Here in Cambodia we walk the path the Lord sets before us. Sometimes the way is easier than we’d planned. Sometimes it’s not at all what we’d hoped for. Our original “plan” was to move into a new home at the end of June. The adjusted “plan” was to move into our new home August 1^st. It’s August 11^th, we’re still in temporary one-bedroom housing, and the landlord just told us she thinks it will be another 3 weeks before we can move in. This isn’t the path we were planning on…but it’s the Lord’s path, it’s a good path…lead on O King Eternal.

In late January and early February Josh made two visits to Kachok villages in our province. The first visit was to the village of In. Josh had a very profitable time gathering words. He worked with the father of the village leader, a man whose Khmer and Kachok were very clear. They accomplished everything Josh was hoping to get done on the trip. It was an encouraging trip for Josh.

For the second village trip, Josh — along with a Kachok friend who’s attending high school close to where we live – drove to Kaoh Piek, a Kachok village about two hours from our home. They spent two nights there; recording words to compare with the data Josh has from other villages. It was said that the Kachok in Kaoh Piek spoke quite differently from the Kachok spoken in other villages.

Josh’s trip to Kaoh Piek village was a success. He recorded and transcribed about 550 words, and discovered that the differences between Kaoh Piek village and the other eight are not nearly as significant as he’d been told. While there, Josh learned that there are no believers in Kaoh Piek village of perhaps 1000+ adults (this is quite a large village for our province), though there has been at least some missionary activity there in the past. Josh and his friend shared the Gospel with two ladies, one of whom is the (distant) aunt/cousin of the Kachok young man who traveled with Josh. Josh’s traveling companion later overheard her talking to other villagers around the fire outside saying that she wants to believe, but is afraid to be the only believer in the village.

Please pray that God would open a way for some believers to make plans to regularly visit Kaoh Piek to share the Gospel systematically.

Please also pray that Josh would have success in finishing his analysis of Kachok sounds and begin working on the alphabet.

One of the things about living in a developing country is that it seems no matter how well we plan, unexpected things always pop up, whether it’s needing to take someone to Vietnam for medical treatment or a missionary get together. We expect this to happen more frequently when we move into a village. I’ve lost count of the Sunday mornings we’ve sat down and talked about our day, only to find out a few hours later that there is an extra church activity planned for the afternoon. So we move and groove and go with the flow and adjust…as do many do our missionary friends around the world.

I thought I’d give you a little taste of our past two weeks: some were regularly scheduled events, some were not. Nothing major came up the past few weeks — there were just little unplanned things. I’m not including any of our normal language learning activities that happen during the day. There were two nights we could have filled up with outside activities, but we kept them free for a family night and for an “us night.”

Saturday 1/24 – I met with a Khmer lady in the afternoon to help her with some ideas for teaching children’s Sunday school. In the evening we had our local missionary fellowship meeting.
Sunday 1/25 – normal Sunday (?).
Monday 1/26  – Evening family phone call.
Tuesday 1/27 – Josh left for an overnight trip to a Kachok village. Becca and I had a sleepover.
Wednesday 1/28 – Josh returned from the village early evening.
Thursday 1/29 – Josh had his weekly evening meeting with one of our Khmer pastors.
Friday 1/30 – Dinner with two other EMU families – confirmed that morning once we knew some of our coworkers would indeed be in town.
Saturday 1/31 – I was planning on meeting with my Khmer friend again to show her a model Bible lesson, but she didn’t come, since there was a family funeral. Fortunately I remembered about the funeral as I was waiting for her to come. We had an invitation to join our teammates for dinner, but stayed home and had our rescheduled family night from the night before. (Missionary fellowship had been cancelled.)
Sunday 2/1 – We went to a Krung village to see a teammates’ daughter’s baptism. We had the Farmers over for dinner. (Both events were decided the day before.)
Monday 2/3 – Kachok men arrived – they stay in our home when they are here to work, which means Josh gets to work with them for at least an hour in the evenings as well.
Tuesday 2/4 – Kachok men were here. The kids and I went swimming at the hotel pool where the Farmer family was staying.
Wednesday 2/5 – Kachok men were here.   Khmer men’s weekly evening Bible Study.
Thursday 2/6 – Kachok men left mid-morning. Josh had his weekly evening meeting with one of our Khmer pastors.
Friday 2/7 –  We spent several hours visiting with a missionary family in a village to see the house they built there. When we returned to town we went out for supper.
Saturday 2/8 – Two ladies and their kids show up for me to show them a model children’s Bible lesson. I was not expecting them, since the meeting had been scheduled for the week before and never rescheduled (see 1/31). When they saw I was busy cleaning for guests, we rescheduled for next Saturday afternoon. Saturday evening we hosted the local weekly missionary fellowship. I was very grateful that several ladies brought food to help me out.
Sunday 2/9 – Meal at church. Josh left in the afternoon for 2 nights at a Kachok village. Becca, Isaiah, and I had a sleepover.
Monday 2/10 – Josh was in the village all day.
Tuesday 2/11 – Josh at the village all day and returned early evening. We got together with our EMU teammates for dinner.
Wednesday 2/10 – Khmer men’s weekly evening Bible Study
Thursday 2/11 – Josh had his weekly evening meeting with one of our Khmer pastors.
Friday 2/12 – Family Valentine’s Party….we’ll see!

