Fishers of Men

Today was our last day to be with the children at the orphanage so waking this morning was a bit surreal. This was the inevitable day that we all knew was coming. We met early for breakfast, Jon and I had the great privilege of meeting with a few of the new Christians that committed their lives to Christ at the meeting held on Tuesday night. It was such a blessing to sit with these new "children" of Christ. We sat with them and answered some questions that they had as new believers. Jon and I had both (unknowingly) felt some concern that we would not have much in common with these men and women, however, God had it all planned out. One of the men in front of us was a principal (my 7 years of teaching came right out!) and the other worked in construction material sales (Jon, of course, has plenty of knowledge on this one!). To my right, was the girl that I'd met from Tuesday and to Jon's far right was the guy that he'd recently been in contact with during the week. Amazing how God can line things up like that.

We were off to the orphanage soon after the breakfast and rolled into the orphanage so see all those precious faces. Hugs and "I Love Yous" could be seen and heard immediately. We all went into their school room and began the dancing. Boy can these kids break it down...and I have to say that we have quite a few team members who can break it down as well.

Next we sat the kids down to talk about our theme for the week, fishers of men, and how we can be fishermen. Among the many things we can do to show our love for Christ and others is to give and share. So we brought out the HUGE bag of rice and began to fill small burlap sacks with rice and a verse from John 3:16. The children lined up from smallest to largest (as they always do) but we noticed something different. No longer did we have our usual orphanage children and a few stray village children, but today we had close to 50 children from the village to join us!!!! They were all lined up, ready for their bag of rice and scripture too. Some had brought their mothers and fathers, even a few babies heard the message today. God works in some really big ways when we wants to.

Once we'd filled the bags, the village children were told that they could keep theirs and then we took, or I should say, followed the orphan children out onto the gravel road to deliver the bags of rice. It was such a JOY to watch the children going out into their community and share their love and faith with others. They were truly fishers of men today!

Finally, it was time for goodbyes. The children took turns standing and telling us what they enjoyed about the week and telling us thank you. It was tearful and heartfelt by each one. They had written letters and made bracelets for us. Many had written letters to all the team members and made bracelets as well. They have such a giving heart. They also wanted to sing for us. As if these acts of thanksgiving were not enough, they recited Psalm 91. Word for word. By memory. It was amazing. These children really know how to say thank you!

I will spare you the details of what it felt like to get on that van and pull away from those tiny tear stained faces. Many of you who've been on this trip or one like it can relate to the sadness that comes with leaving these little ones behind. I can rest in knowing that God is watching over them and holding each one close to Him.

I'm so grateful to this team for their hard work. It has been 100 miles an hour since we landed. There has not been a moments rest. I'm also grateful for the support we've had along the way from friends and family. This truly would not be possible without each on of you. It's been busy and constant energy but I would do it all over again for the fullness that I have in my heart right now.

With that, I'm going to bed. Tomorrow is another day of travel for us as we leave Battambang and drive to Siem Reap.

Get Your Groove ON!

This afternoon we retold the story Jesus calling the disciples the follow Him and Be Fishers of Men! Will Britt by far is the favorite actor with his silly bow! This afternoon we decorated backpags with markers and we played outside and played duck, duck goose!


THE kids and The team got our GROOVE on at our AWESOME DANCE PARTY tonight! We rocked out to Jump Around, Brick House, Play that Funky Music White Boy, Let's Get Started by the Black Eyes Peas, The Jackson Five's ABC and IF WE have it, we will have to post our amazing sketch of Jackson's Thriller dance / video.

The slide show that Jon Vaughan created was BEAUTIFUL. The kids loved seeing themselves and so did the team. What a great a way to reflect on the week!

We had popcorn and soda and had our movie night watching WALL-E. Everyone enjoyed quality time with each other. The kids loved the silliness of the movie and being together.

We are getting ready for tomorrow so I need to go!

In His Grip,
Meredith Houston on Laura Siron Account

WHAT A MORNING!

We started out this morning having breakfast with Paster Vek. What an amazing man of faith and service to the Lord. It was great to have some quality time with him and get to know him better. This morning at the orphanage we had a great time with kids worshipping the Lord in music and then with coloring a fish! Afterwards we had fun playing steal the bacon and volleyball and the girls painted their nails. We left there at 11:30am and went to a restaurant for lunch. After lunch Mistye and Jon went to the market to get sodas, ice and stuff for MOVIE night and DANCE PARTY TONIGHT! It will an amazing Party! Stay tuned......

Day 7 - Perfect

Today was our second day at the orphanage. After singing our hearts out with the kids, we did two skits in keeping with our "Fishers of Men" theme. The first skit was our reenactment of the story of the miraculous catch of fish found in Matthew 9:9-13. We worked hard to make the skit as funny as possible and the kids ate it up. After arts and crafts, we did trust falls and a crazy relay race which involved blindfolds, spinning, and wheelbarrow.

