1 January 2011

John Pahls, as a Maryknoll seminarian, spent several years in Phnom Penh with Maryknoll Cambodia.  After withdrawing from the Maryknoll program, John went to work in Thailand as a librarian in an international school.  Hun Saren lived at the Catholic student center in Phnom Penh during her university days and now works as a manager in a Maryknoll project.  Today they were married in Takeo Province near Saren's home.
	Here is John dressed in typical attire for a groom at a Cambodian wedding.
	The beginning of the ceremony in the small St. Francis Church in Takeo.  Presiding was Bishop Olivier Schmitthaeusler who built the vocational school on the church grounds and is still officially pastor of the parish although he became bishop in October.
	Preaching at the service was Fr. Ashley Evans, SJ, who was director of the Catholic Church Student Center when Hun Saren was a student there as a member of the second group of students to enter the program.
	In a Cambodian Catholic wedding ceremony, the bride and groom speak their vows directly to each other without any assistance from the priest.  Here Saren holds the text of the vows while John concentrates on pronouncing the Khmer correctly.
	After the exchange of vows, near the end of the ceremony, the priest presider, parents and family members and close friends tie red strings around the wrists of John and Saren.
	At the very end the full wedding party posed for a group photograph.
	St. Francis Church is now too small for the 100 or so Catholics who are part of the parish, but when it was built just seven or eight years ago, there were less than five Catholics in the area.
	John and Saren greeted several friends of John's who came from Thailand where they work with John at the school where he is librarian.