What's cooking?

What a difference a few days can make! Getting into a good sleeping pattern again and adjusting to the climate and time zone does wonders for one.

The staff at CHO were very keen to get me started at Destiny Café and wanted me to show them how to prepare a few new dishes.  So on Tuesday morning we sat down, Rosa (CHO Business Manager), Leeta (Assistant) and myself and went through the menu they presently have and looked at what improvements might be made.  Once we had done this we decided on which new dishes they would like to learn, made up a shopping list and Leeta went off to Siem Reap that afternoon to purchase the supplies.

Well she came back with approximately half of the items which is better than nothing as the choice here is very limited.  The rest we had to be inventive and ‘adapt’ accordingly which lead to a few interesting variations on the dishes we were creating.

Overall it went very well and Leeta and her team were very keen and enthusiastic to learn and try different things.  We have made muffins, pizza, coleslaw, carrot salad, quiche, sponge cake and a couple of desserts as well as custard.

But by far the most successful and appreciated were the meringues which I made on the spur of the moment because there were egg whites left over – they absolutely loved them, so it just goes to show that sometimes in life it is the simplest things that bring the greatest joy.

I don’t think we would quite make it onto ‘the Great British Bake Off’, but we had a fabulous time sharing, cooking, learning and just being together – food transcends all barriers.

They have made this such a wonderful and enjoyable experience for me.

Love and blessings,

Michelle

WOW!

What a week it has been! I have experienced every emotion possible but it has been great. And yes I am surviving without hair gel! I have spent this week teaching with Matt and Ellie at Safe Haven school and have also been to school on a mat.

David at Safe Haven School

It has been great working closely with Matt and Ellie as they both have amazing gifts and I have learnt a lot from them already. I think the most moving, inspirational and heart warming day was when we went to school on a mat. The children were so welcoming and lovely. It was a joy to teach them and to see them laughing when I was doing my animal impressions for them to copy is an image that will stay with me for many years to come. The smiles on their faces has been one of the best moments of this trip so far for me. The CHO team has been beyond helpful and they have supplied us with wonderful meals, lovely accommodation, some fantastic translating which has been very helpful indeed and much more.

Today we have had a very interesting day. It started with me and Michelle leading devotions where we spoke about  1 Corinthians 13 verses 1-13. Michelle did great and it was very inspiring. We visited Samoura,who is a pastor in the area, and his family. It was very interesting listening to him and I loved looking round his home, although I wasn't too keen about the crab that suddenly appeared at our feet at one point. We then went to visit another CHO project where they fix and work on motorbikes. I found this very interesting and was fascinated by how clever they were and how they worked and what they used to repair them. We then came back for lunch and then went out to Safe Haven in the afternoon where we listened to Katie (a UK physiotherapist who is also here) talk about health issues and Tim gave a terrific talk about the Bible. Fab job Tim! I am very much looking forward to the rest of this week and what is to come.
Every blessing to everyone!

David

It all keeps changing ...

Before the team came out to Cambodia one of the key messages we as leaders tried to communicate to everyone else was to expect that plans might change on a daily basis.  This really is not because things are not planned well but life overall here is so very different to that we experience in the UK.  There are factors outside everyone's control which can affect what is possible to do on a day to day basis and even hour to hour.  For myself, returning to Poipet after three years, I see really significant changes which have taken place here in the bigger picture, and many of them are for the better and so I will try and share my own reflection of what I have noted over the past few days.  Firstly, some of CHO's own programmes have changed significantly and some have ceased completely.  At first this might be puzzling to the casual observer, but you soon realise that what is happening here is part of a much greater plan.  Having the privilege to lead a team here again was always going to be different with our combined set of skills this time ranging across six major areas: teaching, training pastors, IT, healthcare, catering and photography.  Could we really deliver something useful in the time available? Would CHO be able to take input from from us in so many areas?

So let's start by the return visit to the Safe Haven school site.  Gone is the accommodation for some students.  All now arrive on a daily basis from both the surrounding countryside and Poipet itself which is about 15 minutes away by road.  Some children arrive independently by bicycle and many on motorcycle, dropped of by parents.  The 'ideal' is for children to live in a family home in the villages and where this is not possible, fostering and accommodation is now provided by another partner charity.  On the school site new classrooms have appeared and ground is already marked out for next year's new classroom as the school expands upwards into providing secondary education.  The school perimeter has gained significant earthworks to attempt to protect it from flooding during the rainy season which was particularly difficult in 2013 and this is evidenced by the absence of the chicken farm which had to be closed (and the chickens sold) due to flooding.  Perversely even the fish-ponds are having to be restocked as most escaped during flooding last year.  Around the grounds grass now grows where the earth was once bare, trees have sprung up – bananas and papaya abound, together with many other unidentified species.  Flowering azaleas and hibiscus shrubs also abound and birds and butterflies are now noticeable where there were once few. From the ubiquitous sparrow to Matt's sighting of what was most probably a white egret.  There is still more to come; CHO's vision is for university level facilities at Safe Haven in years to come and there is plenty of space to do this.

