Katherine Parker in Nepal

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 ...

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-ca...

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...

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 attracte...

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 learnin...

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 wo...

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...