In the past two months since Lori left there hasn’t been many blog worthy happenings, but I’ll try to tell a few of them. But first are a few random pics i thought ya’ll might like.

Frank Chillin out 🙂

Alaina…

One of the highlights in April was a visit from Elvin and Ruth Martin. They live about 45 minutes from our place in South Carolina, but had been living with the DNI mission in Phnom Penh for 6 months. They decided to stop in for two days on the way up to Thailand. We had a lot of fun showing them around Siem Reap.

In the beginning of May they started filling in the pond across the road from us. Grrr. The little bit of country side around our house is fast disappearing. They finished filling the pond in and connecting the drain line the other day, and I am guessing that they will soon start building a house on the lot.

On May 12^th Ryan left to go back states side for Bruce Wagler’s wedding, and to work for a month before we come back on furlough. So far he has been having fun working and connecting with friends again.

The night after Ryan left we had a visit from some Mennonites that are starting a mission in Battambang. It was fun having visitors, even if we didn’t know them before. They were very glad they stopped in, because we told them about CAM’s 25 Bible Stories books that we had printed. They had been looking for something like them but didn’t know anybody had any in Khmer. They took a couple hundred that night. They soon had these all passed out and were wondering if they could have some more to hand out. We gave them 4000 more, and they are already wondering when we could do a reprinting as they would like to help expenses on it.

Then Monday the 18^th a mission team from Hillcrest came to spend just a little over a week here. We had a lot of work for them to do and pretty much kept them hopping from the time they got here to when they left. Don’t get me wrong, we had a lot of fun with them to, but it was busy enough that a week seemed like 2 maybe 3 days. On Monday afternoon after they got here they went out and passed out Bible Story books at one of the village schools. We stood beside the road on both sides of the school, so that the teachers wouldn’t get in trouble for having Christian literature passed out in the school. Soon the kids started coming from the school and word got out that we were handing out books. A big crowd came rushing out and in a couple of minutes 400 books were gone and there were still kids that hadn’t gotten any. That evening a big storm came through that blew over 20+ electric poles and some houses, including Sokhum’s sister’s house. So Tuesday morning we went out to her place to help her take her house apart and salvage what building materials we could. We had the house apart before lunch so we took a long break trying to figure out if we could help anybody else in the area, before eating lunch and going home. That evening we went out to the village and they taught all the younger classes. Wednesday morning we went to teach English again. Then after lunch we went to the floating village…While there I sold my camera to one of them J, but after Wednesday I don’t have any pics.L Sorry for that, but I wanted it sold and wasn’t sure how I was going to sell it so I was very happy for that. Thursday we loaded up on the white truck and went to a poor fishing village to hand out Bible Story books. This village is back off the main road and the people back in there would see very few foreigners. Handing out books was a huge success. The children came swarming for the books, and even the adults were happy to have them. In 4 hours we had handed out all 2000 books we had along. The only downside of the day was that it was very hot. I think everybody was sunburned when we headed for home.  Friday we had a work day out at the school. We cleared out some brush and leveled out five dump truck loads of dirt by hand. On top of this we also spread out half of a termite mound. Needless to say everybody was very ready to go home by the time quitting time came around. Amazingly we still had enough energy to play volleyball for youth in the evening. Saturday morning they went to Angkor Wat with Mom and Dad, while us children spent a very relaxing day at home. Then after lunch they went to the silk farm with Matt. Monday the biggest project for the girls was painting Miriam’s kitchen for her. Then in the evening most of us went up to the mountain to watch a beautiful sunset. Tuesday morning they headed back to Phnom Penh to catch their plane back home. They were a big blessing to us while they were here. All the work they did and also just having more youth around was a lot of fun.

The house that blew over.

Taking apart the roof.

The floating village.

Crocodile

Where did he go? 🙂

Isn’t he cute…photo credits Ashlin Good.

Some of them were brave enough to try the half incubated duck eggs.

Well that was up to two weeks ago, right now things are really busy, because WE ARE COMING HOME ON FURLOUGH TOMORROW!!! So as you can imagine with a family of 9 (the oldest two aren’t here) it takes a lot of work to get everything packed and ready to go, get the house cleaned, and do all the last minute things (like getting this post finished). We did have one disappointment though. We bought our tickets planning on being there six weeks almost seven, but found out this week that the tickets are made out for five weeks almost six. It looks like it will be a really busy five weeks and I will try to fill you in on what happened when we come back.

So until next time…

Luke for the Helmuths.