Returning to the new CHO office in Poipet much has changed in three years.  CHO is perhaps less now in terms of a large physical presence of staff and “church” meeting in its own building.   That is now self-functioning as a stand alone church nearby.  However CHO remains at the centre of a large network of village churches (maybe up to 40) some more than one hour's drive away.  The “School on a Mat” programme has grown from 6 to about 15 locations and two classes co-locate on each site each day.  The numbers of children attending these has significantly grown, evidenced by the fact that Sue visited a school on a mat with over 90 children present today.

The business enterprises which previously operated out of CHO e.g. clothing manufacture, embroidery and silk-screen printed goods have now moved on as a stand-along organisation.  CHO's vocational training programmes and micro-loans however still play a major role in supporting and starting up agricultural, sewing, retail and maintenance businesses in the community. Overall CHO is clearly achieving its aim in being a smaller organisation at the centre and grown hugely in the community.

The day for us usually starts at 7 am with breakfast, morning devotions at 7.30 am.  Whilst the rest of the team have been out and about each day – often we only see each other at mealtimes and for our daily team debriefing, catch up on each other's activities and prayer time – I have been between Safe Haven school and and the office.  At Safe Haven we looked at IT provision in the computer room both in terms of hardware, what is included in the curriculum, oh... and then there is the electricity supply to cope with (it should be 220 volts but by the afternoon can be down to 180 volts and computers really don't like this!)

Back at the CHO office, my time has been divided between planning a new website strategy with key IT staff and also enabling different streams of the organisation to come together and become self-sufficient IT wise rather relying on outside help.  I have also been involved in looking at options for a data collection tool on tablets and phones for field surveys and assessments for oral and general medical health.

Changing fast certainly, but all clearly part of a bigger plan.

Graham

It's a team thing

This visit is of course primarily about the current and future work of the CHO team and yes, it is also partly about our supporting role as a 'Connected Church' team from BRBC.  Through the months of preparation though I have found myself questioning whether my own individual 'professional' contribution was to be as relevant this time around as it seemed to have been when I was part of the first BRBC team which visited in 2011.  But, as is so often the case with God's plans, it became clear 'at the right time'.  While our team were making final preparations to travel I learned that a UK GP (Andy) and his physiotherapist wife (Katie) were already here with CHO in Poipet working on a large and long term project identifying the major non-communicable (non-infectious) health concerns in this region, and drawing together strategic tools for CHO equipped staff to identify and set about reducing them, thereby minimising suffering for individuals (for sure) but also saving HUGE capital sums by removing the need for later very costly treatment for completely preventable health issues which could have been avoided or significantly reduced.  They completely lacked the oral health knowledge necessary to support many aspects of this work (e.g. screening and basic advice regarding smoking cessation, substance abuse, cancer detection, HIV support, diabetes issues etc)  and it is this which has become my own particular task integrating into that 'health project team' and is a project which we can all continue to support and update remotely after our return home.  In terms of healthcare this is where my heart has always been i.e.  prevention is always better than cure, though 'cure' of course will always have its place.

I now see how my place in this visit was not only destined to help facilitate the 2014 BRBC team, nor was it only to reinforce work I had done before in terms of equipping local teachers to share preventive oral health advice with local families.  It was part of His wider plan for something much more strategic and long lasting as a small but essential team player in a bigger team and my faith in the 'team manager' has been reinforced yet again.

Sue

A picture is worth a thousand words

That’s the reason I am with the team at CHO’s offices in Poipet, to teach a couple of the staff how to use the camera equipment that they have more effectively. I have been working with Monorom and Rosa primarily, showing them the controls on their camera, which is a good quality Canon digital SLR, so that they can take better photographs to send to their sponsors and promote the activities of CHO. Before I arrived I wondered how I would cope trying to teach a fairly technical area to those whose first language was not English, but I needn’t have worried as both students understand and speak English perfectly, way better than my Khmer. They are also very quick to pick things up and we are making much more rapid progress than I had expected. Our first lesson was how to choose the shutter speed ourselves so that we were more in control of what the camera did and practised the technique on the many motorbikes that pass in front of the Destiny café and even achieved a fairly advanced technique called ‘panning’ to keep the subject in focus while the background is blurred to give the impression of speed as evidenced by the photo below:

This isn’t something I think they would have even attempted before I arrived. It doesn’t show a motorbike passing a car, passing a lorry which is quite common but you get the idea of what driving is like in Cambodia with vehicles weaving everywhere.

I have also shown them how to use some photo-editing software to give more impact to their photos and this morning we had a set-up which would allow good quality photos to be made for sale so that they could start a small business to help fund CHO’s work. It might be a while before that is up and running but seeing what Chomno achieves it may be sooner than I could imagine.

This afternoon I had the real privilege of accompanying Matt, Ellie and David to school on a mat. The children were delightful and engaged wholeheartedly with the activities. Monorom also came with us and I found I was able to give some practical advice as we took photographs together.  An exhausting but extremely enjoyable day.

Looking forward to what is to come.

