Charles Dittmeier – Page 3 – Welcome to Cambodia, and…..

Training the way it should be….

This week a representative of the national deaf association of Thailand (by the fan) came to Phnom Penh as part of the training of young Cambodian deaf people to be leaders in a national association here. it is wonderful to see deaf leaders training our deaf leaders in fluent sign language. They learn so much more when their teacher is deaf himself!

The Catholic Church is one of the major actors in providing schools for children in Cambodia with autism. Today the Church of the Child Jesus in the Boeung Tum Pun area of Phnom Penh had a benefit concert to raise money for an enlarged school building on their campus. Performing was a professional ensemble of singers and musicians from Japan.

Life and Death in God’s Family

This morning at our Sunday liturgy, we had a special blessing, a remembrance for Raymond Leos, our parishioner who died three weeks ago. His brother Greg and Greg’s wife Kristen and their daughter Alexandra came from the United States and celebrated Ray’s life and death with us. I think it is very important for a parish to mark the special and important events in the lives of our church family like this.

Living Mission

Here is the latest column I wrote for The Record, the newspaper for the Archdiocese of Louisville

Sign language resource

Patrick Labelle is a French friend of the deaf who has developed an app for learning and using sign language. It’s for use by deaf children more than the general public.

Patrick explains his app, named Sign Discovery, to Julie Lawler and Thuch Sophy from our DDP education project.

Street Food

A seasonal favorite among the foods sold on the street is corn on the cob. It is sold either roasted or boiled and is usually offered from vendors pushing bicycles with a large bag of boiled or roasted ears of corn. It’s quite good!

Pomelo is in season

One of my favorite fruits taste-wise is the pomelo. It’s quite a bit like a grapefruit but with a better taste. Eating a pomelo is not so pleasing, though. It has a huge soft rind around the fruit part and it takes some effort to get to what is edible. And the fruit part is not so readily edible as a grapefruit. There is a heavy protective skin around each section and it’s difficult to maneuver around that.