"January" Newsletter

Dear Friends, Family, and Partners in Ministry,

I do apologize for not taking pictures of enough things these months. All the pictures in this letter are courtesy of my parents during their visit!

Still, many other things have been happening, such as my boyfriend visiting, Calvin College’s Interim Class, a Christian Reformed World Missions retreat, and saying goodbye to NIBI. And learning quite a lot among it all!

Adventures
Over Christmas, my boyfriend Jim flew all the way to visit me for nine days. We had some fabulous adventures exploring the temples of Angkor Wat, biking through the unusual traffic of Phnom Penh, and staying in the homes of villagers in Plong.

Jim and I posing like the ancient Apsara dancers 
etched in the stone pillars of the temples. We had some fun.

Enjoying water lilies on a visit to the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh with Jim.

In the second week of January, students and professors from Calvin College were here in Siem Reap for the Transforming Cambodia interim, the same class that drew me to Cambodia in the first place. It was wonderful to see a dear friend from Calvin, catch up with my professors, and meet many other earnest and curious students. I thank God for this group. I was really proud of Calvin, both professors and students, especially after talking later with some of the missionaries and NGOs here that they visited. They came with such a humble, flexible attitude, and really worked and learned a lot.
The NIBI students and I also got to attend an excellent conference on development that the Calvin students led, along with law school students from a Christian university in Korea and Cambodian students from several universities in Phnom Penh. It was so encouraging to see a student-led conference on issues that really got students to own development issues and go beyond simple answers.
The day after the conference ended, I left for Chiang Mai, Thailand, where I was blessed to attend a Christian Reformed World Missions (CRWM) retreat for missionaries in South East Asia.  It was truly amazing to meet and spend even a few days with such faithful, courageous people and their families. Hearing about the great diversity of things they do – from translating the Bible into new languages to teaching in seminaries to running social enterprises – has planted all sorts of new


Finally, my parents visited during the second and third weeks of February, and we took a tour of Cambodia together from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh to Plong to Sihanoukville, by the sea. I thank God so much for the chance to see many of my beloved ones from the US in the flesh these past few months! 

The famous Bayon temple, with its four-faced pillars.

My parents and I were privileged to attend the  traditional Khmer wedding of my friend Boral’s sister. 

(My dad & mom, the bride & groom, me, and Boral) 

My parents and I walking along the road in Plong with some village kids.

Visiting a local watermelon farm near Plong. My parents with the village children.

A floating house on the Tonle Sap lake. 

Those who live on the lake are often landless minorities, such as Muslims or Vietnamese. 

It's quite amazing to see the ingenuity of these landless people. 

We saw many floating gardens like this one, as well as floating chicken coops and floating pig pens!

NIBI
NIBI’s semester ended at the end of February. Two students have been accepted at Korean universities. Please pray for them as they live and study in a foreign country! With only five returning students from this semester, and after finding out that they cannot gain approval to give bachelor’s degrees, NIBI is transitioning to a 2-year program and looking for many new students. Already, there will be two new students from Burma.

My parents were delighted to meet NIBI students, teachers, and office assistants.

New Plans
In January, I received a strong calling to reconsider my plans for after I returned from Cambodia. I had been  planning to enter a program in Memphis for learning to be an inner-city physics teacher. Through experiences here and reflection on past times, I realized that God has been calling me to seminary to learn more about leading worship.

 At the end of February, I applied to Calvin Theological Seminary for a Master’s of Arts in Worship, and I just found out that I have been accepted! I have also applied to live in an intentional Christian community in an inner city neighborhood during my time at seminary. I am so excited to study the Bible, learn more theology, discover more about what it means to worship God, and better understand inner-city American life. 

Thank you for all of your prayers.

Love from Cambodia,

Amanda

Volunteer Intern,

Christian Reformed World Missions (CRWM)

P.S. A big thanks goes to the developers of Blogger, who recently seriously improved the user interface for uploading pictures, resulting in this picture-ful blog entry.