Cambodia Bible Education Centre

The electricity:  We have been four days and four nights (and counting) without a power outage! For most of the past month, the power has been reliably unreliable, going off every day except Sunday (we assume that's because there's no one in the office on Sundays to muck around with the switches), and we have often had the good fortune of two or three electricity-free sessions of up to three or four hours each in a single day. Which, as you might calculate, doesn't leave the power on for long between outages. Most annoyingly, it has successfully relieved us of a good portion of our productivity, leaving classes sitting in darkness and stuffiness, and staff sitting facing computers with blank screens. The latest reprieve has made the past few days more productive and enjoyable than we have been in a long while. Students: As expected, January brought us an end-of-semester lull in activity, with many of our students being flat out studying for exams, followed, ...

  We were in the office one Thursday morning and Anna casually asked Vitou what was happening about teaching Savvy, Theung's boyfriend. He has been involved with a church before and has some knowledge of the Bible, but is keen to learn more, and hopefully to be baptised and join our fellowship. Vitou replied that it had completely slipped his mind. So before we knew what was happening, we were volunteering to take a trip to Sihanoukville for the weekend, to meet up with Savvy and spend some time teaching him. That left us about 24 hours to get everything else in order for the weekend - arranging and briefing teachers to relieve us for our scheduled classes; printing, naming, and signing certificates for all the students who completed the recent seminar course; buying prizes for the top-scoring students; trying to find accomodation in Sihanoukville; farewelling Don and Una, Steve, and Sally as they were to leave for Thailand over the weekend; and oh, we needed to pa...

I'm writing this blog as I go. Currently I am 3 hours into a 6 hour bus journey to the province of Preah Vihear it is Friday morning. Bro Dy an I are going to talk to and teach two unbaptised friends. We also have 1 sister and 3 brothers from the phnom penh ecclesia joining us there tomorrow. So far it has been an uneventful and moderately comfortable ride for a man who's ears and knees are on a mutual plain (mind I just don't fit on public transport, even in western countries) We are through the dust and pot holes and on a relatively smooth road. The plan is to meet up with a girl named Khanha. She is traveling further than all of us and is making a great effort in her search for the truth. We will meet her tonight some time and have dinner, organise accommodation and have an informal class with her. The rest of the party will arrive and take part in our fellowship weekend. Saturday night hails the arrival of another interested friend named Vichear who has expressed h...