Rich and Ronda Dolan

Here is the way we ate at the beach and some of the food. These ladies, and some girls, would carry these big plates of food on their heads. Then, when you wanted it, they would slice it, season it, whatever it needed for you. No work, no mess - just eat! On the left, sitting on Rebekah's chair is the plate of lobsters. They are seasoning them for us. Then the other lady on the right is fixing a mango for us. Her plate of food it sitting on the end of my chair. Of course, fresh food is always best and this was great! The 2nd picture is the squid kabobs that we ate. Like I told you, they were very good. We were actually a little surprised at how good they were. I didn't get a picture of these ladies carrying their grills in pots suspended on a pole that they carried. I'll try to do better next time. Or you can come see for yourself! The last picture is another picture of God's beautiful creation that we got to enjoy. As we end 2007 and look at the many ways G...

As most of you know, we decided to go to the beach for Christmas. This was our first trip out of Phnom Penh other than to go to the Zoo on Saturday, Dec 22nd. The countryside was very pretty with hills and lots of trees. Rice fields lined the highway. It is harvest time here so there is much work being done in the fields. I will send pictures of that on a later email. We got to Sihanoukville at around noon on Monday, Christmas Eve. We drove around and found a place to stay since we didn't totally trust the looks of places online (all of you that have been to the Alpen Hutte for a ski trip understand exactly what I mean!) The first picture is the view as we ate our Christmas dinner. The 2nd is Rich and Rebekah waiting for dinner to come. By about 10 am everyday, we were at the beach. We just laid around on the beach, swam, slept, worked on language, read, cross stitched, ate wonderful food and did it all again. We would stay and watch the sunset set each evening before...

Here is a picture of Rebekah and I with our van. It is a 15 passenger diesel and, in case you can't read the side of it, it is a Toyota. It has been really nice - saving the money on tuk tuks! In the picture you can also see our 'yard'. The gate behind us is our landlord's (ours is the one open behind the van). The house is right at the front of the van, so you are looking at most of the front 'yard'. All of the houses here, big or small, are gated. I think you can tell that the top of the gates and fence have spikes to discourage anyone from climbing over. In this note, I just wanted to tell you some of the sights that we see around town an any given day. There was a man, with a numb for his left leg, driving his moto down the road hold a crutch with his left hand. On the back of his moto was big blocks of ice to be delivered. I so admire his willingness to work when he could easily justify begging instead. We saw another man on a makeshift bike. The...

Dtree is our new student in the school. He came from another organization and expressed a desire to study with us. Last Wednesday, he was baptized after talking for several days with many of the students and Tawn. So please keep him in your prayers. He seems to be a very devote student. He takes many notes, writes down everything he can find. He has also brought his brother to Wednesday evening classes. We thank you for your prayers on our behalf. There is so much to be done that it is difficult to have the patience and wisdom to know what order to put them in. Naturally, for now, much is on hold or at least slowed, so that we can learn the language. As you all are in the holiday time of the year, don't forget the really important things...God, your families, love for the brethren. PS. For those of you priviledged to see my boys during the holidays, give them lots of hugs for me. Much love, Ronda

These pictures are just a couple shot I took around town. About 9 Christian young people (college aged) came and we had a devotional, fellowship meal at one of the missionaries' house on Saturday night. We told whoever wanted to go could meet at the church building and we would take the van. This is what we got the van for! We put 21 people in our 15 passenger van! We got into a major traffice jam along the way and ended up heading down a side street (following another car). The street ended up at one of the markets where people sit and sell stuff all over the street, so that we could hardly fit down. It took us an hour to get about 3 miles. But the fellowship was great. Even though the Thais sang devo type songs that the Khmers didn't know and the Khmers sang their songs that the Thais didn't know. For the most part, we knew them all and sang in English!! We did finally get 2 songs that we all sang. I'm sure God thought it was beautiful. Bow, the young pre...

I tried cropping this better, but then the blog wouldn't take it, so this is what you get... This says, in my phonetics, "jum reeap sua" on the first line; and the rest says, "sok sabuy jeea dtay? This is the formal general greeting which means " Good day, are you well?" We can now read. But due to the fact that they don't put spaces between words, if we don't know the words, we can't tell when one word ends and the next word begins. It does make it interesting. Especially when they combine a lot of words to give it different meanings. But we are learning and know a lot more than we did 3 months ago. This picture is of one of the high school's parking lots. I don't know if you can see it clearly, but there are TONS of bicycles! They stack them so close together, that I think the kids on the end would have to come first and get them out in order! There are some motos (motorcycles) on the left couple rows. We can't believe it ...