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?