I know it’s been along time since I have written a blog post, but this time i can claim something more than just laziness. Our computer crashed and was down for a month or two before we could get it fixed. Then I didn’t know the password for the word press account since it was Lori who had set it up, and she didn’t remember either…

The last thing I wrote about was Christmas, and there has been a lot that has happened since then.  I’ll skim over some of the highlights and use parts of newsletter articles I wrote so some of this might be old news.

January 9^th the well team decided to try to drill in a village that they had discovered through Chhom’s brother. They had driven back in to the village the week before to check things out and decided we should definitely put priority on drilling for them.

There are around 250 families that live there. Their only water supply is a pond that dries up in dry season. They also catch rain water from the roof but since it has practically stopped raining that isn’t any good. Once the pond dries up, they will either have to drive 4 miles to get water, or buy water from someone who makes the trip.

The road back into the village is so bad that even though it is only 4 miles it takes an hour to make it with a truck. Unfortunately there is too much rock in the area so they couldn’t drill by hand. So we discussed it with the board and decided that we would get somebody to drill with a drill rig. Since the price to do three wells is only a little more than a single well we decided to space the three within the village.

When we went out to try drilling the first time we had quite a crowd of spectators.

In the last of January we had something exciting happen after church. We had known for a few weeks that Chhom’s Mom was thinking about becoming a Christian, and soon after the service, Chhom’s parents told us they talked about it and both of them wanted to become Christians. So Dad, Elton, and Sen had a little meeting with them asking them some questions and explaining some other things. Once sure they understood, several of us gathered around them and had prayer with/for them. After that they wanted us to go with them to their home to take down and burn all their Bhudist things, and pray a blessing on the house.

While we were doing that, Dad was telling them about the power of prayer, and that if they ever get discouraged they should pray. Frank who was translating went on to tell them about a prayer of his that was clearly answered. Then Frank  looked over at Chhom’s brother and told him that he and his wife should pray for children. They have been married for six years and don’t have any children but really want some. When Elton heard what they were talking about he shared how he and Laura had a doctor tell them they would never have children, but somebody prayed with/for them and they now have 5. Then he suggested that we should pray for this couple. When Frank asked them if they  wanted us to pray for them the lady got a sparkle in her eye and said yes. So we gathered around them prayed that they could have children and through the answered prayer become Christians. Since then there have been several other converts in the village. Most of the new converts are others in Chhom’s family, but i think there are others as well.

Burning spirit houses ect.

While we were there to burn the things Frank found these butterflies and called me over to get some pictures.

There are several interesting conversion stories from out there. I’ll tell you one of them. One of the ladies who just got converted has a little baby, and she noticed that in week that followed her conversion the baby was always crying. So when Elton and Sokhom came out there the next time she wanted them to pray for it. So they along with some of the Christians from there gathered around. While they were standing there Chhom’s mom noticed that the baby still had a budhist necklace tied around it’s neck. She said there wasn’t any reason to keep that, so they cut it off and then prayed for the baby. Almost immediately the baby stopped crying, and a week later the mom said that it was still as quiet and as happy could be.

Early in February Dad’s cousin Phil Yoder brought his family over to visit for a week. We got them to do  some of the tourist stuff, but had even more fun doing things like taking them out on the lake, playing volleyball, ect. One very untouristy thing that we did was going fishing…Let me explain, there was a very small pond that we  knew had a decent amount of fish. So we set up two pumps to pump the pond dry. When it was close to dry everybody who wanted to got in the mud and tried to catch the fish with our hands. We had to be careful to try to figure out what kind of fish it was before we caught it because there were a lot of catfish there to. For those of you who don’t know a catfish has poison in two of the fins that feels about like a bee. So everybody was fairly cautious. We really enjoyed having them around.

Phil’s family.

We took Phil’s out to the lake and stopped to watch these guys fishing for a bit.

Two fish that the fishermen caught.

Trying out crickets.

All of the cousins in order of age…The bag that Ryan is holding represents Lori…She was really missed when Phils were here.

This month is turning out to be a very busy one. We had a team from Hillcrest come for a week. We put them to work part of the time, but we had a plenty of fun with them too. It was great having a lot of youth around even if it was only for a week.

The team that was here from Hillcrest.

The night before the Hillcrest group left we had two visitors come as a part of the SALT program we have. They were here to give some training to Sokhom, Hong, and Elton. We really didn’t find out much about them since they were staying at Eltons, but it sounded as if they got the training done that they came for.

The rest of this month sounds busy too. Jon and Veasna are getting married on the 22nd, and there are a decent amount of people coming for the wedding. So things will be busy from that too.

One evening we saw people putting up hot air balloons

Alaina’s 4th Birthday was March 22. 

A little jumping spider

Well that’s all for now 🙂

Luke for the Helmuths.