Baatrang Middle School...Week One

Thanks so much for your prayers for the beginning of the school year for us at Baatrang Middle School! Holly, Chris and Dhara feel that the first two days of teaching went well. Their schedule changed a bit from what we originally thought so on Tuesdays they go in the morning and teach a class from 9 to 10, and then another from 10 to 11. They then have a break until 3pm when they teach again from 3 to 4, and from 4 to 5. Although that break is long it is good in that it gives them some time to actually go out and work in the garden. On Wednesdays they teach only in the afternoon - four classes back to back from 1pm to 5pm!

For the first class they gave an evaluation to find out exactly where all of the students are at in their experience and knowledge of agriculture. Some of the students' families have gardens at home and some of the families grow rice through the year. Not many students knew what compost is or what it is used for, and many of the families grown only a few kinds of vegetables which they then sell at the market. All of this is helpful for us to know. Agriculture is not a new thing here in Cambodia as you can probably imagine, but it is our hope that what we have to bring to the table in new ways of doing things (composting, living fences, SRI rice farming, etc.) will enrich the lives of the families in Baatrang village.

A few weeks back Chris and Holly went to the school for a work day. They were told where they could put the vegetable garden and given another area to plant flowers. Fortunately we have a soil testing kit, so they took samples of the soil so that we could see what the quality of the soil is. Unfortunatley, like much of the land around here the soil is of very poor quality. Some of our lessons will be on how to go about improving the quality of the soil - they will be making compost, as well as planting beans and other nitrogen fixing plants to help improve the soil.

They were also able to begin building a fence around the plot of land where the garden will be. With the help of the students this fence will be finished in a few weeks time....its gonna take alot of work to get all of the holes dug for the posts!

Pray for Chris and Holly as they continue to prepare the lessons for the rest of the school year. Continue to pray for great relationships with students and teachers to form. Pray also for good relationships for development between us and the community outside of the school. It is our hope that what is taught at school will be taken home and will improve the lives of entire families!

And pray especially as they teach about God! We have been given the 'go ahead' to teach about God and His involvement in and love for His creation.

We continue to be excited at the opportunities that God is giving us at this school and in this community. Keep us in your prayers!

Om Tuk

So this weekend is Om Tuuk here in Battambang City. Every provincial capital here in Cambodia will have one of these festivals this month, and then there will be a HUGE one in Phnom Penh at the beginning of November.

The biggest part of this festival are the boat races. The winners of the races (grouped by size of boat as well as gender of the rowers) will go to Phnom Penh for a final race. During the Battambang race people from all over the province come to town...at this very moment there are literally HUNDREDS of people on the streets outside our house. And for the Phnom Penh race it is so packed that most foreigners either leave town or just don't leave their houses!

We did venture out yesterday evening and made our way through the crowds and blaring music. It makes it even hard that we are white as everyone stops and stares and wants to come and talk to the boys. We decided by the end of our walk that we should've charged 5000riel per time someone touched Kailen and Aiden (we could've made a couple hundred dollars easy!)

The other fun thing is that our language tutors from Phnom Penh came to visit us this weekend as well. We are so blessed to have relationships with these two young women (we're not sure how many teachers have ever travelled to the province to visit their former students!). It was fun to have them in our home and enjoy a little of Om Tuk madness with them.

Socheata (Julee's teacher - on left) and Chenda (Chris' teacher - next to Kailen). We actually made them walk a really long ways...not on purpose, but it ended up being really long! We are pretty sure they think we're crazy for walking so much that evening!

in the middle of the craziness!

Aiden really enjoyed the boats. You can see two of the teams in river below. Some of the boats are short and some are quite long with 30-40 people rowing. We always say we want to be the one standing in the middle yelling "row, row, row..."

all things become new again...

When you arrive in another culture you are overwhelmed by all the things that are different than where you come from....architecture, foods, smells, fashion, etc. etc. etc., but eventually, if you live in your new host culture long enough those things become "normal" and you don't notice them much anymore. Things surprise you now and then, but from the most part when you walk past a full pig head in the market you don't think much about it....you just know someone's gonna make soup!

