A lot to digest!

No we have not eaten too much, having said that we have not been hungry either! Today has given us a lot of information and impressions to digest.

We started the day with a trip to on of the "killing fields" where over 8700 skulls had been found and only 2/3  of the mass graves have been exhumed. It is one site of the mass genocide under the rule of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge from 1975-1979 when 3 million Cambodians were executed.

It was a very peaceful place which had been sensitively and respectfully turned into a memorial of that time in Cambodian history. There were som of the bones on display which gave an idea of just what had happened in that place. The building above had lots of floors full of bones, skulls and clothing as well as the glass case in the picture below which was beside one of the exhumed graves.

There are often floods in Cambodia in the rainy season and when that happens new bones, parts of bones and teeth come to the surface as well as clothing that had been buried on the people. Walking along the paths we say bones lying on the surface of the graves and clothing sticking up in the paths as shown in the picture below.

After the Killing Fields we went to the school which the Khmer Rouge had used as a interrogation and torture centre before they were sent to one of the Killing fields. There was so much evil and so many innocent people murdered that many of us will take some time to process it all. My initial reaction is that this is  tragic part of Cambodia's recent past but it is still happeneing in other parts of the world! How long will God allow evil to prevail? When will He bring it all to an end?

We went out for lunch and there was a lovely picture by our table (below) which was a balast to the terrible pictures we saw in the morning and the mental images we still carry in our minds eye.

Today has been a day of contrasts, this afternoon we went to the royal palace and saw all its affluence. Some of the team found it difficult to deal with in the light of the povery of the villages we visited in Prey Veng and the poverty and need all around us in Phnom Penh.

In the palace area there were lots of shrines to buddah, buddhist monks and a huge temple. It came to me that When Paul walks around Athens, he sees all the shrines i that city and then tells the people there about the Living God (Acts 17 from verse 16). Seeing all these shrines and statues made me think how dead they are and how wonderful it is to know the Living God. We do not need to worship statues and images made by hands, we have God with us through His Spirit the whole time.

Buddhist shrine with incense candles.