Cambodia Bible Education Centre

60 attendees on Saturday. 32 attendees on Sunday. Some new students. Mostly current students. Topic: The Life of Jesus. Presenters: Bro Don and Bro Jonathan. 6 Study Sessions and 2 Workshop/Discussion Group Sessions. Boat trip on the River! Lessons learned: Have more speakers if you want to do a two-day seminar / Make sure discussion groups are about really simple topics / Don’t organize a seminar when you only have a short time to handover to new fieldworkers. (can you tell I’m exhausted and have no inspiration but really want to let you know that we had a good seminar that seemed to go well and gave a good opportunity for irregular students to do some Bible Study…) Okay, it’s a few days after I wrote that paragraph, and although I only have 23 hours until my plane leaves L I really feel that I should be showing more excitement about the seminar… so here goes………… After days of preparation – making powerpoints, booking venues, ordering food, organizing welcome packs, organizing people,...

I still don’t think it has really sunk into my brain that we are leaving in a couple of days!! When I was teaching a student this morning I was think “so next lesson I’ll look at this, then we’ll skip that section and go straight into…. Whoops! I won’t be here to teach the lesson!! Six months has gone WAY too quickly. Before we came it seemed like it would be really long and we’d probably get heaps homesick and not cope and have to come home early… BUT it has been far from that. We have fallen in love with Cambodia! The people, the traffic, the enthusiasm, the thirst for knowledge, the way they make and do things, their English – we love it and will miss it so much. But I think what we will miss the most is…. Our friends! Most of our students have become dear friends. Some are closer than others – like our new brother and sister. But all are special to us. We are very sad to be leaving them. So we’re going back to Australia, to carry on where we left off. It may seem that the past six ...

God-willing Bro Don & Sis Una from Cumberland Ecclesia will be joining us on Thursday 6th December and will continue on for about three months. We are very thankful that the Centre is able to continue – though we feel that they will find themselves stretched trying to keep up with everything here. It’s been hard enough with only three of us here. We have regular students who have been coming for the whole six months we’ve been here… and other students who come whenever uni isn’t too busy for them. And every week we get at least one new enquiry with approximately 3 new contacts each month. This may not appear big – except that contacts come for at least two lessons a week – some even come four days a week. One of our new contacts can only come on the weekend so he has requested to come Saturday 8.30am – 10.30am then 1.30pm – 3.30pm. So there are many lessons to prepare for and give, beside all the admin tasks! After Don & Una, God-willing, Bro Stephen and Sis Lynne from Gold Co...

Loy is baptised! Yes our own gorgeous, adorable Loy who cooks the most amazing food and manages to worm her way into every visitor’s heart - our closest friend in Cambodia. Loy came back from visiting her family about 6 weeks ago to tell us that her parents don’t mind if she becomes a Christian and that she would like to be baptised. So after a few lessons to pull all the bits and pieces together and ensure that this was really what Loy wanted, Loy gave a simple and sincere confession of faith last Friday night. Loy was baptised on Sunday, 2nd December at the Olympic Swimming Pool by Bro Him and Bro Jonathan. The baptism was witnessed by a few of our regular contacts from the dorm, Sokly, Sis Sara-Rose, Sis Naomi and Sis Melinda. The pool was very noisy and most of us had to watch through a fence as we weren’t allowed in unless we were going to swim. But we managed to focus on the prayers, words of Romans 6 and the joy of yet another child of Adam becoming a child of God. After the bap...

Over the last couple of months we've been blessed with a number of visitors - the first my dear Father endeavoring to look old and wise (actually he manages it quite well sometimes) The group during the stay of the Saxon clan Sara-rose's Jnr siblings known as Joe and Jonny - just to the right if the photo were a little wider you would observe S'rose's parents as well ;0) even as I type we are blessed to have Naomi with us (well kind of with us - Loas SE Asia...) This is the classic photo any visitor to the Kingdom of Kampuchea must aquire, it is known locally as the Tuk-tuk capture.

I wasn’t going to blog about our holiday in Sihanouk Ville – because it was a holiday at the beach and I didn’t really want to make you all jealous. But a couple of crazy things happened that have to go on record - First, for really dodge accommodation we had to pay $15 per night instead of the usual $8 as it was Water Festival time and the place was packed out! We spent the first weekend with Loy and really enjoyed our time swimming and snorkelling and going to waterfalls. We also were privileged to watch an awesome sunset – the sun was going down on one side while the full-moon rose on the other side – spectacular! We then sent Loy back to Phnom Penh for uni and decided to go to Kep. This is a quiet little seaside village not far away that is a lot less touristy than Sihanoukville. To get there we took a share taxi. It was a small sedan and managed to fit 8 people – four across the back and four across the front (yes the driver was sharing his seat with a passenger and the speedo w...

Visiting Sokly We found our dream house! Actually its Sokly’s family house…It’s made all of wood – wooden stilts, wooden boards for the walls, wooden window shutters, wooden floorboards with cracks in-between to sweep the food down to the chooks. It has one big room that is used for entertaining guests, eating meals and sleeping; one small room for keeping clothes in and getting changed; and a verandah out the back for cooking. The yard has banana trees, coconut palms, papaya trees and mango trees. The ideal house! It’s set in a quaint village where hay is still transported by ox and cart and all the neighbours come to check out any guests. This is the home of one of our contacts, Sokly. Sokly currently lives in Phnom Penh while she studies at university. However, she often visits her family. Sokly has spent many hours studying at the Bible Education Centre. Despite her poor English skills, Sokly has shown sincere interest in the Bible and asked many pertinent and heart-searching ques...