Catching you all WAY up… Backtrack to Christmas

So life happened… and my writing didn’t. So now that it’s nearly the end of February I thought I’d backtrack to the end of December and play catchup.  I’m sure you’re desperate to hear what we were up to then…

Nearing the end of December, Jonno and K took a trip up to Siem Reap to see if they could line up a builder for when the project was due to start at that stage (start of Feb – it’s been delayed, but we’ll get to that eventually). Getting to Siem Reap from Sihanoukville involves a 6-8 hour drive to Phnom Penh, followed by a 6-8 hour drive to Siem Reap – all traffic dependent. I caught a ride up to Phnom Penh as Mum and Dad were due to arrive on Christmas Day – a most delightful Christmas present. Ezekiel went with K up to Siem Reap but joined us before K went back to Sihanoukville.

We spent a couple of days hanging out with Mum and Dad, revelling in their presence, before the Cambodian Bible School started. K missed the first few days of Bible School as he was back down in Sihanoukville trying to get the builders back on track – a few days of no supervision always has “interesting” results. Let’s just say, the whole build is much safer with K and Jonno on site.

Bible School was great – Cam Beeler came over from the USA and did talks on Growing up in the Lord – the exercise of faith in service. He ran a couple of workshops based around “colours” – which, being a green dominant I found most interesting 🙂

The Colours Personality test divides people into 4 groups – Blues, who are compassionate and caring; Greens, who are conceptual and logical; Golds, who are conventional and sensible; and Oranges, who are, let’s be honest, a bit out there – the word is supposed to be Courageous, but I’m more inclined to label them spontaneous and impulsive ;P

It was really interesting to see how the group was blue dominant and we speculated on how culture could play a part in this. We also looked at how we can best use our personalities within and outside of church – and how each group had weaknesses that could be overcome with another groups strengths – showing how important it is to work together.

We took a day trip out to the farm (also known as the Christadelphian Sustainability Project). A brother from Aussie has set this up, growing bananas, dates, and mangoes, with the idea that moving forward, as the crops mature, it will bring in an income that can help to support the church and its people here in Cambodia.

We also had a cultural afternoon with a variety of different acts – some hilarious (beat boxing and “breakdancing”) as well as more cultural offerings, such as traditional Thai and Khmer dancing.  All in all it was a great week.