Roger: You could tell we were at the right place by the well by the road that unashamedly had on it, Jesus said, ‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.’” On Tuesday we visited a village near the town of Pursat about halfway between Phnom Penh and Battambang. The people of the village are not Khmer like most Cambodians, neither are they Buddhist. We were there to talk to them about several projects that are ongoing. They are involved in a heifer project in which we purchased 5 heifers for them and to repay they return the first and third calves to CTM. We will use them then give the claves when they are weaned to another Point of Light to start a similar project. Right now there is one calf. Two more are on their way. So next year at this time we should be able to start another project. We did find out that that the other two “heifers” will not be having calves anytime soon, since they are really steers. Soemhow in the the cross-cultural and cross language communication it was not clear that all 5 were to be heifers. The other project involves fish; they have a plan to raise talapia(sp?). They already have a pond. These fish sell at a better and more stable price than the typical fish from the Tonle Sap Lake.
We also had an interesting discussion about what the Christians in that community believe about Jesus and His exclusive claims. It just emphasized the point that the gospel is hard to share clearly even to our own culture and moreso across cultures. So we need to ask a lot of questions to clarify.
We arrived to spend the night at the home of Kent and Becky Good. That was sweet. We had a fun discussion of words like “sweet” that confuse missionaries because they are not a regular part of U.S. Culture. Think of words like “bad”, “hot’, “cool”
Wednesday we head to look at a hotel in Battambang that may become a ministry center, a hotel, and a training center. We are also looking at a pig farm. These are macro enterprises instead of microenteprises like we have been doing. This is the area where Dave will play a big part.. At this point we would like to just get an estimate of what it is going to take to do these two projects.
Sorry, there are no pictures as I cannot figure out how to do that again
Can you pray for:
Good cross-cultural communication
Dave to be able to gather the information he needs to make an estimate of the cost and needs for the hotel/ ministry center and the pig farm.
Good adjustment to the time change (we are still waking at 3 AM)
Safety in our travels to Sisophon, Reaksmey Samiki and Siem Reap in the next two days.
(Pictures are of the well and at the Good's house - Kent, Becky, Roger, Jessica, Tim, and Ohn)