, since here it is the end of the month and the reports are still not done. I also edited a draft of CHAD's new memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Agriculture. My biggest accomplishment for the first week was the preparation of a yearbook for the Social Concerns Committee for the Khmer Methodists. The yearbook includes copies of all the previous minutes, as well as guidelines and forms for starting new projects and monitoring existing ones. It has been great to get all of these documents compiled and assembled into a single book.

Things really started to pick up in the second week. I met with the pastors' coordinating committee in Kampong Speu. We discussed a plan for how I would work with pastors in this district, at least for the first quarter, but hopefully this will lay the groundwork for the rest of this year. We agreed to study the "Theology of Development" curriculum together and that I would facilitate the "Mobilizing the Church" curriculum at three locations for six churches, with the intention of forming local Social Concerns Committees in these locations.

The national Social Concerns Committee meeting occurred over two days. We reviewed 2009 and made a plan for 2010. I am very happy that we have some specific training goals in place and I hope that the members will get more involved in project monitoring this year. The second day, my colleague Mr. Thy also provided a lesson on record keeping for savings and credit groups.

In the middle of the second week of the month, we started receiving news about Haiti and our friends there. This was a difficult emotional roller coaster with no news and then good news and then bad news. While I am overjoyed that Jim Gulley , my friend and mentor and adviser to CHAD, was rescued from the rubble, the joy is dampened by the loss of two wonderful colleagues with whom Jim was trapped for 55 hours, ClintRabb and Sam Dixon, and the enormous damage and loss throughout Haiti.

I traveled on two successive January weekends up to Kampong Chhnang to visit with two churches there, twice each: Solong Kandal and Methodist Amen. The goal was to continue the Bible study on "Mobilizing the Church." We also joined together in prayers for Haiti. Solong Kandal has taken up a small offering, which we will send on to Haiti. The second weekend, we thought we would be joined by a small volunteer team from the United States. In the end, the US team couldn’t join us, but we still had a really productive time together. At both churches, we talked in part about the importance of small group study. Despite every one's busy schedules, many of the church members committed to try and get together during the week for just a half hour or hour to re-read the scripture from the previous Sunday and pray together. At Methodist Amen, the youth also organized a hygiene outreach to treat the hair of local children for lice. The highlight for me of the visit, though, was eating curry with the members of Solong Kandal. Yum yum!

Prayers for Haiti dominated my third week of January, but we also set aside time to make the annual plan for CHAD. Vannak is working on making wall calendars for us with the plan highlights for each month, so we can stay focused and keep each other up to date with our various travel plans. Wednesday, I had dinner with a visiting team from Switzerland (and a few French folks, too). Thursday, I had lunch with an UMVIM team from Virginia and Western Pennsylvania.

On Monday and Tuesday of the fourth week, Mr. Thy and I started the "Theology of Development" training with the pastors in Kampong Speu. I should perhaps write a whole entry just about the new insights I learned about Khmer culture through this study with them. We covered two lessons: "Biblical Worldview" and "The Extravagant Love of God." The pastors engaged quickly and we spent the second afternoon on the very challenging task of critically applying the lessons to our own lives and work.

Along the same lines of making our annual plan, on Wednesday I had another meeting about how to better coordinate between some of the work that various missionaries do, especially with the women’s program. I had another meeting on Thursday, looking towards the future of CHAD in 2011 and beyond.

Which bring us to today. I’m still hoping to finish the financial report this weekend, so I can submit it on Monday and clean up, organize, and file the oh-so-many papers and notes. I met with and need to document the visits of several folks coming toPhnom Penh for medical care, including one lady from Kampong Chhnang, two man from Kampong Speu, and one lady from outer Phnom Penh. I also received a few updates about repayment of loans into rice banks. there are some challenges with delayed repayments of small business loans, as well as a query about how to reinvest profits from a water filter project into a new project for the district. I’m also working currently to help Daneth get ready to go from Cambodia to Japan in April for a year of leadership training at the Asian Rural Institute. I am also trying to help Daneth to improve her story telling, but we could use another editor. If you are motivated, I am seeking a volunteer that could work with Daneth to edit the "stories of transformation" that she has written about her work with the women's livelihood development projects.

This fall I will be back in the United States to visit churches. I’m starting to contact folks and block out dates for when I will be in which states. (Probably, no visit to California this time, though.) I was excited to receive a note that another church, First United Methodist of Sunnyvale has agreed to start a covenant relationship with me.

My language lessons continue, as often as they can (16 lessons this month). I am really proud of my progress. I can now actually carry on a decent conversation with my tutor, and I can facilitate some of the "Mobilizing the Church" Bible studies by myself in Khmer. I often, though, still need Daneth to translate Khmer to English (or at least Khmer to simple Khmer), because I can’t understand much of what folks in the villages say. When I stopped by the Bible school yesterday, every one of my pastor friends that I passed by made a comment about my improvements. It was good motivation. Last night, my friend Heng gave a very moving testimonial about why she became a Christian. I was glad to be there to support her.

It has been a great month!

Cambodia updates

2010-01-17T16:27:00.000+07:00

My prayers continue to go out to the people of Haiti and the tremendous loss, especially the family of my co-worker Sam Dixon and to Clint Rabb, who was still in critical condition in Florida last I heard. I am glad to be part of a church family that has been and will continue to be actively involved together with our members in Haiti for the improvement of the country. http://www.umc.org/haiti for updates.

On the other side of the world, 2010 has started off at a sprint. The annual report is not yet done for 2009, but the planning meeting with the Social Concerns Committee was great and I've already got the first quarter of workshops scheduled in Kampong Speu with 6 churches and the district pastors' group in addition to ongoing work in Kampong Chhnang and some tentative plans in Kampong Thom. We're also getting ready to host our first volunteer team on Wednesday. I'm really excited! You can be too with a donation.

This month is Human Trafficking Awareness Month, or so I've been told. My awareness has been heightened as to the real and present danger for young Khmer women and so I wrote about some recent experiences. Thanks for reading.

I'm actually just getting back from spending the day up in Kampong Chhnang at Solang Kandal Church. We shared a bible study on leadership looking at Deborah, Esther and Ruth and made plans for a workshop the following weekend. The church members decided to hire one of the poorest women in the community to make snacks for the morning break. Of course I knew that this was the mother of the young girl who had heart surgery last summer. The church members went off in search of her so that I could meet her again. It was the real highlight of the weekend. She was smiling, her face was filled out and her color was good. Her mother reported that the
January checkup was good. She was looking more cheerful and healthy than I had ever seen her. What joy!

with renewed hope,
Katherine

Human trafficking and a women's hostel in Phnom Penh

2010-01-15T18:31:00.015+07:00

My cousin Wes sent me this article on Human Trafficking and it got me thinking about recent experiences that I have had.

I love going to the Tropical Oasis Spa down by the Toul Tem Pong market. It certainly is not as upscale as some others, but I like to support the young women who are studying there. It is part of an NGO run by friends of mine that works with at-risk girls and those who have escaped from trafficking. There is a great cafe downstairs and I often run into other friends from around town.

The Methodist Mission in Cambodia has a similar training program in beauty, cooking and sewing skills for at-risk young women. It is called Emmaus. Last year, we held a two-day meeting of the Social Concerns Committee (SCC) at the center to expose more of the Cambodian pastors to the program so they know about the opportunity as an option for at-risk young women in their communities. It is a great program and I love visiting its relaxing and beautiful campus. It is a bit out of Phnom Penh, so I've only been a few times. They work hard to help the girls with job placement and just submitted a proposal to CHAD to help some of the graduates with loans to set up their own businesses. The goal in part is to enable young women to return to their villages, rather than stay in Phnom Penh to look for work. I really hope we can fund them.

I also started going to a Monday night prayer group. It is held at the home of a man who works for World Vision on advocacy about trafficking. He has been educating me bit by bit about the situation in Cambodia and in Southeast Asia. While I know that trafficking is a reality here in Cambodia, I usually don't think too much about it. A recent incident, though, has forced me to.

The 10th grade daughter of a church worker I know was waiting at the side of the road in a dark section of Phnom Penh to be picked up to go home after an event. A moto-dop (motorcycle taxi) pulled up. He looked legitimate and she decided to get a ride with him rather than waiting for her arranged ride to come. Quickly, she realized that he was not going in the right direction. He took her to a house and locked her up in a room. Later, she met other girls who were also locked up and who had had similar experiences. They were awaiting transport to Thailand for prostitution.

The church worker's daughter had some advantages that others did not. Because she was waiting for someone to pick her up, family and friends realized right away that she was missing. The church called together a prayer meeting. The church members put out posters and the moto-dop drivers in the church started asking around.

A few days later, her captors said that holding her was too much trouble and they let her go!

The family is not talking much about it, and even though I was just at the church either shortly before or after the kidnapping, (I'm not sure of the exact timing), nothing was mentioned to me. I think there is shame associated with the situation and the church and friends want to minimize that for the girl and her family. I know she wants to continue with her studies.

What would have happened if they didn't have a church community to work together and come to her aid? What about all of the other women who are being held? I know intellectually that Phnom Penh is a dangerous place for young Khmer women, but this seemed really close to home.

The young women from the Emmaus Center have been living two by two when they come to Phnom Penh, but the situations are not optimum. The Women's Program has been praying about starting a hostel where 20 or so of them can live together (both Emmaus graduates and those who come to Phnom Penh to attend college). The reality of the work situation is that the young women often have to work on Sundays, so they can't participate in a regular worship community. A house would give them solidarity and support for each other and a place where they could continue their spiritual development. Yesterday, I heard that the house next to mine might be available for rent, and I thought of it as a possibility.

I have also been praying recently about how I might be more involved with spiritual development of young women in Cambodia. Maybe this is an opportunity. There is still quite a bit of planning that needs to be done, and this is really just the first glimmer of an idea. We would need to raise the funds for maybe two years of rent up front to give the project a chance to become self sustaining. The girls in the house would initially be responsible for water, electricity, and food. We have other hostels around Phnom Penh that have been very important outreach ministries to youth, so we have a good model of how it could work.

Please pray for the Women's Ministry of the Methodist Church in Cambodia, for how the ministry might best be expanded with young women, particularly those at risk. And, please pray for me, also, that I might have clarity about how I can be involved.

Christmas greetings from Cambodia

2009-12-25T16:32:00.000+07:00

Merry Christmas friends!

This is not a traditional holiday season in Cambodia, but I have been enjoying a few gatherings around Phnom Penh in preparation for Christmas including lessons and carols last night.

It is however, the rice harvesting season. Tomorrow I will head up to Kampong Thom, a region that was hit hard by the storms this season and lost much of its crop for this year. The Methodist Church is involved, together with many others, to continue to distribute rice to those affected. Alongside this, the CHAD program continues to work for increased food-security through the formation of cooperative rice banks. I will get to celebrate with the formation of two new groups in the Kampong Thom region.

My hope is renewed by the promise of Emmanuel, that God is and will be with us as we work with each other.

peace, Katherine

A Small Miracle

2009-09-01T11:12:00.003+07:00

from Martha Parker, Individual Volunteer in Mission

I don't know how this really happened. I only know that when I prayed with a young girl in Cambodia, the prayer was answered. I would like to tell the story from my point of view.

My daughter Katherine Parker is a missionary in Cambodia working to improve the lives of the poor. I am a community health nurse in California, serving the elementary schools of Mill Valley, my home community. The schools have a long break during the summer and I volunteered through the UMVIM program of our church ("United Methodist Volunteers in Mission"). I raised money for my expenses and to provide funds to carry out the work of the CHAD program within which Katherine works. "CHAD" stands for community health and agricultural development.

While in Cambodia, Katherine and I visited a newly formed congregation in rural Kompong Chhang province. At the end of the Sunday worship service, the pastor told us that one of the families that was present that day had lost all hope of finding help for a 12-year-old daughter who had a heart that was not healthy. The mother said she had been to many doctors in Phnom Penh and that the girl needed to have surgery, but the family had used up all its money. In fact, she said she had sold all her land to try to get help for her daughter. She said her husband had deserted her and that she and her three children were destitute.

What I had learned from Irene Mparutsa, the nurse with the CHAD program, was that the government hospital in Phnom Penh would care for the very poor if they had documentation from their village chiefs. I also knew that CHAD had pastors who were trained to assist families with the process of going through this system. I asked the mother if we could pray about this, and the congregation and the family prayed together. I asked the mother to prepare her documentation and gather what she needed and that we would contact her. Then, I talked directly to the young girl through an interpreter. The girl said she wanted her heart to be healed, and we prayed together.

Being a nurse, I knew she probably had lived with the condition her entire life. The mother said the doctors just told her not to drink coconut milk; they did not say anything else she could do. I could feel a murmur when I placed my hand on her chest, probably something that would have been corrected as a young child in the US. It was like looking at medical books that were 50 years old about children who had murmurs that kept them from activities and that meant they always would be tired and weak. This girl had difficulty breathing and her muscles were not well developed, because she had to rest so much.

The following week, I started my volunteer teaching of the nurses at a hospital in Phnom Penh. I found out from CHAD's Irene Mparutsa that a team of Methodist missionary heart surgeons from Korea were coming the following week. All was very vague and we had no easy way to communicate directly with the woman and her daughter other than by going to the village that was a three-hour drive for us.

We reported to the pastor and made plans on our end to help the girl come for the heart clinic, but were disturbed to hear back a few days later that the girl's condition had worsened, that the mother was also sick, and that they had set out from their rural village for Phnom Penh with their letter from the village chief, but *without* the information from us as to the specific hospital to which they should go.

I was so upset! I had so hoped to connect the girl with the heart surgeons from Korea, who I had learned were doing their surgeries at Phnom Penh's large public hospital. All I could do was continue to pray, and I asked my home congregation and healing prayer group in Mill Valley also to pray.

Another week went by, and still no one had word of the woman and her daughter. The surgeons had come and gone. Katherine and I visited the village again and we all continued to pray together.

Two more weeks passed and, one day, the pastor called Katherine and me with the joyful report that the girl had returned to the village! She had had open heart surgery and was better! We drove the three hours to the church that Sunday . . . and, who was there? The girl herself and her mother arrived by bike at the small bamboo-stilt church, beaming and praising God for the miracle of the surgery.

We asked where she had the surgery and it was at the hospital where the missionary team of Korean heart surgeons had been, and it happened the week that they were there. Did they do it? No one knew, except that the girl now had a heart to provide her a normal life.

If I have ever seen a miraculous answer to prayer, this is my witness.

