Sigh.

So, for now, let’s talk about The Sanctuary (The Guest House we stayed at for 7 nights–the other 3 nights were spent in airports and on airplanes). We were spoiled stinkin’ rotten, that’s what.

Here’s the gate that leads to the courtyard that leads to The Sanctuary. This is me and Panha (Pawn-YAH, or however you feel like saying it), our 17-year-old translator and one of the finest (and funniest) young men I know.

Here’s a not-so-great view of the courtyard. This is me and Kimmy doing some sort of Bug Spray Dance. We all sprayed ourselves down every morning (and it may or may not have helped).

Here’s the team coming out the front door of the guesthouse, ready for another Big Day.

This is the entryway/dining room/meeting room. Notice the beautiful shade of blue. This is where we prepped for our day and debriefed before bed. You can see the bottom of the stairs on the right of the pic. Kim, Lindy and Erin shared a room on the 2nd floor. Doug and Jason shared one on the 3rd, as did Gabe-O and me.

This is where Gabe and I slept the sleep of angels, with freezing cold air conditioning blasting all our troubles away. It was every bit as comfortable as it looks. And yes, those are towels in the shape of elephants (LOVE). And yes, we really were in a third world country, not on a Caribbean cruise.

This is a big meeting room on the third floor where we unloaded and organized suitcases (we each brought a suitcase filled with supplies for schools and orphanages). This is the team assembling gift bags for the 130+ kiddos at the state-run orphanage.

This is me one morning at 6ish a.m. writing a blog post. We also Skyped with our girlies four or five times while we were there.

Breakfast! Every single morning, included with our lodging. I told you we were spoiled.

This is me tasting Dragonfruit. I’m not a big fruit fan, but this one was probably my favorite. Gabe liked mangosteen the best.

For those of you concerned with rats, spiders and king cobras, this is the scariest thing we saw (creature-wise) while we were there. These harmless little lizards (about 3 inches long) would run up and down the walls at night (mostly outside, but we had one in our room, and Erin has a great story about one that ran over her foot while she was on the toilet).

Here we are, making cards for the kiddos’ birthday party.

And last, but not least, meet Fanny. I know I have a better picture of her somewhere (like where you can actually see her face), but I can’t find it. Fanny is a sweet girl who runs The Sanctuary and has plans to attend university in Denver, Colorado this fall if everything works out with her visa. We would looooove to visit her while she’s there. Awesome young woman of God.

The Sanctuary is run by an awesome organization called Asian Hope (not to be confused with Asia’s Hope who runs our orphanage). Their mission is to raise up Cambodian leaders in the name of Christ who will bring hope and a future to their country. The Sanctuary is specifically for people on missions trips to Cambodia, and they do an absolutely amazing job. FIVE STARS. Gabe said he felt guilty staying there when we were supposed to be sacrificing, but hey, I’d stay again in a heartbeat. Because I love what they stand for and what they’re doing. (And their A/C works really, really, really well.)

Have an awesome weekend, friends! More Cambodia (among other things!) next week!

I have my mom’s (reluctant) permission to “reprint” this letter in this particular forum. (Typing as fast as I can before she changes her mind.) I found this treasure a couple months ago when Bethany and I were at Mom and Dad’s helping them wade through (and purge!) years of clutter.

There are some things, though, that should never, ever, EVER be thrown away.

This letter is one of them.

Let me set the stage. Mom and Dad graduated from the same high school in 1969. They supposedly met for the first time in the church nursery, but they weren’t exactly childhood sweethearts. Their first date was their Senior Prom (Spring 1969). In the fall of that year, they both went away to college. Dad started at Cedarville College (an hour from home), and Mom headed off to Grace College in Indiana. For those of you who know my own story, this may sound oddly familiar to you. Yes, I went to Cedarville and Gabe went to Grace.

So, not long after they went their separate ways, Dad realized there were a lot of other fish in the sea and felt the urge to go out with one of them. So he broke up with Mom. Mom tells me now that they weren’t really even “committed” to each other, but apparently, she was just crushed by his decision.

HOWEVER, just prior to February 2, 1970, she made a conscious decision to MOVE ON. No more whimpering and crying over some dumb boy who obviously didn’t know how good he had it. Who needed him anyway? Certainly not her.

In a big, long, paragraph-less (I broke it up for you. You’re welcome) letter to her parents (that has me ROLLING every single time I read it), she fills them in on her new, happy, independent life.

