The dock strike at the port in Los Angeles almost starved us out. We had eight homes that would be out of rice in three days. Forty-foot containers of Manna Pack and nutrition rice had been piling up at the port of Los Angeles since January.  Finally, on the 29th of April, the load from January broke through to Phnom Penh. We will eat! Now we have a flood of containers coming to store and maintain, but that’s much better than hungry kids! Thanks to all who have helped us clear the “Log Jam!” We are blessed to have partners like Reach Now …  

There was a real happy ending for the leaky church home at Mondulkiri. A team from Life Church in Decatur, Illinois, which included their Pastor, Dave Catron, who put up the money to fund our deployment to Cambodia 17 years ago. They took that old building and made it look like new with a fresh paint job and a new 20-year roof. The congregation is greatly encouraged and the kids found people from half way around the world who really do care about an orphan in Cambodia. Well done Life Foursquare Church!  

It’s a devilish lie! I’m talking about a very well done, but totally deceptive video. Click here to watch it first, then continue to read. Do you really believe that your donations to orphans create them? Orphans are created by their parents dying! Unfortunately, the concept of a country with high corruption and no functional child welfare system, seems unbelievable to some people in the developed world. Where do orphaned, abandoned, deformed, and abused kids go in a place like Cambodia? Can you just pass out money to any family and have them responsibly care for kids? How well does the “Foster Care” …  

Sou and I were both in shock. We were seated at Sarin and Rosa’s twelfth anniversary celebration, actually a re-marriage ceremony (they are leaders in the music ministry at the Chom Choa Church Home, who grew up in our church home system and married). There must have been nearly 300 people there, most of them kids we’d raised, now young adults with kids in their early teens. The others were friends that Rosa knew from her shop at the market, Dozens of them were awestruck, “This group (FCOP) came and did this for you, “Stray Dogs?”  They looked at the …  

FCOP never grows tired of teams coming to help! Sam Tolle may grow weary from the load, but we are all refreshed by the benefits! We had two great groups from Canada and Singapore in March. Life Design Church of Vancouver, Canada, came, built a fence and performed various repairs on the Church Home in Pum Prasat. Then 43 students and staff from the International Community School of Singapore constructed a new fence at the Phsa Chas Church Home. Fences are a major consideration in the ability of FCOP to obtain licensing from the Cambodian government. More than anything else, these teams …  

What went wrong? When I was in Laos in 1968, my job was to convince Laotian rice farmers to develop irrigation cooperatives, so that they could raise two crops of rice per year instead of one. Our great motivator was “Materialism” and, it seems, we became effective evangelists, but it wasn’t always easy. “Just think! You can use that extra crop to buy a new Honda ‘90 motorbike,” we’d say, with great enthusiasm. What came back were often blank stares. “What’s wrong with you,” we’d ask. “Well, to be honest, we’d rather go fishing,” came the reply. It was total …  

When they get rebuilt by our trained mechanics and their apprentices, our 40 to 50 year old tractors and equipment work pretty well. The heavy equipment mechanics and trainees are busy preparing eight old tractors for the farmers in Cambodia as I write this. Pray we can place every one for the maximum good!  

There were weddings that we could have attended, virtually several times each week, last month. Orphans marrying orphans, and their marriages seem to last pretty well. The good thing is that they do have the FCOP family to support them. But can I support the weddings? Poor Pa and Mak Thom (Ted and Sou)! Once again, I have too much to say, but we have a lot going on. There is a spiritual war going on for the soul of Cambodia. Please pray of us often. Christ is the answer, but the devilish forces of humanism will not just roll over …