Griffith Gleanings JUNE 2017

 

Ecclesiastes 3:1 There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: GRIFFITH GLEANINGS JUNE 2017 Our first experience of a Khmer wedding was like none we had ever experienced. We had not previously met the bride or groom. Our invitation was from our landlord’s family who were related to the bride. We interact daily with our landlord’s family who live downstairs from us. Going to the wedding has deepened the relationships with the whole family. The Khmer people traditionally don’t celebrate birthdays, but they do know how to celebrate a wedding. A wedding is a grand affair, full of colour and festivity. We observed the bride and groom changing their outfits several times in the one day. Each outfit and colour has a significance. The family members closely related to the bride also all wore more than one set of matching outfits. In Khmer culture, family bonds are the ones that are the most important, and a marriage is the inclusion of the couple into their new families.  Cambodia has a tropical monsoon climate with at least two distinct seasons: wet (May to October) and dry (November to April). Due to Cambodia’s location just 10-13 degrees north of the equator, the country is hot and humid. Presently we are seeing the wet season rice crop beginning. The soil is ploughed until it reaches a smooth ‘sloppy’ consistency (soil conservation farming practices are not how it is done here), before it is naturally submerged by the monsoonal rainfall. As we have watched the rice crop being planted we desire to see seeds of hope and transformation among the Khmer people. We are thankful for deepening relationships with Khmer locals in our community and the beginnings of being able to share each others stories. Weddings are joyous occasions lasting at least 2 days. Wet season brings with it some 75% of Cambodia’s annual rainfall. Thankfulness: Three newly trained language nurturers are eager to teach us. Energy and protection. Increasing insights in learning Khmer language and culture. Prayer Requests: Rob and Deb in their separate language classes to listen and retain. Effective language review to continue to gain new Khmer words. Solid preparations and partnerships for future team members preparing to come to Cambodia.

 

GRIFFITH GLEANINGS MAY 2017

Mark 1:1 The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God,

GRIFFITH GLEANINGS MAY Squirting your neighbour with a water pistol and celebrating with loud music may not be everyone’s favourite way to see in the New Year, but this past month involved some milestones for us experiencing culture in our community here in Siem Reap. The Cambodian New Year (Khmer: បុណ្យចូលឆ្នាំថ្មី), or Choul Chnam Thmey in the Khmer language, literally means “Enter New Year”. The Cambodian holiday that celebrates the traditional solar new year coincides with Easter. Some of the traditions of the Cambodian New Year remind us of a Western Christmas. Many homes put up decorations and gifts are given. We shared a number of ceremonies with families in our street that largely involved the family honouring their parents. Birthdays are not usually celebrated in Cambodia, but parents each year can expect their children to come and give them food and gifts and even symbolically ‘shower’ them. We were involved in observing a variety of these ceremonies and family gatherings and had more offers to participate in family celebrations than available time during the three day long weekend. We also were asked to participate in one families ceremonial washing as honoured “adopted” parents that involved us both being washed by all family members. It felt both a humbling experience as well as a deepening of relationship. Here’s a short video message to you our supporters. Click on the link below:  https://vimeo.com/214970852/9db4320139

This Khmer New Year tradition involves ‘showering’ parents and ‘older’ members of the community Khmer New Year is an opportunity for families to gather and give respect, food and gifts to parents.

Thankfulness: Progress in training of three new language nurturers. Participation in celebrations of Khmer New Year with local families. Continued good health and safety. Prayer Requests: For wisdom and discernment of the opportunities of deepening relationships. For persistence and energy in learning the Khmer language and culture.

Griffith Gleanings APRIL 2017

Romans 6:10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

GRIFFITH GLEANINGS APRIL 2017 This month the Khmer new year coincides with Easter. The streets of Siem Reap are festooned for this most important date in the Khmer calendar. Families will gather together in their province of birth to celebrate with food and traditional games. Many shops are selling “super-soaker” style water pistols for the occasion as well. This past month we have been touched by the joy of new life, as well as grief in the death of some loved friends. Grief has different dimensions when it involves a geographical distance. Life and death is celebrated in different ways in Khmer culture that we are beginning to discover. The family of the coffee cart in our street have welcomed into the world their baby girl. The day of the week that a child is born can impact the choice of the name, as can various family members. A “baby shower” type of celebration is planned for 1 month after birth. The fragility of life of a young child in Cambodia we expect has influenced this custom (Children in Cambodia are greater than 10  times the likelihood of death in infancy than a country like Australia). We have had the privilege to visit the family, mother and baby a couple of times now to build on these relationships and we see healthy signs of growth. Many Khmer people in the past week have observed a festival with Chinese influences. Jom Reah Pnoo a “tomb-sweeping” holiday involves families gathering to clean and adorn their ancestors’ graves during the festival. We observed tomb stones being repainted, soil being mounded up higher on top of graves. Watching family members from different generations altogether, taking turns kneeling and offering prayers, after which they begin burning paper offerings. Our language nurturer informs us that each has a symbolic meaning – paper clothes for cover, a house for shelter, passports and visas for travel, and a whole range of fake money notes – in different currencies to save the ancestors the hassle of exchanging money. These material comforts are offered to their ancestors as a way of honouring their ancestors and in the hope that they will be blessed in return. After the ceremony, the family divvies up the food they brought for worship as a sign of good luck and to signify family reunion with their ancestors. In our language learning we have moved to a new phase where we tell stories from wordless books. After our nurturer helps us with our attempts, we listen as our nurturer tell us how a Khmer person would relay the same story. We are also being acquainted with the Khmer alphabet leading to learning simple words to read. Who said, learning to read is child’s play? In our almost 4 months of being here in Cambodia. Whilst living cross culturally we have grieved some significant deaths of Australian loved ones and friends from a distance. Including Deb’s birth mother (as Deb was a foster child from 6 months of age), Deb’s spiritual mentor from our home church, our Pastors wifes’ mother, and this last week one of Deb’s best friends suddenly died. We are grateful for God’s presence, your prayers, love, and supports during this time of grief. This news of death and new beginnings for us frames what we share together in the knowledge of God’s gift to us at Easter. May you this Easter reflect on what that gift of forgiveness and new life means for you and your family. He has risen.

