Random Photos from the Jungles

Angkor Wat

This is Ankgor Wat! There are over 100 temples there! It would take forever to see them all! These temples were built over 600 years.
This was one of the places that Indiana Jones was filmed. There were so many tourists there that it was hard to take pictures.
This was outside the local hospital there in Siem Reap. Dengue Fever is a day biting misquito and I got several bites while we were there so I really hope that I don't get it!!
Well in 2 days we are off to the remote villages until Nov 18. I probably won't be able to update this before then. Thanks for your continued prayers:) God Bless!!

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!!! :)

Cambodia

Back in Cambodia!! It's always an adjustment getting used to the weather! It is still the end of moonsoon season so it rains a lot!! Feels like a humid sauna!! LOL We are in the capital city of Phnom Penh. It is very noisy, dirty and busy! Lots of traffic! Gives a whole new meaning to the term, traffic jam! lol It is pretty common to get respiratory infections here because the air is so dirty. One of the girls on my team has had a couple scary asthma attacks:( We are still in school so we have classes every day all day long! This week is childbirth and neonatal care with Vicky Penwell. She has been a midwife for 30 years and has opened many clinics in different countries in the world! I think it's really neat that she is here teaching us because when I was 15 I went on a missions trip to Mexico and worked with her in a clinic! She currently lives in the Philippines and has helping to deliver over 12,000 babies in poverty areas! She is a wealth of knowledge! I would love the opportunity to shadow her and see what she does! She has told us some stories that I will never forget!!! She is probably one of the most amazing people I have met! I am loving this week of classes!! It is stirring up even more all the passions I have for pregnant moms and babies! We heard the statistics for how many mother die in childbirth related causes!! Most of these deaths could be prevented if there were more trained birth attendants! Simple things like showing the moms that their babies need to be dried off when they are born, kept warm and breast fed would save about 30% of the babies that are dying!!! People like Bill Gates have started programs getting ladies in North America to knit caps and blankets for babies to help save lives!! It's so hard to think that something so simple could make the difference in the HUGE number of babies that die every year!!! I could keep going with all the facts and sad stories we are hearing about, but it would be really overwhelming! I have spent a lot of time crying this week! One of the nice things about this school is that we get to cry, pray and learn all at the same time! Very holistic learning! lol

We are being very well fed and housed here in Phnom Penh!! We have 4 local girls who cook most of our meals during the week! They even cook my food special without garlic because they know I'm allergic! They are so sweet!! One of the girls is married and 5 1/2 months pregnant. We did a prenatal exam on her and bought an instrument so she could hear her baby's heartbeat! It was the first time that she had heard it! She was very touched! She is going to bring her husband so he can hear it too!

Next week we are learning about AIDS. We have already learned that AIDS doesn't kill near as many people as diarrhea or malnutrition though!! It is actually a really small percentage but seems to get all the media attention. That's one of the nice things about coming to a developing country, you can see for yourself what is really going on and not just what the media wants you to think!! We will also get to work in a hospital here and do some clinics in the slum areas!!

Thank you for reading this and for your prayers, support and encouragment!!:)

The above pictures are from our day on the river cruise. The first one is of raw pig on the back of a motto!! Anyone hungry?! lol The second one is me on the boat. Sorry it is sideways, couldn't figure out how to turn it! The third one is a river shanty town. It was so poor! The fourth one we were having dinner at this restaurant and it started raining so hard!! We had to run for cover!! But it was a beautiful view until then!! The fifth one is of one of the palaces here! I hope you enjoy!! Love, Sherina

My Last Week in Hawaii :(

I can't believe that I will be leaving Hawaii in less than 3 days!! The past 3 months have just flown by! I am really excited to be able to come home for 4 days!! I hope that I can see as many of you as possible! My plan is to be at Pacific Community Church on Sunday Sept 23.
This last week of school has been really, really intense and stressful, but I have learned so much! We had an EMT from Seattle area teach us about Emergency Medical Treatment. Several times a day during the teaching lectures, there would be people screaming and we would hear loud sounds and have to rush outside to find some people bleeding and badly hurt! I have to applaud our patients and the make up team, because they did such a realistic job! I think my heart rate has been double for this whole week!! The last scene we had was a 2 car accident with 7 casualties! It was so realistic that we had a huge crowd of bystanders and a nurse who rushed over from a nearby apartment building. Our staff had tried to warn as many people as possible without any of us students finding out about it. We had to do triage, treatment and transport for all of the casualties. They had even called 911 to let them know that they were doing a 'mock' accident because apparently they get called every year!! This week was so intense that many of us resorted to tears! We understood why our teacher came a day early and took us out on a fun boating adventure to go snorkeling and bond with us! And that day of snorkeling was probably one of our funnest days here! But during the week, we sure learned how to work under pressure!! So even though I have learned so much at this school, I still feel that there is so much more to learn! I am excited to be able to use what I do know to help people in Cambodia and Thailand. I am flying to Cambodia by myself :( on Sunday Sept 23! We have recently learned that in one of the remote northern provinces of Cambodia, where we will be going, they are have just started to persecute the Christians there for their faith! If you can pray for us that we would still be able to impact those whom God has for us there and that he will protect us and keep us safe! There is still a possibility that we may go to Myanmar (Burma) which is a lot more dangerous, so just pray that God opens the door for that if it's his will. Several of my team members have been feeling sick this week:( Jessica has a respiratory infection so pray that God heals her quickly!! One of my staff, Tom, has flown back to the mainland to be with his sister as she has surgery for cancer. He is planning on rejoining us in Cambodia. Pray that God uses this time to restore their relationship and that he restores Tom's sister to himself! Our school leader Freidhelm's mom is dying of cancer in Germany and he is still torn between coming to Cambodia or going home to Germany to be with his mom. Freidhelm is currently at a big YWAM health care conference in India with another one of our staff. Pray for clear decision for Freidhelm and for his mom's healing and relationship with God. My roommate Jodi has suffered from migraine headaches for 10 years. Last week during a counseling session here on campus, she felt God delivered her from those headaches!!! But since then has been suffering from mild headaches everyday so we are praying for her complete deliverance!! Also pray for continued unity among our team that we may go out full of God's love!!:) Thank you so much for all your continued support, encouragement, prayers and love!! I am attempting to add some pictures from this week of the day snorkeling and also the traumas we experienced in class. Hope to see many of you later this week!! Love you!!!

