Watching The Road

Yesterday I went to visit two Cambodian friends who live in the same house. They don’t have a phone or email so knocking on the door is the only way to keep in contact. The older of the two women was at home but the young woman (who I’m closer friends with) was out. We talked and caught up on threads of news.

Then she told me that the younger woman had been “watching the road” for me. I wasn’t sure what she meant. I asked if I had failed to show up at a certain time when I had committed to visit? The older woman explained that this phrase just means that she misses me very much and is looking forward to my next visit. Between the times we see each other it is as though she is continually “watching the road” for my return.

This probably sounds cheesy in English but in Khmer I think the phrase is touching. It made me realise that there are many people that I am watching the road for too.

The Barbarian Way

Erwin Raphael McManus writes in The Barbarian Way-

Perhaps the tragedy of our time is that such an overwhelming number of us who declare Jesus as Lord have become domesticated- or, if you will, civilized. We have lost the simplicity of our early faith. Beyond that, we have lost the passion and power of that raw, untamed, and primal faith. Maybe John was alluding to the Apocalypse when he told the church at Ephesus that they had lost their first love (Revelation 2:1-4). God's command to Israel was simply, "Love the LORD you God with all your heart and will all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments I give to you today are to be written on your hearts." (Dueteronomy 6:5-6). And when Jesus was asked, "What is the greatest of all the commandments?" and "How do I inherit eternal life?" His answer was the same, except to all that we are to love our neighbour as ourselves (Mark 10:17-19; 21:28-31.)

[I like this descriptive version of the result of salvation in Zechariah 3:9b-10: "...I will remove the sins of this land in a single day. And on that day, says the LORD Almighty, each of you will invite your neighbour into your home to share your peace and prosperity."]

McManus continues:
The barbarian way is about love, intimacy, passion and sacrifice. Barbarians love to live and live to love. For them God is life, and their mission is to reconnect humanity to Him. Their passion is that each of us might live in intimate communion with Him who died for us. The barbarian way is a path of both spirit and truth. The soul of the barbarian is made alive by the presence of Jesus.

Be careful bloggers...

I read this on the SHM site today....

Law reins in wild webbers
Kenneth NguyenOctober 13, 2006

BLOGGERS beware: thoughtless musings in cyberspace can have costly consequences.

That's one lesson that might be gleaned from a Florida jury's decision last week to order a Louisiana woman to pay $US11.3 million ($15.2 million) in compensation, after she used an internet forum to accuse another woman of being a con artist and a fraud. The damages award is believed to be the largest relating to amateur postings on the internet....

When in Koh Kong

I had one of those- "Yep, I'm in Cambodia" moments recently.

I was traveling for work when my colleagues decided it was time for lunch. We stopped at a roadside stall and the owner brought out the dishes of the day. (No menu here; the place was too small for us to be able to choose.) One of the dishes contained a finely chopped meat with green beans and chili. A few of us were curious and asked the owner, "What kind of meat is this?"
She replied, "Tragoot."

And that meant something to all the Cambodian people I was eating with… but I had to keep investigating to find out that tragoot is:

a) a wild animal
b) like a crocodile but smaller
c) a "crawling animal" / some kind of reptile or lizard
d) almost extinct

Unfortunately I didn't get to point d) until after I had eaten my share of the endangered species with a plate of rice and a cup of iced tea.

While the others didn't seem to feel too bad about their transgression, I was already feeling a pang of guilt for my contribution to the destruction of the planet when later that afternoon something happened to make it even worse. Three of us were standing in front of a TV tuned to Animal Planet when one colleague pointed to the screen and said- "Pip, look! That's the animal we ate for lunch!" Oops.

Long time no blog

Long time no blog...One reason for being slack in posting is that work now takes me out of Phnom Penh about once or twice a week.

Even so...I've been more interested in being with people, soaking up life and being involved in what is going on around me lately. I've let the afternoon coffee meeting stretch into dinner. I've stayed for the eight-year-old's birthday party when I had planned to just drop in. I've sat at the kitchen table sipping a Diet Coke and talking for an hour rather than doing some "proper language study". It has been fun!