Cambodia Bible Education Centre

We were welcomed into the village and quickly ascended the stairs into Dike’s Mother in Law’s house. The music had already started and we could look out of one of the windows down at where a large tent was sitting next to a tower of large speakers. It was truly magnificent..Worthy of a rock concert. The equipment had been hired by the village for the very event (it seems that audio equipment is readily available. If one takes a trip down to the market, shop after shop is piled high with amplifiers and large speakers.) and they were going to get their money’s worth. The inside of the house was ‘open plan’. This means that there were no walls at all. Despite the concrete formed staircase, the floor of the house was made of thinly cut bamboo which gave that ‘This floor is going to give way and I’m going to fall down onto the horns of that water buffalo that lives downstairs’ sort of feeling. It flexed a little with each step and I wondered whether it had been made for ‘Michael’ weight. F...

I admit I was somewhat nervous about our intended visit to Cambodia – not that for one moment I thought I was in any imminent danger of being blown up by a mine. It was based on my age group and was more in the nature of … “what if I can’t find a toilet when I need one?” After waving goodbye to Jon and Maggie and little Elijah as they dropped us off to run the total and utter chaos of Hyderabad airport, our advent at Phnom Penh airport was a calming and pleasant surprise. Everything was so ordered and quiet and visas were processed conveyor belt style through a line of officials and paid for over the counter when your passport was held up for you to identify your own visage. Miriam and Michael met us and we were whisked away to their flat some 30 minutes drive away in a rattly van belonging to the guest house cum hotel in their street. The flat in which M&M and Toby live with James and Miranda is the first two floors of a building, typical of a certain style of city dwelling. It is...

Dear readers, We are over our halfway point and the time is counting down until our return to Australia. But that’s no reason for us to descend into complacency. There is much work yet to be done. In some ways, the work we are doing here has barely begun. Our contact list is large and growing slowly, although the initial growth in contacts has slowed down to a steady trickle. We are finding now that certain contacts are committing more time to studying with us whilst others attention has petered away or never really taken root. One is reminded of the parable of the sower in Matthew 13. Some people hear the word and take hold of it with both hands, making their future sure. Others do not hear or allow the cares of the world to entrap them and so their hope is obscured and they venture forward into an uncertain life with a very sure end. The house is rather loud at the moment with Toby sitting on James’ lap as Miriam feeds him, Nirann in the corner chair and Matt sitting against the wall...

I've had a number of requests asking for news about Tobiah... so this blog is devoted to him. My baby is yellow. Some time ago now, people like Landlady, Aunty (Landlady's sister-in-law) and many others have been asking me "why is his nose yellow?". I must admit that until then I had not noticed this subtle change in colour.. was it a nose-specific tan? I was at a loss. However, gradually, the rest of his skin took on a slightly yellow hue. It was then that I started to get suspicious that there was something more to this. I was pretty sure it wasn’t jaundice… his eyes were still a nice clean white, and he hadn’t been unwell. So reaching out into the dark recesses of my medical science memory I remembered one lecturer telling us the story of the Brisbane man who turned orange after eating a very limited diet… of carrot…. for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Sure enough, in my attempt to give Toby his daily requirement of vitamins and minerals, I had been trying to include...