The Day Family Blog

This past Thursday, we put on a Princess Party for all of the little girls coming to the New Punlok Thmey Girls Center. Since I first started working with the girls three months ago, I kept getting this vision of them in a nice house where they were all cleaned and showered with new clothes and combed hair. It was so difficult to see what horrible living conditions many of them lived in and how dirty they were; old and worn out clothes with messy and sometimes lice filled hair. I just want so much for these girl's lives because they had grown such a special place in my heart. It was so awesome because God was able to make this dream of mine come true for these girls that day. It was so great to decorate the Girls Center the day before the party and make it look fun and beautiful for the girls.  It was awesome to see them walk in the front door and watch their faces fill with delight.  The first thing they did when they walked in the room was go to the balloons and

There is a little shop here in Phnom Penh ’s touristy Russian Market that sells these beautiful embroidered banners. The labyrinth of stalls in this market, which we unashamedly frequent, is often very repetitive. A whole row of jewelers; there are your North Face backpacks, there’s your Cambodian-tourist parachute pants… the items go on and on. This one stall in particular is a one of a kind. It is backed by a local Christian NGO and helps at-risk women with employment by teaching them the trade of screen printing. The result is these beautiful banners they sell which display scriptures from the Bible. Gretchen and I put our order in a couple weeks ago for a customized banner. We wanted to get the first verse from a passage of scripture in the book of Romans which memorializes many of our experiences here. Romans 8:18 is the verse on our banner. The text speaks the promise God gives us for persevering through the pains of the present world. It urges us to consider the present

We have been here for two months and we have one more month to go. Lately I've been feeling emotionally drained.  There is so much suffering, pain, and brokenness here that we encounter everyday. One of the little girls this week told us she has been raped, luckily we already know about her story and our staff at Hard Places has been working hard to get her into a safe home. I saw a man beating his 3 year old child with a stick and there was nothing I could do about it. We consistently see older men (40s-60s) with younger Khmer girls (12-20s) at restaurants we eat at, we all know what is going on there. " For my thoughts are not your thoughts,      neither are your ways my ways, declares the  Lord . 9  For as the heavens are higher than the earth,      so are my ways higher than your ways      and my thoughts than your thoughts." -Isaiah 55:8-9 This verse has been an incredible comfort lately. Here, God tells us, that His ways and thoughts are so far above and beyo

Here are some random updates :) I've posted earlier how I've been helping out with the girls that have been coming to the boys center. Well we had been meeting in the front lobby and I had unofficially become in charge of playing and hanging out with them every morning. We were supposed to get a girls center on July 15, but sadly we didn't have enough funding and staff to open one. But we officially get to use the library of the boys center to meet with the girls in the mornings! This is exciting because we have started to create a curriculum that will be a mini version of what the girls would be getting at the future girls center. We teach English, play games, do crafts, sing songs, teach bible studies, and have lots of fun! Planning all of it takes a lot of time and research, but it is so fun when we actually get to teach the girls.  This past Saturday we got to take the all of the kids (I think about 140 of them) to Dreamland, which is an amusement park that reminds

Here are a list of some of the weird, strange and interesting things about Cambodia that I've observed. This is by no means a list making fun of the people or their culture. But as a first time traveler, there were many things that were very new and surprising to an American.  There are no rules in traffic, it is completely acceptable to drive on the other side of the road. Many stores here start with "Lucky". For example, "Lucky Burger" "Luck Supermarket", "Lucky Internet", "Lucky Star Hotel". Pinching, hitting, and even kicking babies is totally fine... as long as they are really cute. Dogs love to roam the roads and put their butts together. So weird. There is trash everywhere, the street and sidewalks are not super clean. On that note, you can throw your trash in random trash piles on the side of the road, which is pretty cool. Businesses and stores will all sell the exact same product in the same area right next to each

This most recent week has been full with feelings of sadness, pain, and wonder as well as knowledge of the faithfulness, glory, and love of God. Truths from Romans 5, 8, and the entire biblical promise of hope of renewal for all things have been place weightily on my heart and those of our whole house. If you have been following updates on Facebook or the blog, you know of six year old Sok and may even feel like you know the little boy. He’s really great! He’s warm, funny, and steals your heart in an instant. Without evening knowing you, he will ask you to come with him to his room to play with cars. He’ll ask you to sit down with him in our big chairs to play with a staff member’s iPhone. He even asked me to accompany him to the bathroom this morning… ha. Sok’s story is one of great sadness and difficulty, but also of God’s nearness and love. I want to write, to highlight and glorify God’s goodness in the midst of difficulty. Difficulty that is not only occasional, but diffic

