GRIFFITH GLEANINGS JUNE 2018

We have such a privilege to be living in this rural part of Cambodia. One of the life giving things we like to do around where we live is to take a bicycle ride in the coolest part of the day. Our own village is surrounded by rice fields, vegetable plots and homes encircled by tropical fruit trees, coconuts and palm trees. Our neighbours will often call out greetings, which frequently involves asking us where we are going. Occasionally we go for a longer cycle for 30 or 40 kilometres that can take us to some beautiful and interesting places. As we waited for some friends to join us for one of our long bicycle rides, we met the village lolly man who crafts animals on sticks from multi-coloured toffee to sell to children waiting outside the local village school. The children gathered to watch him making them chickens, rabbits, fish and elephants etc. He told us he does this because he did not have lollies growing up. Deb shared she could relate to not having many lollies as a child, but then he expanded that actually he did not have much food growing up. His story impacted on us, as does his joy and life choices. This is not a healthy treat but it comes from this mans heart to bring delight to children watching him plying his craft to create their own edible art. The Khmer people are open to sharing their life stories as we go about our every day lives here. These stories are shaping us and guiding us to walk alongside the Khmer people that God brings our way. Join us in praying that God’s sweet love will have a lasting and transforming impact on the lives of Khmer people we share with as we go about our everyday lives here.

Watering a garden is more than just turning on a tap. For Rob at the school there is an underground well that requires someone to wind a handle to fill a watering can. Watering is something Rob and his students are doing a lot of to help grow the garden produce. Now we see the importance of water for life is vital in any growth, really relationships are similar to growing a plant. A seed is sown, nurtured with water and nutrients and behold a plant grows, fruit and foliage appears and provides a place of shade and shelter. In a relationship a chance meeting becomes an acquaintance, it turns into friendship when you meet often and a level of trust is developed. Then you continue nurturing the relationship through care, love, a feeling of mutual respect and comfort. When you water the plants of your relationships they may turn into deeply rooted and sturdy trees. Through these long lasting relationships we pray that there will be plants of God’s kingdom grown.

Thank you for how you partner with us and allow us to be a part of this privilege of seeing God’s transforming work here in Siem Reap Cambodia.

Prayer Requests:
For full recovery of Rob after recent surgery.
For the preparations and partnerships of the 3-4 families soon to be new team members.
For our growth and understanding in our Khmer relationships.

GRIFFITH GLEANINGS MAY 2018

ROB

The Khmer have a word for hard, compacted, difficult to work with soil. ‘Nain’ is a word that I think even sounds harsh to say. I think I have found the most ‘nain’ soil in all of Cambodia. It is at the front of the Chreav school yard, where I hope with the help of the Chreav community to start a school garden. The soil is so nain that the points of a pick hoe that I and the children have been using to break up the earth is bent almost at right angles to the direction it is meant to go. Maybe this is also evidence of the quality of the tools available at my local hardware store, or the many rocks mixed with the nain soil, but it is so nain that my hands are also blistered from trying to penetrate it with various tools. This past week I got a neighbour to deliver a load of sandy soil that hopefully mixed with the clay, might make the soil a little less hostile to the roots of vegetables.
The garden project at Chreav school has often reminded me of the parable of the sower. The school has some rocky ground, some nasty weeds to compete with, but at the moment the ‘good soil’ is more like the path that was trampled on and where the birds ate the seed. Someone reminded me this week that the parable story can be an encouragement just to keep doing the task of “spreading the seed” as we have little control of how the seed is received by the soil. Interestingly the Khmer bible translation identifies the ‘sower’ as a man…maybe a cultural insight for study another day where vegetables are mostly sown my women who place seeds by hand in the carefully prepared soil! Talking of things called ‘Nain’, a little before the sower parable in the Matthew gospel, Jesus raises a dead child to life in a town called Nain. The Hebrew word ‘Nain’ means “green pastures” or “lovely”. At the moment I look forward to the day when I can think of the Hebrew meaning of the word ‘Nain’ for the garden at Chreav school rather than the current soil quality.

DEBHe has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Colossians 1:13-14
God rescues. Pondering on the verse above redemption is past tense but spills over to my current circumstances. I accept part of my redemption story God is still in writing. Lately I have been musing through God’s rescue through ‘redemption’ (a term that describes, not just saving, but gaining or recovering possession of something through payment, like clearing a debt).

God works redemption through his Son, Jesus Christ, it is through Jesus Christ that all of life is made well and whole, all of life is healed and restored, all of life is put right. Now our language program called Growing Redemptive Participatory Approach (GRPA) has 6 phases. Presently I am well into phase 4; a phase of Deep Life Sharing. Really this is a make-or-break phase, or perhaps the sink-or-swim phase. This is the phase when life among the Khmer people needs to take off. Really the cause and effect of the relationship building among the Khmer people resonates within me deeply. I sense God’s redeeming work at hand. I am moved by the privilege to come alongside Khmer people and listen with my ears, heart and soul to their life stories.

Living within the village now I am told by our Khmer community here I have become part of their families, homes, community, their hearts, their lives. I am not ever going to be a Khmer person but being an accepted outsider brings privilege, honour, pain, Khmer cultural responsibilities I am still learning; transformation and a deeper grasp of God’s redemptive work in me and for my Khmer friends.

A recent experience of God’s redemptive work in me whilst sharing life here. For the Khmer families living around us, a big part of their agricultural work is through long hours as rice farmers. We have witnessed our Khmer friends through these seasons of preparing the land, ploughing, sowing, ensuring it is well watered using channels and drains, making sacrifices and request for good favour over their crops, harvesting, drying, for some hand harvesting and threshing their rice, collecting the rice straw ‘hay’, finally storing the rice and hay. Then our Khmer friends will wait to sell their rice storing it by filling in and around their homes with piles of near to 100 kilogram bags of rice.

Waiting until the rice price is higher. Acknowledging that most Khmer people in these rural areas they do not have bank accounts. Rice is not only a staple part of the Khmer diet, but a currency here in rural Cambodia. Recently we were with our Khmer friends as they sold their rice which we have watched them labour over together in all the processes to get it this far and the ‘good rice price’ was 20 cents/kg. This reality of intense work labour and earning what to me (my cultural head space) is so little in return ‘costs me’ (it hurts deeply) as I adjust my cultural views and understandings to celebrate alongside my Khmer friends who are delighted with a good rice price. The value of the Khmer people to God does not dip nor wane but is a constant and they do not have to work for it. The price God paid he did for me, for you, and for the Khmer too. I am grateful for how you all are a family to us in these spaces and places of sharing his light, hope and love. I claim and release my growing pains in Khmer culture and in Khmer relationships daily and in these processes welcome God’s redeeming story at work within me and within the Khmer people. By acknowledging my personal cost and pain I am welcoming God’s redemptive work within me and ways I can share Him who sees the Khmer people as priceless treasures and that they each individually are worth the King’s ransom.