Cambodia 2015: Day 7 - Solid Rock
In the morning, the team helped to run a service hosted by Solid Rock that was attended by many of the local schools and lots of the local community that are part of the outreach programme, including Pastor Naru and his football team, to whom we lost ‘narrowly’ to the day before. The service was full of powerful singing and dancing in both Khmer and English, with bible readings. The team then stepped up and, led by the ever energetic Jonny, taught the crowd the words and actions to the song ‘My God is so big’, and we finished our time on stage with the song ‘From Ashes to Beauty’.
After this, the attendees were split into two groups, the adults and the children. Michael led a service for the adults which included messages from the gospel whilst Jonny and the rest of the team performed a very "ad-lib" production of the story of Daniel. Following this piece of drama, we played games and made balloon animals with the children. It was a delight to see that they participated in the activities with such joy.
In the afternoon, Professor Ningwen and Dr Castro performed surgery to remove a tumour from a patient who was examined at the medical clinic which took place the day before. The patient was suffering from pain with this tumour for 2 years. Ningween's assessment was that due to the condition of the patient and also she would not have been able to afford help anywhere else, this surgical option was the best for the patient. The operation would not affect any of her function including breastfeeding. This was his assessment to relief her from the pain and to send the tumour to the lab which has to be paid for and not covered by government.
Professor Ningwen, assisted by Dr Castro, Sis. Gayle and Sis. Bicol worked for 3 hours to remove the tumour. All in all the operation was a great success, with the tumour being completely removed and no damage being caused to the patient. Needless to say, both the patient and her mother were very grateful and we await the results of the pathological examination of the tumour to see if it is benign or malignant.
After the operation, we boarded the bus and said our final goodbyes to the children of Solid Rock, we then travelled 3.5 hours to Phnom Penh, the capital, and enjoyed dinner at a Chinese restaurant. The BLi team then presented love gifts to the staff at Solid Rock, including many of the older children from the orphanage who were such amazing translators and companions.