Khmer Chinese families go to ancestors burial sites bearing food, decorative paper, incense, pretend money (they burn) and other offerings. Life giving exercise of bicycle rides, sharing sunrise and some sunsets like this one near Angkor Wat.

Thankfulness: The support and encouragement we receive from your partnership with us. For steady progress in our new phase of language learning. The safe arrival of the coffee cart families baby daughter. Prayer Requests: Patience, persistence and passion to learn language and culture. That Khmer hearts will be moved by the gift of peace and wholeness. For training of new language nurturers for future team needs.

Griffith Gleanings MARCH 2017

1 John 5:14 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.
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GRIFFITH GLEANINGS MARCH 2017
We have started out in Cambodia with the privilege of being primarily focused on learning the Khmer language and culture based in Siem Reap. In addition to daily language and culture lessons, we have found opportunities to build relationships with local Khmer people who also help us with our efforts to begin to speak Khmer and learn about their culture. Within a short walk of our home we have found friendly and patient Khmer who trade fruit and vegetables, cook rice and even a family of coffee baristas!
Enjoying a morning coffee has been a routine of Rob’s for many years, so it was a pleasant surprise to find a coffee cart in our street that served a very nice coffee with locally roasted Cambodian coffee beans. But the coffee has only been one of the attractions to frequenting the families coffee business. Deb has no interest at all in drinking coffee, but being a midwife has enjoyed following the progress of the pregnancy of the coffee cart lady. We both have benefitted from the young families help with Khmer words, sentences, and especially learning how this families aspirations are influenced by the unique opportunities and challenges of a life in the Cambodian city of Siem Reap. Being welcomed into the lives of Khmer people like the coffee cart family does give us a sense that God is involved in these interactions as they share some of their own life journey and hopes for the Khmer people.

Our team leader Mark Holt (visiting from Victoria) & our language nurturer Kim Lean encourage our focus through insights, & cultural understanding.

Like it or not coffee can be a link to build relationships
Thankfulness:
The support and encouragement we receive from your partnership with us.
The privilege of focus on language and culture learning.
Progress in relationship building with local Khmer people.
The growth in families being called to God’s mission in Cambodia.
The answering of many prayers for all the team for Cambodia.
Prayer Requests:
Energy, persistence and capacity to learn to speak Khmer.
That God would open Khmer hearts to receive his good news.
For recruitment and training of new language nurturers for future team needs.
That God would be active in team building in next week’s team retreat.

Griffith Gleanings FEBRUARY 2017

Proverbs 4: 4&5 Lay hold of my words with all your heart…Get wisdom, get understanding, do not forget my words or swerve from them.

GRIFFITH GLEANINGS FEBRUARY 2017
Greetings from Siem Reap, Cambodia. We expect many of you reading this have recently returned into familiar routines at the start of a new year. Since arriving eight weeks ago we have settled into some new habits. Some activities bear some resemblance of what we did in Australia, like getting on a ‘push’ bike for an early morning exercise, but other activities are a world away from life in Oz. Ordering a meal at a local rice shop in a new language, spending hours each day seeking to acquire new words and cultural understanding, and building relationships with locals who are patient enough to put up with our attempts to be understood using our limited Khmer language has become part of our daily routine.
We have began to build a vocabulary in our language lessons that includes around 700 Khmer words, but it still feels like we are a long way from being able to freely converse in Khmer any time soon. We are grateful for the priority we are able to give to language learning at present. Learning more language and culture will always be part of life for us in Cambodia.Thanks for your supports to be here and to be available for his work among the Khmer.

A number of occasions now we have ventured out of the city of Siem Reap and seen some of the rural areas that are more often the places Khmer people call home than the city. As convenient as it is to be surrounded by goods and services a short walk from our door, we feel much more at home away from the sight of concrete and iron and sounds of city life. We look forward to opportunities to explore the country side and to have the language skills in the future to engage with the people who live their life outside the city.

The markets hold so much knowledge and traditions to learn.

Roses express love, orchids express respect, but for Buddhists, there is no flower more important than the humble lotus.

Prayer Requests: Family members transitioning. Safety on the streets. Attentive patterns to learn the Khmer culture and language. Team members in Australia (x5 units) preparing families, churches and themselves to join us all in Cambodia.
Praise Points: Good health, opportunities to exercise, safety on roads. Opportunities to be exposed to this culture and learn the Khmer language. Beginnings of Khmer friendship connections. The help we receive adjusting to life here from our friendly Aussie team mates Scott, Janelle, Rosie and Isaac Windus.