SO GREAT A CLOUD OF WITNESSES

Dateline:
Siem Reap Town, Sunday, July 10 2011, 9:56 a.m.
Pat E Lyon

There was a surprise for us in worship today.  A bus load of Ohio Conference people arrived with Deacon Dee and young people en route to a Youth Rally at Battambang.  In Cambodia, white foreigners are referred to in slang as "barang." All the Khmer men sat together and played musical instruments on the west side of the church.  Except one guy with the Ohio people was from Mexico and he didn't have a drum or a thro or rattles or a guitar.  Mony and I sat together and the Khmer women sat together with the children.

Mony whistled the Khmer hymns.  It was beautiful.

The pastor gave a rousing sermon with six points.  After the great cloud of Ohioans witnessed about their mission, Mony and I went up.  I said, "My group is very small.  But it gets bigger this week when Sam and Deanna will come." Everyone clapped.  I told them that long ago, Deanna and I came to teach small children about Jesus and about English.  But small children grew up.  What to do?  So now we try to get scholarships from people in USA for University and Paul De Brule School of Culinary Arts.  I asked all the students to come forward.  They stood in a line.  Tall and sophisticated.  Each one told their name and major.  There were so many youth I could not see to the other end.  (And two had exams?)  I worried for a moment, "Will we get enough money to put all the little kids I just saw in Sunday School through school?

I also told about wells, toilets, pigs and pig pens, seeds and seedlings, etc.  I said, "If Jesus asks you to help, don't wait for a committee to vote on it.  Just help." No wonder I was in trouble all the time!

After worship, Joseph Chan spoke to me about his plan, outlined neatly and enclosed in plastic.  He had not changed in the eleven years since I first met him.  I asked him twice if the land belonged to him or the United Methodist Church.  He pointed and talked faster.  So I still do not know.  But he has a dream of many things.

Then quickly, he bounded for his 4x4 and everyone jumped on the bus and they rode off in a cloud...of dust!

Dee was the staff person for justice in the Ohio Conference and they have a partnership with Cambodia.  Hey, Wisconsin Methodists, we need to put some money and staff on justice!