A Cambodia visit

After a wonderful Christmas Day service at our church, we returned to our home on Ponderosa Avenue to spend a quiet December 25th readying ourselves for our trip to Cambodia to see our son Elijah and wife Sina, and their children, our only grandchildren, Micah and Angelica.  Angelica was born on November 10, so this would be our first opportunity to meet this new addition to our family.  We flew out of Fresno on the 26th and, after 24 hours of travel, met Angelica for the first time.  We soon discovered that Angelica is a very calm, sweet, little baby girl.  We spent a lot of time just looking at her, and exchanging smiles.

Elijah went to Cambodia for the first time in 2003 following his graduation from UCSD.  He worked in Cambodia with Mennonite Central Committee, assigned to MCC's partnership program. He spent special time with a young Cambodian women's peace group interested in promoting women's rights, teaching conflict resolution skills, and advocating for women's causes in Cambodia.  Elijah served with MCC for four years, falling in love with Khmer culture and language in the process, not to mention with Sina Yang.  Sina and Elijah married in 2008.  Today Elijah works with the International Committee of the Red Cross as a delegate and interpreter.  He spends a lot of time visiting and monitoring conditions in Cambodian prisons.   By now his work has taken him to many interesting places and events, including this training.

 

Our daughter-in-law Sina brings a lot of happiness and spice to our lives.  She comes from a big and loving family that enjoys just getting together.  Sina, among other things, is very interested in photography and she loves to eat crab at a little restaurant in Kep.

The sprawling Yang family means that Micah has lots of cousins to eat and play with.  In addition, he's got a soccer friend named Winner and Elijah and Sina's good friends Pisit and Seiha's daughter, Sophia, is also a good friend.

 

We spent time with Micah reading stories and playing games.  Unfortunately, when we took a walk to Micah's school to visit the playground, the gates were locked because it was a holiday.  But overall Micah is a lucky boy.  He's growing up learning to speak two languages, Khmai and English.

We were in Cambodia for about ten days.  Most of the time was spent at Elijah and Sina's condo in Phnom Penh but we did spend a weekend at the Veranda in Kep, on the shores of the Gulf of Thailand.  We returned to our home in Reedley, California on January 8.