Poor, Yet Rich

August 18, 2009. This will be messy because I'm writing en route to the Gulf of Thailand. There are six of us in an 11-passenger Mercedes Benz van (4 Parkers plus the drive Buntha and our tour guide/travel agent Kung Seiha, who is a Khmer returned missionary who completed his mission a year ago). These two Khmer will be with us the next few days to help with travel, phone, motel accommodations, etc. Ben's happy to have their service to relieve some headaches for him.
Yesterday--oh my! Our tuk-tuk driver for the day is named Chevkosal and he's the branch president of the area where Ben was most recently serving. We rode to Sensok first, and the area was our first to see so many houses with no water or sewer. Interestingly (and as Ben had said), many of these humble homes on stilts with bare wooden floors and tin roofs had televisions. We stopped at the church first and Ben was surprised to see the new addition, which more than doubled its size since Ben served there. The happiest little boys (which Don later called "electrons") came running into the courtyard--so cute--they all hugged me and ran and ran in happy circles and smiled for pictures and giggled and ran some more. I went into the chapel area and sat down to play the piano, accompanied by three little boys on and off my lap, running in more circles, and sitting next to me or on my knee with exuberant plunking on the keyboard. So fun!

The first family we visited in the home taught me a profound lesson. We greeted them at their front door, then walked around some attached homes, across a small slough (which I later learned was their sewer), and to the back door where we took off our shoes. We walked through a small kitchen area and into the living room. As we sat cross-legged on their wooden floor, the father of the family pulled out his scriptures, asking, "What's your favorite scripture?" He highlighted and recorded our names and the date beside each passage and then related how that scripture was important to him. For example, Doctrine and Covenants 88:119 talks about organizing ourselves and preparing a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of order, a house of God. He said that they have a house of order, evidenced by the pictures in their home--one of the Hong Kong temple and the largest of the Savior (demonstrating their priorities). They also had pictures from their baptism day on the wall and the daughter Maohe Bammak left and returned with her baptism day picture of her with Elder Parker. The father thanked us for sacrificing the two years with our son so that he could serve his mission in Cambodia. Don got teary-eyed (o.k., so did I); it was a great moment. We visited more and the father told us during the Khmer Rouge he saw things that were unbelievable. We felt a great closeness with this family.

Walking along the streets of this village was quite a humbling experience, as this was the poorest neighborhood we have seen to this point. We stopped by another home, but only the 16-year-old daughter (top of her class in school) was home, so we didn't stay. We walked further and stopped by another home and found the father, who was extremely drunk (at 10 a.m.!). He invited us in, but Ben declined and even chastised him for not being responsible and taking care of his family The children were down the street a ways, too embarrassed to be home with their drunken father.

Chevkoval then drove us to visit lotus man. He was so cute--after talking with Ben for a few minutes, he realized who he was (it had been over 10 months since he had seen Ben). "Oh, Elder Parker," he exclaimed, and he got tears in his eyes. He said Ben is truthful because he said that he would bring us to meet him (said promise was made 10 months ago), and he did. We were invited to sit on a mat lotus man laid out for us under his house. Daniel and I enjoyed a few brief French phrases with lotus man. When Don asked him how he survived the Khmer Rouge with his ability to speak French, he said, "I pretended to be crazy." We were all delighted that the waders we brought fit lotus man perfectly. He grinned from ear to ear. (Our camera battery ran out, so we only have the picture of this imprinted in our hearts--but it's a doozy!) As he bid us farewell, he turned to Daniel and said, "Bon voyage and bonne chance." (Have a nice trip and good luck.)