Cambodia Family Retreat 2009

Thank you everyone for all of your support and prayers while we were in Cambodia. The family retreat we led was better than we ever imagined it would be. God knew all along how it would turn out! He brought our two families together along with the other seven Cambodian families to strengthen our faith and encourage one another in our love and service for Him. God is so good. Watch this video and you will see a glimpse of God's wonderful work. It was a great retreat as we grew closer to our Lord with our Cambodian brothers and sisters in Christ. Enjoy!

Cambodia Family Retreat

Because of the lack of reliable internet connection in Cambodia, we were unable to post things like we had planned, but this is a picture of the families that attended our retreat. The people here were uplifted and encouraged to continue living out their faith in service to God because of Holy Cross, St. John, and other Christian friends. They face many challenges in their ministry in Cambodia in regards to the cultural and historical context of the country's past and present. This experience afforded them the opportunity to forge Christian bonds as they connected with other church workers and their families and realized there are others with a common mission and purpose. The families were so appreciative and gracious to us as we helped them in their faith journey. Overall, the reatreat was a success. We inpacted their lives and they impacted our's as well. This was a time in our lives we will never forget. Helena Dieckhoff

The Interview

In a recent interview, Joelle shared with a "local" news reporter a sample of some newly learned words spoken in Khmer, the language of Cambodia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU2VfU9F3GI

I can't wait!

We are about 11 days away from going to Cambodia! I am so excited about going! It will be so much fun! I am the only one in the family that knows 28 Khmer words. I pretty much know a lot of the greetings and such. I am going to tell you some Khmer words, chumrepso is hello, chumreaplea is good-bye, thank you is aukun, soam is please, and soppsabai is how are you?

Cambodian Church in Wichita

Saturday June 6, 2009, my family and me and my cousins went to a Cambodian Baptist Church and all of us got to go and hear them speak in Khmer the whole time. They also cooked us Cambodian food and we all ate what we liked. There was a curry dish that was very delicious, it was a little bit red with some meat in it.

John 3:16

Hi, this is David. Joelle said I could occasionally post something on her blog.

This is a cross written in Khmer, the official language in Cambodia. A couple months ago, we were trying to find someone who could translate John 3:16 for us. It is the Bible verse we are using which ties into our retreat theme "God is Love". My dad contacted different places and finally came across Cambodia Planeview Baptist Church right in Wichita! He got the name and phone number of one of the church leaders. He was thrilled to hear about us going to his country and told my dad that he would translate it for us.

We are going to print this verse onto t-shirts so that all the people in each of the families going there can have one. It will also help spread the Word about God when they wear it in their home town.

Great News!

One night my mommy and my daddy wanted to talk to my sister Helena, my brother David, and me. They told us that they planned with my aunt and uncle for our two families to go to Cambodia this summer! We were so excited! Then after a while my family and I went in front of my church to share our plans. We told everyone all about what we planned to do. So finally in a couple of months my cousins, my family, and me are going to go to Cambodia to tell about Jesus Christ. We can't wait!