Cambodia Day 3 –
We started off the morning at a coffee shop in Phnom Penh with Stephen Himley from Medical Teams International. Stephen completed a preliminary health assessment for CHO last year and we wanted to pick his brain to get a better understanding of health care in Cambodia.
After our coffee date, we split into two groups. The first team went with a Cambodian doctor and visited three types of medical facilities in Phnom Penh. They were able to gather information and get a general understanding of access to health care in Cambodia and provided a good foundation for how they would spend their time in Poipet.
The second team was able to go to the Cambodia Bible Society to pick up some Khmer/Engligh Bibles, New Testament Bibles and some Sunday School curriculum for the village churches. Our hope is to be able to share the Bibles with the different people we meet and interact with. We also had the opportunity to visit a fair trade store called VillageWorks, a company that Sheils Mischke, our former Missions Director, is working with and made some purchases. We hope to return at the end of our trip to bring items back for Festival of Hope.
We enjoyed lunch and dinner today at two different restaurants that are run by Friends International. Friends works with former street youth and provides training and employment in the restaurants to these young adults. They also have a fair trade store that helps support the ministry. Some members of the team were adventurous and enjoyed trying the fried tarantualas for an appetizer and a dinner with tree ants.
When we returned to the hotel, we were able to meet with Allie, a friend of Kevin’s who lives in Phnom Penh. She ministers to children, teens and women who are involved in trafficking by offering hope to the hopless in the darkest corners of the world. She shared with the team about how there is not a lot of attention paid to the boys when it comes to the issue of trafficking and much more. We appreciated her insight and it heightened our sensitivity to what was going on in the streets around us.