A few hours more a.k.a. First Blood

As I was leaving the internet cafe of my last posting, I was walking down a dark alley (sorry Pop) and was hailed in English to come have a beer. So I spent much of Sunday evening sitting at a cafe/bar hanging out with people from Australia, California, Canada, Chile and France. Fascinating stories, good times. I've been finding that the subject of God comes up quite frequently and I always get to share bits and pieces of my faith. It doesn't feel like much, but I guess farmers don't feel like they're doing a ton of work every time they throw a seed in the field.

Yesterday was my first day at Kien Khleang. I watched a little girl be transformed from an aberration to a beautiful child; what was a hideously divided mouth became what will be a mild scar. I saw a man with an abscessed tooth and a huge cyst distorting his face. A few hours gave him back his face and removed severe pain from his life. I anticipate many more life-changing surgeries as I stand by.

A profile of the other students with me:

Viv - Brittish girl with 1 year left
Aoife (ee-fah) - Irish girl who will graduate in a couple weeks!
Scott - premed from Winnipeg, has family in town
Richard - premed from Utah, in the application process for med school

Everyone but Scott will leave after this week and a new crew will be coming in. I've really enjoyed getting to meet this group. We finished up here at about 3:30 yesterday and I headed home for a few hours. I'm still loving relaxing and all that. At 6:30, Viv & Aoife met me and Tuon (Samnang's cousin) at this great Indian restaurant to cap off the day.

Today has been pretty slow, but I managed some really good time with the Lord this morning... reading, praying, basking... It made me realize how little time I normally spend with Him. That must change. It will be interesting to see how my attention span changes over the next few weeks. I really want to know the Lord and will be able to make time to grow that relationship.

I'm starting to get a feel for how things work around here, you basically wander around until you see something interesting, then jump into the middle of it. I took out some stitches today and will probably start helping out more now that I know the drill. I'm not sure how long I'll keep up this minute-by-minute account, but it's been fun so far. Tonight I think we're going salsa dancing =).