One week down in Sihanoukville

We just finished our first full week of ministry in Sihanoukville and are starting our 2nd week. Our week was full of teaching English, scraping and painting the wall surrounding the property, preaching, intercession, worship, and prayer walks. The English teaching went a lot better as the week went on. We have been working on conversation with the older kids and basic letters and number with the younger kdis. The kids have enjoyed the songs we have taught them. I think everyone knows the song "head and shoulders" now. Friday we did the chapels at the school....high school and elementary school. Saturday was our day off and most of the team went to the market in town. Matt and I were pretty sick from the food so we took the day to rest. We're feeling a lot better now. We tried a new restaurant and it wasn't that good. We won't eat there again. Sunday we did the church service again. Alex and Evan did a great job speaking and Kenton, Keara, Brent, and Isaac did awesome leading worship! Then we went to a cell group. It was a group led by a teacher and some high school students from the school we are working with. They gather the children from the community to do a sort of Sunday School program. It's in a very poor community. We showed up on Sunday and found out once we got there they wanted us to do part of the program. We're getting used to doing things on the fly. It took us about 5 min to put together a 20 min program. It's all about God working through us. It's amazing what God can do through us when we are available and willing to allow him to use us.

This week will look a little different because the school is off on Wednesday. We hope to put together a games/sports day for the orphanage that day. Monday and Friday we will be teaching English and doing two chapels on Friday. Tuesday and Thursday we will be spending more time in intercession and doing some more painting/scraping and other projects. We are planning on leaving Sihanoukville on January 15 to head back to Phnom Penh for 2 nights. We fly to Bangkok on the 17th. Keep praying for more opportunites to share the Gospel here. It's hard cause we can't really just go out on the street and start preaching because of government regulations. But we do have a great opportunity at the school (School of Hope). It is a Christian school but not all the kids are Christians.

Tonight we are having a fun night...pizza and mini-golf for my birthday! It will be nice to have time to hang out as a team. Thanks for praying. Everyone is doing well and has been stepping up a lot. Keep praying for protection from getting sick, especially from the food.

Just wanted to end with a cool story...so we are having to pay an extra $200 in housing costs because of the holidays. After I went over the budget, I figured out that we would be $100 short in the housing category for our guesthouse in Sihanoukville. A girl from Canada who found our blog wanted to give us some money. She ended up giving us $100. That was such a blessing from God. Thanks Beca!