Our perfect day continued with more praise and worship - which turns into a dance party - after lunch. The second skit told the story of the good Samaritan - found in Luke 10:25-37 - teaching Jesus' message to love your neighbor as yourself. The arts and crafts continued with our own "t-shirt" signing party. The genuine love of these kids is unbelievable.

The day wrapped up with a dinner better than any of us could have hoped for - we hosted all the kids (Pastor Vek and his wife joined us as well!) at the local BBQ joint. Fun doesn't begin to describe the evening. The food, the pictures, the praise - it was perfect (if we haven't mentioned that already!). To top it all off one of team members celebrated a birthday with the sweet sounds of those angels singing 'Happy Birthday' in English.

God bless!

Day 6 - More of God's Plan Revealed

What an amazing day! God truly is unbelievable, all knowing, and all powerful. His plans were revealed in a big way today.

Our day began with one of our team members being sick with dehydration. This presented us with a challenge, but a chance to grow closer as a team. God has without a doubt put the nine of us here to serve Him and work together to make His plans happen. (Fortunately, everyone is healthy once again!)

For a lot of people having a sick team member would have gotten them down. For us, we completely rallied around each other bringing our team members even closer. This was perfect timing for us with it being our first day at the orphanage. Our deeper unity allowed us to start our first day with the kids in an even more powerful way. On a scale of 1 to 10, we would say the kids' energy level was a 100! The skits and music seemed to be the favorites of the day. Each one of us had a chance to dress up as a character from the Bible and act out two different passages in Matthew. We sang many songs with the children while being able to see their dance moves and share some of our own. In addition to the songs and skits, the children created crafts that were used at the business dinner we attended this evening. Their origami and place mats added so much to each table as we sat down with men and women from the community. To wrap things up, we played steal the bacon and had three legged races. A long goodbye ended our day with hugs and a phrase we all love, “see you chop chop!”

After the orphanage, we were on to our last event of the day. New Life Church (The church that runs the orphanage) sponsored a dinner for local business and community leaders to witness to them about the love of Christ. It was such a powerful and amazing event. Jon found out yesterday that he would be the guest speaker. We all rallied around and prayed for him to make sure that he was as prepared as possible. He knocked it out of the park! After Jon, and the pastor from New Life spoke, 21 people (about ¼ to 1/3 of the non believers there) accepted Christ tonight. Isn’t God so incredible?! What God is doing in Cambodia continues to amaze us daily!

We wrapped up the day with a debrief as a team celebrating all that God has done just half way through our trip. We continue to ask for prayers for health, energy and strength to serve Him fully while accomplishing all that He has for us to do on this journey.

Monday

Today was a special day indeed! Despite the rain and crashing waves, the morning started out with something we all felt so blessed to witness -- Pastor Vek baptised two people (including Laura!!) in the ocean. Pastor Vek walked out into the water in his pressed white shirt and dark trousers, drenched by the towering waves, yet standing strong for the two baptisms.
Afterwards, the kids ran back into the water like it was their first time ever at the beach, throwing themselves in, splashing, jumping and having a great time.
Some of the boys played soccer while some of the girls braided hair. Lunch was literally a feast with fresh seafood, chicken, beef, vegetables and soup.
We left around noon and began the 8 hour bus ride to Battambang. We played games and sang songs to help the time pass. We arrived safely and are now getting all of the crafts, sports and curriculum ready for tomorrow. It is definitely going to be a great day!

Sadness, Reverence, and Unbridled Joy

First full day in Cambodia, and could it have gotten any more amazing? The day started with Will and Carrie going for a walk, and spotting a traffic jam, CAUSED BY AN ELEPHANT. We all congregated in the lobby and soon found out that none of us slept really well, and had been up without an alarm for quite some time. God did provide, as he always does, and we had a day where we all felt pretty energized.

After a traditional Cambodian breakfast (haha) of omelets, pancakes, and for Will the big breakfast platter, we set out on our way with the other two team here in Cambodia to S-21, which is an old high school that the Khmer Rouge turned into a concentration camp. We all felt the aching in our hearts as we saw the gruesome pictures, read the horrific accounts, and most haunting, saw the hundreds of faces that the Khmer Rouge documented as they brought them into the camp, tortured, and killed them. They killed 20,000 in 3 years just at that place. We then went to the Killing Fields, a place where they would truck people to murder them and push them into mass graves. It was an emotional experience to see the brutality and lack of respect for human life, all of which happened all too recently. It is tough to go through that but vital to see in order to understand where Cambodia has been, and the darkness that the nation is coming out of and fighting, a fight that is fought by a growing population of Christians.

