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Monday, August 31, 2015
Our NewsLetter To You ~ August 31, 2015
A Hauntingly Familiar Feeling
It is a hauntingly familiar feeling.
I've built a Garden only to now prepare myself to leave it behind. I've done it before ... I can do it again! God. Please help me do it again!
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| Purple Passion Vines wound up to frame God's Garden sign. |
John was a big part in building this Garden in Siem Reap, Cambodia... especially at the beginning. Many
young YWAM-ers have also given their strength to the project from time to time. It is truly amazing how a very poor soil can be dramatically improved just by mulching and adding compost. Another year and this garden would have nice humus rich soil.
I've been involved with teaching, encouraging the making and using of compost elsewhere as well. The young people at UofN Puok Center have harvested plenty of compost from their 3-bin system.
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| At UofN Language Center at Puok Three of my favorite young people working hard and learning about making compost. |
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| At UofN Language Center at PuokThis young man is happily lacing chain-link fencing onto the compost frame pieces. |
Who will look after the plants in this Garden? Will the next tenant appreciate the living soil we've steadfastly built? It looks like the Bananas, Wing + Yard Long Beans, Noni + Moringa Trees, Thai Basil and Holy Basil, Common Oregano, Chili Peppers and Yellow Passion Vines will keep on bearing for the next folks.
May they be well fed!
I come away with a more rounded knowledge of small plot food gardening in the Tropics.
Some of the recent things I've learnt:
~ Ants
are the worst enemy. They bring a multitude of plant eating insects. The
easiest way to control them is to get into the habit of boiling water in a kettle and pouring it over the ants as the muster for battle and all around their nesting areas.
~ Moths and
butterflies, beautiful though they may be, all lay eggs and hatch out an amazing variety of leaf devouring
caterpillars; I've captured and watched the morphing of several to see what
they would become. John thinks I'm nuts but ... God created them just so I
could seek to discover His creative genius.
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| Oleander Hawk Moth Caterpillar (Daphnis nerii, Sphingidae) |
~ Compost is so easy to do! However ... It is impossible to involve your
neigbours with community composting, gardening, produce and resource sharing when you cannot speak their language! Although most will accept
produce even when you can't talk to them!
~ Strawberries really don't do well in the relentlessly hot Cambodian sun.
~ Wing Beans, if you can control the ants and thus the aphids, do really
well. It is therapeutic to go out every day or two to re-direct the vines along
a trellis and later to daily pick the Beans before they get too big for eating.
We enjoy eating them sometimes but it is a joy to give most of them away!
~ Lemon Grass is easy to grow and even easier to give away. I still have
no use for it except to chop up for mulching raised beds.
~ Flowering plants are my next assignment. Green is beautiful but somehow an
all green garden lacks Pizzazz!
~ Yard Long Beans don't do well in the hot dry season but thrive near the end
of the wet season. I pushed the limit by planting at the very beginning of wet season but ... I am hoping to eat a few before we leave.
~ Thrips are worst enemy #2. At the first sign of crinkly, yellowing
leaves I reach for the Tobacco-Neem Leaf solution and head out to spray the
affected plants. I am blaming the pomegranate blossom-drop on Thrips. I was
too late figuring out how to prune and then spray these shrubs.
~ Moringa is a weed. If you leave the pods on the trees too long the
seeds will fall to the ground and sprout up everywhere in a week or two. That's
OK; the compost will take them! They do not like transplanting all that much.
Drying of leaves is a chore but we enjoy the powder mixed in with our daily
breakfast cereals. The seeds are very bitter-sweet but we have learned to eat
them - 3 every day!
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| Moringa looking Skyward - the trunk is about 3" diameter. |
~ S'leuk s'dow is actually Neem. It grows here! It took 2 ½ years
of detective work to figure this out. Local markets sell the young leaf sprouts
in July and people eat them in soups. The leaves when dried or very young can be
crushed and soaked for a few days in water and then used as an insect repellent. This plant only blossoms once a year, the seeds sprout readily and
they do not like transplanting once they are more than a foot or so tall. It
takes years before the tree gives seeds to be pressed into oil. All my 20 or so plants will be given away soon.
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| Papaya Fruits developing. |
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| It's a Pomegranate! The thrips got to it! |
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| Bananas! |
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| Yellow Passion Fruit Flower. |
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| Newly formed Yellow Passion Fruit - How long to maturity? |
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| Cypress Flowers are growing among the Wing Bean Vines for a splash of color! |
We have 44 more days to enjoy the fruit of our labors before someone else will benefit. This has been the story of my gardening life. To sum up my thinking ... I would say:
~ Always step lightly;
~ Leave a place better than when you found it and
~Take good care of God's beautiful + amazing creation. Ask him how; He'll tell you!