Without further ado… Oh, one more thing. Take a mental tally, if you will, of the number of times she says, “Well.” Quite comparable to my over-use of the similar “Anyway.”

Monday, February 2, 1970

Dear Mom and Dad,

Hi! How is everybody back home? I’m just fine. You know–you were right! You said I hadn’t given anyone a chance here because I was always hanging on to someone back home. Well–I quit hanging on to anyone back home and boy did it work! I can hardly believe it. I wish I woulda let go a long time before this.

Well, I’ll tell ya all about it. First of all, there was a music recital on Friday night, January 23rd, and this guy named Joe asked me to go with him. Well, I’m really not too wild about Joe, but I had to go to the recital anyway, so I told him I’d go. Well, see, I didn’t want Joe to ask me out again, so I thought if I looked real icky at the recital that he wouldn’t ask me out again. But I decided that wasn’t such a good idea so I wore my new outfit and coat.

I prayed about the evening ’cause Joe has a reputation for being fast and conceited. Well–I was sure glad I was dressed up! I had washed & dried my hair Friday afternoon, so it looked neat. Well, we went to the recital and sat in front of a whole row of guys. They all whistled at me. One guy especially told me I looked beautiful. His name was Dave.

Well, after the recital was over at about 8:30, Dave asked me if I wanted to go mess around on the piano with him. (We were supposed to play a piano duet in the Talent Show.) Well, he looked at Joe and then at me and said, “Oh, I’m sorry, Joe, you probably wanted to take Chris back to the dorm didn’t you?” Joe said “yes.”

So he took me back and I ran up and got my music and went over to McClain with Dave. [I told myself I wouldn't add commentary, but I'm dying here. Really. Truly.]

We played piano and sang together until midnight. He plays beautiful! Just like a dream! Well, right before we left, he asked me if I wanted to go to the basketball game on Saturday night with him. I said I’d love to. So he picked me up at 7:45 and we had a wonderful time. We smeared Los Angeles Baptist with a score of 122-108! Afterwards we had a victory party in the gym. Dave had to play a honkey tonk piano for entertainment the first half hour. It was really neat!

The party was over at 11:00 so we went to McClain again and played the piano and sang together until midnight again. He told me I had the tuffest voice. (That’s pretty funny.) Then I went to church with him Sunday night to the Fellowship Baptist Church. We doubled with his roommate, Jim, and one of my girlfriends, Brenda. After church we went to Penguin Point and ate. We had a riot.

Well, I saw him through the week and we talked and stuff. Then Friday night, January 30th, we were together from 6:00-12:00. Part of that time he had to work in the college building, so I talked to him. Then we watched T.V. in the lounge and played the piano & sang until midnight again. It was so much fun.

Well, [I'm up to 11 "Wells." How about you?] the freshman class decided they couldn’t get two pianos in the gym for the talent show, so I played for Dave to sing a solo–”You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me.” It was so tuff! The spotlight was on him and everything. He’s got such a tuff voice. I also accompanied a girl to sing “People.” She did a beautiful job.

Well, after the talent show, Dave and I doubled with Ken and Pam to get a pizza. It was really a lot of fun! Then yesterday morning I went to church with Dave again and we went to dinner together. It was really great! He treats me like I’m worth something. (Unlike someone else I used to know.) [That would be my father.]

I sat down and added up all the hours I spent with him those 2 weekends and it came out to 29 hours and 15 minutes. Wow–how’s that! [Wait. It gets better.]

I like him, that’s for sure, but there’s some others I like too. Like: Daryl, Larry, Gary, Asher, and Keith. I don’t want to go steady with Dave because I don’t want to get tied down with one. Understand? [Totally.]

I hope you don’t think I’m a big flirt. [Why in the world would we think that?] Just making up for lost time. The next time I come home I’ll explain everything in more detail–whenever that is. I miss all you guys a lot. I’m behavin’, believe it or not and I’m much happier than I’ve been for a LONG time!

God Bless You–every one!

Love, Chris

Two months later, my mom and dad were back together. Sometime later they got engaged. And on August 26, 1972, they got married and have been SUPER-HAPPILY married ever since.

Thanks, Mama, for enduring embarrassment just so I could get a few laughs on my blog. You have done a great service to the world. And you’re one of the tuffest women I know.

Anyway. (I wonder how many second paragraphs of my blog posts consist of this one six-letter word that I use whenever my introductory sentence/paragraph gets long-winded, bunny-trailed, and/or nonsensical?)

Anyway (not to be confused with anyways).

