Cambodia Bible Education Centre

This week has seen the BEC going from relatively empty to crowded, and as of Boxing Day, will be full to the brim! Bible School is imminent and the tribes are coming from far and wide! We counted 20 around the dining table for lunch today! Aussies, Kiwi's, a Canadians, Indians, Welshmen, Khmer, Burmese, Thai... I think that's it so far. But there are plenty more to come :) It's been busy busy busy this week getting ready for Bible School - building logos, making name tags, putting together packs, checking out the venue, it's looking to be a really great week full of uplift! Apparently, we're expecting approximately 150 attendees which is fantastic! The teaching has been spread between a few more people, now that the BEC is full of able teachers. I think the aim is to start getting a few more students now that there are more long term field workers available to teach. We had the honor of travelling to Kampot province veeeery early on Saturday morning for Jonno and Re...

Just to make our days more interesting here, we have been having regular power outages, predictable in every regard except for their duration. Every day, alternating between mornings and afternoons, the power has been going off for anywhere from one to four hours. When the power goes off, the monsters come out to play. The fans stop whirring... The air becomes still and dank. The classroom becomes unbearably hot and sticky, and concentration takes a leap out the window! The lights go out... The room becomes dark. Trying to read lesson notes becomes an exercise in futility. Seized with a morbid fear of what lurks beneath the tables and chairs, behind the cabinets, under the beds we stumble in the darkness, tripping, bumping, trying to flee the enemy. The vampires emerge... Cunningly disguised in the garb of mosquitoes, they approach quickly, stealthily, honing in on their prey. They commence their evil feast, sucking blood to their hearts content under cover of da...

For a number of reasons beyond our control (mostly related to health) we weren't able to have the outreach programme in November, but we managed to pull it off in the first weekend of December. Better late than never! We had 12 or so people come from various provinces, and had a full-on weekend of studies on the Kingdom of God. Friday night started with dinner and worship, Brother Rottana doing the exhortation about the salt of the earth. After worship we had planned to show a Bible-story-movie as the visitors had all been traveling and would be quite tired. David was just getting it all set up... and the power went out. So now it was all fun and games negotiating the BEC in the dark, with only a torch or two available! In due course the power came back on (and a cheer went up around the neighbourhood when it did), and everyone could now watch the movie as planned. After breakfast on Saturday, Rasmay and Saroun taught the first session on the Kingdom of God in the ...

Just for a change, we’ve had another holiday over here, but with any luck it should be the last for a while. The annual Water Festival normally means celebrations, fireworks, and most of all, dragon boat racing in Phnom Penh (on the Tonle Sap River, that is, not in the streets, although we nearly managed it this year). However, the normal festivities of Water Festival were cancelled this year, somewhat ironically, due to the over-abundance of water! The government announced that the money normally spent on the festival would be re-directed to assisting those displaced by the floods and repairing flood damage. For us, the five-day weekend meant a chance to travel with Sisters Nirath and Sokhorn to their home in Kratie province, six or seven hours drive north from Phnom Penh. Nirath arranged the transport—our first experience at travelling by shared taxi-van (shared in the sense of sharing your seat, your legroom, and a good chunk of your personal space with a fair number of other peop...

Rasmey invited us to her niece's wedding. This being the first wedding that we had been to in Cambodia, we were not really sure what we were in for, but we were in for it regardless! Rasmey dressed for the occasion First of all, the preparations: Bible class was cancelled so that all the girls would have time to put on their make-up, together with fake eyelashes, fake fingernails, fake hair, and anything else deemed necessary to be make oneself sufficiently beautiful to attend a wedding. We decided that we would go out on moto as it seemed the easiest way to get to Rasmey's house, out past the Phnom Penh airport. We left with Vitou and Danny but some how we lost them when a big truck pulled out in front of us, so after successfully navigating our way we arrived at the wedding long before anyone else we knew. Mercifully, the wedding marquee was located in the front yard of their house, rather than sprawling across the street as is the normal practice---the st...

We didn't get a lot done last Wednesday. Anna and Vitou were busy teaching; after getting back from the dorm, I settled down to some admin, emails, blogs, and so forth, but within an hour or so the power was off. Blackouts aren't uncommon here, but they normally kick in at either 10:30am or 3:45pm-ish; this time it had barely gone 9:00. Unfortunately, electricity is relatively critical to the operation of the BEC: it keeps computers alive, and the freezer cold, but more importantly, it keeps the lower levels, where Anna and Vitou were in the middle of lessons, habitable, via lighting and fans. Cut the power to the downstairs teaching rooms, and a enlightening lesson immediately sinks in a black hole, where one can't see one's hand in front of one's face, let alone the words on a page. Within minutes of the fans stopping, touching a book will be unthinkable, due to the quantity of sweat that will have formed on one's hands. This time it was a long blackout, nea...

