fredag 23. juni 2017

Rural life




These are just some of the views from the church in Chhuk. It is as I have previously mentioned, the start of the rainy season which will last from May to November. The farmers are waiting for enough rain here to plant their rice crop. I noticed however that farmers in the north east of Phnom Penh have begun to plant as the paddy fields are now wet. As you see from today's pictures these ones are dry.

We started the day with feedback about how the church leader teams have got on implementing the plans they made back in November. These plans were to have a focus on sharing the good news about Jesus.






The lady in the picture above shared that she wanted to go to a particular district and had to sell a chicken to be able to buy the petrol needed for her motorbike. She got $2,5 for the bird and off she went. A quick question, how many of us rich westerners would be willing to sell something we needed ourselves to be able to go and share about Jesus with other people?

Not the exact bird but a Cambodian chicken I saw today.
The lady went to the village and did as she had planned. On her way back she was given a gift of exactly ten times the price she got for the bird, $250! It may be a coincidence but I don't think so, I think God honoured her faithfulness and took the opportunity to bless her.

We have heard a number of good stories during the feedback and otherwise. One not so good thing that we hear again and again is the churches and local communities in general loosing their young adults to the cities or to Thailand to work in the factories. It is common to see grandparents raising their grandchildren as the parents are away or working 12-14 hour shifts in the factories. I hope the Christians in Thailand start house churches where they are rather like the Early Church did when forced to flee for fear of persecution. 

torsdag 22. juni 2017

Food for body and spirit

Let me begin by telling you about my meal last night. We went into the market place by the river. There was not another tourist in sight, we really do get to the heart of this country, it is a privilege to be part of a team of local people who we are fully accepted amongst. That's one of the coolest things about being a Christian, you have brothers and sisters all over the world.

We ordered a variety of typically Khmer dishes and some avocado smoothies and the food tasted delicious. I have my reservations about food hygeine in street market stalls but I am still fine which is either down to prayer, look or the extra "good" bacteria supplement I take daily while here.





I apologise about the quality of the pictures, it was dark etc, etc.

We are rolling from one extreme to the other and this morning I had pancakes, fresh fruit and a cup of hot chocolate in an American café.

Despite us not speaking any Khmer, the worship here has no real need for language, it is the language of the heart. It is nice though when we come across a song or hymn which we know in English. One which often crops up is Because he lives but today has been special because three of the songs I know in English. All around me people are singing in Khmer and Steve and I are able to join in in English. I am sure we are being biblical and making a joyful noise to the Lord.

At the end of the teaching sessions the churches make action plans for themselves on how they are going to implement what they have learnt. Agenda 1 is not a seminar or conference. It is a two year course that aims to change the mindset of churches and help the whole church to live missionally. To finish with each church presents their plans for the next six months and then they are prayed for bu the other teams.

Praying for a team.










Lifting holy hands in prayer.


Praying for each other with laying on of hands.




Street view.




Late afternoon and into the evening we have travelled to Chhuk where we will spend the next two days before heading home. The journey on roads like the above picture has been long and at times exciting (read scary) but we have arrived in one peace. We always use the same mini-bus driver and he drives comparatively carefully.

There is always a lot to see on a journey and today was no exception. There were whole families on one moped, Mum, Dad and 1,2 or 3 children. Live chickens on the back of a motorbike, lorries with their cargo of factory workers crammed together like sardines in a tin on the back (see previous posts for pictures).

The meal we had upon arrival here was also in a street cafe, one we eat at every time we are here. They give you a hot-plate or two and the ingredients we order and we cook it ourselves. It was delicious!



onsdag 21. juni 2017

Giving which costs

Today has been our first of two days in Kandal province. The church leaders here are very motivated to learn and most of them have grasped the teaching easily. The topic of the two days here this time is "The missional lifestyle."

Before we even started with the sessions I noticed the church collection at the front. Rice, this is brought bey the very poorest people as their gift to the church. They bring rice not cash because that is what they have. A hand full of rice on a Sunday might be percentage -wise much, much more than any of us in the west give in offerings. This is an offering in the true sense of the word.



The observant among you will have noticed the Christmas tree on the stage. It has merry Christmas on it and even a snow flake although it never snows here, Cambodia is too near the equator. My guess is that it stands there all year rather like we leave a cross up in our churches all year and not just for Easter.

Below are some action shots of the team in action during the day today. There are none of me since I didn't think to ask anyone to take any.




Although not part of the team he was on the wall of the church. This little chap has a great apatite for insects including mosquitoes, something I am rather pleased about. 


We have been privileged to hear some fantastic testimony about what God is doing in the Agenda 1 churches. This pastor has his church under a tree in the village. They are experiencing growth there.





Here is a group avidly discussing how they might implement what they have just learnt in their church.


It was raining so heavily today as we finished the teaching sessions for the day that everyone stayed in the church until the rain passed. This created time for an interesting conversation, through the translator (in black top) about this ladies passion for sharing with her family, friends and neighbours about Jesus.


We are now heading off to the market-place for a meal.

tirsdag 20. juni 2017

Food and endings


What did you have for breakfast today? Here there is a choice of two things, marinated pork and rice or noodle soup with meat or meat balls. I chose noodle soup. Once you loose the idea that the meal you are eating is breakfast then it is fine. I had a cup or two of hot green tea as you see from the picture.



When we are here we are almost never in hotels, restaurants or place that tourists go. I love the  fact that we get to see, hear, taste and smell the country as it really is. It is an honour that I don't take for granted. There are lots of small things that remind me of that each day. One example is cutlery, there isn't any as we know it. Whether it is soup, rice or meat we use chopsticks and/or a small broad Asian-type spoon. Here is Sunniva in full control of a pair of chopsticks and a peace of meat at breakfast time. When we are hungry we learn to used them very effectively.