Gabe and I took over 3,000 pictures on our trip to Cambodia. I know. And while you can rest assured that I won’t subject you to even 1/20th of those photos, I can’t imagine letting all of them languish away on Gabe’s external hard drive either. So, as time allows, I’ll do themed posts here and there with a few random ones thrown in for good Marla-measure.

Today’s picture post chronicles our entire journey FROM Columbus, Ohio TO Phnom Penh, Cambodia. 30+ hours of joy and excitement. (Actually, it wasn’t too bad at all.)

Our fearless team in the Columbus airport at 3ish pm on Wednesday, July 7. Front row: Lindy, Erin, Me, Kim. Back row: Doug, Gabe, Jason.

Our first stop was a little layover (and dinner–Auntie Anne’s pretzel!) in the Dallas/Fort Worth airport, but apparently we didn’t take any pictures. Hard to believe.

Here are Lindy and Erin working hard in the San Francisco airport making flashcards to help us learn the names of the kiddos in our orphanage. I was totally intimidated by the flashcards and never did use them; I just learned their names as I met them. Hard to imagine now not always knowing their names.

I don’t remember how long our layover was. Three hours? Four? Anyway, we had plenty of time for shots like this:

Taken by this clown:

The 12+ hour flight to Taipei, Taiwan wasn’t the most fun I’ve ever had, but I can’t complain. It reminded me so much of my flight from Alaska to Seoul, South Korea back in 1997 on my way to student teach in Okinawa, Japan.

Here’s me writing in my journal. Not sure if this is before or after my “night’s sleep.”

This is a shot of the little radar screen in front of us as we got ready to fly over Okinawa. I got so excited because I could actually see the Naha airport (where I landed 13 years ago) from the plane!

Here we are in the Taipei airport. None of our stomachs felt all that great by this point, and Lindy’s coffee that tasted just like GREASE didn’t help.

Here’s me (with bad gas) writing this blog post, thrilled to be having my picture taken.

This is the friend Gabe made when he got tired of taking pictures of us.

Meet Sam, a Cambodian man who married a French woman and has lived in France for 30 years. He was coming home to Cambodia for 5 months to visit family. He kept saying his English wasn’t very good, but since I knew about two words in French and zero in Khmer, we made it work.

Then finally! Phnom Penh! And that part of the trip (our arrival) is such a blur to me. Savong and Pisey, the orphanage directors were there. So was Savorn, the country director for Asia’s Hope, and his wife Sony.

And since the older kids were on vacation from school, they came along to help with our bags, give us beautiful wreaths of jasmine and shower us with hugs and smiles.

I love looking back on this picture now that I know all these beautiful people so personally. It’s cool to recognize someone from a photo, but I can’t wait to go back someday and see people I KNOW.

And there you have it. A really long journey that was 100% totally worth it. I’d travel a hundred hours straight to see those faces again.

So, tell me. Have you ever been on an overseas mission(s) trip? If not, do you feel God tugging on your heart to go? Where?

I wish we would’ve thought to take a big family photo before Grandma (and several other people) had already headed home. Oh well. Next time. All of us in this pic add up to less than half of Grandma and Grandpa’s descendants. They have 7 kids (+ spouses), 26 grandkids (+ spouses) and a crazy-exponential number of great-grandkids.

Gabe took this pic with a timer and his mini-tripod, and I am SHOCKED that you can see everyone (except beautiful little Abby tucked behind Asias) and that almost everyone is smiling. Miracle.

Did I mention that Saturday supposedly set some sort of record for July 24 in our small town in Ohio? It was close to 100 degrees (I hear you Texans scoffing), and we had 56 people and NO AIR-CONDITIONING. And you Texans are no longer scoffing, because you can’t fathom being outside (or in an un-air-conditioned house with 55 other people) for 10 hours in the heat. Am I right?

I must confess that some of us did find some relief midway through the day.

My brother Josh, my cousin Sara and I took our nine kids plus my Aunt Jeannie’s three over to my Mom and Dad’s to swim for awhile. So much fun.

Another shift of people came over after we went back to Susie’s. Not sure what the limit is for Mom and Dad’s pool, but I’m pretty sure it’s less than 56.

Next on the agenda: Magic Show with Uncle Rod! Always a good time.

I love that my girlies looooove their first cousins and second cousins and first cousins once-removed. They play and play and play together until they drop.

And they have such a beautiful place to play. We may not have beaches or mountains or deserts (thank you, Jesus!), but Ohio is awfully pretty in its own right.

