Thanks so much for your extra prayers for my emotional well-being. I super-duper appreciate it and have felt so much better today. Now that my head & heart are okay, could you pray for my stomach? Praise the Lord I’m not vomiting (oh, how I hate that), but I’ve made several more trips to the restroom today than I typically do. Ugh.

And sweet Keri got hit with something today too, but hers is coming up the other end. Fever, nausea, vomiting. She says she’s feeling a little better–please pray for complete healing.

And poor Ava. She had some sort of allergic reaction to a hot pepper tonight, and it started with her lips being on fire, then it spread to her face (big red blotches), then her eyes started itching and burning. We took a Batman tuk-tuk (craziness) to a gas station and got her some ice cream on our way back to our guesthouse, and some allergy meds, and she’s sleeping peacefully. Praise Jesus.

We had a delightful, but exhausting, day touring temples, starting with Angkor Wat at sunrise. We got all Tomb Raider and Gabe and Keri took some great photos. Will share those soon, but need to catch up first.

So, here are some photos from our Christmas Day Boat Ride and BB World Excursion. So much joy. This is right before we got on the boat.

Me with three of my girls–Sophy, Longdich, and Cheata, the three oldest girls in the orphanage. Complete angels. I love them like nuts.

Ava playing games with Sophea and Srey Lin. I was much more relaxed when the children were on the first level of the boat instead of the top. Swaying back and forth, railing about a foot high. Yowza. Very faith-testing.

How handsome are these dudes? Goodness gracious. From left to right: Somphors, Theara, and Phalla. Love them like nuts too.

Getting to and from the boat was a little precarious. There were a couple times when I wasn’t quite sure the boards were going to hold me. I had a kiddo on my back on the way there. Decided against it on the way back.

Livi with beautiful Rebekah and Srey Rose post-boat ride, pre-BB World.

The fine folks at BB World were uber-accommodating (which is more than I can say for the 10+ customers that cut in front of me in line–figured out a little slowly that there aren’t “lines” per se at BB World–first push, first served). We loved watching them enjoy their fried chicken, fries, Cokes, and ice cream cones. Cracked me up to order 37 ice cream cones. Cracked me up even more that it cost just $9.25 for all of them.

Gabe with two of his buddies, Phalla and Somphors. He got to sit in a booth with those two and Sophan, and they had a swell time of male bonding.

We get to see all of our kiddos again tomorrow. They’re in Siem Reap on holiday (funded by some amazing, generous people). All 5 Prek Eng (Phnom Penh) orphanages and 7 from Battambang. Roughly 240 kids + “parents” and other adults. I’d imagine this is the first time any of them have ever been here, and I’m so excited for them. We get to go see their Christmas program in the morning.

Temple pics, etc, coming soon!

Maybe it’s the tired talking, but I’m in a mood. Grouchy, feeling down, blah, blah, blah. It’s not PMS, not the post-Christmas blues, not sure what it is. We still love the Jenkinses (our families have meshed so beautifully–praise you, Jesus!). We’re on day 1 of a mini-vacation in Siem Reap. I’ve got no good reason to be singing the blues, but man.

I’m so thankful that Keri has picked up my blogging slack (here’s the beautiful post she wrote about our Christmas), because I just don’t seem to have it in me. So much to say, yet I feel paralyzed. We’ll be up at 4:00am to catch the sunrise over Angkor Wat, so no blogging in the morn.

Maybe it’s hitting me that we’re about halfway through our trip (and only spending one more week in Phnom Penh with our friends). Maybe I miss Phnom Penh (it’s so different here in Siem Reap so far, and I just don’t like it). Maybe the 6-hour bumpy bus ride did me in. Maybe I’m better at mission-tripping than I am at vacationing. Maybe I’ve got a lot on my heart and mind and need to figure out what to do with it.

Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten an entire tarantula.

I would love your prayers that I can snap out of whatever this is and enjoy the rest of our time. And please pray that God will give me the words to share with all of you because he’s shown me a lot a lot a lot of stuff here and ways that all of us can make a huge difference.

I love you, friends. Thanks for being there.

Panha has been wanting us to try crickets and spiders here, and we’d put him off long enough. On Friday night, he found the perfect roadside stand with every variety of creepy, crawling thing you could ever wish for.

