Cambodia Bible Education Centre

On Monday the 11th of June, Toby had his first birthday. I know I’ve recently written a blog about our wonderful little boy (please don’t gag), but here’s some more. Those who don’t want to read any more smushy stuff about Toby can tune out now….. We had a small party for him on Sunday. A bit early, but most of our Khmer contacts only have one day off a week and that is usually Sunday. In preparation for this, I spent some time going to several western supermarkets trying to find foodstuffs which would make a birthday celebration seem like home. It was a depressing exercise. Most of the stuff I would buy back home was not available and what was available was hideously expensive. Worse was the fact that none of these western supermarkets stocked cocoa powder. It seemed bad enough to me that I would have to make a dodgy cake in the microwave (owing to the fact that our kitchen does not contain an oven) let alone having my hopes of it being a chocolate cake dashed! Oh well – so be it. Sur...

Time’s getting away and the things I can write about are mounting up. Sadly I only have the stamina for one massive post every couple of weeks. The dreaded lurgy descended upon me in the last week and I was reduced to a wretched ball of coughing goo surrounded by boxes of tissues. Most unpleasant and not something I’m hoping to repeat, so I’m trying not to expose myself to the elements. That’s why I sat on the back of a moto out to the village of Kandal yesterday. Sunburnt on the way out and wet by rain on the way back. But I’m on the way up now, God willing, and back on the wheel after a brief stint of leaving everything to James (sorry!). There’s nothing like the sore bum that comes with spending an hour or so on the back of a motorbike. The driver, a contact named ‘Meng Him’ (from here on, I will simply refer to ‘Him’ as ‘him’ or ‘he’ as the case demands), informed me that my bottom was obviously made in Vietnam and not Japan, where quality non-painful bottoms are produced. His Chi...

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...

I hadn’t gone far when I suddenly realised … the spiders! I dashed back to see that Muff was gone, Buff was sulking in his corner and the stranger daddy-long-legs reclined over Muff’s web. Where had Buff been when poor Muff was ousted? I spied the shrouded corpse Buff was trying to hide – ha! Gorging while his smaller brother was conquered. I twanged the stranger’s leg experimentally. He immediately shuddered in alarm. Buff shot aggressively out of his corner to the midpoint between the webs. As our bathroom roof is very small he didn’t have far to go, even in spider terms. The stranger had calmed his movements – Buff hesitated. I plucked the connecting threads several times bu t Buff decided he’d need much corpse juice to fight this taciturn foe and scrabbled back to feast again. The stranger settled comfortably into the stolen web. I decided to call him Tuff. It was a dark and stormy night. Flashes highlighted the bloated clouds in pink then paused as if waitin...