Can you guess what we’re all doing here? Okay, I’ll tell you. Watching my brother-in-law, Stewart, fly one of his remote-controlled airplanes. He’s amazing, really, and it’s always a HUGE hit with any crowd.

And last, but not least, a sweet pic of two of my favorite girlies.

Thank you, God, for the amazing blessing of family. A family with a godly heritage, full of wonderful, beautiful people. I love you guys!

It’s going to take something pretty spectacular to get me talking about a topic unrelated to Cambodia for the next long while.

My extended family fits the bill.

Saturday was our Annual Yoder Family Summer Get-Together at Uncle Tim (my dad’s brother) and Aunt Susie’s (isn’t that a sweet picture Gabe took of the field behind their house?). Not all of Grandma and Grandpa’s descendants could make the trip, but over 50 of us did. And for the first time in a long, long while, all of Grandma’s seven kids were together.

And Aunt Jeannie went to great lengths to bring Grandma from the nursing home. It was a super-special day, and I don’t think Grandma’s grin disappeared for one second of the two-ish hours she got to spend with all of us.

Here she is with the youngest of the Yoder clan, Heidi Jaye Mayo (my cousin Rachael’s youngest of three girlies):

And with all seven of her kiddos. Doug, Chris, Jeannie, Nick and Tim in the back. Ron (my daddy), Grandma and Terry in the front.

And Grandma got her socks knocked off when her “baby brother” Russ showed up and surprised her. Word has it he wasn’t supposed to be driving, but I won’t tell. Grandma had two brothers, but Uncle Tom and his wife Betty are gone. And so is Russ’s wife, Miriam. And Grandpa. So Russ is all Grandma has left. Well, him and her oodles of descendants.

Here are some of those characters doing what they do best. Eating.

We Yoders do a lot of eating. And hoo boy, is it good! (This is my brother Josh, my sis-in-law Jess and their kiddos. And my mama.)

Here’s cutie-pie Preston and his pretty mama, Christy. We like to tease my cousin Brian (Christy’s husband) that he is sooooo lucky to have snagged her (but it’s true). Love you, Christy! You too, Brian.

Here’s Grandma leaving to go back to the nursing home. It’s easier not to think about how things used to be. Getting together at Grandma and Grandpa’s farm (right down the road from Tim and Susie’s). Grandpa taking everything in from his seat on the porch. The days when we were the ones who left, not Grandma.

Bittersweet for sure.

I heart my family.

More pics tomorrow for you cousins, aunts and uncles stopping by! (Magic Show! Pool party! Flying airplanes!)

Perfect.

We only had a couple days left in Cambodia when I laid out all my supplies on our bed in the guest house, cut the magnets into little squares and put them on the backs of the tiles. Then I made sure I could spell each of the kids’ names. Except I couldn’t. Because you can’t spell Sopheak and Kimhou without a K.  But never fear. Nothing a blank tile and a black sharpie couldn’t fix.

On our very last night at the orphanage, I pulled the board and letters out of my backpack while I was sitting on the steps with Longdich and Sophy. We started playing around with it, and then little by little, other kids trickled over to join in the fun. We giggled and hugged and spelled things and took pictures and giggled some more. They sat on my lap or scootched as close to me as they could get. I loved every second of it.

The combination of watching those little darlings play with SCRABBLE LETTERS and knowing that we had about 30 minutes left before we had to say good-bye for a LONG, LONG TIME was enough to make me bawl. But I held in the tears and let out the laughs.

And I’ll cherish these pictures for always.

Sophy taking a turn with the Scrabble board.

She wanted to spell Tammy (our pastor’s wife), someone who made a big impact on her when she came to Cambodia with Team One.

Sweet little Senghong.

Srey Lin gets in on the action.

And beautiful little Srey Roth who insisted there’s no Y in her name. Works for me. It can be complicated writing their names in English, because the translation isn’t very precise. They don’t use our alphabet, so we’re basically making up the spellings of their names.

Sophann wanted to show me that he remembered how to spell his “little sisters’” names. He tried to spell “Gabe” and “Marla” too, but there are only so many A’s in a Scrabble game, and our greedy little family needs seven.

Something about this picture just grabs me.

Be still my heart.

And Marla love Longdich too! So, so much, you beautiful girl!

Not sure how much more my heart can take.