I started our family off by eating a cricket. Veasna told me not to eat the back legs because they’re too sharp, so I held onto it by the legs and bit off the rest. Wow. Crunchy. And yes, I was brushing little bits out of my teeth a couple hours later.

I was so proud of my girlies (and Gabe) who each ate a cricket too.

Whaddya think, Ava? Taste like chicken?

Nina was a little harder to convince, but she did it.

And then we moved on to the big dogs. When they first mentioned eating spiders, either Scot or Keri asked me what kind of spiders they were. I joked that they were probably tarantulas.

They were probably tarantulas.

Scot had already eaten cricket before, so he was the first to pop a 3+inch-long tarantula in his mouth. I went next.

Here goes nothing!

In all honesty, I prefer tarantula to cricket. It’s fried in some sort of teriyaki sauce and was pretty similar to beef jerky. Except for the mental hurdle of knowing you’re eating a TARANTULA.

I was so proud of Livi who also ate a tarantula (Garrett rounded out the Spider Club). Gabe and Nina said no way. And Ava cried the whole way back to the guesthouse in the tuk-tuk because she’d wanted so badly to be brave enough and wasn’t quite.

We promised Ava we’d head back before we leave so she can do the tarantula thing. Who knows? I may eat another one. Such good protein. Or maybe I’ll try snake on a stick, although even some of the locals told me it was pretty yucky.

Signing off. Our five children (Livi, Ava, Nina, Garrett, Nathan) have prepared a re-enactment of the Christmas story for us parents. It’s Christmas morning here in Cambodia. So happy to be celebrating Jesus with our beautiful new friends!!

Happy Merry Christmas to all of you!!

I must lead a pretty lazy, laid-back life in the ol’ US of A. It’s so hard to find time to blog here. Whew. We have a little bit of downtime before dinner, so I’m going to try to find some words.

We had such a wonderful time at the Boys’ Center Christmas party. What a blessing to hang out with 79 kiddos in the afternoon (plus another quite a few in the morning, including some young adult guys who come to learn English). They loved to sing and play games, and the skits were a huge hit. Here’s Yvonne pretending to try to teach English to some unruly students (played by the talented staff).

Speaking of the awesome staff, here they are under the sweet Punlok Thmey banner my sister made for them. I’m excited to give them pictures of the boys so they can put them up all around the center. I also have some canvases and paint for them, so the boys and staff can make their own artwork for some of the walls. Hooray!

Some of Keri’s friends in Singapore donated a ton of boys’ clothes for the center. That’s something they haven’t done previously–have clothes available for the boys (that I know of anyway). There were some cute, cute clothes. How exciting! Something else they’d like to do when they get the funding is provide lunch for the boys each day. They estimate that it will cost around $75, and I’d love to find a way to help make it happen. Anybody in?? If we all banded together, I bet God could take it and run with it.

We are loving having Scot and Keri and their boys here. It’s fun to actually be able to show people around “our” city. The Jenkinses aren’t your typical family though. They live in Singapore and have traveled around Asia quite a bit. This is their first time to Cambodia though.

They loved our kiddos at the orphanage. We played a fun game where Panha stood on the stair landing and counted to three (muy, pii, bey!) before launching a ton of rubber balls out at them. They linked arms with a partner and had to catch/gather as many balls as they could. After we played it several times, our five kiddos launched a secret attack of the silly string.

Keri fell in love with all the kiddos, but Srey Nut spent a good bit of time snuggled up in her lap. She begged us to stay longer (Keri, that is), but we couldn’t. We’ll be back on Saturday!

Speaking of beautiful Keri, she wrote her first post from Cambodia last night. I haven’t actually read it all (it took too long to load because of the big pics/not-so-fast internet connection), but I can guarantee it’s a good one.

Signing off for now. Let me know if there are any specific photos you’d like to see. Like of me eating a tarantula or something. Because I have one of those.

No time for many words this morning, so just some pics.

Lunch at Boat Noodle with the Jenkins fam.

Christmas party at the Boys’ Center.

Gabe and Panha doing a funny skit.

Etch-a-sketches for Panha and Veasna for Christmas. So exciting!

Heading out for another big, fun day. Taking supplies to the Boys’ Center, worship with the staff, lunch at a restaurant on the river, visiting Daughters Shop, Tuol Sleng genocide museum, dinner at Mike’s Burger House with all our friends, fun along the river.

Whew.

More pics later!