Cambodia was amazing! I can’t tell you how much I loved it!
The clinic is beautiful.  It’s simply amazing. It’s way prettier than I thought it would be.  We actually ended up having a grand opening.  I had just thought we would do a medical clinic, but when an opening ceremony was suggested, I loved the idea.  Hehe! So we had a ribbon cutting and that turned into even more – government speeches, our speeches, an MC and photographs. Oh and lets forget worship songs and prayer.  And of course everything was arranged last minute but perfect.  The song leaders were told about 30 minutes before, that they would be leading ☺ But they were so happy to do it and they got to lead again and even pray at the next camp and are looking forward to future camps where they can do it again.
What I loved about our opening ceremony was that it was full of love and honor.  So many people have invested time and effort into making it happen and even just coming to see it open.  Michael, Angela and Ellie drove on a motorcycle in the hot sun for nearly 2 hours one way! I couldn’t believe it!  So Michael was our MC – the man responsible for me coming to Cambodia and doing anything at all here.  Without him agreeing to help me, I wouldn’t have had the courage to move there.  We started with worship songs.  Mr. Limsreng is the government official who oversaw the building of our clinic, so he gave the first speech and got to cut ½ the ribbon first.  Rithy is the heart of the clinic and the leader and he got the second speech.  I got to speak last and after thanking God and attributing it all to God of course, got to share how wonderful these three men are and what a great part they all played in the clinic opening and not for any personal gain whatsoever, because if anything it cost them money.  What a dream come true as Rithy and I cut the second ½ of the ribbon together! God has truly blessed me in so many wonderful ways and it brings tears to my eyes because even when you lose all hope, God makes a way and makes your dreams come true! Through the years, I had released this dream to the future and then given it up altogether and yet Jesus brought it back and made it happen.  It is only because of Him that I could be surrounded by such wonderful people in Cambodia.  I still remember NGO leader after leader telling me when I arrived in Cambodia in 2011 that my plan to give the NGO to the locals in a year was flawed and would never work.  They all thought I was being a naive idealist.  And yet, God has given me such wonderful people that its only because I gave them control that everything we have today in Cambodia is possible! 
The camps were wonderful.  The first camp was at our clinic and we had a new team of volunteer students. I had thought we had a bunch of older docs that I had previously trained while they were in school coming, but only one came and with her came a lot of students! So I was a little worried as I boarded the bus and saw all the new faces.  But God was good. They were amazing and the first clinic we saw only a little more than ½ of what we cap at, so we had the ability to go slow and they could learn.  It was so great for me to see our doctors precepting now with me! I think the education system in Cambodia has improved because these guys were way better than my original students had been at their level! So YAY! I am excited about Cambodia’s future.  And they were so eager to learn, which always warms my heart.  No egos, just a desire to be better.
The foreign team was great as well.  Our photographer said it had been one of her goals to photograph and document something like this and here was God answering it the night before the camps started ☺ I was afraid they would all have nothing to do but we were able to keep them busy and more than that, they would see needs and just fill them.  
Everything was beautiful. We had long hours, late meals, long uncomfortable bus rides, but a wonderful hotel to come back to.  No one complained.  Everyone was loving and happy.  The trip was perfect.  A bunch of people who didn’t know each other, many times couldn’t communicate, but without frustrations or anger and despite everything that was done of the fly (the nature of the work and need to be flexible) there was nothing but love and respect in everyone’s hearts and I loved it.  
I loved how God is raising people up and constantly reminding me how lifting others is the best way to raise leaders.  The more I give my responsibility to others the more they rise and shine.  I didn’t even know it but our doctor/pharmacist who always seemed to be in the background this time I asked to do a lot.  She led worship, led prayer and first aid.  She asked me to do it or that I ask Rithy, but she just seemed like the right fit at the time and although I thought I was maybe pushing her, at the end she was so thankful for the opportunity that she mentioned it to the whole group as her highlight!  And Rithy, omg! It was so awesome to see him grow.  He gave speeches as the leader that I could only stand next to him in awe and with pride as he talked.  He had told me he had crossed out his name as the speech giver and put mine in for the 3rd camp, but at the end he ended up speaking and it was soooo great! On the bus ride he shared his entire story and I can’t wait to hear it.  The only part I heard is that he had had dreams of becoming a rich doctor until he went on one of our first medical clinics and then he decided what he wanted to do was to help people and not focus on money.  His love for people is so evident and I feel like Solomon who didn’t seek money but to serve the people well, God has blessed him with all good things.  He has a car, a house, a wonderful wife and an amazing job that lets him work 3 hours a day instead of 8 and keeps paying him more just so he won’t quit! God’s so good! 
I am so not needed in Cambodia anymore.  Everyone is soaring and growing and so is God’s work.  I’m so happy ☺ My heart is just full of joy and so content.  Please pray for Cambodia, everyone there and the work God is doing.  It’s a beautiful nation, with beautiful people and my 2nd home ☺

I am so excited!!! Our clinic has started construction and should be up and running by the end of the year!! We have been so blessed by wonderful supporters who despite my not being the best fundraiser still chose to believe in this project and words can't express how thankful I am.  Rithy has been working sooo hard to make everything happen in the small budget we have and so praise God! He did it! 