This next week will be full of getting things ready to travel to Thailand – wrapping things up here for our month away, and gathering what we need to take to Thailand.

This week we experienced a new for us in Cambodia: Josh went on his first overnight village trip. I wish we could say that these will be rare, but until we can move until a village, Josh will have to leave to make trips  into villages to do phonology work. We’re so thankful that he’s been able to do the last several months of work from home. Our prayer is that we can move into a village by the end of this year so that we can be together as a family when Josh begins working on translation projects. (Yes, I’m very thankful I’m not married to an accountant, traveling business man, etc.)

One gift I want to give our kids is memories of fun-filled times when Daddy has to be away. We’re sad to see him go and we miss him, but I want to create an atmosphere of joy and not dread. (I have good memories of fun times we had when my Dad had to be away.) This is pretty easy, since our kids get excited about little things, as long as I make it special.

When Josh left, the kids were excited. They told him we were going to have so much fun that he wouldn’t want to leave again. Isaiah immediately sat on the couch and wanted to pray with me (since he was filling in for Daddy). We had hot chocolate for breakfast (we were freezing at 66 degrees!). We had special snacks and did some fun activities.

After Isaiah fell to sleep, Becca emerged from their room so Becca and I could have a special sleep-over. We made fun memories. And we were delighted when Daddy came home!

Josh had a very profitable time in the Kachok village named In. He worked with the father of the village leader, a man whose Khmer and Kachok were very clear. They accomplished everything Josh was hoping to get done on the trip. It was an encouraging trip for Josh. Below are a picture of the house Josh stayed in (it was built by a missionary who works in the village) and some pictures of the man he worked with, showing off the backpack baskets that he weaves.

You could see it in her eyes when she woke up: something exciting was going to happen, something she’s never done before, something new and adventurous: today she was going to ride an elephant. Becca was anxious to start our first morning in Siem Reap.

Last week we went to Siem Reap for a few days. A cousin of Josh’s Grandma Jensen (our first cousin twice removed) and husband made a trip to Siem Reap and offered to fly us up to join them. We told the kids that we would try to ride an elephant. I wasn’t sure Isaiah would enjoy it, but he told me he would be brave.

I think both kids were really surprised at how huge the elephants were. Before we arrived Becca asked me if the elephants would be bigger than Josh.  Before our ride we bought some bananas to feed the elephants. It was really cool to feel an elephant’s trunk take a banana from my hand. Becca had the time of her life. I wish I could have captured how delighted she was to feed the elephant by hand. Her laughter was priceless.

Isaiah refused to go near the elephants and decided to ride in the tuk-tuk with Uncle Mike and Aunt Jan instead of riding the elephant with us. I repeatedly asked him if he was going to change his mind, but he was firm in his decision not to ride. But once he saw us all up on the elephant, he changed his mind. Fortunately he changed his mind in the nick of time and was able to get on the elephant before we left.

We had a 20-minute ride up to one of the temples. It’s pretty neat to ride an elephant with your family through an ancient gate up to a temple ruins. Everyone enjoyed the ride, and Becca was thrilled.

At the end of our ride we found some monkeys at the edge of the forest. The kids enjoyed giving the monkeys a few of our leftover bananas. A perfect start to our day at Angkor Wat.