Katherine Parker in Nepal

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 j...

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 wi...

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. A...

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.

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 Conf...

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 ...

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 ...