Sports Carnival- Hope Style

Our annual Sports Carnival recently. It was an interesting day as land large enough to hold a carnival on is hard to find so we had to travel 40minutes away to an outlying Technical College.

Naomi and Nathan both did very well. Me, I was the photographer for the day and Graham helped organise the carnival and provided first aid.

It was an incredibly hot day, so we started the carnival at 7;30am and finished at lunch time.

This was a good opportunity for the school population to mix with our home school unit and together compete for their house colour in a range of usual and unusual events. It brings to focus the need for missionaries to know there are practical, quality and affordable options for their children's education in this country and the role of Hope School in addressing this need.

Please pray for the various missionary children living throughout Cambodia making sense of the world in a very different environment to their home countries....and as far as I have observed, almost without exception absolutely loving it!

Fiona

I feel like I have come full circle

In 2006 Graham and I came with Nowra Anglican College to Cambodia to undertake housebuilding with the Tabitha Foundation. While we were visiting the floating villages near Siem Reap on the Ton Le Sap we took many photos of the people begging. At this particular time I took one of my favourite ever photos, one that impacted me then and continues to now. That of the above woman begging with her two children.

We had her picture as our desktop background for the two years before we came back to Cambodia. I often wondered who she was, if her children were still alive and so on. I searched other peoples online photo posts from the area to see if I could identify her in other peoples photos.

Since living in Cambodia I have returned to Siem Reap 3 times. The first two times I revisited the floating villages I did not see her, but did wonder after her. So in January when I took Sarah (my niece) to Siem Reap, I also took along the photo of her. When we reached the floating souvenir shop / crocodile farm I showed a few people her picture. Most of the people I asked knew her, but could just say that she was Vietnamese and very poor, no more about her. Then yes one of the begger boys in a tub knew her well, he would go and get her for me... and he did.

We chatted for about half an hour, in Khmai, (which she and I both speak a little of) and with an interpreter. I blessed her in the name of Jesus, gave her a gift, and thanked her before we left. She may never understand what she meant to me, and I may never understand what she was thinking of a woman with a photo of her, asking after her, blessing her, meant to her. But I did get a sense that I have come full circle and that both of us have been blessed from meeting each other in a unique way.

The child on the right of her is the girl who was in her arms in the original photo. Her older son was not with her, nor her husband. The baby is her third child. The boys in the back are onlookers.