It's Wednesday, right?

I've already begun to lose track of my days. It's only 5:30pm, but I feel like it's been about a week since my last post.

I'm definitely remaining active. I spent a good portion of the morning with Tim Secrist doing research for some microenterprise projects we've been discussing. We did a lot of walking and talking and thinking hard about ways we can help the kids from our orphanages and student centers make a decent living for themselves as adults. I think we're on to a couple of good ideas. More on that later...

At about noon, we headed out to the orphanage to visit the kids. We caught them right after their lunch, before the older kids had to return to school. Carol, Pheakday and I joined the orphanage director on a quick trip to visit the children's school. It was fairly nice, but a bit overcrowded. It will be wonderful when we can build our new Christian school on the land adjacent to the orphanage. I'll be hitting you all up for money for that when I return.

After meeting the superintendent and some of the teachers, we returned to the orphanage where I taught the younger kids and the older kids who attend morning classes on Wednesdays (I can't comprehend the school schedule, so don't ask) to sing -- or at least to do the hand motions to -- "My God is so Big!" After about 30 choruses of that song, I decided to entertain them with a story.

Many of the kids were admitted to the orphanage within the past couple of months, and have very little knowledge of the Bible. I chose the story of David and Goliath. Pheakday translated. "Bwahahahahaa!" I yelled, "No one can defeat the mighty Goliath! I'll eat you up like a banana!" And then I proceeded to stomp my way through the crowd of kids like Godzilla in Tokyo. At the climax of the story, I rolled my eyes far back into my head and fell to the ground, dead. A wonderful time was had by all.

On our way back to the guest house, we stopped at a roadside restaurant and ate beef loc lac, Thai spicy and sour soup and stir-fried eel with chilis and basil. Man, I love this country.

Well, I love most things about the country. After returning to the guest house, I set out with Preiyo to find a place, any place that could sell me an adaptor to replace the one I lost for my laptop. I can pretty much guarantee that I am the only person in Cambodia today with a Mac Powerbook. After an hour or so of driving around, we finally found one guy who could order one from Singapore. I should get it next week. And, no, I don't want to talk about how much it's going to cost.

Now, it's time to get dinner with the team. Afterwards, we'll split up among the student centers and discuss the topic, "Encouraging One Another."

And then, to bed.

Whew.

Tomorrow, we're going to spend a good portion of the day at the orphanage documenting life stories. Dave's heading off to Thailand to investigate new partnerships and new ministry opportunities. I'll be left holding down the fort with the others. I think we'll be fine.

Talk to you then,

John