Being Thankful

I know that thankful Thursday was yesterday, but I went to church last night and the theme was being thankful and it was a really great service. And today has been kind of a crappy morning, so I feel like I should focus on something other than myself.

I am thankful:

1) I am thankful for Vashti and all the work that she is doing in South Africa. I am really anticipating going to South Africa and Ethiopia because I believe that it will really change my perspective on life and love.

I've been to Cambodia, but it was more insulated. I was with my family and we had a private tour and there were times that we saw what life is really like in Cambodia but it was very far from us.


This is a Buddhist Stuppa that contains 8,000 human skulls that were found at Cheoung-Ek, also known as, The Killing Fields.

Cambodia is still getting over genocide, over 30 years later. There are still not enough teachers to help the children and the prostitution is rampant. Parents will hack off the limbs of their children so that they will get more money from tourists.

2) I am thankful that I have more than enough. Sometimes, it feels like it's not enough and I know that Steve and I panic. But God has given us grace and that is enough. We had a dinner for an upcoming church event and the pastor there used The Message's translation of 1 Timothy and it is really touching. Part of what he says is 'If you have bread on the table and shoes on your feet, that is all that you need.'

Most people in Cambodia make $30 a month. Gasoline costs over $1 per liter. Because their currency is so devalued, they allow the US$ in circulation.



Those bottles all contain gasoline. It is cheaper to buy your gasoline from a bottle in the road then to go to a gas station. The more rural the area, the more likely you will see roadside stands with gasoline. People purchase enough gasoline to get them where they're going. At the same time, we saw almost no cars in Cambodia. Almost everyone drives motorbikes. We saw up to four people on these bikes.

3) I am NOT thankful that I am STILL being bitten by bed bugs even though the exterminator has been out twice. But I am thankful that I have someone to lean on while we go through this. God has been good and so has my husband.



We will get through this, even if the darn blood suckers are multiplying in ways that are inconceivable to me. Update! I AM thankful that we have a three month guarantee and the exterminator is coming out again without us having to pay! Which is great, because we couldn't pay that again. Literally and figuratively.

and I am also hopeful.

I am hopeful that God will answer our prayers. Maybe not in our way, but in His. That God will touch our hearts to do something far beyond ourselves. That, while I feel called to something, Steve clings to what makes him feel safe. And that's okay. There is still time. And maybe God will call Steve too or maybe it will be that we are called at a later time or for something different then what we had previously thought. Or maybe I can go on a TOMS shoe drop :)

And because everyone needs a good joke every now and again...

A religious man is on top of a roof during a great flood. A man comes by in a boat and says "get in, get in!" The religious man replies, " no I have faith in God, he will grant me a miracle."

Later the water is up to his waist and another boat comes by and the guy tells him to get in again. He responds that he has faith in God and God will give him a miracle. With the water at about chest high, another boat comes to rescue him, but he turns down the offer again cause "God will grant him a miracle."

With the water at chin high, a helicopter throws down a ladder and they tell him to get in, mumbling with the water in his mouth, he again turns down the request for help for the faith of God. He arrives at the gates of heaven with broken faith and says to Peter, I thought God would grand me a miracle and I have been let down." St. Peter chuckles and responds, "I don't know what you're complaining about, we sent you three boats and a helicopter."

The Killing Fields and S-21

That's a rib bone sticking out of one of the mass graves at Cheoung Ek or, The Killing Fields.

These are the shackles used to keep prisoners tied to the beds.  Specifically, these ones are for children.

Those indentations are the mass graves themselves at Cheoung Ek.

There are 8,000 excavated skulls in a buddhist stuppa at Cheoung Ek.  Most of them have large holes in them.  The Khmer Rouge refused to "waste" a bullet on people they believed were political spies or traitors.

CNN is running a story about Duch and the rest of the S-21 keepers who killed over 17,000 people in their, well, concentration camp from 1975 to 1979.  Even looking at the pictures on CNN, it doesn't do justice to what you see when you're there.  

