Day 13

Well, I'm pretty much speechless (believe it or not!) but I figured I'd better get something up here to let you all know that we're OK.

I must share one funny story before I forget. We were told not to make a fuss no matter what because it upsets Khmer people. If you hit yourself with a hammer, just be quit about it. This morning when I went to put on my shoes, which had sat out to dry, something squished under my bare foot and when I looked in my shoe there was a frog. I let out a yelp like the Khmer staff have probably never heard before! I then slapped my hand over my mouth thinking I was going to get in trouble. Instead they all found it EXTREMELY funny that the big American lady had a frog in her shoe! Yuck. :-) What's the saying... "eat a frog for breakfast and nothing worse can happen the rest of the day..." Well from now on finding a frog in my shoe is NOT the way I choose to start my day. Thank goodness it wasn't a spider or I'd be dead of a coronary right now!

You know, every now and then in life you get something right. Tonight in this part of Cambodia it is raining horribly yet again and the wind is blowing ferociously. But eight families, eight sets of parents and at least 40 children are sleeping dry under the roofs and within the walls of their new homes. And our gifts and our sweat made it happen. That's good and that's right.

Tonight in our hotel, Brennan and Kaley are dancing and enjoying the company of their new Cambodian friends... some of whom are adoptees like them, some of whom are Khmer people who work with the housebuilding project. They have been learning the Apsara traditional style of dancing and teaching the Khmers hip hop dancing. It has been amazing to watch, and it has been the right thing. I, along with Jim and our friend Derek, have been privileged to just be along for the ride.

Tomorrow will be a hard day. Brennan and Kaley will say goodbye to their new friends, and we will be packing our bags and preparing to say goodbye to Phnom Penh. Both will be very hard, I'm sure.

There will be time another day to show you more photos of the housebuilding and to tell you more, but for tonight that's all I have to say except for thanks....

Thanks to our friends at the Seminary who have made it possible for us to have this much time away to make such an amazing journey...
Thanks to Cliff for appreciating the need for Brennan and Kaley to make this journey and being supportive of the idea...
Thanks to Jim for being willing to spend a boat load of our money to make this trip happen....
Thanks to all of you for your love and prayers that have kept us safe on this journey. We've been in Southeast Asia for all this time and so far (knock on wood!) none of us has even had so much as a stomach cramp. Watching the news here (although there isn't much of it) I'm struck that we could have gone to a "safe" place for vacation, like London, with devastating consequences. The world is not as safe as we would like to believe anywhere, but we have been blessed with safe travels and amazing moments so thanks to all of you for your thoughts and prayers.

Hugs,
Lisa & Crew