The people who walk this ground after me have the same choice. I am only responsible for me and my actions! I hope that you, my reader, would follow my example.
:-)
Thursday, August 27, 2015
Our Involvement
~~~ John tells it all.
December 11, 2014
So here we are at the beginning of our third year in Siem Reap,
Cambodia. Who’da thunk we’d ever wind up serving here? God’s plans are amazing
and sometimes unpredictable. God himself, however, is totally reliable in
everything He does. Thank you, Lord, for calling us here to be in Your will for
this country.
Our involvement with U. of N. /
Y.W.A.M. continues. We have been doing base repairs and maintenance, electrical
work and plumbing. Jackie got to assist at getting the main building painted.
She’s cat woman when it comes to the high up in the air work. She really enjoys
the ladder work when John has electrical work to do. We have taught for a week
in a D.T.S. school, lead devotions and meetings and have offered private
counselling and advice (when asked). Sometimes we’re just mom and dad (or
grandma and grandpa!).
Our work here is not only with
Y.W.A.M. We have been blessed to be able to help and cooperate with our local
church, and other N.G.O.’s. We've previously written about our involvement with
an NGO is from Switzerland. They have set up a large egg (chicken) raising
business which is employing and training several Khmer people/families. Another
is running a children’s home, a restaurant, a demonstration farm and is
building a huge housing project for displaced people. Others we've helped in small ways work in training
and employing Khmers, provide help for the disabled and operate schools for
expat kids. We have installed water wells and purification systems, solar
photovoltaic electric power, drip irrigation and lots of other fun things.
Every new opportunity is a challenge and a blessing. We spent yesterday
rewiring and adding lights to a private school down the street from us. Father
God has put us in a place where the experience and abilities He has given us
can benefit people in need.
There are many needy places on earth, but
this is the one He has assigned us to. Cambodia is tottering and stumbling
forward in its development and recovery from almost unimaginable horrors.
Anyone with a heart to help is welcome here. Take
some TESOL training, quit your job, sell everything you have and move here.
Spend a year learning the language, culture and customs and make a difference
personally. Are you not able to do that? Then recruit and finance some English teachers and cycle
them through the existing schools here. Serving God is an adventure! If
you feel a leading to be involved in any of these ways, please contact us. We’d
be happy to help you help.
One Hour Away
~~~ a
blurbism John wrote. July,
2015
We
have just returned from an emergency trip to Bumrungrad hospital in Bangkok,
Thailand, only one hour away. I had some pain and swelling in my left calf.
Being a male, I treated it with benign neglect, for about 3 weeks, thinking it
was a muscle strain or something that would resolve by itself. My wise bride
asked a friend, who is a nurse from Australia, her opinion. She came over,
examined the leg, asked a few questions, and said it could be a deep vein
thrombosis. Another friend, a nurse from the Philippines, came to the same
conclusion. The only western trained doctor in town was back in the U.K. doing
his recertification, so off to Thailand it was.
A
deep vein thrombosis is a blood clot in the major leg vein. The danger is that
a chunk will come loose, get sucked up through the heart, and pumped in to the
pulmonary artery causing a pulmonary embolism. This is quickly fatal in about
25% of cases. Both nurses said I needed a Doppler ultrasound test, possibly
followed by dye injection into my femoral artery and x-rays. We don’t have any
of that in Cambodia. They both said to go to Bangkok a.s.a.p.
Bumrungrad
International is a hospital in Bangkok, Thailand which treats medical tourists from around
the world. It’s interesting and fun just seeing all the people in various
outfits and speaking dozens of languages. One report I saw called it the #9
hospital in the world, ranked ahead of Cedars-Sinai, in Los Angeles. All the
treatment we have ever received there has been up to snuff, or better, and it’s
one hour away by air. The hematologist told us that they are the referral
hospital for the hard cases. They have to be good!
The
tests revealed the presence of many clots in several of my veins, but not the
big one. Praise God! They gave me an immediate injection of a clot dissolving
drug and put me on four other clot dissolvers and blood thinners. The lab drew
15 vials of blood to test for any reason they can find that I could be
predisposed to this condition. I am scheduled for another trip in September to
re-test and find out the hematologist’s report. I’m guessing that I’ll be on
blood thinners for the rest of my physical life.
So
what’s good about this? This is the same question Joseph asked when he was in Pharaoh's
dungeon. If I am genetically predisposed to this clotting, they will most
likely be able to put me on pills which will protect me from further
occurrences. I’m getting world class care from an excellent hospital, at prices
which are unbelievably low. If Father God decides to send us somewhere else in
the world, I’ll know what my condition is and how to cope. I get to wear
tremendously attractive and sexy elastic compression stockings. And ... the
best international hospital in South-East Asia is ... only one hour away.
Thank You, Lord.
Thank You, Lord.
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