We spent several weeks in the United States over the holidays so that family, friends, and church could meet Caleb. We also needed to stop by the Washington DC passport agency to renew the girls’ passports. We returned to Cambodia on a 35 hour long journey that included far too long of a layover in Seattle and far too short of a layover in Seoul, South Korea. All of our flights were packed to near full so there wasn’t much room to stretch out but the airlines didn’t lose our bags this time so we can’t complain.

Arriving in Phnom Penh around midnight we had to stop at Immigration to apply for on-arrival Tourist visas for Charlotte and Catherine. Then we gathered our luggage, hired a mini-van taxi, and headed back home.

The girls had gone through the entire gamut of desires during our home leave from wanting to move back to the United States, to missing Cambodia, to never wanting to live somewhere so cold, to deciding not to come back to Cambodia, and so on. But their relief on returning home after our long journey was palatable. There was a strong sense of this is our space.

We came back to a lot of new happenings on the MCC Cambodia team.

• Our Seek discipleship program pilot has launched with the International Seek Coordinator having arrived and the first Seek participants arriving shortly there after. Crystal interviewed Cambodian Seek Coordinators the afternoon after our midnight return and Tida started a few days later. I’ll do a more in-depth post about Seek later.
• Our grant renewal with Brot für die Welt was accepted and the grant amount was increased to 500,000 Euros over three years. This is a significant scaling up for us and we’re excited to see what our partners will accomplish with a larger project. Like the initial grant, this renewal includes dual components of interethnic community development and interethnic peacebuilding.
• Five members of MCC Bangladesh’s Food Security team have come for an exchange visit. Victor and Mok handled the logistics while we were away. It’s really exciting to host them and have the opportunity for mutual learnings, there are many similarities between the river deltas of Bangladesh and Cambodia.
• We hired a new Administrative Assistant to provide support to our larger team necessitated by Seek and the grant renewal.
• We welcomed Prantosh, a YAMEN participant from Bangladesh, who was originally placed in India but whose Visa was not renewed by the Indian government. Sabrina worked very hard to find him a placement and get him to Cambodia after his initial placement in India didn’t work out.
• The Finance team has a regional training in Laos this week and the Program has a regional training in Bangladesh next month. So that means they have to get certain work done sooner.
• The Cambodian Ministry of Rural Development, our primary partner, reached out on a Friday to inform us that we needed to submit a report that day for MCC Cambodia’s work since we first signed on with them…twenty years ago. So that was a rush to compile, especially since the transition from paper to digital occurred during that timeframe and not all of the records were on hand.

In general, on the work side, it’s been wonderful to be back. Last year was challenging due to the high turnover. We had to recruit and train 8 new team members. The year before that we came back to a medical crisis. So this year it feels great to come back to a well functioning team that’s been keeping things moving forward and keeping any fires under control until we can assist.

The personal side of returning home was more difficult.

• As I shared in a recent post that I’m processing and grieving my Father’s sudden diagnosis with cancer.
• The girls both got sick within a few days of returning home. The Doctor said that Charlotte just had a bad Cold but Catherine had the Flu; probably caught it from someone on the airplane or at one of the airports. Normally, Catherine is the healthy one in our family. While the rest of us are sick she’s usually bouncing off the walls. So it was shocking to see her actually ill. This is the sickest she’s been since she was a baby…but she’s better now.
• Once again, Leena’s ear developed hematoma while we were away. We learned last time that Leena’s breed is vulnerable to internal bleeding in the ear and that her excessive scratching was caused by a yeast infection, which in turn was caused by the local habit of feeding dogs’ rice. We put Leena on an all meat diet – mostly chicken heads – over the last year and not only did she stop scratching, her coat improved dramatically. But while we were gone one of the many people who helped watch her must have fed her rice again. Next time we might ask a friend to watch Leena instead.
• And, finally, the big one… We came back to a bed bug infestation in our house (still not sure how that happened while we were gone). At first we thought it was mosquito bites but something about it didn’t seem right. So we checked on it and the big red welts in a zigzag pattern are a clear indication of bed bugs. That has not been fun. The only exterminator in Cambodia who deals with bed bugs in a non-toxic way ghosted us so we had to figure out how to do it on our own. It’s quite different in a context without reliable hot water.

In all of it, Charlotte and Crystal have been wonderful. And, as strange as it sounds, the bed bugs gave me something to focus on in the midst of my grieving and in some way that was helpful. Caleb had a rough transition – the bed bug bites didn’t help – but finally came back to himself and is charming everyone again.

So glad to be back, work is going well, but some challenges on the personal front. We did have a major leak in our roof just before we left and it was a relief to see that the landlord had fixed it.