First Mission Conference

2009-08-26T13:52:00.004+07:00

Last week I served as a Conference Secretary for the First Annual Session of the Methodist Mission Conference in Cambodia. It has been a busy month as my assistant Vannak and I put together the "Conference Book" of reports and I worked together with Pastor Var Borom to take minutes of the Conference. It is incredibly exciting to be part of the church in Cambodia during these formative stages.

During Conference, the Implementing Board shared a vision based on Isaiah 54:2 of "Expanding God's Kingdom in Cambodia" and shared our goal of establishing an autonomous structure for the People called Methodists in Cambodia. These are goals laid out for how to establish an autonomous (not independent) church: self-governing, self-propagating, self-supporting and self-theologizing. This year was a milestone as we previously were organized as a "meeting" and now we have met for the first time as a "mission conference."

There were many exciting reports at Conference that pointed to the successful steps in increased autonomy. There is a time-line in place for the goal of self-government to be achieved by 2016 with the election of the first Cambodian Bishop. To this end, we celebrated the ordination of 11 new Deacons and 8 new Elders. Self-propagation has always been a strength of the church in Cambodia. Many new baptisms and full membership reports were given and for the first time congregations were designated as Local Church, Preaching Point or Outreach. The Treasurer gave an astounding report on the goal of self-supporting. The "5% offering" from local churches to MMC increased from $364.06 in 2007 to $3,729.36 in 2008 and the Cabinet resolved to raise $10,000 from local congregations in 2010. The first book of Cambodian sermons will also be published this year towards the goal of self-theologizing. The vision is moving forward.

The vision for the CHAD program parallels this development, has grown, and is bigger than just establishing livelihood development projects for rural communities and training health advocates. It is also to help create local organizational structures to continue this work. We are focusing not just on the current activities, but the long haul, and how to support the next generation of the church in Cambodia to continue the work of being the hands of Christ in this world.

At the same time, Bishop Roy J. Sano reminded us that sometimes we get caught up in building organizational structure because that is actually easier than the hard work of creating a just and peaceful society. He encouraged us to stay focused on our true goal.

CHAD is excited for the coming year again to support the Social Concerns Committee (SCC) of the MMC as it implements its vision: Inspired by our faith in God, Methodist Mission in Cambodia churches are working together with communities to improve the quality of life and to respond to emergency and disaster situations in Cambodia. Using the Community Based Organization (CBO) model from The Philippines, CHAD is helping passionate pastors to establish what we are calling Local Social Concerns Committees (LSCC) in some of the communities where we are working.

One of the biggest challenges we have faced in all of our work as CHAD is monitoring and following up to support the various projects and ministries as they face challenges and adapt to meet current community needs. One immediate dream is that the LSCC will be able to work with the SCC to help solve some of these problems so that we few folks in the central office don't spend all of our time running around the country on crisis calls. The long term goal is that there will be transparent structures in place to initiate ministries of social concern that lead to personal and communal transformation.

An open letter about chickens to the Vacation Church School children in Bakersfield, CA

2009-08-02T18:34:00.004+07:00

From your missionary in Cambodia, Katherine.
To the children, youth and adults of the church in Bakersfield that gather this week for Vacation Church School: Grace to you and peace.

“I always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in my prayers, constantly remembering before our God your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. For I know, brothers and sisters, beloved by God, that God has chosen you… And you have become imitators of Jesus Christ.” (1 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 6a NRSV)

I hear that you are learning about Caring for God’s Creatures this year. In Genesis, we learn that God wants us to care for God’s creatures in the same way that God cares for us. And so, I write to you again this year in the style of the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians to remind you of the words from Isaiah that “The Lord is the everlasting God; God created all the world. God never grows tired or weary.” (Isaiah 40:28b NRSV)

Here in Cambodia, we raise a lot of different animals, such as fish, frogs, crickets, cows, water buffalo, pigs, ducks and chickens. Raising chickens is an important part of family life. Every family wants to be able to have a few chickens, even in the city.

One of the hardest parts of raising chickens is getting enough food for them to eat because all animals that are raised by families need to be fed by the family. This is how we take part in caring for God’s creatures. If you have a pet dog or cat or fish, you need to feed it every day; the same is true for chickens. Chickens in particular love to eat vegetable scraps. What happens when you don’t eat all of your dinner? In Cambodia, the chickens get to eat all of the left-over vegetables; they help to keep the farm clean. The left-over rice is dried in the sun and the chickens get to eat this too. Chickens also love bugs. They are particularly fond of termites and worms. A lot of families have a termite mound at their house, which is good for feeding both the chickens and the fish.

Last week, I went to visit the Minister of Agriculture in one province. He was very happy to meet me and to hear about the good work that our churches are doing. He encouraged me to support more families to raise chickens. It is a very good way for the church to help the poorest people in the community. Raising chickens is not too hard and it can give a family a good sense of accomplishment. The United Methodist Church, through the CHAD program is helping families to raise chickens in three ways.

First, we provide gift-loans to community groups so that they can start raising chickens. A group of about five families starts working together, and each family receives about five chickens. When the first baby chicks grow to about bantee size, they are given to a new family. In this way, the gift of chickens from the church is passed on from family to family until everyone in the village has a small flock of chickens. Chickens get sick very easily, and this can kill off an entire village of chickens, so this is an important way for the church to help a village rebuild after a natural disease epidemic. The initial gift is not very big, just a few chickens for a few families, but because people share with their neighbors, everyone can benefit.

Another activity of the church is to start savings and credit groups. Every week, members of the savings group contribute a small amount to their savings account. Families can then take a small loan from the savings union to help them expand their farm. Many families will take a small loan of $25 for three months to help them buy chicken feed from the store so they can produce chickens to sell. When the family pays back the loan, the interest stays in the community, thus increasing the community's wealth.

The third way the church helps is to provide technical assistance about how better to raise chickens. Through our partner organizations, we can share information about proper housing for chickens and improved feed such as worms. Chickens are not very smart creatures; they need the help of families, especially the children, to go in and out. In the morning, it is the responsibility of the children to shoo the chickens outside where they can hunt for bugs and vegetables. Then, at night, the children need to gather the chickens back to their safe house again so they don’t catch cold or get stolen. With research from our partner CelAgric (which is funded in part by Heifer International), the church in Cambodia has distributed information about how to build better chicken houses. We have also provided information about what vegetables are best for improving chicken health. During my meeting with the Minister of Agriculture, he encouraged me to start teaching more about worm farming so that families would know how to raise worms, which can also improve the diet and health of chickens. We hope to start a pilot project about this in Methodist Amen Church in Kampong Chhnang province soon.

Learning about Caring for God’s Creatures is an important activity for the children in the church here in Cambodia and I am glad that you are also interested in learning these same lessons. We can sing praises for God’s care of creatures by saying: “You cause the grass to grow for the cattle, and plants for people to use, and bring forth food from the earth” (Psalm 104:14). We are all made in the image of God and called to continue taking care of God’s creatures. Thank you for your care. Beloved in Christ, pray for us in Cambodia as we continue to keep you in prayer as well and may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

Alcoholism

2009-07-27T14:10:00.005+07:00

This summer I have made a commitment to visit two churches in Kampong Chhnang (Solang Kandal and Methodist Amen) every other Sunday and lead a Bible study on "Mobilizing the Church." This is one of the core curriculum models being used by the CHAD team to help churches organize a local social concerns committee that can plan and implement community development activities. Last week at Solang Kandal, we studied the Good Samaritan story (Luke 10:25-37) and talked about “who is my neighbor.” It was a challenging lesson, and the class worked really hard at thinking about what it means to love your neighbor.

Alcoholism is a huge problem in Cambodia, and Solang Kandal is no exception. During rounds last week, while my mom was volunteering at Center of Hope Hospital (a free hospital for the poor in Phnom Penh), she observed 3 of the 12 beds had folks in their 30s dying of liver failure.
At a previous meeting at Solang Kandal, we prayed for a young man that wanted to come to Phnom Penh to study at the Bible School, but his non-Christian, alcoholic parents were resistant because they didn’t want to lose his labor on the farm. The pastor had invited the parents to meet with the church community and was working to help them accept that this is a good opportunity for their son to improve himself. I only observed a little of the exchange, but I admired how the pastor was able to work with the parents.

This week, two of the women leaders of the church shared during the lesson about the struggle of having alcoholic husbands. After become a Christian, one woman stopped giving money to her husband to buy alcohol. It is not easy, she said. They argue a lot; he still finds other money to drink, and he blames her for many things. We talked about how as a Christian she wants to love her husband and wants the best for him, and so she no longer supports his alcoholism by giving him money. This was a very powerful example to the class of what it means to love your neighbor. Sometimes, loving our neighbors (or our family members) means not enabling them to go down a bad path. I think it was also helpful to the members of the community to be able to express their pain to an outsider and to have it acknowledged. As a guest in the church, I cannot solve the problems, but I can help provide a space and encouragement for people to give voice to problems, and we can pray together for guidance. In the middle of our conversation, one of the alcoholic husbands joined the meeting and was able to participate for part of the Bible study.

This week the pastor called me with encouraging news. The man who joined the meeting had not drunk any alcohol this week and he had been helping his wife with the farm. Even he was able to find encouragement in the discussion. Please keep praying for these families. It is not easy, but our faith gives us hope, and hope gives us strength, and day by day with God’s help we can persevere.

Giving blood in Cambodia

2009-06-04T16:34:00.000+07:00

On Tuesday, my sister Janet, Piseth, Irene and I went down to Kantebopa Children's Hospital to donate blood. In order to get a transfusion, the family of the patient has to supply donations of blood equal to what is transfused. When school is in session, CHAD facilitates students at the Methodist Bible School to volunteer to help needy families. You can read more about the young boy that CHAD has been helping to get quarterly transfusions in a story by Irene.

There is also a story by a volunteer from the recent UMVIM Medical Team from Colorado. Thanks to the whole team! You can continue to support medical welfare for children and those in Kratie with a donation.

It has been great to have my sister Janet volunteering here for the last month. We've been working with the small-business development at Mau Bourn's church, and following up on some of the recommendations in the mid-term evaluation of the CHAD program by our partners in the
Methodist Church in Finland.

thanks for your continued support!
Katherine

Easter Greetings from Cambodia

2009-04-09T16:40:00.002+07:00

This is a special year when Easter coincides with the three day Khmer New Year festival. It will be quite a celebration. The rains are just starting to bless us with some cooling in the early evenings. In Cambodia we call this time of year when the rains return as the New Year because it marks that the time to begin growing rice is here. Farmers are out harrowing the fields and those with some irrigation are already starting to flood the paddies with the little remaining water in the ponds.

Community Health and Agricultural Development (CHAD) just had a major evaluation with our partners from the Methodist Church in Finland. Lots of good feedback! A new story about prison outreach ministry is available. Thanks for reading. Thanks, also, for your continued support through prayers, visits and financial contributions.

Happy Khmer New Year! Happy Passover! and Happy Easter!
Katherine

Prison outreach ministry

2009-04-08T11:46:00.002+07:00

Last time I was home in California, one of my partner churches in Bakersfield gave me two suitcases of health kits prepared by the VBS kids to bring back to Cambodia. During a recent visit to Kompong Chhnang for a Medical Outreach Clinic, I shared the kits with Rev. Ean Hun and his wife Pastor Sophean. They were very pleased to receive them in support of the prison outreach ministry of the church in Kompong Chhnang. They shared a few stories with me about the significance of this ministry.

The prison in Kompong Chhnang has 280 men in terrible conditions. Rev. Hun said that the men have to sleep in two-hour shifts because there is a shortage of beds. There is also a shortage of food, resulting in swollen bellies and a prevalence of itchy skin rashes due to insufficient soap and hygiene supplies. Rev. Hun has been visiting the prisoners, and, when available, bringing food (basically only men who have relatives who visit have food to eat), soap and detergent for washing clothes. He has been leading a Bible study and recently distributed 12 bibles to men who have been participating.

He was very pleased to have the health kits sent from Bakersfield and shared them with the men with whom he is working. We talked a bit about his hope to be able to provide soap, detergent (for washing clothes) and liniment oil to all of the men, at another point in the future. He also hopes to establish a library of Khmer language literature for the men to use during their one hour time each day where they could have access to such a collection of books.

Recently, one of the prisoners Rev. Hun has been working with was released. Rev. Hun has invited him to stay at the church and to lead a nearby church group without a pastor.

This is a wonderful partnership that has come out of the Bakersfield generosity. I am so pleased that we could support the outreach of the Cambodian Christians in this prison ministry in this way.

Visiting the vulnerable in Cambodia

2009-03-24T17:26:00.000+07:00

Christianity only became legal again in Cambodia in 1992, but I have never really focused on persecution faced by folks that choose into this new faith. I was visiting a church this Sunday to give them encouragement and we were talking about reaching out and visiting the lowest people in their community (a difficult discussion for me, personally, to be having with folks who are very poor farmers themselves to start with). I asked if there were any AIDS patients in their village, and if people looked down on them as shameful. They said, yes, and that they had been visiting them. But then they went on to tell me that actually, some AIDS patients looked down on Christians. I was really shocked because it gave me some perspective as to the persecution that Christians here face.

Thank you for your continued prayers and notes of encouragement, it means a lot to me and it means a lot to folks in Cambodia when I can share with them that they are not alone in these struggles. Thank you also for your continued financial contributions, even in these challenging economic times, to enables us to continue this work.

Blessings.
Katherine

Language update

2009-03-23T11:01:00.006+07:00

I am almost finished with Book Two for learning reading and writing in Khmer, so my teacher asked me last week about what I wanted to study next. Basically, she told me that I am doing fine with reading and writing, but my conversation skills are lagging behind. This is understandable since I work in an English language office and always travel with a translator when I go to the field.

Last weekend, I took a plunge and decided to travel to the province of Kampong Chhnang by myself. On Saturday, I visited the church of Lun Sokom. About a year ago, they started a saving group in the church. The 20 members of the group (both Christians and non-), each save 1000 reil ($.25) every month. They have also been giving out small loans of about $15-25 to the members (repayable in three months). Three members took loans last year in order to buy feed to start raising chickens. They pay 3% interest. According to an earlier plan, they would start the savings group and after they demonstrated its success, then CHAD would come in to provide additional capital, which would allow the group to give larger loans out to the members. I went to evaluate their progress and also to introduce the curriculum "Mobilizing the Church," which is a Bible study designed to facilitate group formation.

Lun Sokom has relativly good English and said I didn't need to bring a translator. Turns out, he was a great Khmer teacher. He forced me to speak as much as possible in Khmer and also to listen hard to the group (only translating enough back to English so that I didn't lose the thread of the conversation). I probably only actually understood about 10-20% of the dialogue, but it was enough to know that they were on track and would continue to work on the suggestions I introduced.

