If you look out the windows in our home, you will see two very different worlds, depending on which side of the house you are on. Our front windows overlook our neighbors who are quite wealthy. The husband works as one of the many advisers to the Prime Minister. They have several nice vehicles, a lovely courtyard with laminate wood floors and some fountains, several helpers, and are always dressed nicely. The are Buddhist and have monks visit their home on special days. They need Christ.

Our back windows overlook a very different world. Even middle-class Cambodians shake their heads when they see how these people live. The women gamble, the karaoke is loud – yesterday they blasted it at 5:26AM – and their street is often flooded with water. Sometimes when I’m putting the kids to bed I stand and watch their lives for a few moments. They need Christ. I’ll also add that the only way to see this neighborhood is from our windows….we have a wall behind our house that divides their neighborhood from ours.

Unfortunately, right now our language abilities are small. We can’t have heart-to-heart conversations, but we can live Christ out in how we interact with each other and with our children. We pray for opportunities to interact with our front neighbors and even though we’ll probably never interact with the people who live in back of us, we can pray for them. We are also working on language study so that some day we will be able to explain the Gospel and understand the questions and responses of others.

On one of our cultural days (we’ve proclaimed Saturdays as cultural days) we went to a park. Anna attracted a bit of attention, as you can see in the photos. The kids enjoyed the park. In fact, we all did…until Isaiah crawled through a pile of feces in the playground. Fortunately he didn’t have it all over him, but our time at the park ended shortly after that. It was one of those moments I have to remind myself this could easily happen in America, it’s not just a Cambodia thing.

We told Becca we would buy her a bike once we got to Cambodia. Two weeks ago we went to a bike shop and got Becca a nice solid Japanese bike. We were told that though Chinese bikes are really pretty (pink, etc), they break. We didn’t know what Becca would think of a non-pink bike, but the pink basket and the bell they installed made her day. Becca loves riding her bike in our courtyard and on our street : happy girl = happy mommy!

I need help. Pay attention folks…this is something I rarely admit. I don’t even like seeing it in print. I like to do things for myself, especially when it comes to taking care of my family and my home. But the truth is I can’t be a wife, mommy, cook, market shopper, house cleaner, nursing mommy, AND study Khmer.  Well maybe I could do it all, but it would require a lot of help from Josh. It would require Josh to give us his study time to watch the kids so I could clean floors (hard to do when kids are up), study, and live. He’s already giving up study time while I meet with my tutor.

Cooking in Cambodia hasn’t been so bad. Chop up some veggies and chicken, add some spices, and either put it in the crockpot or do it in a stir fry. Then cook some rice in the rice cooker, chop up some veggies or fruit and presto, dinner is served.  Enjoyable, but it takes time.

Market shopping: I have yet to shop for food in our market: there is no way for me to go with three kids and I haven’t learned to drive the moto yet (not sure where we would park our car if I took that). Josh has been going to the market to buy eggs, chicken, fruit, and veggies. We could buy all these things at our local supermarkets, but the prices are better in the market. Josh usually goes to the market twice a week and it’s great for language. (Admittedly, most men in Cambodia don’t do their family’s market-shopping. Last week one man yelled at him “where’s your wife to do the shopping.”)

Once Josh brings the food home from the market everything needs to be washed off.  Think about all the dirt that needs to be washed off when you pick veggies from a garden and then add washing off to be sure that drippings raw meat — which is being sold right next to the vegetable and fruit stands — and other animal byproducts are off your food. This takes a lot of time.

House cleaning: We can’t save all our laundry for laundry day because we hang it out to dry, so we do laundry every other day. Plus we’re using cloth diapers, and we usually wash those on the day we don’t wash clothes. So every day I’m doing laundry and hanging it. It takes time.

Let’s talk about floors (I’ll not even mention normal things like dishes, bathrooms, etc.). Phnom Penh is dusty and our concrete floors are almost always dusty. Add children’s dirty feet (they go in and out a lot), my hair, which always seems to be all over (drives me crazy — can’t believe I still have hair on my head!), and dead ants (we figure they must die looking for food…I’m always sweeping up little piles of tiny dead ants). The floors should be swept every day and it would be nice to have them mopped every other day (or every day). I can mop our first two floors in about an hour, so I’m guessing that it would take about two hours to sweep and mop all three floors. This takes LOTS of time! And when I’m done, my beautiful floors stay perfectly nice for ummmm…maybe 10 minutes. Then there’s the gecko gifts…hard to scrub off floors and walls.

