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.