Two days before we left for our Phnom Penh trip, our friends the Farmers came to visit with us. They also left Isa and Eden off with us to play with our kids. So, the girls got to join us for our time in Phnom Penh and watched the kids when we did our testing for our driver’s licenses.

Two weeks later Abi and Gloria came to spend several days with us. They were a great help playing with the kids while I got ready to travel to Thailand (packing and preparing our house). The girls brought lots of crafts for the kids to work on.

Today we start our journey to Thailand. We should arrive in Bangkok on Saturday.

Last week we took a quick trip to Phnom Penh to get our 10-year Cambodian driver’s licenses. We were hoping to do this trip back in June (when our licenses expired), but were unable to because our passports were occupied getting 1-year visas. So…we’ve been in waiting mode until our passports were released from the visa office. Monday a week ago we got the call that our passports were available. We booked our seats on a taxi van (since we couldn’t drive) and headed down to Phnom Penh on Wednesday to attempt to get our licenses.

Cambodia offers a 1-year license based on your home-country license, which you have to go down and renew every year. This time we decided to try for the 10-year Cambodian license which requires a written test and a driving test. The written test was in English – but had many, many translation mistakes so we had to study lots of weird questions and answers (“how long does a healthy driver need?” “1 minute, 2 minutes, or 3 minutes.”)

We were planning on the process taking a few days, based on the experiences of other people we know. There is only one office where foreigners can apply for their 10-year license. This office also services Khmer and any foreinger applying for a 1-year license. Thankfully – by God’s grace – we were able to do everything in one day (it literally took us all day). Both Josh and I passed the tests and now have 10-year driver’s licenses.  We were able to pick them up last Friday.

We then spent a few extra days in Phnom Penh. We had two MKs with us for the week before we knew we were going to do this trip. They came along with us and were a great help watching our kids while we did all the driving tests. (We took Clara with us in the morning for the written test and left her with friends in the afternoon.)

Saturday we did some fun stuff: the girls got their toenails painted, we had pizza, and went to Swensens’s Ice Cream. Sunday we went to English-speaking church and we were able to visit with some friends. Of course, since we were in Phnom Penh we had sickness too. Isaiah jumped on a plastic toy at the guesthouse we were staying at and ended up getting a badly infected foot. Anna got a fever and was sick for two days. Thankfully all are better now. We traveled home on Monday and are now getting ready to head to Thailand in several days. This definiately wasn’t the schedule I was hoping on – but we know that we can trust God’s hand and timing. Life is an adventure!

July 4th marked our 4th year in Cambodia! So thankful for God’s steadfast faithfulness to us all during our past four years here. We’ve learned so much and have grown in so many ways. Thanks be to God!

We combined our anniversary celebration with our 4th of July celebration. We had hotdogs, potato salad, salad (minus the lettuce), and homemade hotdog rolls. When it got dark enough we went downstairs and enjoyed sparklers. Clara was very happy to sing Happy Birthday Cambodia….she did ok with changing to America!