You don't really realize that these things have become normal to you until you are with someone else who is new in the culture/place where you are. You watch their faces become pale as your taxi/bus driver goes at crazy speeds down the roads, dodging cows and water buffalo or when they attempt to pass a huge truck (on a small two lane highway) while there is another large truck coming straight at you. OR you see them take a double or triple take when the moto carrying 150 chickens tied upside down on the back passes you by. Then you suddenly realize....oh yes, this ISN'T normal is it!

We are currently helping to host a short-term team from North Carolina, and it has been a joy to see them experience all things Cambodia! They have been processing their experiences and it has reminded me of SO many things that not too long ago were not "normal" for me. It reminds me that I need to always be looking for new things in this place, to not get lazy about learning about Cambodia and her people.

I have also been reminded of the importance of interacting in very intentional ways with the Khmer, especially those who are not yet believers. They watch us, they wonder why we live the way we live, why we do the things we do, why we buy the things we buy... PRAY for us that God would give us relationships with people here in Battambang, and PRAY for open doors to share our faith and love of Jesus. PRAY for times of refreshing as we are tired (newborns tend to do that to you, don't they!!!) and PRAY that God's Spirit would move in mighty ways in our hearts and well as those of the Khmer.

PRAY also for this short term team, that their time here would reflect the love of Christ to the Khmer so that their lives may hopefully one day be made NEW in Jesus.

more than a month...

Its hard to believe that we have now been in Thailand for more than a month! We left Battambang (after living there for only two weeks) on May 10 and have been living at the Alliance Guest Home since.

We came here to await the arrival of our second son....Kailen Christopher Bellar, and here he is

He arrived two weeks early on May 29th at 12:23am. He weighed 8lbs 14oz and was 20.5 inches long. He is now two weeks old and doing really well.

Big brother is loving having his little brother to kiss on. We haven't seemed to hit a jealous phase yet, but I'm sure that will come at some point. Both boys are doing well and we are just waiting for Kailen's passport to get finished so that we can apply for his visa to get into Cambodia. Once that is complete we will be making our way back home to Cambodia.

Thanks for your prayers for all of us as we prepare to adjust to life in the province with two little guys. Pray for their health and safety, as well as ours.

More pictures and details of Kailen's arrival will be posted on our other blog: ajbellar.blogspot.com

On the Move...

Well...moving day is almost here.  We are hoping that by this time tomorrow morning most of our things will be loaded safely onto our moving truck and covered with tarps to keep the rain off.  After we send the truck off we'll have a few errands to run and then we'll head off to Battambang in our truck.

Pray for Chris as he manages the moving company tomorrow morning and pray that the truck makes it safely to Battambang without any problems.

Pray for us as we have a farwell dinner with our church leaders tonight and then try and get a good night sleep so that we aren't totally exhausted for the drive tomorrow.  AND pray for our truck to make it safely there as well.  This will be the first LONG road trip we've taken it on...and as it is an older vehicle you never know what to expect along the road.

We'll be staying in a hotel for a couple of days while we get things organized in the house and then we'll be moved in.  

Here's a pic of the front of our new house.  It is one of the older cement houses that was built after the end of the Pol Pot regime.  It is bigger than we thought we would get, but the back of the house will be used for the CAMA office.   We'll have two bedrooms, a living room, office and kitchen...and the large area out front for Aiden to run around in (he's gonna love it!)

As you look at this picture please pray over our house.  Our landlord is Buddhist and he does have a spirit house in the front out near the gate.  Those renting before us were not Christian either so just pray for the Holy Spirit to be present in and around our entire house and for no evil thing to be allowed in.

SO...our next post will be from Battambang!  YEAH!!!

Tex-Mex Meal

Left to Right:  Chris, Julee, Chenda, Aiden and Socheata

(Chenda is Chris' tutor and Socheata is mine)

Today we had our teachers from the Khmer School of Language over for lunch.  My tutor has been asking me for several weeks to make them some 'western' food.   I told her I would but asked for suggestions as to what exactly to make for them....as many Khmer don't like anything but Khmer food!