On Sunday, I joined church at Plau Nou Chivet (Way of Life). While I still don't actually understand most of the hymns, I am getting much better at reading and singing along and can catch about one-half of the words.

I then went on to Solong Kandal Church where we continued with the "Mobilizing the Church" study. I brought a local translator, Nara, with me. He was a good group leader and we had a very dynamic workshop. But he didn't do so well as a translator. He kept forgetting to keep me in the loop. So, I just had to struggle along with my own understanding for most of the day. (Luckily, I basically knew what we were doing.) The congregation at this church is really warm and welcoming, and I always feel like a member of the family when I visit.

Last time I visited Solong Kandal (church of Pastor Sophean), we talked about the past outreach activities of the church and a bit about their future plans. Currently, they worship in the house of one of the members. It is a very simple house, the type that is often translated into English as a "cottage." (The house has walls made from woven palm leaves, rather than bamboo slats or wood. It also has a metal roof, which is nicer than thatch, but hotter than tile.) The church members are very active and have worked hard to raise funds themselves for various things. They are engaged in a lot of visitation (to the poor, alcoholics, etc.).

This time we were talking about "outsiders" and how we can be more welcoming to folks different from us. It really struck me about how marginalized Christians are in Cambodia when I asked about visiting people with AIDS. They said that there are folks with AIDS in their community and that, yes, they have gone to visit them. I asked if they experienced that people sometimes look down on people with AIDS. They said yes, but also that sometimes the people with AIDS looked down on the Christians!

They have also been collecting rice through a first-fruits offering. Recently, they sold a portion of their rice and bought a small paddy field (50 square meters) for $580. It will be used to grow rice to raise additional money for the church. They are asking CHAD to partner with them to purchase some farm equipment (such as a hand tractor or threshing machine) that they can rent out as a small business venture to raise funds for the church. Since this is a much more costly investment than CHAD usually engages in (about $3000), we are moving very slowly and making sure that everything is in place first.

From a learning perspective, I was feeling really proud since I went by myself. Even though I still can't actually follow the conversation, I was able to pick out a lot of words and when I knew the big picture I could keep up in a way. It also gave me more confidence to travel by myself and to use pastors or local translators rather than bringing someone with me from Phnom Penh.

Dry season activities in Cambodia

2009-03-05T17:29:00.000+07:00

February is "rodou broamg" (dry season), which is also the wedding season since the rice harvest finished in January. So, in a country where the majority of people are under 30, you can imagine how busy (and joyful) this season is. I see at least 2 or 3 ceremonies taking place every day no matter what part of the country I am visiting.

Here in the Community Health & Agricultural Development (CHAD) program, we continue on! We have almost finished the Theology of Development training for the pastors in Battambong and are investigating which district to target next. Good Samaritan Health Training is going in the Kandal district, and Local Social Concerns Committees are being organized in Svay Reine and Kompong Thom districts. The recent result of all of these trainings? 2 new rice banks, a savings & credit group and a water distribution system for an arsenic-contamination prone region. You can support this work with your donation.

with love & gratitude,
Katherine

The gift of knowledge

2009-02-26T09:25:00.004+07:00

From time to time, I meet someone for the first time, but I know them instantly because the ripple effects of their ministry in the world have been hitting me for a long time. Pastor Sophean, the wife of Rev. Ean Hun, is one such person.

Pastor Sophean came from humble beginnings. I don’t know much of her story, only that she had to stop school at just second grade. I can’t tell you when or how she became a Christian, only that she did. But when that happened, her passion and desire to know God’s Word was so great that at the age of 35, with the help of her family, she learned to read. A woman with formal education only up to the second grade was inspired and empowered.

To look at her ministry now, you would never guess her background. She brings a fervor and passion to prayer that is unique. She led the opening worship service on the second day of our medical mission clinic with Louisiana UMVIM at Chrolongkok Church. Even our volunteers from the US commented to me later that they could feel the spirit move when she sang and prayed, despite the language barriers.

But, I could have told you this before I even met her because of my experience working with one of the churches she started in the northern part of Kampong Chhnang. In a house church, less than two years old, was one of the most vibrant and generous ministries I have seen, engaging in outreach not only with external resources, but also with rice from their own bowls. In addition, I was so impressed because she had trained the congregation to have the best record keeping I have seen of any church in Cambodia.

She has nurtured many young folks in the faith, inviting them into her house and teaching by her example. Pastor Lun Sokom said that when he and his wife were living under her care as youth, that she was very strict with them, instilling a sense of discipline reminiscent of John Wesley’s Holiness Club. Pastor Lon Sokom's love and respect for Pastor Sophean is obvious.

Sophean is currently a student at the Methodist Bible School in Phnom Penh, and her teacher, Rev. Romy del Rosario, is greatful for the depth of experience she brings to all of the classroom discusions. Her quest for knowlege is inspirational. And I could go on and on.

It was a joy for me to join in the wedding of her son last week; I pray for continued blessing for this wonderful woman and her family.

Volunteer opportunity to make kits

2009-01-30T09:24:00.006+07:00

It is a blessing for me to have the opportunity to work in Cambodia. There are so many compassionate folks who are interested in helping with the work here. We are sustained by the prayers of many people around the world. And the financial support is what allows us to continue to serve folks. I have also come to appreciate the provocative questions that folks ask me. Especially when they challenge the approach we take. This kind of dialogue really helps me to analyze how we engage in this ministry and how we could do better.

Lots of folks have asked how they can be in partnership with us here. There are lots of ways, especially the prayers, financial support, and questions. However, sometimes folks would like a project they can do in their home congregation. Projects are great because they can be used as an activity to engage a group of folks in your congregation and serve as a learning experience for how and why we are in mission. For this reason, my colleagues and I here in Cambodia have started thinking about some different kinds of projects that could be carried out in US local churches that would both be beneficial to Cambodians and also be helpful to US congregations as a tool for learning about mission.

What we are thinking about basically is making "kits." There are significant limitations to these projects. The cost of shipping things from the US to Cambodia is prohibitively expensive. Therefore, while there are certain kinds of kits that we can use and things that you can put together, you need to take into consideration shipping costs of whatever you have put together. We have a variety of mission volunteer teams that come to Cambodia. Therefore, it is only cost effective if you can coordinate with someone coming over to use some of their airline allowance to bring the items. Please consider packaging the items in containers (e.g., suitcases) of not more than 50 lbs that are ready for checking on the airline. Please do not begin a kit-making project until you have a plan of how your kits will get here. In addition, my colleagues and I here would be happy at an opportunity to discuss with you in advance a kit-making project -- so that anything undertaken would be the most useful.

We can't always use a great quantity of these things, but these are items that have been requested by our pastors and partners as things they could use:

Cell phones

(Used) clothing for resale business startup

Kits for prison ministry

Refurbished laptop computers

Digital cameras

Credit and savings group record keeping kits

Reading glasses

Home health kits for volunteers at medical mission or for pastors

News from Cambodia

2009-01-16T17:31:00.000+07:00

Some exciting news! The MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) with the MOH (Ministry of Health) for CHAD (Community Health and Agricultural Development) was finally signed this week. This is great news as it will allow us to accept volunteer medical teams to come and work in Cambodia with much less hassle than before. Irene (our community health nurse/missionary from Zimbabwe) has done all of the hard work getting this through, and I have learned a lot about government relations watching her work. You can support our health-care ministry
with a financial contribution.

In the Cambodia Daily this morning was a reprint of a New York Times opinion piece by Nicholas Kristof called Where Sweatshops are a Dream. If you didn't catch this or some of his earlier pieces on sex-trafficking in Cambodia, I highly recommend them. One of my fellow missionaries, Clara from Bangladesh, is working to help provide enrichment programing at an orphanage that is working with the population that Kristof writes about. You can contribute to that ministry.

It was great to connect with old friends and meet many new faces last month when I was traveling in the US. I am back in Phnom Penh now, trying to get on top of the backlog of work. I've posted two quick stories at http://chad-cambodia.blogspot.com Thanks for reading and
your continued support!

A new school

2009-01-15T10:57:00.001+07:00

Sam Oeurn, assistant pastor from Spien Church, stopped by our office today to share about his new business. He has just purchased a school he named LTS (Language and Technology School). He wanted to know if we would come and participate in the ceremony to welcome students for the new semester.

It was a novel request for me, but as Oeurn shared more about his vision for his church and for Cambodia it became clear. Oeurn's dream is three fold: 1) that folks will have the knowledge for a better life, 2) that folks will have the resources to accomplish their dreams, and 3) that the church will have good leadership.

It is big investment for Oeurn, a young man in his 30s, to buy and run this 10-teacher school with 250 students. (There have been 50 new students in the last month since he took over operations!) I know that he prayed a lot before taking this step. But I understand that his vision is big and that he doesn't see this as running just another school in Cambodia. He sees it as a way that he is living out his faith. We are all involved in building a better world (in religious terms: The Kingdom of God), and Oeurn sees his part in this as providing education for kids in his community.

I think it is exciting to see a young Cambodian take his faith seriously and listen to how it influences major life choices. And I applaud him for being able to articulate how this step is helping him to live an authentic life true to his vision and calling.

Advent Greetings from Cambodia

2008-12-11T17:35:00.001+07:00

What an incredible year. I can't even begin to describe what I have seen and learned. There is at least one new story at http://chad-cambodia.blogspot.com and on this site since I wrote last. And my fellow missionaries in the Community Health and Agricultural Development (CHAD) program and I just put out our Advent newsletter. You can download the PDF.

I am back in the US for a month visiting churches in California, Virginia and Washington and catching up on a little sleep. But I am excited to get back to work next year. Plans for a water distribution system in Kandal are coming together, more rice banks are going up in Kompong Thom and Kompong Chhnang, credit and savings groups are working together in Svay Rein and new calves are being born in Battambong. Signs of trust and hope are everywhere.

Thanks for your continued support.
Katherine

A story of healing

2008-10-20T14:39:00.005+07:00

Pastor Kieu Sophal came by our office this morning to help with lesson planning for our health volunteer training workshop that starts tomorrow. I was just sitting at my computer as she told this story, so I am quickly typing it up to share with you.

A woman in Sophal’s district had been battered by her husband and received a back injury that caused her to be in bed unable to walk for about three weeks. Sophal, a new pastor since July, heard about this woman from one of her church members. But Sophal told us that she was worried and hesitant to visit the women: “I don’t have money, what could I offer to this woman.” Sophal doesn’t have a moto (motorcycle/scooter), but the church member took her to see the woman using her own moto.

Sophal told the battered woman, “I don’t have money to offer you, but I have God, and I would like to pray with you.” She came with three other church members and they all prayed for the women. The members reported a sense of the presence of God in that place. “Everyone in the room could sense the awesomeness of God in their hands and throughout their whole bodies.” The battered woman was very encouraged. The church member continues to visit with her and reported that within a week she was able to walk again. Everyone felt that the prayer meeting was a turning point in her recovery.

I wish I could convey to you the sense of gratitude and awe that Sophal brings when she tells this story.

Irene gives thanks to God for Sophal’s testimony… not only for the healing that took place but also for the attitude of the pastor. Many of the pastors in Cambodia feel discouraged because they feel like they don’t have money to offer to people. But Irene likes to remind me (and them) that Jesus sent us out to do ministry without taking anything with us… the people will take care of us or not… but we need to trust that God will be sufficient and provide what we need for the situation… we need to act first and trust that we will be able to find the resources we need for the situation, but if we just sit at home then there will be no way for God to act through us.

It reminds me of the song we used to sing at VBS: Silver and Gold have I none, but such as I have I give thee. Let’s start by giving people what we have. We have the love of God in Jesus Christ.

Irene says, “many times I don’t have money to help poor sick people, I can only give advice and prayer… but I just take the person to the hospital and sometimes we can find a doctor who can help us or another way becomes clear.” We can’t be paralyzed by our fears of what we don’t have. God asks us to just do what we can with what we have and the rest will come.

The song Silver and Gold

Peter and John went to pray, they met a poor man on the way. He asked for alms, and held out his palms and this is what Peter did say: Silver and Gold have I none, but such as I have I give thee, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk. He went walking and leaping and praising God, walking and leaping and praising God. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.

Updates from Cambodia

2008-10-01T17:37:00.002+07:00

Life in Cambodia is a constant learning experience. My language is improving much slower than I would like, but step by step. My writing is good enough that I can create posters for workshops even though I can't understand many of the words I am writing. Tomorrow will be the first day of the level 2 lessons at the University, but I also decided to repeat level 1 since I didn't learn it 100%.

We had a wonderful Annual Meeting at the end of August. The highlight was the ordination of 6 elders and 12 deacons, essentially doubling the number of ordained Cambodians. A president of The World Federation of Chinese Methodist Churches (one of our mission partners here), gave a stirring speech about celebrating 40 years of autonomy with the theme "self-proclaiming, self-governing, self-supporting". It really gave a hopeful vision to our goal of supporting the formation of an autonomous church here in Cambodia.

I've posted a few more reflection here and at http://chad-cambodia.blogspot.com as well as some letters that I wrote to the Vacation Church School kids at Wesley UMC in Bakersfield, CA about water, cows and health.

Thanks for reading, your prayers and support!
peace, Katherine

Building confidence

2008-09-24T10:45:00.002+07:00

This week we had our second foundational workshop with the pastors in the Battambong district. The new church at the district headquarters is just about finished being constructed with just some final cleaning to do (sorry no pictures). We used an upstairs open air porch for our gathering. The CHAD team was much better prepared this time and we were able to complete a full lesson in one day. The theme was “God’s extravagant love for the transformation of the world.”

My personal successes focused around language. I asked Mr. Thy and Tola to pre-translate some of the discussion questions into Khmer and had them print out the questions for me (I still can’t read anyone’s handwriting, only the precise characters as printed by the computer). I then made big posters with the relevant questions for each section. Then, when we gave our oral explanations (which are translated in real time) people could be simultaneously reading the task. I only made one mistake of putting a line-break mid-word. It would be generous to say that I recognized ¼ of the words I was writing, but there was some recognition and it was good practice for me.

The second big language success happened at the beginning of the day as folks were gathering. I was in charge of the warm-up (devotion), and I wanted everyone to collect an object and then share with a partner how that object symbolized God’s love. With minimal prompting and filling in with English words, I managed to successful say “before you go upstairs, please get a thing that is God’s Love and then talk together with another person.” The shocking bit was that the pastor I was talking with actually understood me!