Mommy and wife: Besides all that goes into feeding and cleaning I’m also a wife and mommy. Anna eats every three hours (she has started sleeping through the night most nights). Isaiah has recently decided he wants to use the potty. Becca and Isaiah both want to do school every morning, and there are lots of other fun things they want to do. Becca decided that she finally wants piano lessons. Showers are required every night (you should see the little pile of dirt that gathers near the drain after their shower!). Family life is one of my favorite things and I love it (well, not the messy diapers, crying, and discipline issues, but the rest) … And it takes time. Oh, and sorry, Josh…you want to spend some quality time with your wife and show me your sweet love… not the kind of time that means sitting next to each other on the couch while we study Khmer… YES! I love you … zzzzzzzzz. Sad to say it often happens that the most important human in my life — my husband — ends up getting my leftover energy.

AND then there’s learning Khmer. My tutor comes three days a week for two hours each day. Two weeks from now, when Josh’s schedule changes, she’ll start coming four times a week. So add hours of class plus study time (which I cram in after the kids go to bed and in little bits during the day)…it takes time, time, time, and needs to take more time.

That’s why I need help. I can’t do it all. I could try, but something or someone will suffer. We’ve been praying that the Lord would provide us a part-time helper: someone to do our market shopping, cleaning, and some cooking. Thank you to those who have been praying along with us. This week we met a lady who is going to start on Monday for a two-week trial period. She has been working in a factory and does not speak any English (which will be great for my language learning). Please pray with us that this lady would work for our family and that it would be something good for her as well.

Two side notes: Our bed was delivered Monday and it works! On Tuesday Josh drilled all the holes to hang the brackets to hold our curtain rods. The former occupants had never hung curtains so we had to buy and hang all the hardware. Drilling holes in concrete is extremely loud and can be frustrating. Thankful for all the hours Josh put into this project. Maybe we’ll have curtains by the end of the month!

Happy 4-month birthday to our sweet little Smiles (as we affectionately call her).  We all adore you. Thankful God gave you to our family.

Our home is the left half of this building. If you’re wishing you live here…make sure you read the last paragraph.

Twelve hours after our arrival in Cambodia, Josh and I were in Matt Hancock’s car, being guided by Jeremy Farmer to check out three different renal homes. Not wanting to spend too much time looking at houses, we quickly decided on a so-called “villa” style home. However the villa needed a bit of work, including painting and cleaning – the villa was pretty dirty. The landlord thought it could be ready in 10 days.

Our time in the CMA guesthouse ended on the 11^th but we were not able to move into our home until the 17^th. We spent the in-between days in the 9 Dragon Hotel. The staff was very kind to us – they ended up moving to twice to new rooms. They started us out in a small two-bed room – the two beds were actually touching each other.  The next day they moved us into a larger room, and two days after that they moved us into a room with three beds. The hotel had a pool, which was a great help in providing entertainment for the kids.

On Thursday we went to the villa and started cleaning. Our beds were delivered…they made our bed too short and brought the wrong sizes for the kids’ mattresses. We slept on our bed with the mattress perpendicular to the frame (with tubs under the end of the mattress to support it), and the kids slept on our air mattress (so glad we brought it).

We spent the next week cleaning, unpacking, fixing, and waiting for furniture. We’re still waiting for our bed – the second one they brought us was still too short. Josh did lots of house projects: scrubbing bathrooms, cleaning the front courtyard, and de-trashing and cleaning the back alley, replacing the kitchen faucet, and installing toilet paper holders, towel bars, and a shower curtain. Josh got to know the people at our little hardware store and got lots of practice on his moto. I’ll add that everything seems to take a long time here…nothing is a simple process.

The last thing we are waiting on is curtains. This is a long process: order brackets and poles for curtain rods, go to the market and buy fabric, pick up the brackets and rods, install the brackets (drilling concrete walls takes a while), and finally have the curtain made. So far we’ve ordered the hardware and bought the fabric. After we get our curtains we will be able to put the finishing touches on our home – pictures on the walls.

We’re very thankful for the home the Lord has provided our family. It is much bigger than we’re used to: three floors (the Khmer way to count the levels is ground, 1^st, and 2^nd), with 4 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms. We mainly use the first two floors: the ground floor has the kitchen, a bathroom, and a living area; the next floor has two bedrooms (one for the kids and one for us); the top level has two bedrooms, one we use for storage and the other for a guest room (currently it has a playground in it left by the previous renters until they can sell it).  The outside courtyard is a wonderful place for the kids to play without being supervised.

To help anyone suffering from a touch of envy at our home…I can so see myself reading this post and having a conversation like this with Josh at bedtime: “Did you see the Jensens’ house in Cambodia? Really suffering for the Lord over there, huh?” While we’re not suffering for the Lord, I’ll add that our home comes with drains in the bathrooms that make our bathrooms stink, cockroaches averaging the size of my thumb, lots of geckos who use our walls and floors as their litter box, and 10,000,000,000,000 ants – several different types and they are all over…everywhere – even in our beds! Hope that helps any root of envy that were starting to rise.

Next week I plan to write a blogpost titled Why I Need Help?