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changing lives 2009

first thing that hits me as i walk out of plane when i land in singapore and then sydney 12 hours later is "this place is all organised and stuff"....

so im sitting here at home noticing that the moon is upside down, its crazy all the thing up the north side are upside down, for instance, the serve there icecreams upside down, the sun come up the other way, red means go (but then so does green)

even tho im back home i have the passwords, so heres my final blog........for now :)

when i first got to cambodia we had a prepared to preach (p2p) week and then a bible school.
in the p2p week we split up into 4 groups and went all around cambodia, two groups went to the provinces and the other two stayed in the capital phnom penh
and build gardens for both the dorm and lcdi.

there is one major thing that effected me in cambodia, and that was, i was sitting on the motorbike at the lights next to a school and al the kids were jumping on the chairs having a good old time (like kids do) and there was a kid next to me who when he heard this noise just staired up at the class and was like wanting to be there having fun, learning etc, but couldnt as his family was real poor and needed him to work.
another thing was in vietnam at americas stupidity, where they dropped agent orange over the place to kill the plants, and me a jonno went a saw all these people affected by this chemical. how dumb are some people

as the title of this blog reads, changing lives, thats whats happing both to the missionworkers and to the khmer,
in cambodia i found out its not the huge things that you do that changes lives, it stuff you can do anywhere like a smile or a simple hello (even better in the native tounge) but most of all having a little respect for the other people cos remember, its not about you.

so now i breaming with confidence, and can just get up anywhere and wing stuff and not be to worried, ill tell you what cambodia has changed my life, seeing others perception of life rather than dwelling in circumstances, and thats what paul talks about in philipians 4 somewhere, where nomatter the circumstances, have a peace in your heart that makes you sing in goal and stuff, to have a laugh no matter what, but remember its something you learn, just like paul had to.

as a good mate of a brother once told me, "the secret to long life is...keep breathing, and live until the day you die" :)

the dorms, i love them, whoever thought of doing that idea is a legend, you got 20 guys and 20 girls in seperate dormatories next to each other,
rent in phnom penh is so expensive, and uni students a struggling to pay uni fees, so imagine trying to rent and stuff

we also go to lcdi which is a shanty school where we teach english, brother p is the director of the school and we go out there 2 times a week
i love the lcdi kids, i taught creativity classes as me inglish aint that good, so i just get them to draw stuff and write about what theyve draw, and its cool cos im being like what i wouldave liked my teacher to be like

we also teach bible to 8 of the lcdi students who ride for 1hr in the soaring heat just to learn english for an hour, we call these "the bikers" - as they ride their bikes.
ive been teaching them about demons and crazy stuff like that, and werve talked about agent orange and dna and stuff that people think are demons. now the cambodians are a real superstisious bunch and believe in all sorts of wierd stuff, like eatig mango stien with sugar (by the way i hate oz, 1 mango stien for $2.50, what a rip off) and also watermelon and honey, and if you eiat ither of these you will die....

so i ate them.

i ate mango stien and sugar together in front of loy and then infront of brother p - he was like "you will die tonight" in all seriousness and loy subsequently (if thats the right word) went and hid the sugar till i left so i wouldnt eat it again.
i then fed watermelon and honey to the bikers and they wernt gunna eat it, so i had some, pretended to die, we all had a good laugh, and when they saw me not dead they hoed into it, only 3 of the 8 didnt want to risk it, but its been all over the newspapers that people have died from it so they are fully scared of it.
so i told them there probably was reasons that that superstisions had been made, like rotts your teeth and about gluttony and stuff

so ive had a ball of a time, i was there 3 months and cant believe its gone so long,
now i get back into the rigmarole of work and stuff, but that aint worry me as i know ill be over there in 9 months or so or something

so now im back i fell reved up and ready to take on australia,
so i would like to thank cambodia as it has changed my life i know ive changed its

please remember cambodia in you prays as they need a ton of help

so get up and do something

luv heaps ben xo

Comments

Sara-Rose said…
ben, i bought a dragon fruit for $10!! outrageous
Anonymous said…
Good work Ben

your a legend mate....keep up the good work in Aussie land.

C ya on the other side

Jonno

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