Hello from Cambodia! 

I feel like November marks the beginning of the holiday season. I promise, I’m not playing Christmas music yet, but somehow just seeing “November” on the calendar makes me  feel festive! 

We moved to Cambodia in January 2023 to develop the Water Project for WBS (Warm Blankets Switzerland). As most of you already know, the aim of the project is: to ensure that needy, orphaned and disadvantaged children have access to safe drinking water. Cambodia continues to develop, but there are still so many families and children living in extreme poverty. Since moving here we’ve made a lot of new contacts with other orginazations. Thanks to the ongoing donations from people in Switzerland and the USA, we are now able to help some other local projects. This is in addition to the Water Project, and we hope that we can do even more in the future to help the children in Asia. Here are three projects that we’re currently supporting.

-Lunch and Tutoring Program for low income children at New Life Kampot church. Through a generous donation from some friends in Switzerland, we can support this new project. The children will come every day from 11am to 1pm and eat a hot lunch and receive tutoring.

-Safe Place Children’s Home in Kampot. This is a small children’s home in Kampot. Since moving here we’ve had the opportunity to help Safe Place a few times with a water filter and other small projects, and we hope that we can support them more in the future. https://www.safeplacemission.com/

-Seed. Seed is a Swiss NGO working in Battambang, Cambodia. We installed three water filters for them in August (link to August update) and we were so impressed with their projects. They work directly with local schools to support low income students with a free kindergarten, free lunch, a library, English classes and a child sponsorship program. Many of the children in their programs live with their grandparents or extended family, because their parents have gone to the city to try to find work. This is another project that we hope we can support more the future.  

October was busy with visitors. As I mentioned last month, our friends from Switzerland were visiting us, they departed on the 4th, and that same day Jim and Linda Thomas arrived from the USA. They invited us and four other families for a little retreat in Kep, Cambodia. Jim and Linda are retired pastors who travel to Asia several times a year to provide care and support for missionaries and aid works. They are pretty much the coolest retired pastors you will EVER meet. The very next weekend our long time friends Bob and Christal Hollandsworth came to visit us. Now, if Jim and Linda are the “Coolest Pastors”, then Bob and Christal hold the title for “Coolest Retired Missionaries.” Even though they are in their 70s, they still travel around Cambodia by motorcycle and train! I worked with them from 2010-2013 and we’ve been good friends ever since. It was wonderful to be together again. Both of these couples are like second parents to us, and like grandparents to Benjamin. They showered us with love and encouragement, and insisted on paying for every meal out. 

In October we installed filters in two new communities, Phum Pome and Phum Check. We also held hygiene trainings in both locations for the local children. Because the new school year is starting next week, we included pencils, erasers and sharpeners in their packets, as well as the standard bar of soap, toothbrush and balloons. We had about 50 children total. 

I’ve been teaching preschool. Benjamin’s teacher is on vacation for five weeks, so I’ve been substituting a few times per week. I’m enjoying it more than I expected, and Benjamin has been a huge help, telling me what is and isn’t  allowed. 😂

Well I think that’s enough for this letter, it’s getting long 😉. Here’s the photo link. 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Ab3Kep3C5p5yN1qMA

Have a great November everyone! 

Love,

Jenny, Lukas and Benjamin