Getting better

2008-09-21T10:42:00.003+07:00

I am still low-energy as a result of having a cold last week. I stayed home for three days and rested since I was running a low-grade fever. If I were only a little bit sick like this in the US, I would just ignore it and plow on, so it is frustrating how debilitated I feel by being a little bit sick. Irene brought me by a mixture of herbs and roots and citrus that is a traditional Khmer treatment for flu. We boiled it up in a clay pot and let the smoke permeate the room. I stuck my face in it to breathe it in more and ended up with a bit of a rash. That plus some Benadryl and Robitussin seem to have got the cold mostly under control.

I am also totally munched to bits by either mosquitos or spiders or ants. I can’t decide what has been biting me. I had this terrible night where I woke up and there were a dozen of these pin-head ants in my bed and then I couldn’t sleep again. No, I don’t eat in my bed, but I did go to sleep with wet hair and Ken said that sometimes the ants are attracted to water.

Testimonials: my grandmother, a new business and a dream about a bicycle

2008-09-15T10:48:00.000+07:00

I met Pastor Kieu Sophal last month when she brought a young man (Chamrong) from her congregation into Phnom Penh to get his ears checked as part of the hospital access training that Irene has been conducting. My friend Treasa was visiting at the time and we all got to chatting and Pastor Sophal wanted us to come to visit her village.

Sophal graduated from the Bible School in July and is just starting her first appointment. I tease Irene that we make a great visitation pair because all of the ladies love her and ask her for advice and all of the teenagers flock to me. Sophal has a young church and so she was excited to have us visit, emphasizing that I should give a testimonial. Treasa had left by the time we made arrangements, so it was just me and Irene.

Giving testimonials in not a big part of my tradition, in fact I’m not sure I have ever done it before, so I only have a vague sense of what was being requested. The scripture lesson for the day was from Proverbs about learning wisdom from our parents. (Proverbs is the most popular book of the Bible in Cambodia by my experience.) In the end I told a story about doing bible study with my grandma and some wisdom I learned from her that has been an encouragement to me. I think it was a hit with the old ladies.

Chamrong (the young man I met with Pastor Sophal at the hospital) did most of the translation for me. I got to hear other testimonials too, like one about starting a new business. Another young man went on and on with his testimonial and the translator was just quiet. I was listening hard trying to follow, and was excited because I thought there was a bit where he was talking about riding a bicycle. I was very pleased with my understanding. But, in the end it was a story about a dream, and Chamrong said he didn’t even follow it well enough to translate more than that. So much for my comprehension.

A singing competition

2008-09-12T10:56:00.003+07:00

One of the highlights of my work is the opportunity to worship with various congregations.

Last week, I went with Irene to Pastor Pok Kosal at Ch’mol d’asan church. Irene preached on the miracle of the loaves and fishes from Luke, relating it to stories in her childhood where her mother would pack a mango or banana for her to take to school and how she would hide to eat it so she didn’t have to share. The theme being that God does miracles with whatever we provide to God. We have been emphasizing this idea of Kingdom mathematics in all of our training and projects recently. God doesn’t ask us to do more than what we can. We are invited to give what we have and God will multiply it.

After worship we all had lunch together. Another Korean missionary couple also joined in the service that Sunday and Irene thinks they were a bit shocked to see us sitting on the floor eating with everyone.

Each of the lunch groups were invited to participate in a singing competition. The lead group won 30kg of rice and everyone got a shirt as a prize. I am getting good at faking it through a lot of Khmer hymns, so I enjoyed participating in the competition with my group (we didn’t win), but I couldn’t figure out how to not end up with a shirt without insulting my host. Two weeks later it is still sitting on my desk waiting for me to pass it on again.


Singing Group #1 - the Winners!	Pastor Pok Kosal introduces the prize for the best singing group: 30kg of rice

The church has a bus (more like a jeepney for those who know Filipino transport), and after church the pastor delivered everyone home. It reminded me of my days in campus ministry when I would drive the church bus in Iowa. We got to see a new building that was just completed a month or so ago and will be used for kindergarten classes, although they are having trouble recruiting qualified teachers who are willing to work about an hour outside Phnom Penh. Irene also coordinated with the pastor who will be bringing a patient for follow-up care in Phnom Penh.

I also got a cute series of pictures of a mom packing up a kroma (scarf) for her son to carry home.

It was an exciting worship, full of joy and laughter.

You can see all of the pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/ktp.cambodia.01/ChMolDAsanChurch#

An open letter about health to the Vacation Church School children in Bakersfield, CA

2008-08-11T13:45:00.001+07:00

From Katherine, a missionary from California to Cambodia, and Irene, a missionary from Zimbabwe to Cambodia,

To our sisters and brothers in Bakersfield who have received a faith as precious as ours through-your relationship to our God and Savior Jesus Christ:

May grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. We write to you today with the words of the Apostle Peter when we say: God's divine power has given us everything needed for life.

While we have been eagerly preparing to write to you about the faith we share, we have also been busy hosting a Medical Outreach Clinic this week.

We were visited by a team of volunteers from a Methodist church in Singapore who came to Cambodia this week to help us host a Medical Outreach Clinic. It was the first time for the people from Singapore to visit a Cambodian village and so they were shocked by the poor conditions of the people living there. But they were eager to share their skills and gifts with the people, just like you have been eagerly sharing your skills and gifts this week at your local mission site.

Cambodian pastors from two different villages worked with the local government officials to arrange for us to use a medical clinic building that has been all but abandoned because the government has only hired one midwife to serve the medical needs of the villages in a two mile radius. Many people came to help us host a free one-day clinic: one doctor from Singapore, one from the Philippines and 2 from Cambodia joined together with five Cambodian dentists and a big group of volunteers from Singapore to run a pharmacy. I worked to register people as they came and Irene coordinated the triage nurses and worked with people needing help to get further care in Phnom Penh. Over 320 people were able to visit with a doctor or a dentist!

After they see the doctor or dentist, people go the pharmacy where they receive free medicines. For the children, we also make sure that they get a de-worming pill and vitamins.

The pastors and members of the two churches are eager to help their community to improve its health. This next week they will continue to visit the sick and to teach the poorest people in their community how to continue to get frees health care through the government "equity program". It is a very slow process for the pastors and the people to become comfortable with the system and learn how to get care. Slowly, we hope to help the pastors advocate with the government to hire a full time doctor to work in this clinic.

Irene tells the story of how it took Rev. Bunny almost two years to learn how to advocate for health care for her community. One step before we can organize a free clinic in the province is to request permission from the Provincial Health Department. In 2007 Irene invited DS Rev Bunny to make this request of local government. Bunny replied "I cannot go there to ask permission; they don't like us (because we are Christian), and they are so difficult. If you want, you (Irene) can go alone." And with Rev. Bunny's kind permission, Irene went alone to the government offices and made all arrangements for the medical clinic, which successfully treated patients in two villages.

Irene has continued to work with Rev. Bunny and pastors from the villages to educate them about how to access government health services. Here is a conversation that Irene and Thy had about the challenges in this work.

Irene: Do you think pastors believe me when I say that the government will provide health services for the poor from their village if they bring them to the provincial hospital?

Thy: No, they never believe you, they think the government will do this for you because you are a foreigner, but they won't do this for a Khmer (Cambodian) person.

Last month, after many training workshops and visits with the pastors, Irene again invited Rev. Bunny to visit the Provincial Health Department. This time Rev. Bunny and her husband Pastor Sokchieng agreed to come.

Later in the day there was a monthly district meeting. Rev Bunny said "I have been to the Provincial Health Department this morning and learned that yes the government provides free services for poor people and that the church can help poor people understand and show them where to go. We have limited resources as the church, and so on our own, we cannot help all. We need to help people get what the government is providing."

How powerful it is to walk along side people and see the changes in attitudes, building relationships and trust so that we can partner to do the best work.

It is so excited that we get to work together to make a better world. The volunteers from

Singapore

are helping. Your missionaries in from California and

Zimbabwe

are helping. The people in

Cambodia

are helping. And you, in Bakersfield are helping. We are all working together to build relationships. And, bit by bit, everyone learns about God and grows in their ability to help each other.

An open letter about cows to the Vacation Church School children in Bakersfield, CA

2008-08-11T13:44:00.001+07:00

From Katherine, a missionary from California to Cambodia, and Thy our brother in Christ Jesus here in Cambodia,

To the church in Bakersfield:

Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ.

We write to you again with the words of the apostle Paul when we say that we give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters. And this is right to do, because we know that during this time together of Vacation Church Camp your faith is growing and the love of each one of you for one another is increasing.

Mr. Thy and I heard that you will be visiting a farm in Bakersfield this week. You will get to see how we grow food to eat in the United States. What did you eat for breakfast this morning? We had rice noodle soup. What will you eat for lunch? How about dinner? We will have rice with some stir-fry vegetables and fish, the same as other people living here in Cambodia. In Bakersfield, most people probably eat cereal and bread and pasta, but in Cambodia we eat rice – LOTS of rice. So, the farmers have to grow the rice. About 85% of the people living in Cambodia are farmers.

When you visit a farm in Bakersfield, you will probably get to see a tractor. Tractors are very helpful for farmers. But, a tractor is very expensive (you can ask how much one costs). Most farmers in Cambodia cannot afford to buy a tractor. Actually, I have only seen one tractor since I came here. So, how can farmers prepare their land to plant rice? They use two cows to pull a plow! But even a cow is expensive. One local cow costs about $400, and most people in Cambodia earn less than $2 a day, so it can take a lot of time to save the money needed to buy a cow. But, even if you get one cow it is not enough, you need to have two cows to pull your plow. What can you do?

One of the activities of the church in Cambodia is to start a "cow raising group" in their local village. The community members form a group to help each other raise a cow. They choose one group member to be the caretaker of the cow. The CHAD project sometimes helps by giving the group a gift-loan to buy a cow or two. Then, the group can share with their neighbors and everyone can plow their field and do other farm chores. When a baby calf if born, they choose a new member to be the caretaker of the cow. After the caretaker has passed on two baby calves to other members of the group, the cow becomes the property of the caretaker. We call this "passing-on-the-gift". One church in Cambodia told me they now have 8 cows that their members share with each other!

Mr. Thy is one of the Cambodian staff members in my office. Here is a story that he told me about one cow raising group.

Living in Atsue village, Sombor Commune, Prasth Sombor District, Kompong Thom Province, Mrs. Morm Khy, a 55-year-old- widow is dreaming to own a cow one day to help her family farm the small plot of land that was left in her possession after a divorce in 1995. The divorce left her only with 1000 square meters of rice land and three young children. Since then, she became the breadwinner of the family and all the heavy burden of caring her children fell on her. To supplement the 72 kg of rice she harvested from her very small plot of land, Morm Khy has to work as farm laborer where she earns a meager wage of 5000 reils or $1.25 per day.

One year later, in 1996 her hope was restored when she joined a Christian community in her village. That group of people provides her a lot of support, even inviting her to be a member of the cow raising group project. Being one of the poorest families in the group, Morn Khy was chosen to be the one of first recipients of the cow gift loan from CHAD.

She said that since owning a cow her situation has changed significantly. First and foremost, she benefits from building a good relationship with her neighbors who help her feel that she is not alone and who stood by her side during times of troubles and difficulties. For Morn Khy, owning a cow means she only needs to borrow one cow from her neighbor in order plow her field and transport firewood from the forest to her house. In the same way, she told that owning a cow also gives her the ability and opportunity to help her neighbors by letting them borrow her cow. According to her, she saves 30,000 riels for transporting firewood and about 1,500 riels/day for vegetables she harvest from her garden that has been fertilized by manure from her cow.

Another benefit she mentioned from owning a cow is it affords her to be more productive or keep her busy at home. For instance, with cow manure she started doing compost, cleaning the area surrounding her house, and growing a vegetable gardening--watering, cultivating the soil, and fertilizing it. According to her these works help her overcome her boredom, and also help her to be industrious. She said, "these benefits also enable me to keep sending my 18-year-old youngest son to school till now." With her smile, she expresses her joy even though she is working hard, Morm Khy said that she would like to say thank you for all the support from my church and the cow raising group that chose me to be first person to receive the cow gift loan from

CHAD

An open letter about water to the Vacation Church School children in Bakersfield, CA

2008-08-11T13:42:00.003+07:00

From Katherine Parker, United Methodist Missionary who has been sent from California to Phnom Penh in the Royal Kingdom of Cambodia in Southeast Asia.

To the community of God that is in Bakersfield, to the children and youth and adults who gather this week for study and prayer and work and celebration, together with people from around the world who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and Jesus the Christ.

I want to say hi to you with this formal greeting in the style of St.Paul's letters to the churches throughout the Mediterranean, to remind us that the church has always been more than a group of people in our own town with which we get together on Sunday. Rather, it is a community of people around the world who believe that we are called to love God and to love our neighbor. And, whether we see each other every day or every few years or we never get to meet, we are still a family, a community that supports each other to be the best that we can be.

I grew up in a town in California very similar to yours, participated in Vacation Church School in the summer like you, and then went to college to study biology. Now I live in Cambodia where I work as a missionary for our church.

And, one of my jobs now is to teach both children and adults about clean water.

Do you know what bacteria are? This is part of what I teach in Cambodia. Bacteria are very, very, VERY small creatures. Some bacteria can live in the water; and some bacteria can make us sick if they are in the water we drink. But we can't easily see bacteria because they are so small! So, how do we know if water has harmful bacteria in it?

In America, we have scientists who help us. They test the water, and if there are any bacteria in it, they kill them, and send us fresh, clean water through the pipes into our homes. But this is not the case everywhere; most people in Cambodia don't have water that comes into their homes through a pipe.

Right now, it is the rainy season in Cambodia. Every other day in the afternoon, the wind starts to blow and the clouds creep in and we have a fantastic rain storm with thunder and lightning. Many people here in the countryside have roofs made of leaves. They try hard to save their money to buy a metal roof. A metal roof makes a lot of noise when the rain comes and it is hot in the sun, but if your roof is metal rather than made of leaves, you can collect the water that comes off the top into a jar! If you keep the jar clean, this is very good water to drink.

How do you stay clean and prevent the spread of diseases? One part that is very important is to wash your hands, especially after you go to the bathroom or play with an animal. One of the games we play is about how to wash your hands. We practice washing our hands for 20

seconds to kill all of the bacteria. One way for the children to learn how long they need to wash their hands is to learn a song they can can sing while washing. But, let's get back to the water.

