As you pray for Afghanistan, please include a prayer for MCC Afghanistan and our local partners there. For security reasons I can’t share details but it is a time of immense fear, sorrow, and lamentation. Please also take a moment to remember Glen Lapp, a MCC service worker who was killed in Afghanistan in 2010….
Month: August 2021
Fishbones and the heart of the Mekong
I developed a dairy allergy in my teenage years. Since then, I’ve often been asked “how do you get your calcium without milk?” Well, calcium is available in many foods with dark leafy greens being of special note. One of my favorite sources of calcium is blackstrap molasses which is a fantastic sugar substitute for…
Best Mosquito Spray Brand Name
Between Dengue and Chikungunya, we’ve developed a healthy interest in keeping mosquitos away. There are few things more satisfying than frying the little bloodsuckers with a mosquito racket but we also use mosquito spray quite a lot. Since COVID-19 disrupted international trade, the brands of mosquito spray available here have been in constant flux and…
Two Year Anniversary
August 10th marked our two year anniversary in Cambodia. I got my dates mixed up and so we celebrated today. Just like last year, we splurged on lactose free ice cream in the mid-afternoon. In 2020, Crystal started us on a daily routine of writing a gratitude for the day on a notecard (you can…
Christopher Dock and Peaceful Education
Our rural primary school education program is making the shift to focus on peaceful education and that’s had me thinking about Christopher Dock. No, no, not Crystal’s high school but the educator for whom it is named. Christopher Dock was a Mennonite educator who taught in the Skippack area from 1718 to 1771 (with a…
Online School is back in session
Last week, Charlotte started second grade… It’s hard to believe that’s true but it is. My little baby is growing up so fast. …and, yesterday, Catherine started Pre-Kindergarten. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, both girls are currently studying online and it will probably be months in the best case scenario before they’re able to study…
Winnie the Pooh and Milk Tea too
There’s a new Milk Tea shop near our house and I couldn’t help but notice that Winnie the Pooh is out promoting it. This might seem like the kind of innocuous copyright infringement that often occurs here but in Asia the combination of Winnie the Pooh and Milk Tea are actually a meaningful political statement….
PSEA in MCC Cambodia
PSEA is the acronym used for the Prevention against Sexual Exploitation and Abuse. About a decade ago, the world began to discover that sexual exploitation and abuse were possible, and even at times rampant, in the humanitarian world. Scandals in large international NGOs were made public and the international development and humanitarian sectors began to pay…
Myanmar: Light in the Darkness
“I hate the military. They kill. They rape. They torture. But if they come to my house I will offer them something to eat. Not because I like them. But because we must have forgiveness in my country. There is no peace possible if we do not choose what is best for all of us,…
No visit to the US this year.
We had originally planned to travel back to the US in March of this year for our first home leave. There were many reasons we couldn’t do this in March but they all have the same root cause; as Charlotte has come to say with weary disgust, “because of COVID.” That remains true now as…