beautiful but broken

today was a good day.
i know that i often talk about my work here and the church and im aware that there are people who read what i write who probably dont understand why someone would do all the stuff that we're doing for a church. but i make no excuses, when you see someones life change and you see the reality of god make a lasting impact on someone it is hard not to want to write about it. i always struggled believing that what the bible says really does have an impact, i never really trusted that the power of God could change a life. i think it was because i never reaslly saw it in myself very dramatically but i have seen it many times here. i have come to realise that even if you dont have the language or the alpha course! and you have lots of cultural differences, all it takes is God to reach down and save someone. it really is true.

we had a great time this sunday because we had so many people come and visit, half of the language school came which was great and mr goy, sothys friend, also made an appearance. mr. verne was back after not comming for a couple of months because he was studying for exams and he brought a new girl friend which sparked some funny moments, mostr of which i missed or didnt understand. we had eight khmer people at the bible study at lunch, which is the most i think we've ever had, or at least since ive been comming. so that was good.

we re-launched the conversation club this week and went off to the uni again on saturday morning then set up camp outside the church on sunday afternoon waiting for the masses to swarm in. we got one bloke. turned out to be a really good time, he told us all about when he was growing up in battambang province and he remembers the khmer rouge had control of that area and he saw many explosions and gun fights, mr.cain was his name. they lived for a while in thailand at a camp after the province fell to the vietnamese then the cambodian government forces. this spraked a really upsetting story for sothy about his father and uncle... they were young khmer rouge soldiers, in some sort of position, and sothys uncle tried to help some people who were working in the fields who had painful legs get some medicine, the comander took sothys uncle off for 'education', which really mean 'execution'. sothy then said how his father tried to save him but faced death himself as he watched his brother get beaten over the head until he died right in front of his eyes. sothy talked about it quite casually but i know he had some real sadness about it, if his father had tried to save his brother then sothy probably never would have been born. apparently one of the daughters of the khmer rouge commander loved sothys dad so convinced those in charge to save his life. it sounds like something from a movie, but i actually met this man, sothys dad, the guy who used to be a soldier in the khmer rouge and was forced to watch his brother killed and has spent the rest of his life remembering it.
i often think when i see some old guy on the side of the road 'what were you doing back then?' or 'whats your story?' its all a bit to real and shocking to make sense. sothy invited me to go and visit his other uncle who has other stories about the things that happened, im thinking of writing a book! you reall could fill hundereds of pages with all the personal accounts of suffering. its a beautiful but broken country.

Virak.