Maybe I'm just a girl

Wonderful that we have had two more enquiries about Bible study via Gmail this week, one in response to the newspaper ad and another recommended by one of our present contacts. This will mean another student joins classes on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. The other young man will join our Sunday morning class, which is going through the abridged version of Learn to Read the Bible Effectively.

Our presentation of Learn to Read the Bible Effectively at the Bethezer boy’s dorm on Saturday night attracted about 30 participants. They really enjoyed the first session which was translated by our brother Him. We are trying to encourage regular attendance at these sessions for the next 10 weeks and so have told everyone that they will receive a certificate at the completion of the course. They all LOVE to get recognition in the form of certificates so we hope this is a good incentive.

A special thank you to John Collins who has taken on the role of “blog feedback”! Unfortunately Steve hasn’t found a helmet big enough yet! Thank you all for your comments…it is wonderful to read them. Max from Sydney had a funny line… “As you sooa, so shall you reap” (chooom reap sooa means hello in Khmer). Good one, Max! Keep them coming, the humour therapy is like gold to us.

Funny quotes for the week:
Steve (speaking to an LCDI student at BEC): Sopheak, can you see if there is someone at the door?
Sopheak (after having a look): Is no

Lynne (to one of the dormers who had only just returned from Khmer New Year): So good to see you, when did you get back?
Lay: I got back tomorrow.

How cute is this little girl off to school in Phnom Penh from outside our house one morning.

Interesting news in the Cambodia Daily today, for us as watchmen:

School children in Prey Viev village in Kompong Speu province have been directly effected by the global food crisis. The school’s rice stock has run out and, as a result, a popular program of free breakfasts has been suspended indefinitely because of soaring food prices.
Short of cash, the UN World Food Program can no longer supply 450,000 Cambodian children with a daily meal of domestically grown rice supplemented by yellow split peas from the US and tuna from Thailand.
The suspension of the food program illustrates one of the many ways that the global food crisis is hurting the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people. Only destitute schools were selected to participate in the school feeding program: Pray Viev, in particular is one of the poorest villages in what is Cambodia’s most impoverished province, Kampong Speu.
The breakfasts have been a magnet for students to get them to attend school since it was introduced eight years ago. So not only will the children miss out on nutrition but on education also as they are forced to help supplement the family food supply in other ways. Some children are made to trek to nearby mountains to harvest tamarind buds and bamboo shoots instead of attending school.
The paradox for these children is that they actually ride or walk to school through kilometres of rice paddies. Rice is becoming increasingly unaffordable for the very people who grow it. In 2006 a survey showed that 22% of Cambodians in rural areas could not meet their own basis food needs. This was long before recent price rises.
The UN food agency has initiated an appeal for $500 million in additional funding to cover the increase in food prices. In Cambodia, the price of rice is now above $700 a ton. This is more than double the $295 per ton budgeted for this year.

We are so blessed with the hope that we have and our prayers for the Lord's return are made all the more fervent when we read such stories as these. God bless.
Lynne and Steve