Hello from Siem Reap, Cambodia

Cast: Aaron Mondok, Ryan Gunn

Day 10 - 100 uniform giveaway & rice | Missionaries.com

Ryan Gunn is currently my favorite blogger. He's doing an awesome job of keeping everyone at home updated about his trip to Cambodia.

Kudos, Ryan!

DAY 10 – Friday began with another 10 ton rice distribution and medical clinic. Seeing so many sick people - especially children – is depressing. As we continue to move north in Cambodia we are seeing more and more amputees. The northern border of Cambodia is littered with landmines from past wars. Pol Pot’s region is especially bad. After his Khmer Rouge was overthrown, Pol Pot turned his territory into a landmine field so no one could get in or out. Unfortunately, these countless mines are still active. I’ll have much more on this as we get into mine territory later in the trip.

The highlight of Friday took place in the afternoon when we visited an orphanage and gave away 100 school uniforms. The recipients were between the ages of 7 and 14 and HAD NEVER BEEN TO SCHOOL BEFORE because their parents couldn’t afford a uniform. Knowing that these 100 kids will begin their education is awesome!

The orphanage where the uniform handout took place is called Hope For Cambodia. Most of its kids were abandoned by their parents (some lost parents to death). The orphanage, which keeps children until they turn 18 or graduate college, gives the kids a positive and safe environment. Hope For Cambodia is supported by United States Churches through Pathway To Hope. Each child is raised in a Christian environment which includes Bible studies each morning and evening.

Tomorrow (Saturday) we’ll take a 3 hour ride into the mountains for a rice distribution and medical clinic. This will the 8th rice distribution for those keeping score.

Have a blessed weekend!

Day 10 - 100 uniform giveaway & rice | Missionaries.com

Allie and Emey

We had friends over one afternoon this week. This is their daughter Emey playing with Allie on her favorite toy.

paradoxuganda: Scouring the Byways

You  think your job or vocation is difficult? If you're like me, you whine to anybody who'll listen. I've found that pushes people away. I learned that what I really need is a good dose of perspective. So I read the Parodoxuganda Blog for a much needed dose as often as I can...

The pediatric ward is full of some pretty pitiful people, and this morning I found my hard heart wishing that it wasn't. When I bent over to examine malnourished twins and smelled the alcohol wafting up on their mother's breath, I was annoyed with her. Then there was the two-year-old with a tiny head and puffy body whose father admitted he was tired of this handicapped child who cried all the time, which explains why the kid keeps landing on our doorstep as our problem in spite of months of supplemental food (third time he's shown up for admission in six months). Another frighteningly malnourished child's grandmother started complaining that she had not brought pans with her to cook in (which everyone does) and as we talked I realized in spite of her apparent helplessness and angling for yet more assistance, there were three competent women in this girl's life, both maternal and paternal grandmothers AND HER OWN MOTHER, gathered around the bed. It seems that when her father was arrested for stealing cocoa, her mother abandoned her to the care of one grandmother, and three years later they are all suddenly realizing that the girls is inches away from death. Then there is the abandoned-to-another grandmother cerebral palsy kid whose problems already seemed pretty unsolvable, even before she also tested positive for sickle cell disease today. Or the little girl with severe malaria whose mother complained she had no mosquito net, though whenl I pointed out that it was documented on her chart that she had received two within the last year, she quickly explained those had holes in them. In short there is hardly a patient on the ward whose suffering is not in some way related to poor parental choices, marriage quarrels, neglect, substance abuse, carelessness, or just plain hard knocks in this life. And it is like there is a neon sign on the roof of the hospital, calling all of the most un-fixable problems, the most mired-in-distress families, to pour on in.

But isn't that just what Jesus would want? Sure, I'd rather invite the relatively competent, "deserving", one-concrete-medical-issue-only types into the ward, the kind of kid that gets three doses of Quinine and smiles and walks away healthy. The kind of kid that one can feel a sense of accomplishment in helping. Instead Jesus tells the story of filling his feast from the highways and the byways, pulling in those at the margins, those that have messy lives and dysfunctional relationships. Because in reality, that is who we all are. Struggling parents, making bad choices, failing to love and provide, and needing grace.

Praying for a byway-scouring heart.

paradoxuganda: Scouring the Byways

Day 6 | Missionaries.com

Ryan Gunn is Blogging from Cambodia. He's on the Musicianaries team along with my son and South Florida rapper, Proverb. In a week or so, a small contingency from Calvary Jupiter will join them.

DAY 6 – Monday we visited a women’s shelter on our way to Pursat. Opened in 1999 by Transform Asia (http://www.transformasia.us), the shelter rescues women from the sex trade, prostitution and abuse. Most girls arrive between the ages of 13-17.
In addition to protection, free room and board, the women receive an education and are taught new trades like cosmetology, sewing, gardening, housekeeping, etc.
“Women learn to trust again. They’ve been manipulated and used all their life,” said Transform Asia founder Setan Lee.
The women’s center employs a full-time guard to protect the rescued girls from criminals who want to recapture them. When thugs come by, the guard first tries to scare them away by firing shots in the air. If that doesn’t work, he’s instructed to shoot at their feet. So far one thug learned the hard way and caught a bullet in his Achilles.

Read the rest of the article here: Day 6 | Missionaries.com

Tunes Review: In the Name of Love - Africa Celebrates U2

U2 reimagined and reinterpreted. This project captures Bono's passion for the plight of Africa.

Released over a year ago, this album only recently come to my attention. No big surprise. I rarely find the music I like. It finds me.

You have to appreciate a deeply ethnic vibe to enjoy these U2 covers. U2 offers the complete package lyrically and musically. But sometimes the music, even when you've spun the songs a thousand times, can detract from the meaning; the poetry of the words.

The artists on this album cause the poetry embedded in U2's rock-n-roll message to hover on a plane separate from the music; above it even.

Bono fights against the AIDS crisis, extreme poverty and rampant spread of malaria that vexes Africa. This album is African gratitude. You need to pick it up. You'll love it.

1. Pride (In The Name Of Love) by Soweto Gospel Choir
2. Mysterious Ways by Angélique Kidjo    
3. Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own by Vusi Mahlasela
4. Bullet The Blue Sky by Vieux Farka Touré    
5. With Or Without You by Les Nubians
6. Where The Streets Have No Name by Tony Allen
7. One by Keziah Jones
8. Desire by African Underground All-Stars Featuring Chosan, Optimus & Iyeoka (Sierra Leone)
9. Seconds by Sierra Leone's Refugee All-Stars
10. Sunday Bloody Sunday by Ba Cissoko
11. Love Is Blindness by Waldemar Bastos
12. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For by Cheikh Lô (Senegal)

As American As You Can Get

In honor of Independence Day, July Fourth, Great Americans, Founding Fathers and Rugged Individualism, I cut and pasted several quotables from Benjamin Franklin. Franklin's influence on American life, culture, and thinking is still felt and will probably not come to an end soon.

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.

A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.

A small leak can sink a great ship.

Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.

All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.

All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones.

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.

Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.

As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.

At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.

Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.

Beauty and folly are old companions.

Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.

Beware the hobby that eats.

Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.

Diligence is the mother of good luck.

Do good to your friends to keep them, to your enemies to win them.

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.

Even peace may be purchased at too high a price.

Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.