Rod

The Pastor's view

Today we went our separate ways: Michelle and Rod stayed at the Destiny Café to work on menus and publicity; Matt, Dave and Ellie took 4 classes of children for lessons at the Safe Haven School; Graham was working on IT teaching for Safe Haven School too; Sue disappeared into the villages to teach oral hygiene and I started the first five of a series of sessions on 2 Corinthians with 35 village pastors. The effectiveness of their ministry will be apparent on Saturday when a baptism service has been planned for about 100 people from the churches they have planted! Very few second-generation Christians here: this is conversion growth.

The first two chapters of 2 Corinthians cover being called into a ministry of bringing God’s comfort to people, the importance of praying for others and being prayed for, and the forgiveness of sins and how that works in a culture where shame and honour are dominant values. Who is teaching whom? The pastors were unanimous in affirming that God could and did forgive the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge and saw forgiveness as an integral part of the good news they proclaim so effectively. Already as a result of preparing and delivering these talks in this culture I know I have gained fresh and significant insight (for me) into parts of 1 Corinthians. A learning experience in all sorts of ways.

Other impressions: today’s heavy rain showers will be welcomed by the farmers; we welcome the relative coolness although the all-pervasive dust on the paved roads has turned into a muddy slosh. As I write this, a dozen small birds are feeding happily on the grass a few yards from me: the school, where I am based, is a Safe Haven for them as well as for the children who are taught here so effectively: children at Safe Haven tend to learn three times as quickly as they might in a state school: no wonder Chomno has a vision for extending the education provided to university level. The CHO team have worked tirelessly; they work when we work and when we have meal breaks (delicious food!) they are serving us.

It’s now 4.40 pm on Tuesday here – just over 24 hours since we crossed the border into Cambodia, but our journey here already feels like a distant memory. If you want to pray for the BRBC team, please pray for good nights’ sleep: a combination of jet lag and noisy hotels have meant disturbed nights for most of us– a couple of the team (no names mentioned) have slept through our alarms and they may not be the last to do so. It’s a challenge and a privilege for us to be able to play a very small part in an amazing project: so far, by God’s grace, so good!

Tim

First day at School

Part of Safe Haven school (library on left, classroom range to the right)

Not really sure who learnt more today, the children at Safe Haven School or us, David, Ellie and Matt. Whoever did, it will certainly be a day that we will not forget. After a good breakfast (the food really is excellent here at Destiny Cafe) and devotions with the CHO staff led by Sue (well done for volunteering to be first), the two different languages blending together in worship is just amazing.

Then we all set off for Safe Haven School where we three had the opportunity today to take four classes, grades 2, 4, 6 & 7. Grade 4 first and it certainly was a challenge. We attempted to tell the story of Jesus welcoming little children, with a mixture of songs, games and new English words (with a bit of maths thrown in!)

We think it is fair to say it got easier as the day went on, as we became more aware of what worked well. Being at Safe Haven is very eye opening. Hearing children scream "YES!" and run as fast as they can when the bell goes for class is just so heart warming and is a testament to the great work they do here. The children are continuously smiling, enjoying themselves and have great respect for the gift of learning. English is very important to all Cambodians and their enthusiasm makes it more enjoyable for us because it proves we are in the right place and are wanted. We finished the day with a meeting with the school staff, we think both sides learnt a lot, we certainly did.

The best word to describe Safe Haven (and CHO) is love because Jesus is at the very centre.

Matt & Ellie

The journey begins!

The call was made a year ago for people in the church to go out to Cambodia to volunteer for CHO (Cambodian Hope Organisation) and then the preparation began. We had the fundraising day where we had stalls, car washes and enjoyed a quiz evening later that day. We received some wonderful donations towards the trip which made us feel blessed and appreciative of the support we had.

Preparation included training, learning the do’s and don'ts and cultural tips. We also applied for our visa’s and underwent a course of injections such as hepatitis A + B and typhoid. On Sunday 19th October we had a wonderful commissioning service at Brighton Road Baptist Church. The next thing we knew was that we were sitting at Terminal 4, luggage booked in and on our way. We had a very smooth flight and managed to get the odd sleep in every now and then. We got through customs without a hitch and were met by Monorom, a member of staff from CHO, at the airport who took us to our hotel for the evening which was called Valentine Resort. How wonderful, shower, bed and air con.  We got up for breakfast at 7.30 am and were on the road heading for Cambodia. We stopped a few times to fill up with fuel which gave us a comfort and toilet break. We then later that day arrived at the border which went quite smoothly as when were inside it started to rain quite heavily. We arrived at the hotel in Poipet at lunchtime and we were shown to our room and made to feel very welcome from all members of staff. We had a peruse of our room and after that headed to Destiny Café where we met Chomno and his big beaming smile made us feel even more warm. After we had a super lunch we were taken to Safe Haven school where we had a look round. It was all very intriguing and quite amazing. We had a moment of prayer before we drove back to the hotel for our team meeting.  And that was our first day!

Michelle and David

We are on our way!

Thank you to everyone who has supported us in so many ways over the past months of planning and continue to do so.

We hope to start daily blogs from Monday 27th October so do check back.

In the meantime why not check out the story about our partner the Cambodian Hope Organization or the Tearfund Connected Church programme.

Thanks!