This week four Kachok men came to work with Josh. Josh spent his time with them collecting words with the goal of creating an alphabet for the Kachok language. The ultimate aim is to produce Christian materials and perhaps a Bible (or portions) for this tribal group. Josh will be using the Khmer script to form the alphabet. His job is to match the Kachok sounds with Khmer letters. (He will also match Kachok sounds with Roman script.)

The men arrived Monday morning and left Tuesday around 2:30 pm after working with Josh both days. I was a little nervous about hosting the men. In the past, some villagers have learned to prefer expats over Khmer people because some expats wine and dine them. We were told to be hospitable but not to overdo things. It was very helpful to have our helper to advise us on what was normal for our guests. It sure made breakfast easy…ramen noodles!

The plan is to have all or some of these men work with Josh every week. If it works out, they will continue to come to our place. However, there will be some weeks that Josh will go to the village to work with the men. Our hope is that Josh will only need to collect data for three months. We appreciate your prayers as we enter this new phase of our ministry, while we also continue our Khmer language study.

Note: Josh wears wrist braces to help with tedinitis. No humans or animals were injured during the research.

Last week Josh and our team leader, JD Crowley, made a visit to a Kachok village to talk about Josh’s possible involvement in providing the Kachok people a written alphabet. The trip to the mountain village included a 1.5-hour car trip, a river-crossing by ferry, and a 20-minute motorcycle ride.

Josh and JD met with some Kachok leaders in the home of one of their pastors. JD encouraged the believers who have just suffered a church split and passed out his Khmer translation of the tract: There Are Only Two Roads. The believers are very interested in having an alphabet for their language. They are sending three to four men this Monday to our home for two days to work with Josh on collecting words in the Kachok language to analyze. (They will all stay in our home.) After this, every week or two, a group will come here for a night or Josh will go to the village to continue the research.

The village is building a new church building, since their old one was taken by the group that split off from them.

Two days last week Josh met with a Kachok boy who attends our church in Ban Lung to work on transcribing a Kachok story Josh recorded while in the village. It’s slow work since they have to go from Kachok to Khmer to English, and neither Josh nor the Kachok boy is fluent in Khmer. [Though the boy is better than I am! -Josh]

Please pray for Josh as he starts working on this project and pray for wisdom as we seek God’s leading in regard to our possible future involvement with this tribe.

This Sunday Anna Grace celebrates her 18-month birthday! Hard to believe she’s a year and a half already. She’s definitely growing up and joining the big kids more.  Anna continues to be an easy-going, happy little girl.

Jokester:  This little girl loves to play jokes. She’s  funny and she knows it. The other day I asked her if she wanted to give Josh a kiss. She said yes then proceeded to kiss her stuffed bear multiple times and then have the bear kiss Josh. The other day she knew Josh was going to sit next to me on the couch, so she ran over and sat in his spot and laughed when he tried to sit down.

Teeth:  Anna now has 12 teeth, including 4 molars. 

Naps: Anna still naps twice a day. Not sure when she’ll drop her morning nap. It works well for doing reading lessons with Becca.

Words: I have yet to count all of Anna’s words. To name a few: yes, no, please, thank you, Mommy, Daddy, Anna, Becca, Isaiah, (she only says Becca and Isaiah when prompted to) yam-yam (meaning food/eat in Khmer), Om Two, puppy, TruffCrunch, chicken, kitten, love you, where are you, hello, bye-bye, outside, how-y (meaning finished in Khmer), night-night….ok I’ll stop there. She does try to sing the ABC song, but she keeps singing A-B over and over again. A few weeks ago Becca helped teach Anna to say yes. Before then her yes was a really sweet no. Becca used small pieces of the waffle she bought at the market to teach Anna to say yes…and it stuck.

Miss Friendly: Though Anna’s not so friendly with Khmer people she doesn’t know, she is very friendly with the expats here. The other day she climbed into the lap of an older missionary we’ve recently spent some time with and gave him a kiss. She’s always making friends during our weekly Saturday night missionary fellowship.

Anna continues to be a gift to our family. Can’t imagine our family without her.

This is a post of randomness – complete randomness. Enjoy.

MOLD: July through October is rainy season. It was no big deal  in Phnom Penh, but here it’s another story. Mold is growing everywhere: books, puzzle pieces, blocks, picture frames, belts, clothes in our dressers and closets, etc, etc, etc, etc!

SLEEP: We sleep so much better here than we did in Phnom Penh.  We lived right across from some wealthy people who were heavily involved in spirit worship and Buddhism, and we can’t help wonder if that affected our kids’ sleep. There were times (one in particular) when the kids would wake up screaming, and it frightened us too. Since we’ve moved up here, our sleep has been much more peaceful.

COOKING/BAKING: I’ve started enjoying cooking/baking again. It was so hot in Phnom Penh and our house held oven/stove heat for hours that cooking was not enjoyable. Nothing like dripping with sweat while trying to make Christmas Day cinnamon rolls. Since moving here cooking/baking has been fun. I enjoy trying to find baking recipes that work with the ingredients that are easy to get here. (Which means I’m trying to find things that don’t require butter or milk, etc). We found this great chocolate cake recipe that doesn’t even require eggs, and it’s very tasty . . . and the kids love that I freely let them lick the batter!

PUMPKIN: Pumpkin is in season right now and we’ve been enjoying homemade pumpkin cookies, pumpkin bread, pumpkin seeds, and pumpkin soup (with homemade “Olive Garden” bread sticks). Right now I have eight pumpkins sitting the kitchen waiting to be cooked and pureed. [Comment from Josh: The bread sticks are much better than any I’ve had at the Olive Garden.]

GENESIS: I’ve started studying Genesis with our house helper every Thursday afternoon. It’s fun to have the extra motivation to study a book and neat to see Genesis through our helper’s eyes. So many things we take for granted are new treasures of information for her.

DIRT: We get so dirty here. Sometimes I have to scrub our kids’ feet/legs off with a brush. Whenever they wear new clothes it seems like they get stained the first day they wear them. I love consignment shop clothes . . . guilt-free clothes. We seem to get the dirtiest at church, and usually as soon as we get back from church all the kids get a shower.

ANTS: I don’t even know how many different kinds we have in our home. Don’t want to know how many we’ve probably eaten. Welcome to Southeast Asia.

SHOWER WATER HEATER: In hot season it doesn’t matter, but in rainy season and cool season the shower water heater is a really nice gift from God. On those cooler damp nights, the water pressure might be bad, but I’m sure glad I don’t have to restrain my screams while taking a cold-water shower.

IMAGINE … Using a faucet that has cold and hot water options. Do they even have such things? Imagine having a hot water cycle option on your clothes washer (I’m not talking about the boil a pot of water and dump it in option, which we have!). Imagine not eating rice for almost every meal. Imagine not sleeping in a mosquito net. Imagine not wondering how long it will be until your kids get worms. These are all just normal things here and sometimes I forget that it’s not like this everywhere. What do you mean you don’t sleep in a mosquito net!? Do you want to get sick and go to the hospital!?

In other exciting news, today Becca finished Level 1 of All About Reading. Tomorrow we’ll have a party to celebrate! (She lost her second tooth last Sunday. Every time she smiles I laugh because she’s so cute.)