First let me say 'thank you' to all of you who wished me a Happy Birthday. How incredibly blessed I am to have so many sweet people who sent to me. It really made my day!
We just finished the Pchum Benh holiday. It would compare somewhat with our Christmas in that most people go back to their villages and spend 3 days with family. It is a buddhist holiday with a lot of ancestor worship as well as going to the temples. Phnom Penh is very quiet during this holiday and it is really nice! No traffic and the noise level is way down. We enjoyed it.
But school will resume on Thursday, the 29th. Rich will be teaching World Religions to some of our students. Khemrin will be finishing up teaching Old Testament History to most of the others. I will be teaching Sacrificial Systems (Leviticus) to Sophanmai (we just call her 'Mai'). She doesn't need too many more classes before she graduates and she has already had the other two classes being taught. Covid really messed up Rich's schedule with different sets of students getting quarantined in the village and others here, so he is having to do a lot of piecing things together in order for the students to get the classes they need.
I thought you might enjoy some picture of things here that are different that in the US.
Rich and I were having coffee at a coffee shop and I happened to notice all the wires outside in the trees. All up and down our streets, the wires look similar to this.
As we were driving around town, I saw this building being built. There is tons of high rises going in all over the city.
Look at the top open level. This picture barely shows you what is going on.
But this is the person, sitting on the side of the ledge. He or she is directing that wire that goes to the ground. So they are just sitting on the side of the building about 14 or so floors up. No safety harnesses or anything.
This is a street in the middle of the city. When we moved here 15 years ago, this street was mostly one or two story houses with a couple hotels that were about 5 stories. It has really changed!
Lastly, I want to tell you about our plumbing fun.
We have been telling our landlord that the guest bathroom doesn't have good water pressure and sometimes has no water at all. Our guests have to be able to shower at times convenient for them, so it must be fixed.
After getting the response of "yes, our house is the same; not much water." I told her that was fine but then we would need to move, since we had to have water in the guest bathroom.
We have lived in this house for 12 years and the landlord does NOT want us to move.
Our house is called a 'long house'. It is the typical Khmer house. Most Khmers would run a business out of the bottom floor and live above. The house is very narrow but tall. For example, our bedroom is on the 4th floor. The guest room and Rich's office is on the 2nd floor; living room and my office on the 3rd floor; and then the kitchen and the dining room/garage on the bottom.
We get decent water pressure on the top two floors because we have a big tank on the roof. So I asked the landlord if the bottom two floors could also be able to connect to the tank. And here is the result.
This first picture is the guest bathroom. The PVC pipe nearest you is just outside the bathroom, in the bedroom and comes from my office on the 3rd floor.
This is my office and bathroom. the left side is the tie-in to the plumbing that comes from the roof. Then it goes out of my bathroom into my office and then into the floor to feed down to the guest room.
The part of the PVC pipe that is in the bathroom is now covered back up but the other isn't.
And this is Rich's bathroom in his office. The PVC pipe comes from the guest bathroom, through the wall into his office bathroom.
It's a thing of beauty, right!?!
I thought you might like to see how we get things done here. I just hope it works! Our first guest is James Glasscock and he will be coming in a couple weeks to try it out!
We have been having tons of rain, which is good as the dry season starts in November. Rich and I have been caught out walking or riding the motorcycle several times. Many streets are flooded, so you have to think about your route before you go.
I hope you all are doing well. Again, we are so very thankful for all of you who pray for us, support us in the work here. It is truly the work of God that YOU do; we just get to be your feet on the ground.
Much love,
Ronda
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