Coming soon to you ...

Having changed schools over a year ago, and with my last prayer card/photo having the name of the other school on it, it was well past time I prepared a new prayer card. One of the joys of this current age is the ease with which these can be produced. Digital photos and photo editing software are fun, so it's not even really a "chore" to do it.

A friend took some great photos for me in Thailand when we were there during my "summer" break this year, and now the same friend is heading down under, so the time to get the photos printed was now! Have had a delightful day on Wednesday, playing Scrabble on Facebook, reading, and doing not a lot else, I finally got round to editing the photos. Eventually I came up with something that I think works well, and is also a little more generic than the previous one.

That done, I headed out to the photo shop, and requested a sample be printed. They said they could do it in an hour, so I tootled up the road to my favourite stationery and  bookshop, and happily filled in the hour, and managed not to spend too much money. Next I tootled around the block back to the photo shop, where they had produced the sample. It looked great, and so I ordered and paid for 150 prints, and said I'd be back on Saturday to pick them up (as I was planning a couple of days out of town.

I then headed home where I actually looked carefully at the photo only to discover a small error. Here's basically what I was looking at.

And here is what it should have looked like:

Can you spot the error?

I quickly phoned the photo shop, but alas, they had already finished printing the photos for me. Bother! OK, so I'll have to go with plan B. Now all my beautiful photos have a small sticker on them correcting the error.

I picked the photos up this afternoon, and then spent the afternoon stickering! Took a while to cut and stick 150 stickers, but it's done now.

Why do I do this? Because there is no way that I could serve in the way I do in the place that I do without the prayer support of many folk. Folk who pray often like a photo of the person they are praying for (I know I do), and so they will soon receive these photocards.

Just an ordinary week ...

Sometimes I wonder what to write about, and yet, I sense that God is in the ordinary as well as the extraordinary.

This week started with a Monday holiday, which is always pleasant. It gave me a chance to catch up on some grading and planning, and to enjoy some down time over the weekend. On Saturday afternoon I received a text message inviting me to join a BBQ at Logos on Sunday afternoon. With Monday off, I felt comfortable doing this, so I enjoyed a swim in their big pool, and catching up with friends and colleagues from that side of town. A very pleasant way to start the week.

Tuesday it was back to school, knowing I would be missing two students, and discovering that another was away was not totally unexpected. My challenge for the day was a student who arrived half an hour late for school. Since we are starting each day with a series of spelling pre-tests, it's a pain when students are late. The next day the same student again arrived half way through the test, and so had to wait until the test was finished before he could join us. That may seem tough, but this student has a history of being late at least once a week, and often more. The test then has to be made up sometime, and with our packed schedule, that usually means Friday afternoon. Not my favorite time for testing!

The rest of the week was pretty much just an ordinary week. Thursday morning I sent one poor kid home when he was sick at recess time. He didn't come Friday either, for which I'm grateful in a way, because that means he has time to recover fully and is less likely to share bugs with others in the class.

Friday had one scary event. We divide the class into boys and girls for swimming, and while the girls swim on Wednesday, the boys have an extra Khmer lesson, and then on Friday they swap over. Unfortunately, our classes are not evenly balanced with boys and girls. I have 8 girls and 13 boys, and the other class has 7 girls and 12 boys. That means our girls' swimming class is a pleasure, and the boys class is a real challenge. With 12 boys down the deep end of the pool (and I mean deep - I cannot touch the bottom for quite a good area of the pool), I usually number them off, and then they swim in smaller groups. I'm glad I had done that on Friday. There are some important rules about the deep end, and one is that students cannot go down the deep end unless they can swim the width of the pool twice without touching the bottom, so the kids in my group can all swim to that extent. There is also always a teacher in the water at the deep end with the students, and a spotter on the outside. Unfortunately on Friday something happened and one of my boys decided to panic. He was actually very close to the shallow end at the time, but because he got scared and panicked, he was in trouble. Fortunately, God prompted me to turn around from the other student I'd be watching closely, and spotted the problem and was able to get him out without a major problem, but it was a lesson for me. After discussing it with the other teacher, and knowing that a very capable Khmer assistant is available on Wednesday when we swim, I requested permission to swap the boys' and girls' swimming days, and to have the Khmer assistant work with us on those days. Permission was granted and I hope we won't have any more scares like that again. Just goes to show, that you can never let your guard down in the pool, even with capable swimmers!

So that's the end of just another ordinary week. The week ahead is actually just two days, and on Tuesday we have a field trip to an Ice Sculpture Display. The children will enjoy this, and it will give them a chance to experience what it is like to be in a really cold environment, which will help them understand a little more what life is like in the Arctic biomes when we study them later in the year. Stay tuned for photos.