Some of you might have seen me post some recent status' for prayer requests for a little boy named Sok. Here is the latest update from The Hard Places Community about his condition. " After weeks of trying to locate surgeons who could operate on Sok's heart, we were led to  www.babyheart.org . It's a great organization that is saving the lives of children all over the world. The head doctor there said that he  could perform Sok's surgery, but that the facilities in Cambodia were not equipped to handle such a complex operation, so we would have to fly Sok to another country where we would meet the cardiology team from Babyheart. We began the long and tedious task of getting the necessary paperwork for Sok's passport, and thanks to Steph and Borey, the paperwork was completed for us to apply for passports. However, Sok was admitted to ICU at Royal Ratanak Hospital three nights ago in critical condition. After much consultation with his doctor, we know that Sok

Yesterday we got the opportunity to go visit Agape International Missions (AIM) in Svay Pak which is a small village 11 kilometers outside of Phnom Penh. Svay Pak is known for it's trafficking of young children. Don Brewster and his wife, Bridget, moved there in 2006 and started AIM with a rehabilitation home for girls rescued from sex trafficking. They have grown so much since then. When we visited yesterday, it seemed they owned every other building on the main street in Svay Pak. All of their buildings are aimed to defeat child sex trafficking, and it is awesome to see all of the work God is doing in that village because of AIM.  It was so amazing to see how God is creating such beauty and life out of death and darkness. Every single building they have used to be a brothel. I don't know how much more evil you can get then a brothel filled with children. The thought of it makes me sick to my stomach. But God, in His goodness, is so much bigger than any evil in this world

I know I've said it before, but time here continues to go by quickly. This week we will have been here one month.  I want to give you an update on what I've been doing here. Last week we had a team from Mississippi come to help HPC out, so that left us interns with some more random jobs. On Monday I got to babysit the director, Alli's two little girls which was very fun. She is an  extremely busy person, so I was glad I got to help out a little bit. Then I was put in charge of organizing a couple of things. The first was a room in Alli's house which will become a team hangout room. It was filled with many random things that I organized and but into boxes. Then I was put in charge of organizing the craft/game/costume/office shelves in the staff office. This was quite a task because organization is not a valued skill in Khmer culture. But after a few days of cleaning and organizing, it looks awesome! I've also been doing outreach at Wat Phnom. We go for a few hours i

I can't believe we have already been here for two weeks! Time has gone by very quickly. Each day I grow to love this city more and more. The first week we volunteered at the Boys Center , I helped with the different classes they hold in the mornings for the boys (computer classes, English classes, discipleship, and  playroom therapy). Then in the afternoons I helped out at kids club at the Boys Center which consists of dancing to songs, playing games, skits, worship and a lesson. I really enjoyed my time doing that, the boys are all so awesome and even though we don't speak the same language, we are still able to connect and have fun.  But this week some girls from the streets and surrounding neighborhoods have started to hang out on the main floor at the Boys Center in the mornings. They usually wouldn't allow them to come in because it is for boys, but they will hopefully be opening a center for girls this summer and they want to start building relationships with the gi

I would have had an album uploaded by now, but after 4 hours of waiting I was only at 128 out of 225 pictures and then figured out that facebook said it would take another 16 hours to upload. So I canceled it. We will get internet in our house on Monday, so I hope I can upload pictures much quicker on that wifi. Here are some tastes of life in Cambodia so far! The Killing Fields A memorial for the victims of the Khmer Rouge A small outdoor market There were SO many birds in this cage! They believe that when they let the birds go, they receive good luck.    The Independence Monument A monument in the middle of a roundabout  representing their independence from France in 1953. The sign the Khmer staff made for us! They are all so great! Central Market   A random statue of a dragon. There are a lot of them.  We see monks everywhere, especially in the mornings when  they go  around and give people blessings 

A blog post from Josh's perspective follows! It feels like its been a long time since we arrived not because its been a long, difficult week but because there has been so many new experiences and we've done so much. The week has been really good and I'm starting to find my roles to fill while serving The Hard Places Community (HPC). First, thanks for your prayer, everyone. The beginning of the week was tougher as we were clueless in a new foreign city, figuring out how to eat safely, Gretch battled a two-day bug, and seeking to know God's place for us here. The church has been a huge encouragement and refuge in all the newness though as we still have all things in common with the body and our shared salvation transcends all foreign experiences. As for my role, it's still being revealed. However, I know I'll be teaching the discipleship class for the older boys (8-12 years old) at the HPC boys center which serves boys victim of physical or sexual abuse or are at

This was the first journal entry I wrote the second day we were here. “We made it! We are finally here in Cambodia! I still can’t believe we are in Phnom Penh! I want to journal about everything. I want to capture every moment. Everything is so new, the sights, the sounds, the smells, the tastes. And I love it! Walking off the plane and out of the airport was so much fun! We immediately felt the hot humidity and it felt like paradise… I probably won’t continue to think of that word when the heat becomes a norm. We got to go on a tuk tuk (pronounced took took) which will be our daily mode of transportation. This I also love. Our first look at the city was on the tuk tuk ride form the airport to the house. There were so many things to take in and I wanted to soak everything up. Which I know in the next three months I will have time to do. I have ever seen anything like this city, this kind of poverty level. The streets are filled with trash; almost every house has some sort of shop in