We walked past a tree at Cheuong Ek that said, "This tree used to kill babies".  They used to beat babies against a tree and, if they didn't die, they'd toss them in the air and catch them on their bayonets.  When you go to S-21, you can STILL see where the blood was on the floor.  The floor has a large, somewhat brownish stain that takes up a good part of the center of the room.  THAT IS STILL BLOOD.  From 1979.

I'm glad that the people of Cambodia can know that justice is being sought.  30 years after the fact, you can tell that it effects people almost daily.  There are STILL not enough teachers to teach a full day of school.  Children have to go in shifts.  Almost anyone you talk to has lost someone because of the Khmer Rouge.

I guess my question is, why do we let it keep happening? 

Cambodia, Part 2: Laughter

We visited the royal palace while in Cambodia.  It is a huge complex that is covered in gold and symbolism.  

My family at the palace

So we then went into a different part of the complex called The Silver Pagoda.  The Silver Pagoda holds many images of buddha and, as a tradition in many of the Asian countries we've been in, it is required that you take your shoes off before going into a temple.  My father was wearing a pair of loafers that he had bought the week before and left them beside my brothers shoes.  Can you guess where this is going?

So we come out of the pagoda maybe 20 minutes later and...no shoes.  We tell our guide and he tells all the guards who are around and they ask my dad to wear a pair of sandals that somebody left behind.  My dad is a HUGE germophobe.  HUGE.  My dad is like, no that's cool.  So they actually take us to the front of the complex and ask us to watch people's FEET as they

 walked by.

We actually thought it was really funny (my dad too).  So we put on our loafer goggles and watched people walking by.

The loafer goggles did not work.

Look at those socks!

My dad was uncomfortable with staring at people's feet and accusing them of stealing his shoes.  Plus, being a germaphobe, he didn't even want to put them back on after someone's stinky feet had been in them.  Our guide, Wan Tay, said that in the 13 years that he'd been a tour guide, this was the first time that had ever happened.  He also told us that he was going after he was done at work with us to actually go look for my dad's shoes.  And my dad believed he really did go looking for them.

That's okay.  We needed a good story for the trip.

Cambodia, Part 1: Sadness

S-21, the high school turned concentration camp in Phnom Penh

   If you look closely, you can see bones in the ground along with the clothes.



This past Christmas was spent in Cambodia. We spent a few days in Phnom Penh (P-nom. We were told that the Vietnamese call it "Nom" Penh and that is WRONG) and a few days in Siem Reap.

We visited sites associated with the Khmer Rouge on the first day.

In 1975, the Khmer Rouge moved people from the cities to the country and started what they called "Year Zero", turning back time to a "utopian" agrarian society.  They killed all doctors, teachers, and anyone wearing glasses (a sign of intelligence).  

Our tour guide Wan Tay told us that he was lucky because only three of his brothers were killed during the time of the Khmer Rouge.  Two million people died during this time.  Many of the skulls we saw had large holes...because the Khmer Rouge refused to use a bullet on people they believed were traitors.

Cheoung Ek was a small town that became the burial fields for S-21, essentially the concentration camp for "political prisoners".  Of the over 17,000 people who were kept at S-21, only 4 people survived.  At The Killing Fields (Thank you, Sam Waterston), there is a tree with a sign that points out that this is where children and infants were beaten against the trunk to kill them.  If they didn't die, they were then tossed in the air and caught on the end of a bayonet.

I get so angry when I talk about these things.  How could people do this?  How can people do this?  My friend told me that people can't reconcile the loving God and the angry God, but that our love of something can bring out our anger when the object of our love is hurt.  The Cambodian people are STILL suffering from the Khmer Rouge.   There aren't enough teachers in the schools because so many were killed.  There are still 6 million landmines dotting the country.  Adults will cut off the limbs of the children so that, when they beg for foreigners, they will get more money.

What about Darfur?  Every time I see something about Darfur, I can't help but think about Cambodia.  We always say that this will NEVER happen again.  And still...

As uncomfortable as I felt in Cambodia at times, I think I fell in love with it almost immediately.  I hope that I can go back someday, on the back of a motor bike.