In the dry season, it doesn't rain for weeks and weeks, so then you want to have a well where you can get water to drink and to wash. Most wells are "open"; this is not so good, because then

leaves and dead frogs and other things can get into the well and then more bacteria that can make you sick also get in. Some wells have a cover on them; this is much better, but sometimes the bacteria can still get in . Just like in America, if we know that the bacteria are in the water, then we can treat the water to kill the bacteria.

One way we kill the bacteria is by boiling the water. But, families in rural Cambodia don't have a nice gas stove or electric tea kettle; they have to collect wood to heat the water. Whose job do you think it is to collect the wood? The kids! Can you imagine if you had to go outside and look for wood for an hour everyday before you went to play with your friends? Not much fun. So, it is good to know which water has bacteria and which water doesn't.

I work with people here in Cambodia to test all of the water sources that they have. We test the rain water in the jars, the deep well water, the shallow well water, the pond water, the water in the rice fields and the water that people filter or boil. Then we can count the bacteria from the different sources. Here are some pictures of the water we tested. Can you tell which is best to drink?

From Rice-banks in Banteay Meanchey and Battambong

There are many people in Cambodia who are teaching about clean water. What we are doing is important for two reasons. First, it helps people to see, often for the first time, that there are actually bacteria in water that looks clear and beautiful. Second, it gives people here a tool so that they can monitor their water supply the same way that scientists in America monitor our water supply. This way, if the community knows that its water is clean, then the children can spend their time going to school and playing with their friends, rather than collecting fire-wood.

And you are part of this too. Every time you drink a glass of clean water from your kitchen sink you can remember how wonderful it is to have good water come right into your house. We know that it will be great when everyone in the world has clean water just like we do, but how is that going to happen? It will happen because we learn together and work together. And that is what the church is. We are a group of people who support each other all over the world to work together to help our neighbors. You help your next-door-neighbors right there in Bakersfield and you help your neighbors in Cambodia to have clean water through your prayers and learning and gifts.

I am strengthened each day with the knowledge of your faith and the ways you show caring compassion to each other and to your neighbors.

Strategic Planning

2008-06-11T13:46:00.002+07:00

The Community Health and Agriculture Development program is richly blessed to be supported by so many people from around the world. Our staff of four people is made up of four different nationalities (Zimbabwe, Philippines, Cambodia and USA). In addition, we work with volunteer-in-mission teams from Malaysia, Singapore, and the USA. (And I'm not sure I can count all of the nationalities of the other missionaries and volunteer teams that work with other parts of the church.) For other partnerships, about 1/3 of our program funding comes from the 1000 member Methodist Church in Finland.

We appreciate not only their financial and prayer support, but also their support for planning. We have been working closely with our contact in Finland, Catarina, to develop a 3-year strategic plan for our program. Here is a summary of our vision, mission, goals and focus that have come out of that work. The activity plan is too detailed to post.

It has been a great exercise for our team, which has just doubled in size with the addition of Ken Cruz and myself as new missionaries. As a team with a diverse range of experiences, world views and thinking, this has been an important step as we learn how to work together to better serve the people of Cambodia.

CHAD Strategic Plan 2008-2010

VISION

Methodist Mission in Cambodia (MMC) churches engaging communities to experience wholeness of life as they witness to the transforming power of living the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

MISSION

Working within the Methodist Mission in Cambodia, CHAD seeks to share the love of God known through Jesus Christ in ways that create trust, hope and wholeness of life—physically, socially and spiritually.

OVERALL GOAL

Improved health and well-being of individuals, families and rural communities where the Methodist Mission in Cambodia works.

Strategic Focus

1. Empower churches with capacities and resources for leadership development of pastors and laity for wholistic ministry;

2. Empower communities through formation of community-based self-sustaining development groups in health, agriculture and livelihood;

3. Extend strategic linkages/partnerships of CHAD through formation of formal and non-formal partnership agreements and consitituency development through UMVIM (United Methodist Volunteer in Mission) teams;

4. Enhance internal organizational capacity by building and nurturing a strong, committed and God centered team and improving leadership, governance and accountability at all levels.

Binn Im's ministry

2008-04-11T13:36:00.000+07:00

Binn Im is the assistant pastor at Prekedai Methodist Church in a village about an hour down some dirt roads outside the provincial city of Batambong in Cambodia. Binn Im's story begins several years back when she received a gift-loan of a pig to raise through her participation in the Women's Association of the United Methodist Mission Initiative in Cambodia. She struggled to care for the pig and overcame several obstacles, including the death of her second litter and slow weight gain, to pass on piglets to another woman in her community.

It was during this time that Binn Im was responding to the call to ministry in her life. She applied and was accepted to study at the Methodist Bible School in Phnom Penh, where her son was also a student. Last year she graduated and was appointed as assistant pastor to her current rural congregation.

Four months ago, Binn Im welcomed a medical mission team to her church through the UMVIM (United Methodist Volunteers in Mission) partnership with CHAD (Community Health and Agricultural Development). The medical mission was a success and many people in her village received care. Binn Im has been working since then to ensure that those who need follow-up care are able to make the difficult journey into the provincial hospital at Batambong or all the way to Phnom Penh and serving as a patient advocate for them.

In the meantime, Binn Im has also continued her own discipleship training by attending workshops with the CHAD partner organization "Cheas Ponleau" (Bright Light). At Cheas Ponleau she was introduced to the concept of a seed-project. This is an approach to development where pastors are encourage to facilitate a group project using local resources.

Binn Im recognized the suffering of people in her community during the rainy season when there is insufficient rice to eat and local merchants charge 100% interest for a short-term loan of rice. She had a vision to start a rice-bank on the church property. With the approval of her District Superintendent Rev. Treung Bunny, Binn Im worked with a group of 15 families in her community to construct a barn to store the rice on the church property.

One church member traveled to the mountainside for 2 day to cut the trees for the frame. Other families donated nails and bamboo slats as they were able. And all of the families worked together to weave the thatch pieces to create the roof and walls. In two weeks the community had together build a small barn to store rice, something none of them had the resources to accomplish alone.

Through several visits, CHAD staff continued to support Binn Im by facilitating community discussions about how to write by-laws to govern a rice-bank. The community discussed many potential pitfalls, and because of their experience working together to build the rice-barn, they had the confidence to devise solutions to foreseen challenges and commit to continue working together regularly to avoid those future un-foreseen challenges. Yesterday, CHAD also provided a gift-loan to enable the community to purchase the initial rice to start the bank.

Binn Im knows that this is not the end of the story; the rice-bank is not only a means to address poverty-alleviation for the current 15 families who form the rice-bank group, but also an exercise in discipleship. She is continuing to nurture the community, so that as their faith and the rice in the bank grows that new members can join and eventually (in three-four years) they we be able to split and establish a new rice bank for more neighbors.

We love because God first loved us. Through your generous gifts, Binn Im was mentored into her role as a pastor and has been able to begin her vision of a rice-bank in her community. And through your continued prayers, Binn Im and her community will grow in their faith and learn the joy of giving. CHAD staff will continue to walk this path with Binn Im and her congregation, starting with a workshop on water and hygiene in two months time and continuing as the community identifies needs and areas for partnership. We hope you will continue to walk with us too.

A week in the field

2008-03-16T09:42:00.000+07:00

Saturday afternoon, March 15, 2008, I returned to Phnom Penh from four days in the field (my seventh week in-country), where Mr. Leng Thy (my CHAD program colleague) and I met with seven churches. I found the week's experience both sobering in the challenges and exciting in the prospects. Here are some pictures and my immediate reflections upon return to the city.

Cambodia is a country still visibly struggling to rebuild community trust, stability and self-sustenance after many years of civil war and foreign occupation. There is a strong sense in the poorest parts of the country of needing "relief" and looking to the West for that relief. For individuals who are Christian in this predominantly Buddhist country, there is sometimes a disquieting hope that since "now we are Christians ... you should provide for us." However, the urgent solicitation of Western relief, on whatever rationale seems promising, is not limited to the growing Christian communities. An edge of desperation among proud people and an urgent solicitation of the West seems to extend through every setting in the country where there is NGO work aimed at poverty alleviation.

Members of Toul Prom Methodist Church in Banteay Meanchey Province gather to discuss starting a cow-raising group.

A significant job for the CHAD program is to share about the concept of stewardship and why we, as Christians, need to nurture, sustain and expand the resources that have been entrusted to us so that we can share with others. Mr. Thy talks about a time when Cambodia was rich because people worked together, but now because of mistrust people are locked into poverty. It is from this starting place that CHAD works with church and community groups to start development projects. We ask the community to identify what needs it has and then what resources it has to begin addressing those needs. CHAD works together with the community to provide a gift-loan. It is called a gift-loan because the individual who is entrusted with the initial portion of money or, say, an animal is expected to return that to the group so that the gift-loan can be re-invested in the community, rather than being paid back to the donor.

The single disappointment of our work this last week comes from our visit to a church this Saturday morning. In 2006, there was a micro-credit project to provide loans to purchase fertilizer for families in a village in Kampang Chhnang. This community has been really struggling with the concept of a gift-loan. While some of the recipients of the initial fertilizer were able to pay back the loan in part, others could not, and yet others moved away. Part of the challenge I think is the vision of the money as belonging to CHAD and not to the community, so that direct recipients are not sufficiently motivated to re-invest in the community. There are other outstanding micro-credit loans that this community has from other NGOs with similar disappointments.

A young boy looks at rain water collected from the roof of Kangwa Church, Banteay Meanchey

Mr. Thy, the local pastor, the community and I couldn't come to any resolution about the next step to take in this instance. Mr. Thy and I are encouraging the local pastor to work on building trust and communication within the community through a small project, maybe around basket weaving, because now there is so much mistrust that the group members don't even attend meetings any more. This was my first introduction to a dysfunctional project. I know that they exist and that this particular situation is not at all representative of the micro-credit projects as a whole. What has happened in this community is disappointing, but for now I am trying to assess any mistakes that were made, so that we all can do better in the future.

The rest of the visits were extremely positive. CHAD worked with a community in Swaiant village in Batanmbong province starting in 2005 to establish a cow-raising group. When we visited this week, we met a five day old calf, the second to be born to this cow! This church community has worked well together for cow-raising and so we were excited to celebrate the beginning of a rice bank with 10 families.

A cow with her 5 day old calf. This is the second calf for this cow, so the husband and wife who are caretakers of the cow will get to keep it. Also pictured behind the cow is the pastor of Swaiant Church where this project originated.

The economics of rural Cambodia is that the primary source of income for farmers is selling their rice, which is usually harvested in December. Some of the rice is sold immediately after harvest, and some is kept to feed the family throughout the year. However, if the family needs money they will sell their stored rice. For this reason, there is a lot of hunger in the months of October through December before the new crop is harvested. The local merchants charge 100% interest on loans of rice taken at this time.

Unfortunately, no one family has the money to build a structure to store rice. In this community, the families had all contributed money to purchase the supplies for building a communal storage house for rice (about $5 per family). We observed the cement pillars that had been erected for the storage building and the palm trees selected to be cut down for further construction materials. Unfortunately, the community member who is skilled at planking palm trees has been sick with a fever and so the rice store is not completed. The community hopes he will recover soon and the families can finish building the structure in the next week.

CHAD provided the $750 in capital to purchase the initial store of rice. The group has established its bylaws and policies for loaning out the rice (at 30% interest, about 1/3 the rate offered by local merchants). The group hopes that in three to four years it will have doubled its rice and can use this to start a new rice bank. I was excited to listen to the families talk about how they hoped to use this rice bank to reach out in ministry to their community. They were realistic about the challenges and were committed to continue working together, expanding upon their initial success with the rice storage house.

Signing the contract for a Rice-bank at Bour Village, Banteay Meanchey Province.

Mr. Thy and I disbursed two other gift-loans for rice banks at and met with two other communities that are in the planning stages, one for a cow-group and one for a rice bank. The other visit was to follow-up with a cow group about what to do since the first calf that was born had a broken leg. The group agreed to sell this calf and to pass on the second one.

I was also able to test various water supplies available to communities include rain water, tube wells, open wells, truck-tank delivered water, and ponds. A picture of the biological water quality and options for improvement are starting to emerge.

Testing water from a pond that is the sole source of water for a household in Borvil Village, Battambang Province.

Up to now, I have been attending visiting local communities (within 1-2 hour drive) meetings with pastors, organizing our financial records and generally learning about the CHAD program. It was exciting to get out and visit more remote locations this week and hear directly from the people about their joys and their challenges. I can see that this will be a hard job. Mr. Thy teased me that some of these communities will give me a headache and that maybe when I return to the States for General Conference I will not want to come back! But I remain hopeful; there is important work for the church to do in Cambodia and I give thanks to God for my opportunity to participate in it.

More pictures (this time with captions!) can be viewed here.

News article about CHAD

2008-03-15T17:35:00.000+07:00

See the March/April 2008 edition of NEW WORLD OUTLOOK to read the story Toward Sustainable Development in Cambodia by Rev. Dr. James L. Gulley.

Finding a routine

2008-03-01T22:04:00.001+07:00

This last week I seem to have finally found a routine! I catch a tuktuk into work with Erica, an individual volunteer-in-mission at the dump-site orphanages. We join in morning devotions with the other staff and the young men who are studying mechanics for three months with the "Faith Engines" youth employment training program. Then I spend an hour studying Khmer with Jantein.

Office work still feels like orientation as I work with Mr. Thy to streamline the process for receiving and processing project proposals. We have been making more trips to visit existing agric- and micro-enterprise groups. We are also planning for two big 2-day workshops in March on Wholistic Development (particularly using local resources for small projects) for the Kandal and Kampang Chhnang districts, and I am getting ready for some workshops on water quality and sanitation with a local church and a pastor group.

This month we were also blessed by a Volunteers-In-Mission Team from the Louisiana Conference of the United Methodist Church who came with a medical team to run a free health clinic at two churches in the Kampang Chhnang district. The medical clinics were well received and Missionary Irene Mparutsa, community health nurse for CHAD, is busy making sure that the individuals that need follow up care from the hospital here in Phnom Penh are getting the proper treatment.

The Louisiana team visit started with the dedication of a new church that was built with their support over the last two years. It was a wonderful experience to see that a conference that it still working on rebuilding the homes and churches damaged by hurricane Katrina is simultaneously reaching out in partnership with its neighbors on the other side of the globe. At the luncheon following the dedication service I sat with this group of high school students who were thrilled to practice their English with a native speaker for the first time.

From Dedication of...

At the end of the health clinic I was able to join the team as they traveled to Siam Reap to visit Angkor Watt and other temples. It was quite spectacular, much more than I expected. Here is an example of some of the beautiful bas relief carvings.

From Angkor Watt a...