It was our last day in Tboung Khmum and a group photo taken. I particularly have struggled with the heat this morning. The room was very small and the air so heavy with humidity that your skin was always damp, not just arms and legs but every bit of skin was constantly hot and wet. We had only two fans for all these people.

Never the less we had a good day with teaching for us and group-work for the participants. Then we reviewed the last two days with the organisers and the last two years before coming to some conclusions about what happens next. Agenda 1 is in principle only two years long.

We then headed back to Phnom Penh to drop off the Ravnås family before continuing to Kandal province where we will spend two days holding Agenda 1 for church leaders and their leadership teams there. The journey to PP usually takes 4-6 hours but this time we were back in the capital in just over two hours!


mandag 19. juni 2017

Hot, hot, hot!

The alarm rang at 6.30am this morning. Those of you who know me well will know that early morning is not my best time of day. Here you see Markus under his mosquito net. We are getting used to the temperature here. This is evidenced by Markus saying it was cold in the bedroom, the temperature was showing 19 degrees at the time!



Today has been a very hot day with extremely high humidity. At the lunch the mini-bus driver felt so sorry for us that he offered to drive us back to the guest house. Today has been a three shower day in the hope of staying cool. It wasn't enough, we have all been running with sweat all day. Teaching and leading in this climate is the most challenging thing about the trip. 

Something else which is very warm is the way we are received by the church groups. This is our fifth trip to this province and lots of the people are well known to us and we are met with genuine warmth and joy. Here are a few people as we are starting.


 Language is no problem with a bit of goodwill and some hand signals. Here Åshild is playing with a new friend.


Tom Kenneth teaching. The whiteboard is balanced on a number of plastic garden chairs and tied fast with farm twine. It did the job just fine.


Prayer and worship are an important part of the day. I love hearing and seeing the Khmer worship style even though I don't understand the words I do understand the language of the heart.


Below you see one of out team writing what the church pastor is saying on his action plan. Illiteracy amongst the adults is very high.

Having fun together.
 Tom Kenneth in action.


Interesting wall plugs are just one aspect of the very eccentric and dangerous power system in this country.

 We stand together to pray and there is a tangible sense of the presence of God.


søndag 18. juni 2017

The team is together again

Today is the first formal day of the team trip. We started a bit later than usual, at 8am with a 45 minute tuc-tuc drive to the Light for Living church which was at the opposite side of the city. Markus and Åshild (below) like the rest of us, are enjoying the ride.



Because there were at that point six of us plus baggage we needed to tuc-tucs and so we drove in convoy!

It is fantastic to be part of the worship here even though we don't understand what they are singing about I always find that God speaks to me in other ways. One of the things he showed me is the way the whole-hearted worship of the church attracts children from the neighbourhood to come and see. I pray that this witness and the children's curiosity will be a witness which leads to faith in the area.

Below are pictures of a couple of the local children.




The service lasted about two hours and was completely led by the students from the two Normisjon dormitories except for the sermon. The older man in the picture below preached the sermon. He spoke on the power of the Holy Spirit and opened what he shared with some of his personal experiences under the Pol Pot regieme in the late 1970's.

We were invited to share in the fellowship meal after the service, the food and the fellowship was inspirational.




Then we had a long drive which in the past has taken up to six hours. Thankfully today we had very few hold-ups and we got here in less than 4 hours. Thank you to all of you who have been praying about that. To give a flavour of the ride here is a picture of a row of the Ravnås family catching some ZZZZZ on the drive.


Here is a moped or motorbike with a whole shop balanced on it! A flavour of a drive in this country. Sorry about the quality of the pictures, were taken in a bouncing mini-bus!






No car trip is complete without a snack on the way. We bought corn on the cob and ate it straight away. It tasted sweeter than the corn at home as well as it being fun to eat!




lørdag 17. juni 2017

June 2017, safely arrived.

We left Stavanger airport at 12.30 Friday morning, flew first to Stockholm and then an over-night flight to Bangkok. we then picked up out transfer to Phnom Pehn arriving here at 08.45 local time or 03.45 Norwegian time. Everyone except Tom Kenneth slept at least some of the way.

Today is the only free day we have and we need to get used to temperatures of over 30 degrees centigrade and humidity of over 85% which is very different from the cold spring we have had at home.

The first thing we did was to jump in the hotel pool to cool off.



After a long time swimming and relaxing under the bamboo sunshade which covers the pool area, we decided to go and find something to eat. Trip advisor has given us lots of exciting restaurants to try on our trips here. They have all been local food and all very good. Today's was no exception, we ordered six dishes to share between all six of us and everything was delicious.


After we had eaten we had a walk around the city in the area of the royal palace. As we wandered the sky turned black with rain clouds. It is the start of the rainy season here and when it rains it is more like standing under a shower than it is like the rain we get at home. Today was no exception but thankfully it passed quickly leaving us wet and warm: and splashing around in warm water heated by the paths and roads it landed on.




Splashing around in water that is as warm as a bath was a new and fun experience for the younger members of the team.

We wandered along the edge of the river and sat for a while to look at the point where two major rivers become one, the Tonlé Sap and Mekong which flow through the delta areas of Cambodia and Vietnam before joining the South China Sea.






There were two small boys with a very sharp knife and a coconut which Åshild was fascinated by. What she hasn't yet noticed is that all the Cambodian people, especially the older ones stare and stare at her. All Cambodian children are born with dark hair and it remains black. Åshild has true viking colouring with white-blond hair, something which I think is very rare here. They stare as if they cannot believe their eyes before breaking out into a huge smile. 

Studying the boys with the coconut.




We caught a ride in a tuctuc back to our hotel, all three children, and some of the adults could not keep their eyes open and had to be shaken awake when we arrived.