Incredibly Blessed

This evening I am feeling incredibly blessed. It's a fact that I am incredibly blessed anyway. Here are just some of the reasons why am incredibly blessed every day:

• a comfortable, safe, secure, dry (well mostly) place to live;
• plenty to eat (too much in fact sometimes);
• a comfortable bed to sleep in;
• airconditioning;
• a great job working with delightful kids;
• a family that loves me;
• friends; and
• above all, a God who cares about everything that happens in my life, knows me through and through, and loves me beyond anything you can imagine!

So why, today, am I particularly feeling incredibly blessed. Well, it's like this ...

Earlier this week, two of the girls in my class came to me and said, "Ms Karen, we didn't give you a birthday party last year, so we want to have one for you on Friday. Please can we do it?"
"But my birthday's not until January!" I replied.
"But we didn't have a party for you last year, so please can we do it on Friday?" was their passionate plea.
How could I say no? Actually it was reasonably easy to say yes, because I knew two of my students had birthdays coming up - one today and one tomorrow, and having taught them both last year, I suspected a cake would arrive for him sometime during the day, so it made sense to have a party this afternoon. So I said yes, and they gathered some support from their friends and this afternoon they had their party.

After lunch we packed up the classroom, and headed downstairs, since I don't think it's fair on the cleaners to party in the classroom. The children collected their goodies, and I collected Vitu's cake from the office and we started to get organised. First of all, I organised the children for a game of "Cat and Mouse", which they just love, starting off with the birthday boy and girl as the cat and mouse. Then we gathered around and tried to light the candles, failing miserably, so sang "Happy Birthday" anyway, then cut the cakes. Here's some snaps of the cakes before we cut into them.


So Vitu and Whattey enjoyed a special treat for their birthdays, and I was privileged to be so loved by my students. They had also made some cards for me, which I unfortunately left on my desk at school, but they were equally precious and I'm looking forward to reading them again sometime soon. So I had an extra birthday this year, but I refuse to become another year older until the end of January 2012!

Now that's enough to make a teacher feel pretty special, but then something else happened this afternoon which was equally blessing. The postal system here in Cambodia is somewhat different to that in Australia. If something is addressed to a post office box there is a fairly good chance that it will arrive (although that's not always the case). In the event that a parcel is sent, several things might happen. First it might just get put in your box (if it's small enough), and you get to discover it when you open the box. That has happened. Alternatively, it may just get sat on the counter, and you need to check the counter regularly just in case something has come in. Sometimes there will be a slip in your box to tell you it's on the counter, sometimes not. Then, they might decide that they need some revenue, and in that case, you will get a yellow slip, with a price on it that you have to pay, in order to collect the parcel. That's what happened to me this week.

The guy whose box we use found a yellow slip in the box, and so he dropped it into the school office so I could go and claim the parcel. I finally managed to do that this afternoon. Well, it took them a while to find the package, and when she finally handed it to me, it was alive! Yep, it was crawling with ants. I'm not sure whether they were Cambodian ants or Australian ants, but they were definitely alive!!! The parcel was addressed simply to Karen K, and since I'm the only Karen who uses the box we were fairly sure it was for me. Well, I opened it in the Post Office to do my best to get rid of the ants. What I discovered was a card in an envelope and a small package of crystallised ginger! Unfortunately in ridding the package of ants, I inflicted further damage on an already injured finger, accidentally bursting a lovely big blood blister on my first finger of my right hand. That's OK. It was messy, but I found a packet of tissues and a bandaid to solve that problem, found a zip lock bag to put the package of ginger into (I was fairly sure I'd got rid of all the ants by that time but I wasn't going to risk it otherwise), put the card and envelope in my backpack and headed out to meet two of the Khmer staff from school, so we could check out a field trip possibility for the students. From there, I headed off to my tutoring job, and finally got home around 6pm.

While I was eating dinner I finally had a chance to open the card. I should mention that when I got the package, the senders details were limited, but I thought I knew who it was from. Well, when I finally opened the card and read it I was blessed to discover that this sweet package, and note had come from someone I don't actually know. This person has been reading my blog, courtesy of a mutual friend, and had taken the time, and effort, to put together a special package for me. Sharon B., I discarded the post pack at the Post Office because of the ants, so I don't have your address, but please know that your thoughtfulness was greatly appreciated, and gave me a special thrill! I will enjoy the ginger! Thank you!

What a blessing this was. It may seem like a small thing, but the thoughtfulness of it was a big thing for me. We do not know how the little things we do impact on other people, but doing small acts of kindness can bring big blessings! Who can you bless today? I'm not asking you to bless me. I've been blessed beyond imaginings. Now I'm thinking about who I might be able to bless in a similar way! Thanks again, to Sharon, and also to our incredible God for his awesome blessings every day.

