Merry Christmas Family and Friends

So a very Merrry Christmas I wish to family and friends. I miss you all much. But it's good to miss you...too often we "don't know what we've got till it's gone", to quote Joni Mitchell. The good news is that I'm alone, but not lonely (yet :). Actually, I'm not even alone very much, except in the evenings when I usually have a quick bite and come home to my apartment. And even then, I have the pleasure of skyping with Margie, doing some bible study and prayer together. It's a wonderful, strange feeling seeing your lovely wife and home from half the world away, and talking as if you're in the same room. 


Well, it's past time that I updated the blog. As I feared, it takes more discipline than I can apply to do this. Sorting through photos takes time, and sometimes uploading them is tedious. Also, days go by with lots of activity and if I don't write about events immediately, I forget a lot of great things. One that I'll share right now happened just this morning. After breakfast, I like to walk around the market area close to my house. I was about to pass a place in a large villa called "Room for Reading" when I thought, why not go in and see what this is about. I found a wonderful NGO--non governmental organization--from America. They have been developing literacy programs for about 10 years by providing beautiful books and building schools and libraries and training staff to promote reading. They have powerful programs in a number of south Asian and African countries. And they are going to give a Christmas present to my school: I'll bring the librarian, Chhavey, and the English teacher, Sovann, next week and they can choose tons of free, high quality books for the school! They are free of charge for public schools and ngo's. They have expensive books, like the Dorling Kinderley titles and lots of familiar children's books like, "Miss Nelson is Missing"...."Spitballs whizzed through the air...the kids in room 207 were misbehaving again"....ah the hundreds of times i read the story of the lovely miss nelson!

I'm not sure how folks in the tropics ever manage to get into the spirit of Christmas without snow, but somehow, they do. I had great fun at the Lighthouse Church Christmas celebration last Sunday afternoon from about 4 to 7pm. Wish I could post up the videos but the darned connection in my apartment is way too slow. I'll just post a photo or two. The second floor worship center was packed with lots of young people and some of us old folks too. The center is maybe 80 feet long by 30 feet wide and accommodates about 400 people. There's no airconditioning, but plenty of fans keep the room decent. They put on a nice program, with skits, traditional dance, recognizable Christmas carols, Khmer carols, a Christmas sermon, and lucky raffle winners. A live band played terrific music, Christian and later, dance tunes. Everyone had free drinks and veggie burgers :) 


At one point, we were standing and praying, when I noticed a lovely little face smiling up at me and pointing as if to say "Hey, it's me!!!" and indeed, it was she.....one of my students from the Community Learning Center. Later she brought me some candies and next day in school, told everyone that Mr. Kevin had been at her church.

Here are the lovely, but mean, ladies who forced me to reveal my dancing ineptitude.


After the celebration, they cleared out the chairs and a whole bunch of folks got into the favorite Cambodian passtime, group dancing. There are these favorite tunes that go on forever, like the song that never ends, and people love them. It's so much fun that I actually wish I didn't have two left feet. Yesterday, I was forced to display my leftfootedness at the Hagar staff Christmas party, when the teachers dragged me onto the dance floor. Thank the Lord I don't have a video of that!