From Geoffrey and Jessica; IT HAS BEEN A WONDERFUL WEEK

This past week has been quite an experience, the new people, culture and environment keeps me on my toes. I love the feeling of being completely out of my element because it forces me to rely more on God. I’m thankful, though, because Jessica and I have received such a warm welcome. There is a young married couple from Canada serving here, Jenny and Josh. These two have opened up their home to us, shared meals with us, guided us around the city and have accepted us with arms wide open. These two bend over backwards to accommodate us. The pastor of this ministry and his family, the staff of this facility and the leaders of this organization have been such godsends as well. Our accommodations are remarkable; the thought never crossed my mind that our home here would look like this. For the past two years this ministry has been constructing this new facility that has the capacity for the multitudes of people that ground themselves here. The almost complete building is four stories tall and is absolutely magnificent from the strikingly colorful tiles that brilliantly clothe the floor to the unyielding stone pillars that support the structure. The top floor is the church and allows for seven hundred people to sit comfortably, which I assure you will soon be too small for the vast amount of individuals that learn, grow and mature here. This place is stunning to say the least.

This city is very big and modern, I feel underdressed and as if my attire is out of date when I see the fashion and apparel the youth are sporting out here. The Buddhist temples with a beautiful Cambodian sunset set as the backdrop are picturesque and awe-inspiring, the fact that these remarkable shrines were hand crafted leaves you breathless. Don’t let the inexpensive price of the Cambodian cuisine fool you, the food brings out the most exhilarating aspects of flavors and these meals leave your taste buds begging for more. Venturing out on a Tuk Tuk (motorcycle with a carriage) is the only real way to travel within this city, wearing a mask isn’t fun but the rush of wind flowing through your hair (except around sewers) is elating and the view of the street vendors and community goes unmatched.

Throughout the week we will both be teaching numerous classes and training different English teachers. Every morning I will be training the teachers for two hours and afterwards I will be spending about an hour working with the preschoolers. I am really excited about working with these children, I can’t tell you how adorable they are. I worked with a preschool for about a year (shout out to the staff of Precious Lambs Preschool) and that has given me a lot of different ideas for songs and games to play with these children. I’ll be leading a bible study about twice a week. Every evening I’ll be teaching English as well, knowing English is gold out here and to have a foreigner teach it is a rarity so the children seem to hang onto each word that is spoken from us. I’ll also be speaking at this church on different occasions.

It is easy to volunteer and contribute towards a worthy cause but that isn’t what I want for this trip. My hope and prayer is that I will fall in love with these people just as I fell in love with my Kenyan family. I want rejoice with them when they triumph in life and I want to mourn with them when troubles are revealed. 1 Corinthians 13:3 says “If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.” Paul knows the truth, to give, help and serve without being emotionally attached is simple to do, I want more than that. I want to be a life learner of loving others, rejoicing and praising God for the good and weeping and mourning the sting of life’s troubles. I hope that when I come home from this trip I will have learned what it means to love without limits.

Blessings,

Geoffrey

RANDOMS:
Playboy is a big deal here… they have playboy shirts and bags but they don’t know anything about the playboy industry. They think it is a mischievous boy…lol
Taking off my shoes whenever I enter a building is going to take some getting used to
Jessica chipped her tooth and had a really big hole because of it. We took her to the dentist to get it filled and they did the wrong tooth!!
There is a dog here that has a bunch of blue ink all over his back… his name is Lucky
A boy here doesn’t like going by his name. We asked him why and apparently his name means Lucifer… lol

Word of the day
Sngat – be quiet

I have had a lot of people ask me about a mailing address. It is…
New Life in Christ Church
ATTN: Geoffrey Nighswonger
P.O. Box 1234 Wat Phnom
Phnom Penh, Cambodia

To be completely honest I have everything I need right here. Jessica and I are perfectly content with everything we have. If you want to do something special for us it would be awesome if you made a donation to www.tumainiinternational.org or if you want to give us something very specific for us personally, maybe something pops into you head or you want to take us out for dinner or something along those lines shoot me and email and we can work out a donation on line or through my mom. I would love some peanut butter cups… but the odds of them actually making out here are pretty slim and the cost of sending them is pretty high but the call is on you. Thank you everyone for sharing in this journey with us.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 9:47 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.