Bankok

Well we have safely arrived in Bankok, only one 2 hour fliught left. The journey so far has gone very smoothly, thank you to all who are praying for us. We were late arriving in Zurich but were transferred directly from the plane to the overnight Bankok flight without problem.

We all managed some sleep on the plane but I think it was only me who slept for 7.5 hours and needed waking for breakfast!

In the airport we have had a team meeting, we have a busy few days ahead of us and need to be organised if we are to keep to the schedule. After the team meeting we are free to wander around the airport shops. Below is a picture of doctor Pat who joined us in Oslo and is a part of the team.

We're on the way

We are all safely on our first of four flighte during the next 24 hours. We are heading for Oslo where we will meet up with the last member of the team, Pat the doctor who is flying in from the UK.

One day left

How am I going to spend the remaining day before departure? With focus on my family and focus on God. It is a long time since I have been away without at least some of my family with me and I cannot remember ever being away for so many days on my own. It will be strange to have lots of new experiences which are not shared with them. 

It is for God and his kingdom we are going. I trust that he has lots of expeiences for us in Cambodia. I trust that he is with us both to challenge us and to comfort us.I know there are lots of people supporting us in prayer and that is perhaps the most important thing of all; bringing the team before Him regularly and interceeding for us. If you are one of the prayers, thank you. Don't forget you have a very important role in our trip.Prayer changes things, it moves the hand of God. I will try to keep this blog updated so your prayers can be focussed on what we are doing day by day.

3 days left

Well, now the trip is very close and I cannot decide if I am excited or quite what I feel. It is a bit difficult to know what to feel when you have no idea what to expect. Well, not much idea anyway. The norwegian word "spent" has no equal in english but does sum up how I am feeling. "Spent" is often translated as excited but it is not quite correct. Excited in English is a singularly positive word where as "spent" has an element of nervousness in it. If you ask me now how I am feeling I would reply that I am "spent" in the norwegian sense of the word.

I have quite a strange selection of items now gathered into a heap in the sitting room. Not the normal holiday packing. Here are a couple of examples of the odder things in my luggage heap: 100 tubes of toothpaste, 40 laminated posters of bible stories, 100 syringes (no, I have not taken to drugs!), some non-cotton swabs and my holiday reading would appear to be called "Where women have no doctor".

I want two things primarily for this trip, to honour God in all we say and do and that we as individuals as well as the team will come closer to Him. This trip in my mind is not as much about what we get or experience but how we can serve the people we meet in Cambodia. There will of course be lots of new experiences but that is definately secondary.

I have been invited to speak at the churches where we are on the Sundays. Those of you reading this will know that I am not often stuck for words but this time I am struggling. Partly because I have been a bit too busy to spend time listening to God and what he wants me to say to the people I will speak to, and partly because every time I start to think I realise how culturally based much of what I normally say is. I feel therefore my words will be at best culturally irrelevant to the people I will meet. The answer I know is to seek God and prioritise that. He knows what he wants to use me to say to them. The challenge in real terms is finding the space and the calm to listen to Him.

6 days to go

This time next week I will have just arrived in Oslo on the first leg of the trip. We will be travelling to Phnom Penh from Stavanger via Oslo, where we will meet up with Pat, then on to Zurich, Bankok and finally Phnom Penh.

Itinerary
23rd June Depart Stavanger via Olso and Zurich to Bangkok and finally Phnom Penh.
25th and 26th June To Prey Veng province where we will be holding health-education seminars in three different places.
27th June Sunday-school teachers’ seminar.
28th and 29th June sightseeing in Phnom Penh. http://wikitravel.org/en/Phnom_Penh
30th June Loved party with students.
1st July Church service then depart for Siem Reap.  http://www.lonelyplanet.com/cambodia/siem-reap
2nd July tour of Angkor Wat. http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/668
3rd July Return to Phnom Penh.
4th July Depart for Kampong Speu province. Sunday-school teachers’ seminar. http://www.tourismcambodia.org/provincial_guide/index.php?view=detail&prv=5
5th July Health and hygiene seminar followed by a football tournament for teenagers.
6th July To Shanoukville. http://www.sihanoukville-cambodia.com/   Check out the slide show at the bottom of this link.
7th July Health and hygiene seminar at a school.
8th July Back to Phnom Penh.
9th July To Bangkok then home.
10th July Arrive Stavanger.