I especially enjoyed Bayon Temple with its hundred faces.

As before, I have more (unorganized) pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/ktp.cambodia.01

First Week in Cambodia

2008-02-11T18:21:00.001+07:00

I arrived safe and sound in Phnom Penh during the Lunar New Year celebration, which was going on everywhere, including at the Independence Monument just one block from my hotel. The dragon dancers came to my hotel on Sunday.

Almost immediately, I was plunged into a workshop about the organization and direction of CHAD (Community Health & Agriculture Development), where I will work as an Agriculture Development Advisor. We had 31 participants including District Superintendents and pastors (top) who are members of the Social Concerns Committee.

My first week, I also headed to the rural countryside. Here's a church in the Kampong Chhnang Provence with a well and hand pump in front, reminding me of my time in Ghana where I tested well water. I've brought my water testing mobile lab with me to continue that work here.

Rev. Ean Houn (left) invited us for lunch in the cool breeze of his traditional stilt house.

We visited the church of Pastor Soeung Sopenh and saw the new cement bio-gas system that he and one of his church members had just built.

You can see more of my (unorganized) pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/ktp.cambodia.01

Preparing for Cambodia!

2008-01-20T12:50:00.000+07:00

This is just a quick note about what’s happening with me as I enter the final two weeks of my preparations for going to Cambodia. I head from the family home here in Mill Valley to the San Francisco airport on Saturday evening, February 2. I will take an Eva Airways flight that leaves about midnight and travels through Taipei to arrive about noon in Phnom Penh on Monday, February 4, approximately 21 hours after departure.

When I returned to the States from Ghana last June, I almost immediately commenced work on my application for a position as a career missionary with the United Methodist Church. By mid September I was in upper New York State for orientation and on Oct. 9, 2007, I was officially commissioned by the General Board of Global Ministries. My first assignment (nominally for three years) is as an agriculture development advisor attached to the Methodist Mission in Phnom Penh. I will be part of the effort there known as CHAD, for Community Health and Agriculture Development. I will divide my time between the office in Phnom Penh and work in the rural countryside. The main task of my first ten weeks or so in-country will be learning the Khmer language.

In late June last year, as a member of the church’s Annual Conference for California and Nevada, I was elected to be first alternate lay delegate to the church’s Jurisdictional Conference in mid July in Portland, Oregon. I hope to attend this conference (which elects bishops), as well as the church’s quadrennial General Conference in April 2008 in Ft. Worth, Texas, but do not yet know whether either of these trips will be possible and practical to arrange.

Last September, I resumed my U.S. course work at Sacramento State in my masters degree program. That course work is now successfully completed. The remaining step in the degree program is formal approval, writing, and oral defense of a thesis. The data collection for the thesis research on well water quality in West Africa is complete. The next main step is the statistical analysis of the data. Before I leave for Cambodia, I hope to obtain the formal preliminary approval of my thesis subject and also to make substantial progress on the statistical analysis and initial drafting of the paper. I will need to make an oral defense of the paper at some point in the future during a return to the States from Cambodia.

For further information and posted photographs on my experiences in Cambodia, you should be able to check my blog, which I started in Ghana and will work to update from Cambodia. http://bokashi.blogspot.com/ A further communication project on which I also plan to work is picture postcards. For a tax deductible donation of $50, which goes towards my support, I will mail each donor 10 picture postcards over the course of the year. You can subscribe to this by mailing a $50 check payable to Mt. Tamalpais United Methodist Church, 410 Sycamore Ave., Mill Valley, CA 94941, with a check memo line annotation “Advance Special # 15187Z”,.

This is truly a Great Adventure. Please keep me in your thoughts and prayers.

Advancement

2007-10-19T03:05:00.000+07:00

Lots of wonderful and exciting changes have been happening in my life.

On October 6 I celebrated the 90th birthday of my Grandma Janet (actual date October 13) with our extended family. I also celebrated the marriage of my good friends Brian & Erin. On the 7th, I was commended by my home congregation, Mt. Tamalpais UMC, to the General Board of Global Ministries of the UMC, and then celebrated the 80th birthday of my Grandma Gretchen and met my newest cousin. We also celebrated my sister Janet's 19th birthday (on October 8th).

On October 9th I was commissioned as a Global Missionary (standard support) of the General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM) of the United Methodist Church. I have been assigned as the Agriculture & Community Development Adviser for the Methodist Mission in Cambodia. I hope to move to Cambodia in January 2008 and begin language study.

On the 10th I turned 30!

Today I presented my research proposal to my supervisory committee and the graduate committee of the Department of Biological Sciences, California State University Sacramento, and was approved to advance to candidacy. There are a few corrections to be made in my proposal and some more paperwork to follow through on, but I am excited to be moving forward and to have the approval to proceed with writing my thesis.

Thinking of home

2007-04-24T20:55:00.000+07:00

How does the time slip by? I just changed my ticket yesterday to stay an extra month, so now I am set to leave on 15 June. I'll be back in California in time for ACS and Kwade's wedding. Maybe over the summer I'll get the rest of my pictures posted, or maybe not, my photo albums from Japan have not changed since I left ARI. Anyways, it has been good.

Research Progresses

2006-10-29T02:11:00.000+07:00

I have been getting some questions as to how my research is going. The short answer is very well for me, but not so well for the communities I am testing. I am finding a much higher rate of contamination than I was expecting to find. Quite how to analyze all of the data is still confusing to me, but it is coming along well.

I have a whole group of pictures of the hand-dug wells and bore-holes that I have been testing as well as the result data from each of them posted, but I’m sure that besides my professors and the communities involved this is of minimal interests. I sometimes take pictures of the people in the community who hang out, help me administer the tests. This is a collection of those pictures.

People from the Suhum Field Tests

I have met lots of interesting people out in the field, but I was most excited to come across a blacksmith making farming tools. He was kind enough to show me his trade and let me take a few pictures. He makes all basic farm tools – hoes and machete (cutlass) – but was working on a particular curved knife for cutting down cocoa pods at the time when I visited.

Suhum Blacksmith

Aburi Festival & my Paramount Chief Professor

2006-10-29T02:10:00.000+07:00

Aburi Festival

After the parade at Cape Coast I was too tired to stay for the Durbar (sortof a party, but also involves speeches). When I went up to Aburi for their festival on October 14 I was too tired from being out in the field to get up early and so I missed the parade, but I was there for the Durbar. Well, I was there for the part of the Durbar where there was dancing and lots of interesting greeting of and by the Paramount Chief. Then the vice prime minister or some such important political figure showed up (late) and there was more greeting. Then the political speeches and the discussion of what development project would be carried out in the following year began. My host didn't feel like translating and so this was not as interesting, so we went off in search of lunch.

Some things I learned:

(1) The ritual of greeting is very specific in Ghana. After the chief arrives, then people begin to come forward to greet him. There is usually a dance that is performed by each individual as they move forward to greet the chief. Each person performed a unique dance, although there were some similarities. The dancing appears to my untrained eye as somewhat hectic and confusing, but I could also tell that it was precisely executed. Hammond explained that if you dance poorly at the festival it is very insulting, and so all of the dances were very precise and practiced. The chief stayed seated throughout this whole process and depending on the status of the person coming they might just approach the chief or go all the way up and shake his hand.

(2) After the chief has been greeted, then he came down and made a circle around the grounds to greet everyone who had come.

(3) The linguists are people who speak for the chief. It is not proper for the chief to speak in public, so instead he whispers to the linguist who makes the announcement. The linguists also carry staffs with top ornaments that have some symbolic meaning or represent a popular parable.

(4) The political minister arrived late, after the chief had already greeted everyone. Instead of going out again, he sent his linguists to greet the minister on his behalf. The minister came down from his seat to accept the greeting of the linguists; this signified that (at least on the chief's turf) the chief is higher ranking than the political minister.

(5) Bananas and groundnuts (peanuts) make a very satisfying lunch.

My professor for Medical Geography, Prof. Nabila, is a paramount chief from the northern region. I am constantly baffled by the particular forms of respect that my fellow students pay to him.

First off, we have become totally spoiled in the class because he always gives us juice boxes to drink during class (we are only four students). But, he never distributes the drinks. One of his aids will deliver them and then he will call on one of the students to distribute them (we always serve prof first). Last week this became apparent because he made a joke that he was going to serve the drink and was telling me how this never happens. But, before he could, one of the students had jumped up to relieve him of the responsibility.

Class usually takes place in his office, but we wait around in our regular classroom to be informed that Prof. is ready for us to come up. When we enter the room, at least the one student also from the north, and sometimes other students, do a kneeling bow to him. He is never allowed to carry anything, not even to move it from the bookshelf to his desk after he has located it. Professors in general are seen here as a long ways above students and are shown a lot of deference. This professor, however, is perhaps my most humble professor. He seems to accept the deference paid to him as part of the responsibility of being a paramount chief, but he doesn't act like he expects it or that he is particularly superior, just this is the way culture defines the relationship.

What is most odd to me is the ways that he is trying to change the culture of his people and the ways he accepts the cultural norm. For example, Prof. only has 5 children because he works on population studies and he knows the effect of large families on population growth. I was shocked, I though 5 children was a lot. That was until my mates explained that the expectation is for him to have 20 or 30 children, and some have around 80. We also have interesting dialogues about topics such as malnutrition and the cultural beliefs that children should not be fed eggs. He is very upset about the cultural practices towards giving inadequate protein to children. The idea with eggs is that if the child gets a taste for eggs, they will steel the eggs before the chicken can even lay them. But these traditional beliefs act to deny protein from the most vulnerable members of society. Prof. talks about how he uses the Durbar at festival time to do some education of his community around these issues.

It is a difficult dilemma for me to understand the process of cultural adaptation. There is a lot of talk among my fellow foreign students as to the negative aspects of western culture influencing people here. I will not deny that this is the case, particularly when it comes to environmental protection. The current implementation of western cultural values is leading to severe environmental degradation that used to be preserved by traditional values. It is not that western culture doesn’t also have values to preserve the environment. Unfortunately, there is a lag in how values are adopted. The values (or superstitions) that kept people out of the forests and preserved the environment are abandoned early along with the value to exploit the land for immediate capital gain. The education and adoption of western values of preservation or modern interpretations of the traditional values of conservation take more time to be articulated in the community. This lag causes a period of severe environmental degradation. This lag causes some of my fellow students to say that we are wrong for sharing our cultural values. However, as Prof. has been sharing, there are a lot of traditional cultural beliefs, such as the idea that children shouldn't get protein, that need to be changed for the betterment of the country. It makes me want to study anthropology and culture change to understand the process better. I agree with my mates, that education all around is important. Both education that allows for the articulation, and thus preservation of those beneficial cultural values, as well as education that allows for a more well rounded adaptation of outside values that lead to the betterment of the population.

Birthday party and hair braiding

2006-10-11T01:32:00.000+07:00

I turned 29 this year while I was in Ghana. As is typically the case, I let my birthday slide by without much hurrah. The day before I ventured down to the salon to get my hair braided. It was great fun because I learned that it was not necessary to have hair added, that they could just do corn-rows in my hair. The beautician was very talented and could quickly braid my hair without even adding gel to it. It took less than an hour to braid the front half into about 12 corn-rows.

I asked my program office to pick up some cake for me, and then I made a frosting of melted chocolate and condensed milk. I also melted some orange marmalade and poured it over the cake before putting the frosting on. It was very tasty (but a little too sweet for my tongue). I took cake with me to share with all of my classmates, and the various people I interact with on a daily basis (the porters, the ladies who make my breakfast, the TAs in my department, etc.). All of the Ghanaians were very upset that I hadn’t told them earlier, but whatever. Lots of the foreign students came by in the evening to help eat the left-over frosting which was fun. So overall it was a very nice birthday, and I don’t think I could have asked for better.

Birthday Party

First Data Collected

2006-10-09T02:23:00.000+07:00

As interesting as it is to travel and see the natural beauty of Ghana, my purpose in being here is actually to complete a research project on microbial water quality. As this has taken form, I have focused my efforts towards bore-holes, and looking for indicators of recent fecal contamination in these. On Saturday, September 30 I went with a student, Peter, from my hydrology class to his hometown to sample the water there and test my protocol. On Monday, I went to the 37 Military Hospital with the same purpose. I am satisfied that I can detect coliform & e.coli in well water, and I have refined my protocol for the visual survey of the wells. You can see the documentation of my initial data:

Chanten-Lapaz Water Quality

Sep 30, 2006 - 15 Photos

On Friday, October 6 I went to the Community Water and Sanitation Agency office in the capital of the Eastern Region, Koforidia. I collected some historic information about the digging of bore-holes in the region and made arrangements to go next week and test the wells in 14 communities in the Sahum District. I am really excited at how quickly this has come together. Up to this point it has been extremely slow and tedious to make the appropriate connections, but once I submitted my ten-zillion letters of introduction to the Sahum District Assembly they have been very helpful in making the arrangements for me to visit the communities. More details after my visits next weekend!

Volta Hall and various pictures

2006-10-09T01:49:00.000+07:00

It is easy to complain about how different things are and how frustrating it is to adjust my mode of thinking to be patient with delays, power-outs, etc. In reality, I live in one of the most beautiful places in the world, in this amazing garden. So, one morning I went out with my camera to document some of the beautiful flowers and trees in the courtyard of Volta Hall, where I live. Enjoy!

Where I live - Volta Hall

Sep 28, 2006 - 135 Photos

Of perhaps equal interest, but not so aesthetically pleasing, here is a gallery of various pictures taken from the bus window during our orientation and other outings to the market, etc.

Roadside attractions

Sep 24, 2006 - 52 Photos

Living with the wildlife

2006-09-29T01:24:00.000+07:00

My bed is protected by a mosquito net, but I am somewhat skeptical as to its effectiveness because I have found spiders inside my bed. My room, additionally, is a know haven for wildlife.

My roommate and were having a challenge from a rat the first week. It was chewing holes in our window-screen and coming into our room during the first week we were here. Our first attempt was to spray the screen with DEET and Permithrin, but this did not deter the rat. We put all the food into plastic bins with lids, which meant the rat had nothing to eat. But, he was still visiting. After a week or so, we discovered that if we filled the window well with plastic bags that he didn't like the sound of those as he was chewing a new holes in the screen and he stopped visiting. However, this may have coincided with more people moving into the dorm. In any case, we haven't had any problems in our room since.

Lizards are a constant delight to me. There are some very large ones that have red heads and tails. They do pushups in the courtyard, apparently a kind of threatening defence mechanism. The smaller ones like to hang out in our room. The very smallest ones are barely bigger than an inch. I took some pictures of the one that was hanging out on my ironing board. If I nudged it, it would scurry very quickly. I took a video, but unfortunatly, I can't figure out how to share that.