Parent-Teacher Conference Fun

Today was the first day of our first set of Parent-Teacher conferences for the year. At East-West we do a conference around the end of the first quarter and sometime in the third quarter, and then formal report cards at the end of each semester. The conferences are a great time to meet parents, explain a little of how things work in the classroom, and answer any questions they have. Each conference is just 15 minutes long, and I'm a little proud to say that we were only running 15 minutes late at the end of 10 conferences. Not bad going.

This year I decided to get some input from the children into the conferences. Some children attend with their parents and others don't. I'm easy either way, although I think it's really good when the kids do come. Anyway, back to the children's input. Each week on Friday we have a journal writing time. Sometimes we use the Six Thinking Hats to guide the children's writing, and other times I give them a prompt. For the conferences, they had six questions to answer.

1. What have I done really well?
2. What have I discovered I really need to work harder at?
3. What is the best thing that has happened in class this year?
4. What is the worst thing that has happened in class this year?
5. What do I really want my parents to know about me in class?
6. Is there anything I don’t want my parents to know about me in class? What is it? Why?

This proved to be a really interesting exercise, providing me with some useful information to inform my planning, and also providing some great material to discuss with parents. Last weekend I typed up the students' responses, and then at the bottom of the page I added a section titled "From the Teachers". In that section I have four items to comment on:

• Strengths
• Progress Made
• Things to Work on
• Something I enjoy about "student's name" ...

I then printed each student's page out, and they could take it home at the end of the conference. All the parents seemed very happy to receive this. I think it was especially useful where only one parent came, because they have a written record that they can take home and share with the other parent. Unfortunately they are only in English, but I know the children can read it even if the parents can't read the English, so they still have something to talk about at home. 

And now for something totally different! The title of this post was "Parent-Teacher Conference Fun" for a reason. During the second last conference the heavens opened, and the wind blew, and we had a huge storm. The wind was blowing so hard and it was raining so heavily that the water was literally flowing down the hallway. The water was actually flowing into my classroom, which is more than 10 metres down the hall from the open end of the building. Yes, I mean flowing into the classroom. It came 2-3 metres into the classroom. We literally paddled to the table for our last conference. In fact I did that one alone, while Mr Dy graciously attempted to keep the water from invading any further. He was scooping it out, but as fast as he scooped it out, it came back in. Eventually the rain lessened and the wind eased, and we were able to make some headway. I went home and got my mop (which is easier to squeeze out than the school mops), and headed back. By the time I left, after doing a little prep for tomorrow's lessons, the classroom floor was almost dry, except where it continued to trickle in under the door. Looks like it's going to be an early start for me finishing off the cleaning process and getting the classroom set back up again. I love rainy season!!!!

Well, having share that little adventure, I've still got 10 more conferences tomorrow and that means I have ten more sets of comments to finish off, so I'd better get on with it! Goodnight.

Children's Fears

In Grade 4K, each week, on Friday, the students have time to journal. Sometimes they use a variation on the Six Thinking Hats to prompt their writing, and other times I give them a question to answer or a topic to write on. One of the topics that I chose was telling about the funniest things the students have ever seen, and another time it was about the kindest thing they have ever done. A couple of weeks ago I asked the children to write about what they were afraid of, and also to think about whether this fear was helpful or not. Today I finally made it a priority to catch up on reading their journal writings, and it was really interesting.

Some of the kind things the children had done were precious. Like the child who, in the absence of her older brother, set up the dinner table in a special way to make her mum and dad feel special, or the child who did all she could to help her older sister feel better when she was sick, or the boy who cared for his younger sister. I love these kids. They are so precious, and they so much want to do well.

As I read the stories of some of the things the children feared, I found it sad to repeatedly find stories of fear of ghosts, scattered among fear of big dogs, and snakes, and other more usual things. For me, it was a reminder of the "reality" of ghosts in the belief systems of many of the children I teach. We recently had the Pchum Ben holidays, and that is a time when people make special efforts to appease the spirits of the dead. On top of that, many of the children have access to cable television, with what seems to be an abundance of television shows that features ghosts or people coming back from the dead. These fears are very real to the children, especially to the Cambodian children.

Please pray for me as I work with the children. I cannot specifically talk about my faith with them, but I know that God is using me here. I also praise God that I know that, in Jesus, I have the greatest power possible to protect me from the whiles of the evil one, who loves to attack those who are sharing God's love. I praise Him that I have no need to fear, because his perfect love casts out fear. Pray for the children too, that they will come into contact with others who know and love Jesus, and that they will also come to know and love Him.

Remembering Dad - Part 2

In my first post, I focused largely on Dad's professional life, and that was an important part of who Dad was, but I think that the most important part of my Dad's life, and one which I'm glad he shared with me, was his love for Jesus.

