The lay missioners from mission-sending groups from various countries get together each month in a type of support group. This month they met at the MEP house on the Bassac River.
Lay Mission Meeting
Fruit Stand
A fruit stall at the Sansam Kosal Market.
Well!
I’m embarrassed… I wasn’t able to access the Internet everyday on my trip to the US for the funeral of my sister Ann, but I was taking photos so I could give a summary when I returned. Well….I’ve returned but I’ve lost the photos! I downloaded them from the camera but I don’t know where I put them on my laptop! I’ll find them… Hang on!
On the road…
Greetings… I am on my way to the Phnom Penh airport to head to Louisville, Kentucky for the funeral of my sister Ann Dittmeier who died yesterday. I fly through Seoul, San Francisco, and Houston before getting to Kentucky–about a 35-hour trip. I won’t be able to update the website here until I arrive in Louisville.
Ann Dittmeier
My sister Ann Marie died today in Louisville, Kentucky. It was rather unexpected. Ann was eating lunch and had a seizure and died. I am the oldest of the eight brothers and sisters and Ann was the oldest of the sisters. This picture of Ann and me is from a Christmas probably in the late 1960s.
It’s STILL here!
This is water, more than ankle deep, still along a street in Boeung Tum Pun. It collected there in a monster rain storm on MONDAY. Think we have a drainage problem?
Notable Quotes
“What you are is God’s gift to you, what you become is your gift to God.”
Hans Urs von Balthasar, Swiss theologian
It’s still here…
The day after the big rainstorm, a woman with a broom in the Boeung Tum Pun area attempts the hopeless task of moving flood water in her street. There’s no place for it to go. The sewer systems weren’t designed for it. Note the concrete drainage pipes lined up to be installed, though. Maybe this time next year there won’t be so much flooding.
Water, water everywhere…
We had a heavy rainstorm this afternoon, right before I was to bicycle home. 20 minutes after it started, it was already over my shoes so I left the bike at the deaf office and took a tuk-tuk home. These two girls got a bit damp on their way home on the streets of the Boeung Tum Pun neighborhood.
This is the type of tuk-tuk I was in. My shoes were in water when I was sitting IN the tuk-tuk. I have never seen Boeung Tum Pun flood so deep so fast before.
CSR–Boncafé
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the idea that a company should play a positive role in the community and consider the environmental and social impact of business decisions. (Business Development Bank of Canada)
Boncafe in Phnom Penh has taken CSR seriously and approached the Maryknoll Deaf Development Programme about training deaf people how to make coffee. DDP thought that was a wonderful idea!
The training at DDP was in two sessions on two different days, one day for deaf people from Kampong Cham Province and the second day for learners from Phnom Penh. Here Pakheday, the trainer, explains some of the basics of making good coffee.
Here he explains the hardware on the commercial coffee making machine. The goal of the training was to provide a marketable skill that the deaf people can use to set up their own businesses.
The training was hands-on and each student made one of the coffee varieties. The DDP staff suffered caffeine overload from drinking so many of the demonstration coffees!
Certificates were presented at the end of the day of training. Now the DDP Job Training Project staff will follow up with the trainees to see if they are able to capitalize on what they have learned.
On the third morning, without the students, the DDP staff made videos of all the coffee varieties and the processes for making them. The videos can be used for review and reinforcement of what was learned.