Day 1 - Kampong Phluk
Kampong Phluk, what a village!
Also known as the floating village where homes are built on stilts upto 12 meter high to accommodate the flooding when the waters of the great River Mekong back flows into the Tonle Sap Lake.
On this occasion, we were here during the low season so we could experience the height of these houses. We set up the medical clinic and saw over 100 patients today, thanks to Dr. Castro and Dr. Ivan and the fantastic supporting team!
We had great fun with children ministry despite the missing luggage which had all our children ministry stuff inside. (Side story: Jonny and Brian's luggage got lost in transit yesterday in India, hence they ended up buying and wearing traditional khmer clothes yesterday and today - but praise God, the luggage appeared later today so all is well again!).
We also built a water pump which went 26 meters below the ground to enable us to draw clean underground water (see photo gallery). We also built the water filter systems (as generously supplied by our charity partner: Homespun Environmental from Texas, USA) which had a carbon filter and a sawyer filter which kills 99.9% of the bacteria. The water from the pump is poured into the water filter and out comes drinkable filtered water - hoorah! Thank you Russ & Kate for providing these precious water filters and blessing them to the people of this Cambodian village!
Learning how the villagers in Kampong Phluk lived is indeed humbling. These villages literally make use of the every resource available to them to make a way of living possible. From using an old car wheel as the school bell; to using PVC pipes and suction to draw water meters below and upto their home on high stilts; to their home toilets within the stilted homes with a big well / hole below where the waste is collected and buried.
They are also forced to use the river water for their washing and cleaning, even though this is also where their wastes enters. So clean water is essential to their development. The medical cases we saw today also point to the issues of not having clean water as the root cause for many of their ailments.
After a hard days work, we were treated to a buffer dinner and a folk dance show. Really very nice.
PRAYER
Please continue to pray for us. NingWen and Winston have yet to arrive, as their flight to Shanghai, where they were transiting got cancelled. We just heard that they will be arriving tomorrow evening - please pray that they will arrive safely without any more delays.
Also pray for good health for the team members, adjusting to the heat and humidity and fighting jet lag at the same time and having a heavy schedule will take its toil.