Pedagogy, for beginners

There are days like this, where my low to inexistant, but daily increasing skills with children have to be sacrified for the purpose of a lesson learned. Or in other words: I am once again amazed by God's timing.

When it comes to missions and adapting to a new culture, we are always beginners. Despite my three preceding experiences in Cambodia, I admit our first three weeks in Cambodia have truely been an initiation for us. Living in a small orphenage and sharing our roof, bathrooms or even beds (Michèle you're the best!) with Hisar, Riem, Sreign, and Chet and Phally, our two lovely little flatmates, have truely been a blessing for us. But I must admit, adapting so fast to such a different culture and way of living, where privacy is quasi inexistant has been at times difficult for us. We often prayed for strenght and compassion...and slowly started to love our situation and enjoy the joy and cheerfulness, and above all the simplicity our little new friends were bringing to our lives.

It is the very moment we finished our adaptation and were fully and wholeheartedly thankful for our living situation and gave up any claim for a more confortable living that God chose to make us meet my friend Timothée (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJLjtEOU5As). Timothée is a young french missionary, who has an amazing ministry among street children here in Phnom Penh, by creating a really efficient center to act as a shelter and safe haven for them. He was about to leave for south america to visit churches and encourage communities, and was eagerly looking for somebody to look after his house. And here we are, in a wonderful villa in the outskirts of Phnom Penh, where the sun is shining, the streetlights inexistant and the access somehow..difficult. But the neighbors are very nice, and (except some weird animals) not one sound can be heard at night. The neighborhood is lovely, and there is a small church nearby that is said to be the first church in Phnom Penh.

Glory be to the Great Pedagogue! Through our amazing little friend, He taught us simplicity, trust and flexibility; and through our new living situation he taught us an important thing: he invented the very notion of timing*.

* As it turned out, and totally independantly from our knowledge, the very day we moved out five new kids where scheduled to move in the space scarce little orphenage, bringing obvious bed allocation issues.