Tinny Lizard

Shai Hills Wildlife Refuge

2006-09-25T06:11:00.000+07:00

Yay for outings, and getting better at uploading pictures with captions. Like all parks in Ghana, in order to take a three hour walk along the road we had to hire a guide, but Simon was very good at spotting animals, so we even got to see a Green Monkey.

We left shortly after 6am, got put onto a trotro where the mate didn't actually know where we wanted to get off and had to take a trotro south before connecting by Taxi to the park, but still made it on the trail by 8am.

On the trotro ride home, we made it easily, quickly and cheeply to Ashaiman, but then we asked for a trotro to Legon (which is west of Ashaiman) and ended up on a trotro going east to Negon. I was a bit queesy and not paying attention until we were driving along a coast-line I had never seen before. So another hour later we were back in Ashaiman asking for a trotro to Accra, to which they told us essentially "no dummies, you should catch a direct trotro to Legon", to which we replied essentially "we tried that already, and look where we ended up." In the end, we took a direct trotro to Legon, which only took 30 minutes, so we got back about 2:30. But that is travel in Ghana, and all in all it was a very fun outing.

2006_09_24 Shai Hills Wildlife Reserve

Sep 23, 2006 - 65 Photos

Adinkra & Kente Fabric

2006-09-19T17:40:00.000+07:00

I just figured out how to get a title on my blogs! I know that is somewhat lame, but the connection here is so slow, so I usually don't try to make any major updates.

After over an hour I have finally uploaded some pictures from my visit to the fabric villages near Kumasi during my second week in Ghana. There are some pictures of how the ink for Adindra fabric is made, and me printing some Adinkra patterns on fabric. There are pictures of some young boys weaving Kente cloth and the two pieces of cloth that I bought. Also, the museum in Cape Coast had some displays about Adinkra and Kente cloth, so I took pictures of those.

I also have captions written for all of the pictures, but I am so tired of the slow connection that they will have to wait for another day. I hope that if I go down to the Volta cafe late at night, that the speed will be faster and I can get the other pictures I have taken over the last month loaded.

Adinkra & Kente Fabric

Aug 5, 2006 - 20 Photos

Power Break

2006-09-15T16:50:00.000+07:00

Two weeks ago I walked into the courtyard of the Department of Oceanography and Fisheries where all of the students for my class on Coastal Zone Management were gathered eating a kind of Ghanaian corn nut snack and plantain chips. George asked me if this was my first “power break”. I gave him a baffled look. I thought they were referring to all of the students sitting and chatting in the courtyard eating snack and that this was the Ghanaian equivalent of a “coffee break.” Really he was referring to the fact that the electricity was out, thus all of the lights in the classroom (as well as the aircon) were out, so everyone was hanging out in the courtyard for the natural light.

The level of Lake Volta is low this year and so there is a limited amount of hydroelectric power being generated and a system of rolling blackouts has been instigated across Accra. According to the radio, which several people have reported to me, the schedule for blackouts is 12 hours of power off during the day followed by 12 hours off at night 3 days later. Except that it didn’t seem to happen exactly that way.

At first I barely noticed the power-outs because they were all during the day. It was slightly annoying because then the free internet access in the International Student Office is down, but that is not the only thing that causes it to be down. The buildings are all built with two walls of windows to facilitate natural light for these kind of situations. And somehow, our power always seems to comeback on at 6pm when it is out during the day. Until last night. Well, half of the dorm came back on about 6:45, but the annex (where I live) did not. The computer lab in Volta Hall was working, but there was no light in my room. Since I am a creature of habit and I don’t like to change plans this was somewhat frustrating to me. I had planned to do some reading in my room and then I couldn’t, so I just went to bed instead.

I should probably head down to the Bush Canteen and get a kerosene lantern, but in reality I don’t find the power outages to be that big of a problem. Even when power was out in my dorm, the office building just outside my room was blaring its lights all night (as usual), and so there was plenty of ambient light to do all of my evening chores, just not enough to read, and I didn’t feel like using my laptop by battery in the semi-dark.

The report is that the university is on a different rolling outage where the academic buildings will get power M-F. The dorms are divided into three groups and we should expect to loose power every three days from 7 am to 6pm. However, this is not entirely accurate since the School of Business across the street always has power and we have had our power out all night.
Sometimes concurrent with and sometimes just because, the water also goes out. This causes more of a frustration to me. I keep two buckets of water in my room. And actually, I typically heat a bucket of water with my heating coil and use it to take a shower, so that is not a problem. It was confusing at first as to how to proceed. But now I have a setup on the balcony with a pitcher to use for washing my hands, and I can shower with about a gallon of water, but since I usually heat two I never feel a lack (although I avoid conditioning my hair with the quantity of water).

The main problem is that the toilets in the bathroom fill up and the room begins to smell after a day or two. The most recent water outage lasted almost 3 days, except that we had water for about 2 hours in the middle. Luckily, those women, who were up and around, made use of it to flush all of the toilets. The worst was last night when the power was out so the bathrooms were dark and the toilets were full, it made the bathrooms a scary destination.

If you don’t have enough water stored in your room it is possible to fill up your bucket from the polytanks in the courtyard. I think that it is possible to also fill the toilet tank from your bucket and although this is not the common practice I may take it up. I am typically too lazy to carry water upstairs from the polytanks, so I try and keep my buckets filled up when the water is on so that I am not caught off guard.

The power came back on at 5:30 this morning and the water shortly afterwards, so now I feel like I am back to normal. Even though it is possible to do everything by carrying water, I am lazy and I tend to put off things like mopping the floor and doing my laundry. So, this morning I mopped and this evening I will probably do laundry.

Cape Coast Festival

2006-09-05T16:47:00.000+07:00

My second visit to Cape Coast was for a seasonal festival. Festivals play an important role in the culture of the Ghanaians, with spiritual, economic, political, agriculture and many other significances. Perhaps the agricultural foundations seem like the basis to me. The festival I attened started on Wednesday with a special ritual to re-open the local lagoon to fishing. Cape Coast is a fishing community, but for several months of the year they close the lagoon to fishing and only fish in the sea, for conservation purposes. This festival marked the re-opening of the lagoon, unfortunately we missed that part of the ritual.

The spiritual aspects of the festival revolve around the local shrine. The African Traiditional Relgion (animistic in nature) identifies a rock that is located in the dungeons of Cape Coast castle as a sacred spot. When the castle was built, the shrine had to be moved into what is now the center of town. So this particular shrine now has two location of equal significance. Some of the rituals happened at one or the other or both of these locations.

Thursday night we arrived in time for the pouring of libations and ritualized dancing. I received a nice explanation of the process of how a deceased person is selected to become an ancestor. It turns out to be fairly similar to the process of selecting a saint in the Roman Catholic tradition, and they seem to play a similar role of intersession. There are a few different rules, such as an ancestor can not have died a violent death, and the death cannot have been caused by fire or water in any form. But, basically you had to be a good person. The ancestor of the shrine at Cape Coast was known as Nana Anthony, which happens to also be the name of the patron saint of the Portugese Catholic church built above the dungeons where the Shrine is located. This was described as a symbol of the melding of Traditionalist and Christian traditions in modern African Traditional Religion.

The dancing took place at the shrine in the center of town. It opened by making an inner and outer circle with sand and then pouring libations (a bit of gin) on the grounds as an offering to the ancestors. The dancing was very hypnotic and was a kind of meditative commune with the spirits / ancestors / gods (sometimes it was hard to tell). I only stayed for a few dances since it was already past 11pm. Our power was out when I got back to the hotel, but they had put kerosene lanterns at each of our doors.

On Friday was the main ritual sacrifice. Usually both the dancing and the ritual sacrifice are done in secret, but since tourism is so important to the Cape Coast economy they have made these elements public. In the morning we went down to the castle. We witnessed them carrying plates of fruit and other gifts down into the dungeons where the rock shrine was located. They also brought a bull to the castle to be accepted by the god(s) there before being moved to the shrine in the center of town for slaughter. The distressing part of the animal sacrifice was that there was no apparent respect paid to the life of the animal involved in the process. While hanging out at the castle the bull was subject to poking, being pushed over and having a bloody rag waved at it in order to rile it up. It was already bleeding slightly when I saw it the first time at 10am. It was a decent sized bull for those I have seen around Ghana, but compared to other bovine I have seen, even in the Philippines, it was on the small side. We waited and watched for a while, but eventually I went off with the professor who had the most knowledge of the events to get some lunch because I wanted to hear more of an explaination of what was happening.

While we were out the procession occurred. The reports of those who stayed to witness it was that the bull was walked from the castle up past a tent area where the chiefs were sitting to approve of the bull. During the procession lots of the town children and members would all attack the bull. The bull was barely walking, and bleeding from several wounds by the time it reached the shrine in the middle of town. The effect was that it was placated so that those who were performing the sacrifice would not have to worry about it responding in any way or acting in any way that might harm them. This was perhaps important because those performing the sacrifice were of the royal family, and not likely to be people who handled animals very much these days. By the time I reached the shrine there was a tight crowd around it and I couldn’t see much of what was going on inside, although there were some chicken entrails outside from an earlier sacrifice. So, I headed back to the hotel.

My roommate stayed to watch and was a little ways back, but was glad that she did not have a direct view. The neck of the bull was slit and so the bull died by bleeding. I was disappointed that the spinal cord was not first severed by a strong blow, but this is difficult to do and requires some skill. After some time the neck was sawed some more and the head pulled back and removed. This came as a shock to some people who got blood splattered on them. My professor had explained that in the process of the ritual it is believed that the gods who are involved (some said it was a ritual to the 77 gods of the area) become manifest in the children of the chief who are performing the ritual. When the bull is sacrificed they drink some of the blood as a sign that the gods are accepting the blood sacrifice and then they return to human form. After the sacrifice the bull is butchered and the meat is divided up among the various chiefs who are up in the tent. Thus ending this part of the festival.

Saturday was the culmination of the festival, and typically the only public part of the festival. You can just look at the pictures with captions or read the description.

Cape Coast Festival Parade

Sep 2, 2006 - 146 Photos

Early in the morning we headed out to get good seats at the start of the parade route. I took a multitude of picture during the parade. First come the Acosombo. These are the traditional Military Companies. Participation in these is hereditary, and they are very similar to our fraternal orders or secret societies in the US. There is not a need for local militias these days and so the Acosombo typically function for search and rescue or to do various development projects. There were seven different Acosombo companies in this parade. They all had a different color costume, dignitaries, musicians and dancers who paraded with them.

Then came the chiefs and queen mothers. These people were carried by palanquin and had large colorful umbrellas held over them. Behind each paloquin were several huge drums, each carried on the head of one man and played by a rotating group of people. The paloquins were carried on the head of 4 men and would sway and dance and turn in circles. The chiefs and queen mothers would dance (as much as you can from a sitting position). I even saw one queen mother who was tossing out small bills to people in the crowd.

We watched the entire procession go by and then we joined the parade. I chose Adrienne as my parade partner. For a while we danced at the back of the parade, but then we decided to explore, so we pushed our way forward. We made our way all the way up to the front of the parade. We were going to join an Acosombo company and be part of their revelry, but then one of them blew a horn of some sort in Adrienne’s ear which was very painful, so we had to fallout until she felt better. The line was moving incredibly slowly, so we went ahead to the festival grounds. We saw the big park that was set up for political speeches. Apparently the President or some minister in his cabinet was scheduled to give a political speech, and I’m sure there would be many others, but we decided that those were not of interest to us, so we went off to get lunch. There were lots of open air food stalls, but we settled on a restaurant where we could sit and relax.

On our way back to the hotel we got caught in a push of people where there were lots of people’s hand all over us and my bag. It was probably the scariest part of the day. I am glad that I have a very sturdy bag with thick fabric. The zipper to my water bottle pocket got opened in this crush, but no important pocket. Several folks with cloth bags had them slashed and two cameras were stolen, but I, luckily, did not loose anything. We headed back to the hotel and got there about 4pm.

On Sunday we visited a national park and went on a rope walk through the canopy of the rainforest, which was fun.

Here are the pictures from Kakum National Park:

2006_09_03 KakumRainforest

Sep 2, 2006 - 42 Photos

Cape Coast & Elmina Castles

2006-09-04T16:40:00.000+07:00

I have been to Cape Coast twice now. It is a very important destination for travelers to visit, but also difficult to put the experience into words.

The first visit was to tour the castles at Cape Coast and Elmina. Elmina was the first perminant European building in West Africa and is significant because it represent the era of trade between Europe and West Africa. It was built by the Portugese and used by the Dutch and then turned over to the English when they took control of the entire Gold Coast in I think 1860s. Cape Coast was also built by the Portugese but then captured by the English. Both of these buildings have a long and varied history, not all of it pleasant.

Initially they were built as trading forts. They were places of storage for the goods coming from Europe to West Africa and those awaiting transport back to Europe. Initially the majority of the trade was in gold, but also in other goods. They were centers of interaction with Europe and also the centers from which Christianity entered into Ghana. The first Ghanian Anglican priest (who was trained in England and returned to Ghana for his ministry) is buried in the courtyard at Cape Coast Castle.

Then West Africans were transported to the Americas, thus marking the beginning of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. During the next 400 years more people than I can really comprehend were transported across the Atlanta. A huge majority of them were processed through these coastal castles. Because sea travel is dependent upon the prevailing winds, often times men and women would have to wait several months until there were ships available to take them. During that time they were kept in the dungeons of the castles that were previously built to hold more savory goods used for exchange. In Elmina Castle, it is the original Catholic church built by the Portugese that was turned into the trading hall were merchants exchanged the West African slaves for riffles and other goods, about 3 rifles per man or 1 rifle per woman.

In Cape Coast there is a tunnel under the outer Castle wall which the slaves would have to walk from the dungeons where they were held out to the gate which opened onto the dock and sea. The tunnel is now blocked off for symbolic reasons, but the gate is still there. The gate is called “The Door of No Return” and there is a plaque with this inscribed on the inside. A few years ago, the bones of two slaves, one from the US and one from the Caribean, were exhumed and brought back in a ritual that involved brining them back through the door. In memory of this, there is a plaque on the outside of the gate which reads “The Door of Return.”

