From Geoffrey and Jessica; TWO WEEKS DOWN

One of the most heart warming aspects of living here is that each morning when I step outside I am greeted by two hundred precious, trusting, and sometimes toothless grins of life filled children who are more than willing to give you a high five. There are two separate schools here. One is in the mornings and goes from preschool to fourth grade and has been around for six or seven years, every year they add a new class for the children. These are the preschoolers that I get to work with each day. I’m now on a rotating schedule, I will be going to teach English to two classes each day from Tuesday through Friday. Which translates into me making up games and songs that have to do with different letters of the alphabet and rewarding the kids with stickers, I’m probably just as excited about it as they are.

In Mark 10 it gives accounts of how people brought their children to Jesus and he would hold them in his arms and bless them. I can relate. The only word that my foolish self can come up with to describe what it is like working with these children is “joy,” and that is but a faint echo of the overwhelming sense of peace, jubilation and delight that stirs up within me when I get to teach them. These children are so innocent and pure, I can see why Christ embraced them and loved them so.

I can’t help but smile and be filled with joy when I see these children. The mannerisms of these children put a grin on my face. I smirk when I catch a glimpse of a small child with a backpack that looks bigger than him. I laugh to myself a little when I see one of them standing on their tippy toes trying to grab a hold of the door knob or when I see the puzzled look on their faces as they stand outside the bathroom trying to figure out which one to use. I like it when a stampede of children burst onto the grounds from the gate with bags filled with sugar cane juice, yoyo’s dangling from finger tips or foreheads proudly displaying newly earned stickers. You never seem to grow numb to the childish grin that appears from cheek to cheek when it’s snack time and favorite treats of all kinds are handed out.

The children here are precious and I know I can’t wait to see what this trip has in store for me.

Be blessed,

Geoffrey

WORD OF THE DAY
Sucksabye (not sure how to spell it) hello

FYI
If any of you are interested in possibly coming out here for a two week trip to help put on a vacation bible school for the kids please shoot me an email and I can give you some more details.

RANDOM
– Jessica and I just ate these fried squid things… they taste a little like flavored Styrofoam
– Last night I counted how many mosquito bites or marks from mosquito bites were on my feet. My left foot has 22 bites and my right foot has 23. My feet are covered with little red bumps. I think I just racked up a few more bites as I wrote this.
– I asked a group of college aged guys what they like to cook. They started blushing and chuckling, apparently they literally only know how to fry an egg. I was thinking that it was maybe a cultural thing and that guys here just didn’t cook… nope lots of guys here cook just not these ones.
– Jessica and I were walking through the street market right next to where we stay and we saw some fish. Jessica asked how fresh I thought they were and then they started to flip around because they were still alive and we both just cracked up.
– Have any of you ever been a part of Operation Christmas Child? It is a program that is ran through churches and schools where people take home and fill these red and green shoe boxes and it gets sent to children in third world countries to give them a Christmas. Well yesterday over two hundred boxes were handed out here to our preschoolers and school kids. It as so amazing to see these boxes actually delivered, I had filled them countless times over the past few years… it was just really amazing to see these kids playing with little cars and dolls through an organization I had supported.
– Apparently in Phnom Penh traffic related deaths are among the highest in the world. I heard that about five people die each day. On that note, Jessica and I went exploring a little bit in the city today after we went to the dentist to get Jessica’s correct tooth fixed and we almost became one of those statistics. We were crossing the street at the intersection and crossed when the little green man lit up and it seemed like we became moving targets and like cars didn’t care that we were crossing ha ha. Watch the video I attach if you want to see how it went.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 9:57 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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