Homeless

We love Cambodia. Even more so, we love the children at Hope for Cambodia Orphanage, who happened to steal our hearts...almost a year before we even lived here.
Even though we are head over heels with Cambodia, we often miss the great U.S.A. In fact, out of reverence, true patriotism, and maybe a little sarcasm, anytime we hear someone mention "America,"  or "the States," we proudly exclaim, "God bless it!" Some trivial luxuries such as dish washers, clothes dryers (for some time even clothes washers), 24/7 air conditioning, public bathroom toilet paper, Chick-fil-A; and some necessities such as modern medical care, started this trend/game we like to play. It's often the silly things we miss. However, there is a piece of our hearts that are still in our great country...and those are a ton of people we love dearly. Missing the things from home is enhanced even more when we have to miss the children too. Unfortunately, due to rainstorms and flooding (we'll have to post pictures for you people that have been to Lveasar before -- the river is SO HIGH!), we were unable to travel to the village for over two weeks. All of the sudden, it was easier to remember all we miss at home when we were missing the whole reason for being away from home!

This got us to thinking about what is "HOME"? There will forever be a part of us that calls Cambodia "home". We will also forever call the U.S. ("God bless it!") our home. Yet, really, neither of these is really our "home." We were recently reminded of a study we did here in Cambodia at our house church over 2 Peter. One of things that we emphasized was being "sojourners" on this earth. As followers of Christ, our home is not this earth, it's Heaven. Our house church is primarily missionaries and a few NGO workers...we're all Westerners, mostly Americans. So this idea, of living in a land (Earth) that's not our home, and anticipating "going home" (Heaven) was very near to all of us. "This world is not my home."

Those are the random thoughts that we've been thinking lately. We'd love to tell you more of what's going on in HCO right now, but since we've missed so much, we really didn't know what to say! We were able to sneak out to Lveasar a day early just to visit and play before we started teaching again. It was a great reunion and inside of a few hours we were refreshed by all the things we love about being here. Being away from our kids for so long gave us a little glimpse of what it is going to feel like come the end of October and it made us realize we're not ready to get on a plane just yet. We do have some prayer concerns that we need your help with...

Please ask God to...
1.  find a good home for Channy while she works at Bloom (she starts mid-September!!!)
2.  help transition Sopheak into a trade school and Veasna into university (still waiting on results for their high school exit exams...we should hear how they did this Saturday).
3.  help Pastor Sokhom find more staff and housemoms for the children.
4.  help us not to be so busy with the children that we don't focus on "home", but be "all here" with our work here.

Thanks for being awesome, friends!

We love you!
Tamara and Lauren