In Elmina we went first into the cell where the European soldiers who had committed some crime were kept for their punishment period. It was not pleasant, but there were windows in the upper parts that let in light and air. Next door to it was the death cell, with a scull and crossbone carved into the stone above it. Only those who were condemned to die by dehydration or starvation were put into this cell. Usually it was the leaders of the slaves in the dungeons who tried to rebel and escape who were put here. There were several rebellions over the period of the slave trade, but none were successful. The dungeons themselves where the slaves were held for up to 3 months while waiting for transport are hard to explain. They do have a window or two in them to let in a small ray of light and fresh air, and the rooms seem kind of large until you realize that 50 or 100 or 200 people were kept all together in one room, with no sanitation, and only one meal a day. When the ships come, the people are herded out through very small openings that require them to stoop and travel in single file such that order can be better kept.

The women and men were always kept separately. At Elmina the cells for the women were better in that they had a full wall or two that was just bars. This was nicer in that they had access to light and air, but it also meant for more exposure. The governor’s residence overlook the courtyard at the center of the women’s cells. Women were put on display in the courtyard where they could be selected for sexual use. Women who refused could be chained to one of the cannon-balls in the center of the courtyard where they would be in the full exposure of the elements.

Whenever I face these genocidal acts of humanity, whether at the Holocaust Memorial Museum or the Hiroshima Peace Museum or here at Cape Coast and Elmina, I am shocked that we as humans can be so brutal in our treatment of other humans. Sometimes the stories that the tour guides would tell us seemed so extreme that I couldn’t believe that they happened. I have toned down my reflections here to just a vague generalization of what I personally observed and the tamest of the atrocities described, yet even those are horrendous.

What I still cannot comprehend is the shear magnitude of the number of people who passed through the walls of those castles. I know that people died during the long walks to get to the castles, then they died in the dungeons and also on the ships. What we have is a record of those that arrived, and those numbers are too great for me to comprehend.

Dance class

2006-08-30T21:33:00.000+07:00

I love social dancing, particularly the variety found at Gaskell and FNW, but I have never been much for clubbing. So, I had a few trepidations about the "African Traditional Dance" class that was scheduled for four evenings of our orientation. It was very new, the energy is very different from the high, smooth feel of the rotary waltz I love so much. The dance instructors were all amazing, beautiful dancers, and they could execute isolated movement so well that I was somewhat intimidated. The music was also totally new and strange. The drumming is strong and powerful, the rhythms were strange and almost syncopated, but not quite. And the tonality was also new, the drums each had their sound, and the rattle and the bell, and then the singing and flute on top of it all. It was a total sensory overload.

But the professor is amazing. He is totally attuned to the expression of dance not only as a movement of the body, but as an expression of the spirituality of the community and the individual soul. During orientation the dances were really hard, I just didn't quite get how the music and the movement worked together. In part because I am such a controlled person. The professor would say, "when the music changes I want you all to get out there and boogie, boogie with all that you are." The idea of letting go so completely into a dance is very frightening to me, at the same time, the word boogie just sounds funny, and not like something I would ever be caught dead doing. To top it off, they called the move we were learning "chicken arms." So, we would be dancing around in a circle, and then one of the assistants would come over and call you out into the center where you had to show off. It was so frightening, but at the same time the attitude is so generous, and everyone is smiling. For a few, brief moments I could slide into my body and just move as the music moved, until someone would call out and I would become self-conscious again.

As I was signing up for classes, I was worried that dance would not fit into my schedule, and so I missed the first week of classes. Luckily when I went last night they were working on the same dance we learned in orientation.

I am so amazed by the professor. He started off explaining that we had to come with the correct emotional energy for dance, then led us in a song that grounded the group together in a common pulse. And then we got up and started practicing the dance moves. It was the noisiest environment. The drums filled the entire room, and the acoustics have a lot of echo. Additionally, some parts of the dance are sexually suggestive, and so there is a lot of hooting and laughing that go along with them, especially during the explanation of movement if one of the TAs is a bit silly and over-exaggerates a movement.

The style and technique are still foreign to me, and I have a long way to go in learning how isolate different parts of my body, but the class moves at a good rate, and the attitude is so generous that I know this will be an important kind of learning for me.

A fetish shop

2006-08-28T04:31:00.000+07:00

Today (Sunday), I went to the early service at Trinity United Church again. The senior pastors were all off at their respective equivalents of Annual Conference (it is a Methodist-Presbeterian church). Once again, the music was great and the sermon left something to be desired.

In the afternoon, I went with two others down to Accra in search of "Timber Market" somewhere around James Town or Ussher Town where they had read in the Lonly Planet guide that there was a place to buy fetish items.

After 3 tro-tro rides and plenty of asking we decided to head out on foot. Along the route we met up with Emmanuel (a very common name here), who took us to the entrance of Timber Market. We had some difficulty explaining what we were looking for, but we eventually pulled out the guidebook, and that helped.

There was a single stall deep in the interiors of a residential area that bordered on the Timber Market (where they make things like doors). The residents were delighted to see us and were very friendly, but the woman at the stall was a bit more worldly / standoffish. She had a huge display of roots and herbs and calabash bowls. She also had a stack of animal skins (including a lepard), tiger teath, sculls, horns, tusks, pipes, etc. I bought 3 porcipine quils for 30 cents each, and the others also got some cowery shells.

Here are the pictures of what we saw:

Timber Market Fettish Shop

Sep 24, 2006 - 13 Photos

Emmanuel took us back to his house. It was a very small one room appartment, but nicly furnished and we got to meet his fiance Matilda.

It took us to tro-tros to get home, so we stoped at Nakrumi Circle and walked to my new favorit vegan restaurant where I had a huge mint & tomatoe salad with tofu. Back home I finished my mosquito net frame, finished the laundry I started this morning and moped the floor (I sweep daily, but Sunday I also try to mop).

Classes start for real this next week, so I hope that all goes well!

A cocoa farm and the botanical gardens

2006-08-28T04:17:00.000+07:00

On Saturday I invited a group to go with me up to Aburi for a day trip. We were joined by one Ghanaian first year, Fiona.

Our first stop was to the Tetteh Quarshie farm and homestead in the town of Maampong. Fiona explained that Saturday is "market day for funerals," which explained why there were about four taking place in the very small town of Maampong. The care taker of the Tetteh Quarshie farm was at one of them, but someone went to fetch him and we had a very interesting tour.

Tetteh Quarshie was a Ghanaian black-smith who traveled to (some Island, I'll fill in the name later), where he befriended the local farmers with his ability to make farm equipment and so when he returned to Ghana they gifted him with a live cocoa plant. Several people had been trying to establish cocoa growing in Ghana, and he also tried first in Accra, but failed. Then he headed up to Maampong where the chief gave him 0.38 hectars with a creek and he succeded! We saw two of the orrigonal trees planted by Tetteh Quarshie, which are about 126 years old. The rest of the orrigonal farm has trees about 50 years old, all in good health.

There was some controversy over who first introduced cocoa, but I believe a court case settled it on Mr. Quarshie. For a time, Ghana was the worlds largest producer of cocoa, but there was an infestation in 1982 or 83 which meant that many of the groves had to be burned and now they are second or third. Cocoa is still a major cash crop in Ghana, I think it is second only to gold as a foreign currency earner.

Our second stop was the botanical gardens in Aburi. There was more info on cocoa, and some interesting spice trees. We met some more nice folks and had a relaxing lunch.

We took a wrong turn and had to walk along the highway, but eventually made it to our third stop at the carving village portion of Aburi. Our friends from the botanical gardens were driving by and stoped to look with us also. I bought a small gift for Patti, but basically just looked.

I took lots of pictures, which I'm finally getting posted at the end of September!

Tetteh Quarshie's Cocoa Farm & Aburi Botanical Gardins

Aug 26, 2006 - 28 Photos

Adventure to Medina

2006-08-26T03:55:00.000+07:00

Today was my first solo adventure in Ghana!

Volta Hall was noisy last night, so I slept in until 8am and then read for a while before heading out at 9am (this is very late by local standards, given that I was woken up at 4am by the singing from the Pentecostal prayer meeting). I had a fried egg sandwich (40 cents) and a cup of Milo (hot chocolate, 80 cents) for breakfast at Akwafu Hall (another dorm, the name means farmer).

Across the street and just to the left of the main gate of the university I caught a tro tro headed north. (A tro-tro is a kind of mini-bus into which 20+ people squeeze on a set driving route.) I'm not certain of the final destination of my tro-tro, but I asked the mate (the guy who is in charge of filling up the tro-tro and collecting the money) if it went by Zango Junction. I gave him 2000 cedi (20 cents) and at first he didn't give me any change. I didn't know the fare, but it is 3000 cedi for the 20-30 minute ride to the central Accra market. Then the passenger behind me hissed at the mate and so he gave me back 500 cedi. I had heard that it was hard to get cheated on the tro-tro because there are lots of other passengers watching, but this was my first experience of it in action. In general, I like the tro-tro better than the drop-taxis. Not only are the taxis 10-20 times more expensive, but I also somehow feel more vulnerable with just other foreigners in a cab.

The tro-tro dropped me off at Zango Junction (at one end of the Medina market) and I could see the Shell Station that was my landmark for finding the Areba cell phone office (to try and sort out why my parents can't get through to me). I was done (mostly unsuccessfully) with that errand by 10:30 and decided to walk around the Medina market.

I have been to the Accra (Mecheda) market four times now, and am starting to feel more comfortable finding my way around it. Accra is a really big market and has a good selection of (western) clothes, shoes, books, and, of course, my favorite department store - Melcome. However, after today, I think that for general trips to the market, Medina is both closer and all more comfortable.

Part of this might have been that I was on my own (not with any other white foreigners) and so I got to interact with more people. I received 4 marriage proposals in the hour or two I wandered around. The best came from a man selling some nice pottery; I might go back and try to get a vase later.

The most exciting part is that I found PVC piping! I have been very frustrated with the trip-lines that are currently holding up my mosquito netting, and so I am constructing a frame out of the PVC. The men selling the PVC joints (a different place from the pipe) wanted to know if I was a plumber. I should have answered yes (since I actually have done a little plumbing), but instead I told them about my project. They were very supportive and drew a diagram as we discussed what joints I should get (this also included a marriage proposal). I really enjoyed all of the interactions and it was lots of fun to laugh with people.

On the tro-tro ride home, the mate was really good about storing my pipes along the floor of the tro-tro and I sat next to two older ladies. When I motioned to them that we were at my stop (because they had to get out so that I could), they said to the mate that the "foreigner" (in English) wants to get off. It was surprisingly refreshing to be referred to as such, it felt very respectful. I often have people yell "obruni" at me. Obruni also means foreigner, but especially down at the Accra market it is often in the context of "Obruni, give me" or "Obruni, come here and buy from me." Sometimes I will also be referred to as "white woman" (which is how some people translate obruni).

The joints didn't fit perfectly with the pipe, so I have been layering the glue into the structure and hope to have it finished tomorrow. I picked up some clothes I ordered, and was pleasantly surprised with how they turned out.

I also cooked my first dinner in my new rice cooker. I made rice with squash, carrots, green beans and spring onions, a can of tomato paste and some random spices I picked up in the market. It was great to eat so many vegetables that were not drenched in oil, but it tasted about like the rest of the food I have been eating. In general, there is not a lot of depth to the flavor of the food, and there is more chili pepper than I think is necessary, but I like the food, especially jolof rice.

2006-08-19T00:31:00.000+07:00

Dorm life and adjusting to Ghana

2006-08-18T17:14:00.000+07:00

After almost 3 weeks in Ghana, I am starting to settle into life here! I arrive on July 30th, and my luggage (intact!) a few days later. I am moved into my dorm room in Volta Hall with Isis, an Anthropology / Zoology student from CSU Humbolt.

Orrientation was a blur of lectures, a visit to Kumasi where I bought some Kente cloth, and to the Castles at Cape Coast and Elmina (the location for the departure of so many slaves across the Atlantic). I am still trying to process these experiences.

This week has been the slow process of registering for classes. I will mostly be reading in the department of Geography and Resource Development (Medical Geography, Hydrology and Agricalture Land Use Theory and Practice). I am also trying to register for a course in Epidemiology, and need to visit the department of Oceanography and Fisheries to talk with an advisor there about my research and get connected to the Ghana Water Board. My desire is that it will also work out for me to take dance, but we'll see. The registration process is very different and somewhat confusing, but I am practicing patients.

Volta Hall is the only "all female" dorm on campus. Its motto is "Ladies with Style and Vision." And my first impression of the new students moving in these last few days is that definatly have style. I have been feeling very underdressed, even in a skirt and blouse, mostly because the women all seem to wear heels. I have a hard enough time walking in sandles on the combination of cemement, paving stones, gravel and dirt!

The other entertaining aspect is that the ATM (if it is working) typically only dispenses 10,000 cedi notes, the equivalent of about $1, and only up to 40 bills at a time. On a lucky day, it will be loaded with 20,000 cedi notes (the largest bill printed), but these are less useful. I have found it useful to try and stockpile the smaller bills because exact change is usually needed if you don't want to wait around for 5 or 10 minutes to get the balance.

2006-05-17T09:49:00.000+07:00

Things to Do

I have a large number of tasks to complete before I leave for Ghana (in addition to finishing up my regular school semester). Here is a list of immediate items so I don't forget:

purchase airline ticket (due: 5/19)
academic advising meeting (due: 5/19 at 12:30)
health check-up (due: 5/23 at 11:15)
11 passport size photos (due: 6/1)
submit Americorps payment voucher (due: 6/1)
finalize project proposal summary (due: 6/1)
mail packet / payment to Longbeach (due: 6/1)
make WAPI & discuss experimental design (due: 6/2 or 6/3)
questions about housing / availability of items to Longbeach
letter of introduction to Ghana churches
vaccines (due: 7/1)
fill prescription for malaria pills (due: 7/1)
finalize project proposal (due: 8/1)
order visa (due: 8/1)
pack (due: 8/28)

(subject to update)

Going to Ghana

2006-04-30T10:07:00.000+07:00

This weekend was the orientation for my year at the University of Ghana, Legon and Chiara informed me that sending mass emails, as I did during my time in Japan, is soooo passé. I have never been enthralled with my livejournal site as anything more than a place to read what my friends are doing, so this is an attempt to figure out a mode of communication that works with my style.

This opportunity has only really come to fruition in the last two weeks, but since it is now only 3 months till I depart (Friday, July 28 at 10:00 pm), I figured it was time to try and get in touch with folks and let them know what is up with my life...

Currently, I am living in the central valley of California and working on a masters of science in conservation biology at CSU Sacramento. My research is in microbial water safety, in particular, testing that can be done on-site in remote rural locations in tropical regions, with minimal resources. I have also been working for various agencies of the United Methodist Church for the last six years, which I hope to return to after completing my degree.