Peter, a Cambodian that works for New Life Missions (who runs the churches and the orphanages that we are working with), then took us to lunch then to the the main church campus which is here in Phnom Penh. On the way, he told us about the Weekly Evangelism Club (WEC), which is a group of Christians that commits to share the gospel once a week in a one on one setting with a non-believer in Cambodia. They started a year ago, and are already up to 2,000 WEC members. Their goal is to get to 3,000 by the end of the year, and eventually 5,000. They say by doing that, they can share the gospel 20,000 times a year!!! This is a country that is 98% Buddhist. Talk about praying BIG!!

We had a great opportunity to pray for the church as a group of 26 (all three teams from globalX), then decided that we would LOVE to go see the Phnom Penh orphanage, since most of us hadn’t seen it yet, and didn’t know when we would have the opportunity to do it again. Talk about God putting plans in work we didn’t know about. On the way, Peter told us that ALL THE KIDS WOULD BE THERE!!!! We got so excited about being able to spend time with our kids before seeing them at church tomorrow morning. We got to the orphanage, walked down the long road to their gate, and to our surprise, there were the kids from all 3 orphanages, close to 100 in all, all lined up in two lines for us to walk through, waiting on us. They all started clapping we when walked up. The lows of the evil of Cambodia were far overcome with the joy and love we felt when we saw these precious children of God. The kids immediately hugged and called out the names of the familiar faces, and QUICKLY gravitated to our 4 first timers, when introductions to Will, Suzanne, Meredith and Ashley quickly turned into hugs and holding of hands. For us veterans, we just let it all just wash over us as we greeted, hugged, picked up, loved on, and sat with “our children”. God is such a good, loving and caring God, and seeing these children who have so much, in the Western world’s eyes, that they are lacking just so unabated joy, love and happiness truly showed God’s love.

After a couple hours there, we were sentenced to have to leave and head back to the hotel. We grabbed some dinner and packed up our stuff to go to the beach and then grouped up for a team debrief. 9 people who were virtually strangers 8 months ago sat in a room having laughs, talking about highs and lows, and just really being a group of close friends digesting the day. God is good, and has placed great blessings on us to have such a wonderful group of individuals who truly care about each other.

Thanks for your prayers for strength, they were certainly felt today. Please, please, please continue that for the next 48 hours as we have a couple full days of playing hard with the kids at the beach. We won’t have internet access tomorrow, so we will be back to blogging Monday night. Thanks for your support. We miss all of you and look forward to telling you more stories throughout the trip.

PS We will have pictures to upload Monday

Safe and sound

Hey everyone!! It has been a long and tiring last 30 hours, but at last we are here in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Our flights were great, and it was so joyous to see familiar smiling faces of some of the church men there to help with our bags and get us to the hotel. We are all checked in and ready for some sleep. Tomorrow will be a great day as we see the city and church and what God is doing here, but also a tough day as we see the history of evil as we visit SR 21, an old Khmer Rouge concentration camp.

Please continue to pray for safety and health, and especially for energy tomorrow.

God Bless!!

Okay guys, i'm about to go to bed but I wanted to give out a little word or two before I try to sleep. Notice I said, "try". ;)

I wanted to try to find some scripture to help me relax and just "be". I'm spinning my wheels trying to get all this done and my head is about to explode. This verse was helpful to me and I hope it can be helpful to one or two of you...

"For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." Ephesians 2:10

We've work hard, and planned all we can and now it's all in God's hands! What a peaceful feeling it is to know that He will carry us through all of this. He's already decided how these next 12 days will go! It is such a joy to be serving along side of each one of you. My prayer is that you rest peacefully tonight. Get ready for a great adventure of love and service!

Here is the Team!!!!

Why am I writing?

So, not sure why I'm writing, not even sure what I'll say but I felt the need (at 11:43 no less) to blog a little something. We are 14 days away from our departure and all I can think about is the day we see those precious children and the wave of love that will come over us as we are greeted. I have a million things I want to say to them and yet, they won't understand a word of it. I don't even know how I'll hold myself up when I see their tiny faces. Their beautiful eyes. Ugh, those beautiful eyes.

I can tell that our team members are feeling the crunch. I feel it too. I know we are feeling the stress and anxiety that comes along with leaving the country. All I can say is, trust in the Lord, my friends. WE can do this, and when WE can't...HE can!

I'm praying for each one of you. And I'm praying for that amazing journey that we are about to go on. And oh, the prayers for those sweet little ones.....

It is 11:48 am for them right now. They may be about to eat lunch. They have a full day ahead of them today. We will be there soon. Sharing our love, sharing our time, sharing our hearts. It's good stuff.