Christmas parties all around! Although I suppose they don't much resemble a party as we know it. This year is the first Celebration of a Birth in 2 villages. I was a part of entering these villages for the first time, one in 2011 and one in January of this year, with the awareness and conviction that they needed a lot of help. As help and love came, so did the curiosity and openness to be loved on. And now, simply because of grace and believing in what they saw and heard, the folks with changed lives have gathered and learned new songs and new stories for the first time in the history of the villages.

Yesterday in, we'll call it, K.B. the villagers remembered me and grabbed me up in hugs. It was a sweet SWEET moment when I saw 2 particular ladies participating and giving testimony. While previously leading teams up and down streets, explaining culture and praying for what we saw we were confronted by two very angry ladies - angry with our organization for forgetting to meet them at a designated spot for transport to our partner clinic after they had traveled so far to a neighboring village just to meet with us. An hour later I left their yard and called back "home" to see who could recall and rectify the situation. Because of the way the situation was handled, the partner clinic that loved and served them, and the authentic follow-up and concern they received these 2 ladies were some of the first to Believe.

I heard testimony of not beating family members any more, widows praying that they can re-marry a man that doesn't drink or abuse children, family members reconciling, and burdens and fear and nightmares lifted. Let me brag on my God!

Their village joined together with 20 or so folks from another nearby village to have what may have been the first ever Cambodia Christmas pot luck. They didn't ask us to provide a thing! (a welcome change!) Dumplings, noodles, fruit, boiled sweet rice desserts, and crackers were plenty!

The other village? We'll call it P.K., and it was the village that cheered when the local temple announced that we'd be bringing rice and medicines during the bad floods last year. Their remote villages now have water wells, rainwater harvest tanks, health centers, and a plethora of health education done, AND over 40 have a completely new life. Now that's progress.

Pictures: The gathering in K.B. and the trusty boat that got all 23 of us there!

Fingers crossed! It looks like I can blog FROM Cambodia again. Looks like I've been un-blocked. (I just got an error message on my screen while I typed that - no, no, no!) I don't know how to process a lot of what's around me. The second time around it should be less shell-shocking, right? The lack of capacity to teach well and perform well because no one taught them otherwise after genocide killed all the professionals in the last generation. The ignorance, callousness, and corruption of a government that raked a room full of NGOs over the coals for not doing more for their country while they pad their pockets with bribes and "taxes" on those that can't afford to filter the water that's killing them. The lack of compassion by most villagers - so much so that one father was dying of a broken hip in his daughter's own house, my friend had to go get his brother off the highway in a wheel barrow after an accident because they didn't have/couldn't collect enough money to pay the ambulance driver, and a lady not far from our property suffered massive domestic abuse while her neighbors listened and did nothing because "that's her bad luck". The daily struggle to have enough money to buy food AND pay to send your kids to school. And then choosing which child you think has the most potential and telling the others they have to drop out and find and income, thus labeling them sub-par and damaging their confidence and psyche. It doesn't make sense. I can't process it, almost to the point I can't breathe because everywhere I'm looking needs something. This is so much bigger than all of us. Oh how they need to know there ARE absolute truths in life to follow, that the creator of the world and all mankind elevated women to an equal footing, that every single person has potential because they are made in the image of God, and that we will all have to give an account of our lives some day. This "normal" that they know doesn't have to be normal! I just wanna scream it out. (There's a lot on my mind tonight...)

Its been a long time! I should've done this months ago when I got home, but I wanted to post to explain the loooonnng silence. Somewhere along the way the government overseas decided they didn't like certain blogs and websites and mine - either directly or indirectly - was one of them. Here's a most recent journal from just before I left Cambodia in May 2012: Well, we did a lot of work that God ordained that reached hundreds, but I’m also one that was changed. I’m one that encountered God. Millions are lost, but that’s a faceless #. Thousands of orphans. Thousands starving, 10s of thousands don’t have water. Millions dead at the hands of genocide. These are easy to keep a distant statistic. And then I met them. Orphans Wani and Sokal, my neighbor's kids that kept me awake crying because they were hungry, my friend Sarom has scars from being beaten during the Khmer Rouge and Viesna doesn’t know his dad because he left him and his mom to be a soldier. Now its real. And so these millions don’t know Christ - never even heard of him even on his merits. Aside from salvation itself Christ alone brings things they don’t know exist. Peace inside. Or hope. Or comfort. Provision. Leading. We tend to take these for granted – sure a little turmoil now and then – but the Spirit is in our heart and working us to sanctification. What spirit here? I’ve said before that sometimes I forget the desperation and emptiness I had when I was lost and so I tend to subconsciously downplay the urgency. But to those lives it is desperate. Its critical. And they don’t know how to fix it. On a daily basis I’m so unaware of how rich and astonishingly wealthy I am. We are. How can 2 so different places co-exist? We have 1 Father with 1 heart, 1 desire for his people – yet most Americans are simply incapable of understanding the enormous need elsewhere. God, help me convey it. Yet still most days sure I’d rather be comfortable. At least I have that option. I don’t have to contemplate selling my oldest child for $50 to make ends meet. Why do I want to be entertained and entertaining? Why can’t I just enjoy silence seek God? Why is my radio or TV on even when I’m not listening? Its like I’m trying to escape a guilt I can’t yet identify. All the while my friends here are dying faster than we get to them. You know, brokenness - even though I sing about it lightheartedly - to know brokenness, is painful. To see people as god sees them? To hurt for them? To feel helpless as you watch them go down the wrong path because they don’t know a creator wants to communicate with them. Shew. Its rough. I’ve cried for them. When have I ever done that before? God’s heart is beating through mine. Missions is so new, so foreign to a lot of people. I keep thinking What will it take to do this? Oswald Chambers said ‘I can’t cause people to find what I’ve found but I can cause them to have a desire for it.’ I’m rich – In conviction. In awareness. In having a government that actually issues passports. In the ability to travel wherever I want. In my questions. Why are 85% of Bibles printed in English when its the rest of the world that needs them more? Why are we taught that retirement savings is more important than to be a Biblical Christ follower? Maybe there’s suffering in the world so that the rest of us can learn compassion and serving. Lori, you didn’t give up anything that wasn’t worth giving up. All I know is that God is bigger than I'd ever experienced, He speaks through dreams, and that the harvest is plenty. My time there was challenging and hard to say the least, but I emerged more in love with the lord and with a deeper character. I'm praying and seeking what going back might look like.