Camodia bound 2012

    As my sweet friend, Amanda Bryant, said in her blog its a strange feeling walking off the plane in Vietnam and feeling like nothing is out of the norm. I knew what to expect. I knew who to look for. And I knew what it was going to smell like. I will probably feel more out of place when I return home and walk out of the airport in Nashville because I don't know where I'm going to go, and I don't know what it's going to look like. The only thing I do know is that my fiance and family are going to pick me up. It was a nice sensation walking off the plane feeling like I was somewhat home, especially after two days of traveling. It's such a relaxing feeling to know that when I'm in Saigon I know where to go, and where certain stores are, where the good sweets are, where the market is, and how to contact close friends if I was to ever be sick or in danger.
   Pulling into Cambodia, after a five hour bus ride the next day, I had the exact opposite feeling. As we were on our bus Amanda and I realized that we miscalculated what day we were going to arrive in Cambodia. We both realized that we booked our hotel a day late, which meant we had nowhere to stay our first night! When our bus pulled into the city Amanda and I looked at each other with a look in our eyes that said "well....what are we going to do now?" We decided to get a tuktuk and go to the only place we were familiar with, which is a coffee shop/ministry called Jars of Clay. Upon pulling into the shop we saw a big sign on the door that said, "UNDER CONSTRUCTION! We will open again in a few months." At this point we were both trying to think very quickly of what to do next. Looking around I saw another coffee shop across the street. We decided to grab a drink and use their wifi to look up local guest houses. We were both extremely tired, jet lagged, and a little brain dead. When nothing seemed to be working out we finally decided to quickly call (because our phone was dying) the one person we knew in Cambodia, which was the Blaines.They recently moved to Cambodia and have been good friends with me for the past few years. Luckily they came to our rescue and found us a 5 dollar hostel and helped us get situated. Praise the Lord.
    We are now staying in our originally planed guest house with the Blaines and are having a great time. Amanda and I have been to the local Russian and night market were we bought our favorite Asian fruits, and we have also eaten amazing Vietnamese, Thai, Khmer, and soon to be Mexican food.  We also went to a local coffee house that beats anything I've seen in Nashville. We are really enjoying our time with the Blaines and their little baby girl Clara.
   Today we went to a local Anglican Church, which was really nice. They seemed to have a number of people that were around our age. We also ran into a few people that we have meetings with later on in the week. I'm starting to realize PP isn't as big as I thought it was. Tonight Amanda and I are going to a local International church, which we are also excited about. Thanks for keeping us in your prayers. We are both doing great and staying healthy. I also here our 75-90 degree weather is a lot better thn everyone else in the states ;). We are traveling to a near by city tomorrow to meet with a Vietnamese pastor so please pray for safe travels and encouraging meetings.