Our last Saturday in Phnom Penh we spent the morning visiting Yayyi’s home. She made us a delicious meal of curry and fried rice and insisted we eat until full. (Pictured on the right is her stove.)
We have been truly blessed by Yayyi and her kindness to our family. I think she’ll be the thing most missed when we move.
A quick blog post, since I’m in the middle of packing our home to move next week. Craziness. I laughed as I remembered that during my birthday last year I was unpacking — and this year I’m packing.
For lunch we went to Sugar n’ Spice Café run by Daughters of Cambodia. The location also has a spa, so Becca and I had a pedicure. We had a nice morning. Good to celebrate with my precious gifts – my family.
One of the things we’ve enjoyed this past year is getting to know new fruits. For weeks Yayyi had been bringing us the fruit pictured on either side of this paragraph. It wasn’t until I saw it on a restaurant poster that I knew the English name: passion fruit. We love passion fruit. At first I was surprised the kids like it, since it can be really sour. Yayyi brings the kids some several times a week. We eat it straight, in smoothies, in oatmeal–or drink it like tea. Delicious.
Dragon fruit is a big surprise. When looking on the outside I expected it to have a brightly colored inside. (There is a kind that’s purple inside, but what we buy is like what you see here.) The taste is a bit disappointing to me. It tastes like…..nothing. But the kids enjoy eating it.
Anna has now, for the most part, left crawling behind and is enjoying walking…or should we say running. She loves to go fast. She loves to walk outside. And she loves to play ring-around-the-rosy.
This month Anna has started bringing us books to read to her. When we finish one she goes off and gets another one. It’s really cute to see her come with a book in hand and want to sit on our laps. Anna also enjoys looking at books by herself. She can recite her favorite, Higher, Higher, by Leslie Patricelli. One night when we were in bed with the lights out, Anna recited the whole book to herself…guess she wasn’t sleepy. That night she also growled for quite some time.
It’s been neat to watch Anna interact with her siblings. She wants to be included in their fun and loves attacking Isaiah during our nightly reading.
Anna’s yellow skin coloring is slowly fading. Her skin, like our other children’s, turned yellow/orange from eating sweet potatoes and pumpkin. You can still see it in her nose and and in her hair. A common question asked about Anna when we’re out is, “why is she yellow?”
We’re continuing to enjoy Anna. Can’t imagine life without this sweet little girl in our family. 15 months sure do fly by.
July 3rd, 2014 we boarded a plane and headed to our new lives in Cambodia. This week we’re celebrating our first year in Cambodia. We wanted to take a moment to highlight some answered prayer requests and to share our main discouragement with you. Sometimes it’s hard to find a balance between sharing blessings and sharing the hard things of real life. But we want you to know that, along with all the cute pictures and answered prayer requests, we’re just a normal family with joys and discouragements in what God has called us to do. Praise His name for His continual grace and encouragement.
We thank the Lord for the many delights He’s blessed us with during the past year: a smooth transition to Cambodia for all our family, a good home for us to live in, a wonderful helper for our home, good language learning opportunities, and excellent health (up to now we have been free of any “tropical” illnesses and have only had normal colds or tummy aches). We thank you for upholding these things in prayer for us.
Language learning can be discouraging, full of ups and downs. In the past year we’ve made good progress, but it’s never as much as we’d like and we always feel like we could be doing more. We’ve had to adjust our learning expectations and realize that it’s a slow process with good days and bad. Some days we’re really encouraged by good conversations with people and the understanding we have, and the next day we walk away from a conversation wondering if we’ve been studying the right language. On a whole we’re encouraged with our progress, but there are days when it’s discouraging. We appreciate your prayers as we continue with our language learning.
Last week Josh finished all eight levels at his school, Gateway to Khmer. The program was a perfect fit for him and we’re thankful that the Lord opened the school just when we arrived. For the next three weeks Josh will go to the school for extra one-on-one tutoring, and he’ll also be working with his teachers on some projects to help the school. After that we plan to pack up and head to Ratanakiri the last week of July. Amy has already started with the packing and is making steady progress toward our move. We’re looking forward to making this next step.