From as early as I can remember, we shared family devotions at a mealtime each day. A Bible reading, a comment, and a prayer time. We also acknowledged God's provision each time we ate a meal, as together we said grace.

As far as I know, Dad was a member of his local Baptist church from his youth. During my life, I remember attending church as a family. Prior to their marriage, Mum and Dad both attended West Preston Baptist Church. The first church I recall attending as a family was Regent Baptist Church, and then, after we moved to Glenhuntly, we attended Ormond Baptist Church, both in Melbourne. After the move to Townsville, we attended first Central Baptist Church, and later Currajong Baptist Church. I recall Dad being actively involved in church life, including being a part of the diaconate, and church treasurer. For a time he was also involved in the management committee of the local children's family group home. As a teenager, and before my sister attained that status, I remember attending the occasional evening service with Dad, although I know he regularly attended both. After the move to Brisbane, Moore Park Baptist Church was their church home until the move to Armidale, and finally to Coffs Harbour. In each church family, Dad was no "pew-warmer", but an active participant in church family life. Over the years he continued to take on the role of both deacon and elder, and I know his Godly wisdom was appreciated by many who came into contact with him. In fact, I think that the last thing Dad did before he was admitted to hospital just prior to his death, was a prayer meeting with the other elder from Boambee Baptist.

Dad's faith wasn't just about going to church though. His faith was an integral part of who he was, and I have no doubt that the principles he learned through his growing years as a Christian led to his being the patient, principled, perfectionist, planner that my sister took delight in describing at his funeral.

Particularly during our years in Townsville, I remember our family hosting visiting missionary speakers. My parents actively supported missionaries as much as they were able to, and when I choose to move to Cambodia, to serve my Lord here, I knew it was with their support. I will never forget Dad's words when I asked how they felt about me continuing to serve as a teacher here in Cambodia beyond the first six months. Dad said, "We just want you to be doing what God wants you to do." How much more support than that can a person ask for. Thank you Lord for Christian parents who were willing to let me go.

In fact, the letting go occurred much earlier than that. It was during our teeinage years in Townsville, we developed our non-denominational attitude to worship. While my home church in Australia is still a Baptist Church, I am grateful that my growing years enabled me to experience worship in other denominations (Anglican and Methodist/Uniting), as well as the interdenominational atmosphere of Scripture Union camps. When our own family church didn't have a suitable youth group, Mum & Dad were very happy for us to attend another group that had more young people in our age group, Central Uniting Church. A while later, when I felt I didn't really fit in at Moore Park (our family church), Mum & Dad again allowed me to stretch my wings and find my niche at Kenmore Baptist.

There is so much more I could share about Dad, and maybe there will be another post in the days to come. Meanwhile, I hope that those who read this will remember a godly man, who loved his family, and taught them to know and love the only true God. What greater legacy can a man leave than a family that knows Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. Thanks Dad!

Thank you God for taking care of me

Owning a moto, and riding one is never without risks. This morning when I headed downstairs I could smell fuel. Hmmm. That could be ominous. I didn't want to look but did and noticed that my moto was sitting in a puddle of dubious colour. My first thought was, "I do not need this". Anyway, I did my first couple of errands, and then returned to the house, and was greeted by a somewhat concerned tenant from upstairs. OK, thank you. I dropped off what I was carrying, picked up my helmet and moto keys and headed back downstairs. This has happened before, and it is usually a perished hose between the fuel tank and the engine, so I thought I'll see if I can get to a servo where they have helped me with a similar problem before. Moto started OK, and I made it safely there. When I got there, I was fortunate to find someone who spoke a little English, and discovered they would not be able to help me there. I pleaded for help and this young man offered to help me find a mechanic, hopefully just across the road.

We set off, with him pushing the moto and me walking along beside, and after 3 false stops, he managed to locate a moto shop who were able to repair the problem. We had had to walk quite a way, but he did not seem concerned at all by the time I was taking out of his morning. Having found a mechanic, they wouldn't give a price until they made sure they knew what the problem was, so this very pleasant young man, concerned that they might try to rip me off, stayed until he was sure the problem was fixed and he was able to get a definite price for me. As we waited, he asked if I was a Christian, and when I said yes, he told me that he was also a Christian, and told me the church he attended. I couldn't help but think how gracious God was to me this morning, in providing me with an unknown protector. When I offered to pay him for his help, he politely said no, and, having assured himself that all was in order, headed off to visit his sister and her new baby (born in such a hurry the baby was delivered in a tuk-tuk on the way to the hospital).

Isn't it just awesome to know that God cares about the little things as well as the big things. The other amazing thing, was God's protection as I rode to the servo. The fuel was actually dripping across several electrical connections! That could have been nasty. Thank you God for your daily protection in all aspects of my life.