I asked other foreigners here what they have fixed for their Khmer friends and no one had a positive story to tell, one even saying that she fixed a large Khmer meal (Ginger Pork and another stir-fry style dish with veggies) for some church leaders one time and at the end of the meal one of the women exclaimed "WOW, American food tastes okay too!"

Needless to say I have been wracking my brain for several weeks on what to fix for them.  I wanted them to get a taste of the kinds of food that Chris and I grew up on, but I also wanted to fix something that they might actually like and eat ;o)   So....I went with good old fashion tex-mex!  I made fajitas, spanish rice, beans, and pico de gallo and to top it off I made a chocolate wacky cake and added some cinnamon to it for fun.

When they came this morning I had already made most of the food, all I needed to do was cook the meat and veggies for the fajitas.  As I explained to them what kinds of food we were having and told them the ingredients in all the dishes I could tell they were a little unsure as to how delicious this meal was going to be, but they were still excited and ready to sample it all.

I am proud to say that they seemed to enjoy all of it...though the beans were probably the most challenging for them.  I was really unsure about the rice.  Unless you are making traditional fried rice here you really don't mess with your rice...plain white rice is just the staple of the meal, so I considered making an extra pot of plain rice in case they didn't like any of the food and needed to fill up on something else.  I didn't end up having time to get that done but it was okay as Chris' teacher finished off her first serving of the spanish rice and then took another large serving and finished it all off!

After lunch Chris put Aiden down for a nap and while he slept we played Qwirkle together.  Now that was a challenge trying to explain to them how to play a game in Khmer!  But we succeeded and really had a fun afternoon with them here.

It is sad to leave these relationships behind as we prepare to move on to Battambang, but we hope to try and keep in contact with them and meet with them when we do make it down to Phnom Penh in the future.  Pray for both of these girls as neither are followers of Jesus.  Pray for them to have a continual flow of strong Christian students in the coming years and that they will some day make the decision to become followers of Jesus.

It's Official!!!!

YAHOO!!!!  We are very excited to be able to share with you that as of today we have officially been assigned to work for the next 1 - 2 years in Battambang!

This past Monday-Wednesday we made a crazy last minute trip up to Battambang to talk with David and Doris about what the future is going to look like for all of us and also to do some house hunting (just in case we did move to Battambang).  On Wednesday morning we all came to agreement that Battambang is the place for us to be for this next phase, and we are all at peace and quite excited about it all.

We also were able to find a house to rent....which was a double blessing since it all happened SO quickly!  Unfortunately everything was so rushed that we forgot to take any pictures...so you'll have to wait on all of that.

The house is an older one and needs some work, but the landlord was agreeable to do a few things for us.  It is a cement house with three bedrooms, three bathrooms, living room, office and kitchen.  What is great is that we will only be using the front four rooms and the kitchen and then the spare bedroom and the "garage" area will be used as the CAMA Office so its a great deal for all of us.

Thanks to those of you who have prayed for this, we do now have a yard area that Aiden can run around and play in and our part of the house is only one level so we won't be having to climb up and down stairs with two kiddos.  The extra bonus is that this house sits directly across the street from David and Doris's house and is also quite close to Sharon (our Filipina teammate's) home so we will have a sense of community with our teammates which will be extremely helpful as we welcome baby #2.

An update on that situation - It looks as if Aiden and I will be traveling to Bangkok during the second week of May (need to be there by the 14th) and then Chris has been told that they will allow him to head that way on May 25th, which is 2.5 weeks ahead of the due date.  SO, pray that this baby doesn't come before the 25th!!!

Once the baby is born we will have to get him a passport and then work on his visa to get into Cambodia.  Please be praying that this part of the process goes smoothly and quickly so that we can get back to Battambang and settle into our new life there.  Pray for Aiden...there are lots of transitions coming his way and we need wisdom to know how to take care of  his needs.

Chris and I are so grateful to God for his blessing and guidance in this process.  It has been a long and at times stressful wait, and we know there are rough times ahead with transition, but we trust in God's goodness and rest in that.