It’s 3pm on Thursday afternoon, and I’m lying on the bed in my hotel in Battambang. This has been my first rough day of this trip. I have a headache, and I feel a little sick to my stomach. Andy and I spent all morning playing with the kids, and now we’re taking much needed a mid-afternoon rest. I’m beat.

Today I feel like one of Jesus’ disciples on the day He fed the 5,000, pre-miracle. “Give them something to eat,” He said. “How are we supposed to do that? We don’t have anything for them,” they said.

Like the disciples, I find myself forgetting who I’m working for, and what he’s capable of doing. I focus on my own resources and on my own abilities, and I look at the hungry people and start to panic.

There’s never quite enough money. Never quite enough energy. Never quite enough mental capacity to remember all of the little details: names, dates, dollar amounts.

Sometimes I feel very strong, very capable and very much at the top of my game. Today I feel like the game is moving just a little too fast for me. Tonight, I’m hoping to catch up. I’m praying I’ll be filled up. The kids are planning a special assembly tonight. There’ll be dancing, singing, skits and ice cream.

I pray I’ll be fully present. I want to just soak in God’s goodness reflected in the smiles and songs of the kids. I want to trust Him to provide and believe that He is in charge. I want to see Him do some sort of a miracle, some sort of a multiplication of resources. I want Him to take center stage and take both the glory and the pressure.

Amen.

It’s about 8:30 at night in Battambang, but it feels much later. I still haven’t completely gotten over the jet lag. I can get up in the morning and feel fine, but I get sleepy early at night and tend to wake up a lot. That’s one of the reasons I’m not doing a particularly good job at blogging. That, and the intermittent quality and duration of internet connectivity is keeping me from updating as often as I’d like.

I am, for the very first time, not staying at the venerable TeO, Battambang’s most established hotel. Vando, one of our orphan home directors, booked us at a brand new place called The President. For its grand opening, the hotel is offering some kind of promotion, and we’ve landed ourselves in a ridiculously large room for $17 per night. It’s very Cambodian, whilst trying very hard to be Western.

There’s an extensive list of regulations and requests including “Thanks for not using towels for cleaning foots or as a cigarette astray” and “It’s also prohibited to carry out sex trade.” I can’t speak for the towels, but the latter seems to not be enforced here at The President.

At any rate, it’s good to be back in this town. I love the people, and I enjoy the relatively sleepy pace; I just wish they would move it closer to Phnom Penh. The 6-1/2 hour bus ride was grueling, and Andy arrived here feeling quite under the rainy and surprisingly chilly weather. While he rested, I went to our main Battambang campus and enjoyed a large and late lunch with our staff.

I spent the next couple of hours hanging out with the kids at BB1 (sponsored by Westview Bible Church in Montreal), BB4 (sponsored by Wooster Grace Brethren Church in Wooster, Ohio) and BB5 (sponsored by Western Reserve Grace Church in Macedonia, Ohio). It’s been raining non-stop for the past few days -- we’re getting the remnants of the typhoon that has devastated other parts of Southeast Asia – so our campus’ outdoor common areas are now more marsh than park. I joked with Savorn, complementing him on his beautiful volleyball pool.

So, instead of playing giant, unruly games of volleyball, capture the flag or even duck duck goose, I visited each of the homes that share our main Battambang campus and sat quietly with the kids and told them the following things:

1. I missed you all, even the new kids I haven’t met. I think of you all the time, and pray for you day and night. I am so glad that we are part of a family, and I look forward to returning to see you again and again, and I am so happy that we are going to know each other when you have grown up and I have grown old.
2. For those of you who are new here, I want to tell you that you will always be welcome here, always safe, and always have enough food to eat. You will get an education, and you will have opportunities for a good future. Your mom and dad and brothers and sisters love you and will take care of you. When you are sad, you can talk to your brothers and sisters, because their life has been very similar to you. And you can always talk to God, because he loves you and always watches over you.
3. You have many people in North America who love you as well. When I walk into your sponsoring churches, what do I see? Pictures of you! Those churches are so proud of you, and they pray for you all the time. When they have Sunday morning services, they talk about you. When the pastors get together for meetings, they pray for you. And Asia’s Hope has a board and many supporters who pray for you often as well.
4. My wife and kids wish that they could see you. I wanted to bring them this time, but we could not raise the money. But we are working hard to raise funds, and I pray that next summer they will be able to all come to visit. You will love my wife. I am very loud and funny. She is gentle and sweet and has very good hugs.

