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...)