I left the board and letters at the orphanage for the kiddos to have their way with. There are no guarantees that any of the pieces are even left a week later. Stuff just doesn’t last long when you’ve got 20+ kids in your family. But I don’t care. Those precious minutes of joy we got to share was so worth it. And I’ll just bring a new board and letters next time I go.

I’m thinking September is good.

What started out as “let’s write a quick note to each kid” turned into quite a little production with notes from each of the five of us, photos of us with each kid, some stickers, and a couple little trinkets.

Then we added notes from our teammate Doug and then some more from Sharon, a Team 1-er. We dropped them off on Tuesday night, and the Asia’s Hope team departed for Cambodia at 1pm Wednesday.

A huge thank-you to Judy for using up valuable luggage space to transport notes to our darling kiddos. And please pray that they arrive safely!

Here are some of the pics we included with the notes:

Man alive, those kids are awesome! Can’t wait for these three to meet them.

Tomorrow’s post: Scrabble letters in Cambodia. I KNOW!! Bliss infinity!

I need some practice trusting, so it’s all good.

I’ll explain in a nutshell and then let it rest. Our parents (both sets) kept our girls while we were gone (trading off and on). The day before we got back, Gabe’s mom brought them back to our house and completely outdid herself. Cleaned, did their laundry, mowed our yard (front and back), made signs for the airport, gave Nina a bath.

A very cold bath. For whatever reason, we had no hot water.

When we got home, Gabe tried to light the pilot on the hot water heater to no avail. He called a service guy who said he could come right then (Saturday) for $97 or Monday for $67. No-brainer. Who needs to shower anyway?

I took a hot shower at our neighbors’ on Sunday morning, and Gabe did a super-fast scrub in our cold water. The girls? They’re still young enough to smell sweet.

Monday.  Heating/cooling company calls. Someone will come between 2 and 4. I go shower-less. He comes. Can’t get it to light. Says, “let me look at your gas. Maybe someone messed with it while you were gone.”

Or maybe the gas company turned it off and locked it because we didn’t pay our bill. Awesome. No warning, no note saying what they did. Awesome.

I pay the service guy (who apologized 10 times for making me pay) $65 and called the gas company. Paid the bill over the phone plus a $50 reconnect fee. Awesome.

They’re coming today (Tuesday) sometime between 7 am and 7 pm. Joy.

Sat down at my computer 10 minutes ago and started cleaning up some of the piles on my desk. Came to a small piece of white paper folded into fourths. What’s this? I ask myself. Unfold it. It’s a notice that our gas has been turned off (on July 12). How in the world did this get here?? Then I make the connection. It was probably in our door when Janelle and the girlies got here Friday. They put it on my desk without reading it (as they should have) and there it sat until after we’d already paid a heating/cooling guy $65 to essentially tell us what the little paper said.

Sigh.

I find myself questioning God with stuff like this. “God, you realize how many starving Cambodians $65 can feed, right?” And then I remember that He is in control, that He owns everything and knows everything and loves those hurting people more than I ever could.

And I trudge on. With joy. And faith.

Photo post tomorrow! I can’t wait!

I feel so heavy.

Glad I don’t have to go to work today. Praying for Gabe as he does. Going without a shower today. Praying the hot water heater fixer-man comes soon. Praying God will help my unbelief as I envision the thing being irreparable and costing money we don’t have.

I just met a slew of folks in Cambodia who trust God implicitly for his provision minute by minute. Lord, help me be like those people.

Just read a heart-wrenching story from Asia’s Hope’s director about a man who is desperate for someone to care for his children.

Had a wonderful time sharing Cambodia with our church family yesterday.

On today’s to-do list: grocery store after fix-it man comes and write 22 letters to precious kiddos in the orphanage (my friend Judy leaves for Cambodia Wednesday with a team from Asia’s Hope). There is really no other way to get mail/supplies to Cambodia without them being confiscated.

Have I mentioned that God rocked my world last week?

Through my fog of diphenhydramine, I wonder what God has planned for our lives in the days and months ahead. Where do we go from here? Everything seems so pointless. Everything that used to matter now pales in comparison with people fighting to stay alive and children being trafficked to keep food in their families’ bellies.

My heart is broken, and I’m not sure how to function right now.

Externally processing right here on the ol’ blog.

My kiddos are fending for themselves as I figure out how to maneuver through the haze. They’re acting out and I don’t have the energy to do anything but threaten them.

Praying a lot for the people we met, people God is raising up to be the hope of Cambodia.

Praying for myself that God will show me what I need to do and give me the strength to do it.

Would love your prayers too. Thank you.