Katherine Parker in Nepal

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 ...

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 Kristo...

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...

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

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...