One of the blog posts that I have yet to write is about our January 2022 trip to Battambang province. We went for an engagement ceremony but got to see the sights while we were there including many, many beautiful flowers. In the latest entry of my Flowers of Cambodia series, I’m sharing some flower…
Category: Daily life in Cambodia
Sharing Food Together
In the New Testament, we often see Jesus breaking bread to share with the disciples and others. There’s something powerful about sharing food in community. This week, Sokea from the MCC Phnom Penh office is out in Prey Veng at our field visit helping with some work and the Prey Veng team has been sending…
Voltra Electric Motos
Last August I shared that MCC Cambodia was planning to purchase locally manufactured electric motos in a budget neutral by selling our old gasoline motos. The new electric are more affordable than gas motos and, additionally, being made in Cambodia do not have an import tax pushing the cost higher. So we were able to…
Some photos of Catherine being a big girl
Now we’re looking ahead to Catherine’s birthday in May and realizing that she’s turning the same age that Charlotte was when she moved here. There’s definitely some COVID-19 time dilation going on because it doesn’t feel like it’s been that long. In any case, I wanted to share some photos of Catherine’s final months as…
The Season of Lent
For Lent this year, both Crystal and I have gone on a social media fast. You won’t be seeing us on Facebook or Twitter, unless we need to hop on for work, but instead we’re trying to redirect the time and energy we usually spend on social media towards God. At least that’s the intention….
Charlotte’s 8th Birthday
Last month we celebrated Charlotte’s 8th birthday in isolation. All four of us had COVID-19 at the time but, fortunately, the birthday girl had the mildest symptoms of the four of us. She had been hoping for a birthday party with her friends from school but, while disappointed, was completely understanding of the situation. At…
Gratitude
The flavors and textures of gratitude are many. There’s the quick and sharp relief gratitude that the red ant which got in my hair while sweeping the courtyard didn’t bite me. There’s the bone deep, breath-stopping gratitude of seeing pictures from my 16 year old niece’s car accident and knowing she miraculously got out with…
COVID-19 finally got us Two Years and a Month Later
The first case of COVID-19 was diagnosed in Cambodia on January 27th, 2020. It’s been a long two years of caution, disruption, and uncertainty. As leaders here, we’ve tried to walk the line between modeling appropriate precautions and being calm and reassuring. This month, for the first time in a over a year, we started…
Dog fights and culture fatigue.
I will admit that while there have been plenty of times of missing people, places, foods and the ways of doing things back home, I had yet to grow tired of Cambodia. Perhaps because of Covid my culture shock curve is doing strange things, but I continue to wake up every day amazed that I’m…
Several Vaccinations this week
This week Crystal and I received our first COVID-19 booster shot. We could have gotten it back in August but decided to wait until it had been six months since our initial dose. It ended up taking longer than that because we were vaccinated by the Military, not the Ministry of Health, and had some…