Although the main aim of the trip is to serve the Cambodian people in practical ways there is an occasional day of relaxation which I am sure we will need. The schedule is otherwise busy and we will have to quickly acclimatize to temperatures of around 35 degrees centigrade - lovely you might think BUT the humidity is between 80 and 90%!

Below is a map of Cambodia which will give you an idea of the position and size of the country.


View Larger Map

This is Normisjon's web page about Cambodia and the projects we have there. There are some great pictures and if you have time to fiddle a bit you can use google translate to translate the text.
http://www.normisjon.no/kambodsja

9 days to go!

There are only nine days left before the team leave for Cambodia. We are all starting to get excited and perhaps a bit nervous too! We leave Stavanger on Saturday the 23rd of June and fly first to Oslo where we will meet up with Pat Rishton, Tracy's sister in law who is a doctor and the tenth member of our team. From there we fly on to Zurich followed by an overnight flight to Bankok and finally a short hop to Phnom Penh, the capital of  Cambodia.

Cambodia is a country with a troubled past. Many will remember the terrible years from 1975 to 1979 when under the Khmer Rouge over two million men, women and children were slaughtered. For more information see:  http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1879785,00.html The result we still see today is a very young population with huge challenges ahead of them. I do not yet know what all this will look like in reality when we get there nor do I know how I will react to what I see especially if we visit the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.

In the team we have 4 youths aged 13-17, two nurses, a doctor, a teacher, a pre-school teacher and me. The team will be involved in much teaching as well as some practical help and through this we will try to show Gods love in word and action. We will be teaching basic health care in five places. My role in this is minimal, I will be part of the drama group supporting the teaching.

In two places we will be gathering the sundayschool teachers from the area and encourageing them in their important role as well as holding seminars on various ways of telling bible stories to children. Amongst other things we will be using puppets to tell the story of the lost sheep as an example. The puppets will be left with the sundayschool for them to use in the future.

We will be holding a "Loved" day for fourty teenagers and teaching them about the five languages of love  http://www.5lovelanguages.com/learn-the-languages/the-five-love-languages/   followed by a "loved" party.

We will be away for seventeen days and spend a lot of our time travelling or teaching. Please pray for us as we prepare to travel as well as during the trip.

The team

Generosity

Read Matthew 19.16-26.

I have recently been thinking about generosity and giving. There is a saying that "the last thing to be converted is the wallet". I am not sure that it is the case for everyone although it can be tempting to not fully trust Jesus but to want to trust ourselves and our own abilities in other areas of our lives and so I would guess it holds true here too. We find it difficult to fully trust him with our economy. We feel that we are safer if we have a bit put away for a rainy day.

There is much to say about the common teaching, purported to be Jesus' teaching that Christians should give a tythe, 10% of their income to charities and the church. I believe Jesus wants us to give our lives fully to him and that includes our economy. What we have therefore belongs to God and is given to us to use wisely. Our generous God does not say that we should have nothing ourselves, far from it. We are however asked to use it wisely and for His glory. Time and again in the gospels we see that Jesus is less interested in how much people give as in how much they keep for themselves.

There is another saying which is somewhat sharper than the first one I quoted "the church does not have money problems, there is pleanty of it in the pockets of the church members". I think that is perhaps a bit provocative but it does make a valid point.

What we give and where we give it to is not about how many blessings we might get back although God does bless us especially when we behave like him, in this case generously, but we cannot buy his blessings.

To be a disciple meanns to be a follower of the master and disciples in Jesus' time would give up everything to follow their master if he were to choose them. Jesus turned this on its head and he invites us all to come and follow him as one of his disciples. It is not just for the special chosen few, following Jesus is open to all. We make the choice but to be serious about following him demands our all. Isaac Watts put it well in his famous hymn When I survey the wonderous cross.

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ my God!
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to His blood.

See from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

Our giving does not start with ourselves but with Jesus and our generosity springs our from there. When money has more control over us or power in our lives than Jesus then we need to re-evaluate our priorities. The bible text at the top of the page is considered sufficiently important to be included by Matthew, Mark (10.17-31) and Luke (18.18-23) in their gospels. Do we hear what it says and do we take it seriously, we who live in the rich west? Is there any area of our lives we have not fully given over to Jesus?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhmmeFuzGRk&feature=share