Location, location, location... River frontage---extensive water views! Exactly where you don't want your house to be when the monsoon hits. Following the Very Busy Weekend, we had a tiring but very enjoyable two days. Anna and I accompanied Loy on a flying (or should I say, wading) visit to her home and family, 350km away in Siem Reap province. With twelve hours out of our two days spent sitting on a bus, we had plenty of time to soak in the views, which were remarkably watery this time round, with every river twice it's normal width, every ditch filled with water (algal or otherwise), most fields well into submarine territory, and many houses standing in water (anywhere from ankle-deep to eaves-level-deep). Probably two-thirds of the journey was through land inundated by the over-full Tonle Sap Lake. Algae in the water, and as a consequence, itchy skin for everyone who has to wade through it. Understandably, living with annual inundation has its downside...

Bong So Veasna teaching about Abraham This weekend has been a busy and exciting one. We have had our monthly outreach programme here; this time the studies were on the promises, starting with the promise in Genesis 3:15 about the snake and the woman's seed, and what this meant, and how the snake would inflict a temporary wound but Christ would crush sin. Brother Dy did a great job. Some of my students that would normally have a lesson with me on Saturday morning joined in with the outreach group and really enjoyed it. Next up was Brother So Veasna, doing Part I on the promises to Abraham: where Abraham lived and how he travelled to the land of Israel, and the promises that God made to him. Part II followed in the afternoon, led by Brother Him. Discussion groups after the seminar On the Saturday evening we all went to the dorm and David continued his seminar series that he has been doing on God, this time on the nature of God. The normal crowd of 60 or ...

Slums underwater seen from the Bassac Bridge I thought we should give you an update on the flood situation over here. First some numbers (to the best of our knowledge - it's quite difficult to get reliable information): 17 (out of 24) provinces affected by the flooding;  the death toll stands at around 250, the majority of them children, having been drowned, lost, or bitten by fleeing snakes and the like; 300 schools closed; 2700km of roads damaged; 30,000 people displaced; around 400,000 hectares of rice paddies inundated; and $100 million set aside by the government to repair damage. This year's Water Festival has been cancelled so the money can instead be spent on relief efforts. A report from a week ago says that the water is still likely to rise further, and threaten Phnom Penh ... so watch this space. Here are a couple of links: Record Mekong Flooding Threatens Bangkok, Phnom Penh Flooding Claims 250 Lives, as Government Response Continues ... and t...

Emily, Dany, Vitou, and Vitou's nephew The day after the Oudong Mountain excursion, we did a day trip to the village that Vitou, Saory and Samrach come from; David and I on one moto, and Vitou, Dany, and Emily (an Aussie workmate of Dany's) crammed on another, for the 60km ride out to Kampong Speu Province. Vitou's house The day started off a bit drizzly and cloudy, but halfway out the clouds began to disperse and the sun put in an appearance.  It was an awesome drive, first passing Phnom Penh airport, then continuing west out into the countryside, (which actually isn't flooded here, so has brilliant green fields full of young rice), sugar palms dotting the landscape, and cows, either wandering aimlessly over the road or tethered at the roadside. Along the way we passed numberous wats (pagodas), where normally one would only encounter monks, but because the day was a Buddhist holiday everyone was there, dressed in their Tuesday(?) best, and the wats ...

Daniel was the topic chosen for Outreach this time, and we had lessons on chapters 1-6, taught in turn by So Veasna, Vitou, Jared, Dy, Chantry, and Sokhieng. For Chantry and Sokheing it was their first time to teach a Bible lesson (other than Sunday School), and they were a little apprehensive. But by the time they had finished their session, the jitters had been overcome, the smiles had re-appeared, and they were asking to teach again next month. The students are an inspiration also, in particular for their concentration spans, which I'm sure far exceed my own. They arrive Friday afternoon, after travelling for several hours to get here, then get stuck straight into the first lesson on Friday evening. On Saturday morning, there's a second and third lesson, followed by a fourth shortly after lunch. This weekend we all went to the Olympic Pool for a couple of hours relaxation on Saturday afternoon, after which we headed to the dorms for the seminar, which I taught th...

It has been holiday time for the past few weeks here. Even though the Pchum Ban Festival only officially lasts for 5 days, holiday mode seems to stretch on for a good number of days longer afterwards, not to mention several weeks beforehand. So Phnom Penh has been a good deal less hectic than normal, as most of the population has been off in the provinces. Oudong Mountain Puddlescape (not normally lake here, btw, and yes, those are treetops sticking out of the water) In the matter of comings and goings: Steve Armes left on the 20th of September and Sarah, James and Jared left on the 24th. A big thank to you all for all the work that you've done. A few days later, Dan Maluga and Gaye nearly-Maluga visited briefly, en route from Thailand to Australia, for their wedding (coming up this weekend).  Wat, complete with numerous what-nots While Dan & Gaye were in town, those of us left behind in Phnom Penh made a pilgrimage to Oudong Mountain (which, incidental...