greenpeace

i have so much to say i dont know where to start....

bad news first,
danik - Sothy's sister has been really sick recently, at first he said it was cancer, but we are not sure exactly because i think he uses that word a lot if someone is very sick. we went round to their house just opposite our building to pray for her after church today and she said that she has an infection because of water in her lungs. tomorow she is alos having an opperation on her nose because she has trouble breathing and they think the two things might be connected. so this is obviously not good...

also i found out this week that i cant go to sydney for the conference there in march. so ive been pretty bummed out because of that. im thinking of going anyway for a week and then maybe to new zealand for a week in april or june. i need to go check my diary and my bank balance! god willing!

i want to write a blog about cambodian history. ive learnt a surprising amount about the country right from the angkor empire around 1100 ad right up to present day. so watch this space, i haven't time or zeal to write anything convincing at the moment.

so good news....
poli - he is a young khmer guy from kompong speu who has been in the city for 4 months and came to learn english. his province is about 48km outside PP and another 10km from the main town to his farm. this morning at church he decded that he had heard enough about the bible and this jesus bloke and simply decided that he wanted to know more about him. so we prayed with him and he said how happy he was that now he belives in jesus. it was a really special morning.
midge has her sister over for a few days so they went up to siem reap where the angkor temples are for a little holiday leaving just steve. so we decided to go out for lunch to parkway. so me sothy, steve and poli went out for some noodles. it was really great to spend some time getting to know more about him and his family and his home. khmer new year is in a few weeks time and poli invited me and sothy to go out to kompong speu to stay on his farm with his family for a couple of days. let me say this is not only incredibly kind but also very special, it is great that he wants to have us with his family for the new year and especially having a young western guy from the city come and stay is a big deal in their culture particularly in the country where they dont see many white people. so im massively excited about going and gave him a big YES!...how cool, khmer new year on a rice farm in the middle of cambodia. brilliant. that was the most best thing that happened to me this week.

just a side note,
did anyone hear in the news about the japanese whaling ship that got stranded out at sea and was drifting towards new zealand last week? i thought it aweful ironic that the only ship in the area that could save it was a green peace ship that was out, originally, to protest against it andtry to stop it. there was this whole spiel in the radio about how the japanese needed to swallow their pride and accept help from greenpeace.

com'on england
Ben.