No Gideon Bible here

Greetings from dusty Phnom Penh! Thai Airways, "smooth as silk", fed us dinner on the 55 min. flight from Bangkok. The airport in PP has modernized in many ways. Now visa applications are handed out on the plane but there is still a table of 8 glum officials who pass each passport down the line each one doing some mysterious action. Entry visa is $20. paid in US dollar only. I'm perverse enough to enjoy seeing the French have to cough up US dollars in their former colony. Our Cambodian friends, Davin, her dad and nephew were waiting for me.
Here's a little of the Negstad/Cambodia history. In 1993 (hope I get the dates right from memory) Lisa came here to do a summer internship with Church World Service while in grad. school at Yale. The Vietnamese had left the occupation of the country which was now under UN supervision leading up to the elections in 1994. The day Lisa landed here the UN was evacuating UN dependants because of threats of violence by the Khmer Rouge. After her summer here Lisa went back to Yale and finished her degree and then was hired to be Church World Service's fiance and administration director for Cambodia. She served in this or similar capacity for three and half years. Lars and I came to visit her in very early '95 and he stayed on for a year working for the International Conference to Band Land Mines. A couple of years later Joanne and I visited. I accompanied Lisa when she came back for her first visit after she had left and I've visited 2 or 3 times since. It has been about six years since I was last here. Lisa became very close friends with a Cambodian woman, Ravy, who is about Lisa's age. She also was 'adopted' by Ravy's extended family. Ravy came to visit us in American several years ago and this winter Ravy's niece, Davin, spent some time over Christmas with us.
This may be more than you want to know but it gives context to my brief visit here these days. In an hour Davin will pick me up and we will travel to the orphanage where Emily volunteered and I'll deliver the educational books collected on her behalf. I'll report on that visit in my next blog.
While I'm here I'm staying in a guesthouse, $16. per night, across the street from Ravy and her family...thus the title of this blog.