My Second Month

Well August has just flown by! I've been so busy and computers and me don't get along very well so the few times that I have started to update this my computer has decided to act up!! Not my fault at all I am sure!! lol :P We have learned so many things in the last month that I am not sure that I can remember them all!! One of the main focuses was nutrition and the different types of malnutrition. We learned how to use a mix chart with staple foods such as rice, maize or potatoes and mix that with beans or eggs or sweet potatoes etc to make a complete protein. We studied some of the common deficiencies in Cambodia especially and what foods were available there that the people could eat to prevent those deficiencies. One of my favorite weeks was last week. We had a lady teaching us on how to do teachings in the villages. We weren't allowed to bring our laptops to class or switch on the AC and we had to do group presentations in village style settings. All week we had to sit and study on the floor! This teacher even made me cry with some of the tough questions she made us ponder but she ended up being one of my favorites and one that challenged me and made me think about some really hard issues! My group presentation was on breastfeeding. We talked about the importance of breastfeeding for the baby and the mother and why, especially the importance of giving the baby the first breast milk-the colostrum. In many cultures this is not done. This last week brought together our teachings on world view, cultures and some of the key issues we had been studying and how to present that in a village setting! It was really hands on and useful and we know have a valuable teaching to take with us to Cambodia.
The last few weeks there have been a few changes to our team. Our teammate and roommate, Jenni, went home so know we are down to 9 students and only 3 people in my room. It was hard to say goodbye to her and there were lots of tears! Funny thing is that her flight got cancelled and the airlines put her up for 2 nights in the Hilton hotel!! It is one of the most expensive hotels on the island!! (I think its like $500/night!) A few of us girls borrowed a car and drove out to spend the day with her! It was so much fun enjoying there beautiful beach and snorkeling! A wonderful last day with Jenni! We also lost 2 of our staff a month early because they had a huge conference to go to in India!! We are missing them but know that it is important for them to be there!! Another staff, Tom, might be leaving soon to go look after his aging sister who just got diagnosed with a late stage of breast cancer:( We will be so sad to see him go but understand the need for him to be with his sister. We are praying for her healing and would appreciate your prayers too! Her name is Kathy. Tom would then try to meet up with us in Cambodia as soon as he was able while his wife stayed with us. We are really praying that he does not have to go!! Tom's wife Cindy is my small group leader and I have had some dinners and talks with them and they are so wonderful!! I think that God has amazing plans for us in Cambodia and the enemy is trying to distract from that so please pray for this!!

I have not felt as tired this last week, (other than the day I stayed up til 2am doing my presentation!! lol), and have not gotten seriously sick other than 1 migraine headache, so that is very good!! Most of my teammates and staff have gotten sick with stomach problems and diarrhea:( I would really appreciate your continued prayers for my health especially as we head to Cambodia!!
The first week I was here on of the staff mentioned that one of our teachers would be the school leader of a midwife school in the Philippines. My heart started racing as soon as I heard about that program!! We will not be receiving this teaching from her until we are in Cambodia and I was just going to wait and talk with the teacher then about the midwife school, but my roommate Jodi, who is also very interested in the program, ended up looking it up online and found out that we only have a few weeks left to apply for the next school which starts in March!!! So we have both emailed for application forms to be sent to us and are anxiously awaiting the reply!! 2 years is at times sounding like a long time to me especially when I would love to get married and have a family, but if its what God is calling me to-I want to do it!!! This program that we are inquiring about is 2 years in the Philippines. It gives you the certification to deliver babies in North America. It is primarily based out of a hospital that delivers about 1,500 babies a year!! I am really excited about the prospect of getting this training! Mothers and babies are so close to my heart and I would love to be able to make a difference in the number of mothers and babies that die from preventable deaths!!:( Please pray for me about this as it would be a big commitment for me!!

My outreach fees for going to Cambodia and Thailand are due next week!!! As of the moment I still owe over $3,000!! (American:( I know this is where God wants me to be right now so I am willing to put this on my creditcard and try to pay it off when I come home but I would really rather not have to do this! If any of you feel it on your heart to partner with me in sharing God's love in a practical way with the poor and needy, I would soooooooo appreciate it!! You can send a check to my parents home address (they prefer it not be posted on this site as anyone can read it, but email me or contact them and we can get that too you!:) Or you can send a check to:

Sherina Tatum #388

University of the Nations

75-5851 Kuakini Highway

Kailua-Kona, Hawaii

96740-2199 USA

I will be home for 3 days!!! Sept 19 until Sept 23. I am in one of my friends weddings so I will be very busy but I would love to see as many of you as possible!! I will be at church, PCC, on Sunday Sept 23 before I leave. Feel free to email me as well if you would like to see me and I will see what I can do!! (Or if you want to give me money!! lol I am getting desperate!! lol:P)

My email address is: sherinatatum@hotmail.com

Thank you so much for reading this!! I'm sorry it took me so long to do this update!!:( I love you all and miss you all!!! Thank you for your prayers, support and encourament!!