What an exciting month it has been! I was able to hang out with my church friends from Singapore for a week this month on a mission trip. I didn’t realize how much I miss speaking Singlish or mixed languages until I met them. It was a timely encouragement and also a privilege to be able to work with a dedicated group of people on the mission trip. I was also thankful to have some time off to visit Vietnam for a few days after the mission trip.
For a while, I’ve been wondering why I’m involved so much with teaching English to the Khmers. Because that certainly wasn’t my intention. Nor was it my “forte”. But I realized that perhaps God have plans for me to work with a specific group of people, which is the young ladies in the lab and the office. And it is amazing because it seems I have come in at the right time, since there was no one else in the RDI team who could do that due to age, cultural and gender factors.
I’m starting to build closer relationships with some of the local staff, such as my Khmer tutor, Sophak, a really sweet girl, who’s also one of the students in the TOEFL class and a non-believer. She mentioned once that she was looking for ways to obtain inner peace by going to a guru who teaches how to get peace from within. I have difficulty to make her understand that she’s looking at the wrong place. Pray for better communication and the right time and right words to witness to her.
Please pray for one of the girls in my English class, Vanny, who is a believer. Her brother (Sopheak), a non-believer, is a drug user and has caused much grieve to the family. He’s been taken to a rehab centre. Pray for change of heart.
The English class for the village teens are going well. I think the maximum no. of students that have turned out so far was about 30, which is quite a handful to handle. I have decided to take a break from learning dry stuff like verbs because they have problems catching up and switch to learning some songs and playing some games.
Advanced case of arsenicosis (arsenic poisoning) or so called “black foot disease”.
Next month there’ll be a group of 15-20 high school kids coming to build a rainwater harvesting tank at Preak Russey (Russey means bamboo), one of the 2 villages with arsenic poisoning cases identified. Praise God that the village head and school principal have agreed to let the school be used to house the volunteers. So the group will take turns to stay at the village (instead of travelling, which may be a life changing experience for some. I may be staying with them for some of the nights while they’re at the village. Preak Russey is an example whereby good intention isn’t always a good thing. Some 10 years ago, some NGO put tube wells at this village without checking the water quality. Consequently, the villagers have been drinking arsenic contaminated water and thus the arsenic poisoning.
Filters that I’m working on.
One thing that RDI works very hard is raise the awareness of cases like this and to provide information and recommendation to any NGO. For example, an ongoing project is the development of drinking water quality index. Essentially the plan is to map drinking water quality for the entire country. This will be particularly helpful for NGOs that come in and want to put in wells for villages, and they can refer to the map and determine the best location or whether it’s a good idea at all to put in wells.
One exciting thing about the project I’m working on (assessing the performance of arsenic removal filter) is that we have stumbled upon some new technique that may be a viable solution to removing arsenic. The current technology that I’ve been working on doesn’t seem to give very good results so this is a good news. Current technology uses rusted nails and laterite as media to remove arsenic. Now we’re looking at using “cooked” sand as media.
There’re always many interesting projects going on at RDI, and most of which are impacting the lives of the locals as well as the volunteers. I can see God using people of all skills and background and doing some amazing stuff.
Prayer Items
1. Language - learning curve is slowing down. It’s difficult to focus with so many things going on.
2. TOEFL & English class - for continual growth of friendship and chance to share the gospel, especially the young ladies and girls. TOEFL class is having a regular turnout of 4-5 students and English class for the village teens about 20-30 students.
Spiritual health - When I’m tired, I really slack in keeping up my bible reading and I’ve only just started doing bible study on my own.
3. Project work - The lab is shorthanded this month and work gets piled up. One critical instrument is not working well.
4. To juggle between project work, teaching TOEFL and English, and learning Khmer. It can be quite taxking.
5. Working with different cultures - wisdom and sensitivity in dealing with people of diverse background.
During RDI staff retreat. These are students from TOEFL class. Most are from the lab. Sophak, my tutor is on my left.
On the ferry. Visited Lvea Em with Health and Medicine crew
