Phnom Penh

This is Vicki Penwell and I at our team dinner!! She is one of the most amazing people I have met!! She lives in the Philippines and has started midwife clinics and other health clinics in several countries! I would love to go and work with her!!
This is Jodi, Steph, me and Seang at the Khmer wedding we went to! Jodi was my roomate in Kona. Steph is one of my teammates from Hondurus. Seang was my translator last time I was in Cambodia, when I was in the town of Battambang. He came down for the wedding and it was such a nice surprise to see him!!!
This is Kom Saut!! He is an AIDS orphan at the AIDS hospital that we went to. He was so serious the first day we were there, but the next day I got a few smiles out of him and the last day he was laughing!! He is so sweet!! It broke my heart to leave him!! I want to take him home!! But AIDS children are not allowed to be adopted outside of Cambodia:( See you in heaven, Kom Saut!!:)
I went to see the Killing Fields this week! That was emotionally heavy!! But it is essential to understand what the Cambodian people went through in the past! This is a picture of the many, many heads that were uncovered in the mass graves from the people that the Khmer Rouge killed!! Now the majority (about 80%) of Cambodians are under the age of 30 because 30 years ago, the Khmer Rouge tried to kill off most of the people! They especially targeted those that were educated! Cambodia continues to struggle to rebuild it's economy. The children and youth are the future of Cambodia and many of them do not even have enough food to eat each day!!
On our way to one of the orphanages we worked at we would have to take a ferry accross the river and we would pass this floating village. The river rises about 12m every rainy season but these people's homes float so they don't flood like many of the other homes!! There were also whole villages of 'house boats'!! So many of the people live in such extreme poverty! Now that our official training is done, we are focusing on providing health care to those who don't have access to it. This often involves doing teachings on basic life saving things such as hand washing, oral rehydration solution to prevent deaths from diarrhea and dehydration, (the solution is just water, sugar and salt!!) and breastfeeding! People in Cambodia have traditions that they have been practicing for generations that are often quite harmful. One of the latest ones I learned about, from the director of a hospital we have been working at, was discribed to me as the 'baking mom'!! In the villages, right after a woman has had a baby, they build a fire under the stilts the house is on so that the heat and smoke from the fire go through the wooden slat floor boards and cook the mom! They get this idea from the concept of when you cook meat it stops bleeding!! In reality, the woman's temperature rises which increases her heartrate and makes her pump out more blood!! Also, the baby often dies because it cannot fight the heat and the smoke to breast feed! This is just one of the ideas in the villages here in Cambodia that is increasing the mother and baby mortality rate!! It is so sad!! As we are preparing to leave for the villages next week, I am wondering what other things we will encounter! I don't think there will be internet access there, but I will update this as soon as I can! Some prayer requests for the next few days and weeks would be: for safe travels as we take a bus up to Siam Reap to see Angkor Wat and then back to Phnom Penh, for team unity and health, and safe travels up to the province of Ritana Kiri and around to the 20 some villages we may treck to when we are there, also for protection because some of the local people in the church up there are being persucuted for their faith. I am really excited to be going to the villages!:) I pray that God opens the doors to go to all the places he wants us to go to and that those we meet see his love through us! Love and Prayers, Sherina!!! :)