Cambodia, Day 17

God has been very merciful to me in one specific way: I haven't gotten sick. No upset stomach, no fever, nothing. I'm one of the few who can say that. But I did yesterday finally get a little post-nasal drip, which means I'm sniffling and clearing my throat a tad, and I've had a couple of quick sneezing fits. It feels like the tiny bit of allergy I get occasionally back home. It's rained pretty hard on occasion over the past several days, and as the local vegetation gets a fresh burst of vitality from that, I suspect it's all belching some pollen into the air. Naturally, my immune system needs to commence playing war games to be ready for the threat of Cambodian pollen. At any rate, if this is the worst symptom I experience here, then I'm still doing pretty good.

Funny moment: Sway is our only team member that speaks Khmer, and today, one of the boys  asked him if I came down from the sky. Sway found the question confusing, so he asked the boy why he thought that. The boy said I looked like one of the Kung fu masters from a Chinese movie who come down from the sky. That was a fine thing to hear secondhand later on. I wish I could think up a way to use it to mess with them tomorrow, but it's our last day, and the setup likely would be too complicated.

Also this afternoon, I resumed giving away my office toys. The Kids Club lesson was about Leviticus 26, the year of  jubilee. One situation I wanted the kids to imagine was losing something they owned, but getting it back later, so we had a skit in which Delia was the teacher, and Sara was a pupil caught playing with a toy. Delia took the toy and said Sara could have it back at the end of the week. The toy we used was my large inflatable hammer, and there was a nice touch of absurdity with Sara swinging around this huge thing during class and getting caught with it. Then, near the end of the lesson, I wanted to make the point that everything belongs to God, and that He judges our hearts by what we do with the possessions temporarily entrusted to us. For that skit, Sara started by using the hammer to repair the leaky roof of a poor widow. Delia admired the hammer and asked if she could hold it, so Sara made her promise only to do good and nice things with it. Delia then scampered around the room, hitting everybody she could reach on the head with the hammer, which the kids absolutely loved. When she got to Ratanak, she hit him several times, and he playfully toppled over and passed out. After the end of the lesson, I explained about my office toys and why I was giving them away, and I presented the inflatable hammer to Ratanak. He almost immediately hit Delia with it.

Tomorrow is our last day at Rahab's House: the storytelling students will perform their stories, and the adults and kids all will learn about how the year of jubilee was supposed to mean freedom for all the captives. Chuttrah asks for more prayer for his wife's health, and all of the NCU folks could use prayer for the last of our energy to stretch through one more round of everything.