We joked, we jostled, we hugged. I whooped them up into cheers for this Saturday’s excursion to Angkor Wat, and then I left and returned to the weirdly shabby elegance of The President Hotel to rouse a recuperating Andy for dinner.

I’m hoping that the rain stops today and we can run and roughhouse with the kids. If not, we’ll find some quiet indoor games. Or maybe we’ll just ignore the rain and play outside anyway…

It’s about 11am. I’ve had breakfast, and have gone to the market to pick up a few souvenirs for my kids, and I’m already feeling worn out. I slept well last night – thanks, in part, to the Ambien – but I feel like I’m fighting something. And yesterday, despite the night before’s horrible sleep, I went almost non-stop. So I’m up in the hotel room, trying to get a quick nap before heading out to the school, then the orphan homes, and then an evening out with the staff.

At any rate, I guess the most exciting thing I can think to write about is Pheaktra. As many of you know, he was in the hospital for more than a month with a severe kidney injury inflicted when he fell out of a moving vehicle. Well, he’s home now. And it’s so wonderful to see him up and moving around. 

He’s very thin, and he has a huge scar across his abdomen. But he is in good spirits, and is thrilled to be back with his family. His older sister Srey Ka seems especially happy to have him home, her huge brown eyes glistening with tears when she talks about him.

Pastor Rich Nathan says that we should look at all of life through “the three-fold lens of scripture.” Every situation can be seen through the lens of creation, the lens of the fall and the lens of redemption. In other words, when we look at the world, we can see the goodness of God’s creation – He made it, and it’s got his stamp of identification and, ultimately, ownership. But everything can also be seen through the lens of the fall. Everything is broken, imperfect, damaged. Additionally, one can look at every situation through the lens of redemption the lens that shows us that God is working to fix things, to save people, to make our world new.

And in our work here in Asia, it’s very easy to see all of these principles at work when you know how to use those three lenses. I think of Pheaktra. He’s such a wonderful little child. But he’s been damaged and broken physically and emotionally. But God is fixing him, repairing his body and redeeming his childhood. All of these children are like that – the whole world is, but it’s especially easy to see when you can observe the scars and the recovery.

Mostly, though, in this world it’s easy to see the brokenness. The prostitution, the corruption, the impunity, the poverty – it all screams out, “Something is wrong with this world. This is not how it should be!” I’m praying that as we submit to God’s way of doing things here, we will also get to see a lot more of the kind of redemption we observe every time we visit one of our orphan homes. 

So today – as always – I’m grateful for an opportunity to have a job where I can see not only the brokenness of the world, but God’s plan in action to redeem it and make it all new. And I’m also so grateful for everyone who supports Asia’s Hope with prayers and financial contributions. There is so much work to do, and every dollar makes a difference.

Thank you, God for allowing me to be a part of your redemptive work. And thank you friends for all of your support.

I just heard from Tutu that there's been a flu outbreak at our DS3 and DS4 orphan homes, with 10 kids falling sick. Please pray that they will recover quickly and that the rest of the kids will stay safe.

Well, it’s 6:30am on day two of our trip to the seaside resort town of Kompong Som. Yesterday at this time, we were already on the road from Phnom Penh – 4 mini-buses full of kids and staff, more than 100 of us in all.

After a four hour drive that took us through rice fields, factory towns, mountains and coconut groves, we stopped at Cambodia’s very southern edge, dropped our bags under the thatched cabanas that line the beach and, en masse, ran out to meet the gently rolling waves, laughing, jumping and splashing.

After five or six hours of sun and sand, we dragged ourselves back to the cabanas, flopped into the low slung hammock chairs and prayed a blessing on the evening’s meal. What a feast it was, everything except for the pork and the pickled cabbage had come directly from local waters, and had probably been caught that day. With a lot of help from our Cambodian hosts, we ate our way through mountains of fresh crab, lobster, shrimp and squid. If it hadn’t been so affordable, it would have felt decadent.

Often, when I come to Cambodia, I feel like I don’t get enough time to just hang out with the kids and staff. Yesterday, we had the entire bus ride and the whole day at the beach for nothing but pure, unrestrained fun, an extravagant celebration of God’s goodness to us, and the love we share as a big, boisterous family.

And yet today I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck. I always run the risk of overdoing it, but yesterday was one of those days where I really had no choice. And this morning? I’m preaching at our little makeshift church service, and then we’re heading back to the beach for another few hours. I suspect I’ll do a little less frolicking and a lot more lying around.

Tomorrow, I think I will rest.

