Greetings from the heat of SE Texas.   I could be saying SE Asia because the temp and humidity is quite familiar to our life in Cambodia. While the weather conditions are familiar, new normal is not.  For me new normal is is not comfortable.

There is a remarkable tension for us in being grateful to our Lord for new and very meaningful work of church restart/rejuvenation at Westway BC in Huntsville.  I certainly remain humbled at what I see God unfolding in this place and these wonderful people. The tension comes to me as I ponder the enormous difficulty being faced by our teams in Cambodia as they continue in intense poverty brought on by continued Covid related restrictions.  We so long to be at their side day by day to encourage and lift their weary hearts.  It seems so wrong to have the comfort of our homes when our beloved family there frequently goes without food.

Then the tension flips as we see the developing faith of our Cambodian teams, the trust and hope they have in Christ and each other as brothers and sisters in the Lord in spite of their trying conditions.

We love the people in both places.

Daily it seems we search for new alerts that travel might open for us to make a return to Cambodia to be the encouragement our friends so long to experience.  How many times can they say, “we want you to come mom and dad” and we have to say “soon”?

I feel the days passing by.  And Zoom, while we do this nearly weekly with our Cambodian families, is an extremely poor substitute for real touch. They and we long to embrace and move forward with the Gospel spreading plans now delayed since January 2020.

We continue with events and desire to schedule more.   Always well received and helpful when we do them here in the US, they provide both education for those here and a source for selling the goods our teams make in Cambodia and send to us to sell.  For several it has  been significant income over the 18 months.  I believe Cambodia has been set back easily 50 years.  We continue to send financial support needed for subsistence living during Covid restrictions.

The church, not permitted to meet and assemble, is struggling to find underground methodologies. We coach them in the ways adopted in so many places where the church has been underground for generations.

We will go back.   If God will open the door we will go back.  And we will continue our work at Westway as God has given us those people to shepherd.

For your continued interest, prayers, and support, we express our most sincere appreciation.

May we see you soon (in some way other than Zoom). Face to face would be great.

God bless you