As I have come to expect, my first full day in Cambodia has been a doozy. It’s only 9pm local time, but my body feels like I’ve been up all night. Thanks, Jet Lag.

It would be nearly impossible to write about everything we’ve done today. Before noon, we had already bought shoes, visited Psar Tuol Tompong (aka the Russian Market) and toured the notorious Tuol Sleng genocide museum. After Tuol Sleng, we headed out over the river towards our orphan homes in Prek Eng.

In a period of about six hours, we visited all four homes, playing volleyball, hide-and-seek, Simon says, Uno, Skip Bo and countless other games including the one where all the kids tackle me and I try to get up. I call that one “Gulliver.” Not a huge amount of fun for my aging body, but the kids howl with laughter.

At about 6pm, we headed back to Phnom Penh and attempted to visit Pheaktra, one of our kids who is in the hospital for a kidney injury sustained in a tuk-tuk accident. The hospital staff decided to only allow family members, and our white skin was a dead giveaway that we were not family, biologically speaking, at least. We were, however, able to talk with him via cell phone and see him wave from his fourth floor balcony.

Many of you have been praying for Pheaktra over the last couple of weeks. Thankfully, he’ll be heading home from the hospital within a couple of days, and is expected to recover completely. When we arrived today at Prek Eng 2, Pheaktra’s home, I asked about his condition.

After giving me the good news about his prognosis, Narun, Prek Eng 2’s director said, “Every night, we pray for three people: Pheaktra, Karen and Joe.” He pointed to the wall, and there was a picture of my friend (and Pheaktra’s sponsor, incidentally) Joe Aebi, who was diagnosed last week with serious liver cancer. Nearby was a picture of Karen James, my friend and Central Vineyard Church’s sponsorship coordinator who successfully fought off thyroid cancer last year.

What a blessing. What an unbelievable blessing. I spent my last week in the states thinking of nothing but Joe and his family. I sent a picture of Joe from Facebook to Narun, and he has had the staff and kids praying daily that God would heal Joe and bless his wife and children. And even though they know that Karen had recovered fully, they still pray for her every night.

It’s beyond humbling to serve these wonderful people on your behalf. Please join them in praying for Joe Aebi and his family. And please continue to generously support Asia’s Hope.

Tomorrow I’m taking all of the kids from Prek Eng 1, 2, 3 and 4 to the beach at Kompong Som. It should be a great time, The kids are so excited they haven’t been able to sleep.

I haven’t taken many pictures yet, but I’m sure I’ll get quite a few tomorrow. God bless you! 

Well, we’ve arrived, but we haven’t really seen much of Phnom Penh yet. It after 11pm when we left the airport, and unless you’re down at the riverfront, along the main drag  Monivong Street or one of the trendy bar neighborhoods, there’s not much to eat, not much to see or do in Phnom Penh at night – not that either Andy nor I really felt like doing anything.

With the help of Savorn, our national director, we lugged our big suitcases up a tiny flight of stairs and took the smaller (and cheaper) of the two rooms offered. Our tiny room could use a little more closet space, but I’m not going to complain it’s got a TV, a small fridge, two separate beds – each with its own mosquito net – and air conditioning. Best yet, it has wireless internet access that sort of works much of the time.

So, without much ado, Andy and I unpacked a little and went to bed. I woke up a couple of times, but was able to get back to sleep. Not sure about Andy. He’s tossing and turning quite a bit. It’s 5:30am – 6:30pm at home – so I’ll let him sleep for a while before offering to show him the town.

We plan on getting out and about pretty early today. We have the morning to ourselves, and then we’re heading out to visit all of the orphan homes this afternoon. And in the evening, we’ll visit Pheaktra, who is still in the hospital.

And then shat should be more than enough for our first jetlaggy day in the country. I will take pictures and get them online as soon as I can. Thank you for your prayers. It’s an honor to serve these kids on your behalf.

Well, I just lost the first blog post of my trip. It was brilliant, and transcendently erudite. I reflected on my last few days of trip preparation and mused on my arrival in my second home, Phnom Penh.

But I lost it. 

It won't be my last lost post, though, as internet services are notoriously fickle in SE Asia. But I didn't expect to experience technical difficulties in the departure lounge in Columbus. Oh, well.

At any rate, I'm traveling with one of my best friends, Andy Taylor, and meeting up later with Chris Ramos from Back2Back Ministries. I'm anticipating one of my best trips ever. 

I'll be sure to post as often as I can. Please pray for me, and pray for the family I'm leaving behind in Ohio.

Peace.