We have officially started to proceed with our clinic building project :) We were fortunate enough to buy land right infront of a national highway that was recently constructed. The only downfall was the road was built higher than the land and so we needed to fill the land in order to build. Well we just filled the land and working on plans to begin construction! 

I have been super bad at updating the blog and website and I apologize. So this year has been busy and it's been great! We started the year in Cambodia and did two medical clinics before we headed off to Pattaya where I got to partner with some great organizations doing work on the ground in the sex capital of the world! It was sad to see that as  you walk down a stretch of 1-2 miles you can see 200 girls and women standing there available for the night.  Although that was sad, what made me sick was how many transactions you see happening even at 4am in the morning.  The worst part is, as in Cambodia now for a large part, a lot of these people don't want help. Each organization I talked to was saying how it is becoming harder and harder to get the women out because they make more money doing this. In fact on the beach you will see girls there just for the weekend to make extra money - coming down from bangkok so they will have extra spending money while at college. 
Anyone who has business ideas would really be helpful in Thailand and Cambodia.
So that was January and February for me.
After that we went to the philippines.  We did 4 camps in malolos and 1 in coron.  The first day we prayed for a lady before the camp even started and we thought we were praying for a knee problem but apparently she has a mini stroke 3 days earlier that got healed too! YAY God! My friend bought his friend just to visit. A strong 18 year old who apparently had had back pain for 8-10 years so that even stairs hurt him.  He had stopped doing leg exercises because of the pain. This shouldn't happen to young people.  But he got healed!! He was stunned. He has never been prayed for before and a week later he was still beaming :) 
We bought out land in Cambodia - which is the real reason I went in January - so we could see it! We are so blessed because there is a national highway that got build just in front of it! That so improves the access! 
So the problem with building the clinic has been funds.  I have a lot of skills, but fundraising is not one of them.  I am not just bad, but horrible at it, but as I have prayed and told God that, He keeps sending me people to help! Our facebook fundraiser has 60 days to go and it almost at goal!! And yesterday I just spoke with someone who wants to help me host an in person fundraiser! I don't have the guts or the knowhow to do that, but yay for people who want to help me and Save Each One!  

I have attached a video one of our teammates made for the philippines trip!

We just finished our first set of medical camps for this year with the team from America.  4 straight camps - quite tiring but soooo good :) Everything was perfect! hehe! Because the team of Cambodian medical students, the american team and myotherapy team were just so wonderful.  Our first day hotel was horrible - we couldn't even use the towels, but that just made the next few days so much better! I usually have a hard time with food, but this time people joked about becoming vegetarian :) We ended up seeing 200+ the first day, about 200 the second, 150+ the third and the 4th day when we were all so tired we finished early before lunch but still managed to see 100 patients! :) My cap is 100-150 so we more than exceeded my goals! And speaking of goals, the whole idea of medical camps started because I had medical students I was teaching.  I had wanted to do free medical camps for the villagers but found I had to pay bribes to make it happen and that is something I definitely was not willing to pay.  So when I found out the students in Cambodia don't get enough clinic experience I told them if they could arrange a medical camp, we would do it. I could do the medical camps I wanted, the students could be the doctors precepted by me and the villagers could have free care.  It's been 5 years now and we are such a well oiled machine.  My original students who are now leaders of the cambodian organization and I think so much alike, it's amazing!  
For this set of camps we had about 6 new students and they were to be the doctors seeing patients. It made me just very slightly wary because sometimes it's soooo hard when you have to train new students and you are hot and tired and jet lagged. But we had them come and learn some basic things the day before and then on the field they were like sponges who said and did everything I taught them!  They were sooo amazingly good!! and what made me so happy was that they were as happy with the experience as I was with them.  When we talked at the end about the trip some of them said that is was the best mission group they had ever gone with and another said s/he learned more on this trip than s/he had at medical school (this from a 6th or 7th year student!) 

I am pretty excited.  You know how you dream and think about things and it looks like nothing will happen and then all of a sudden, God makes it all happen! :) Last year I went to Kenya to do volunteer work.  While I was there I spent a lot of time with the pastor and he was telling me about all that they have done.  One of the things they were doing was a feeding program.  And for some reason as he talked about it, all I could think about was, that I wanted to do that as well.  But being the practical person that I wasn't quite sure who or how that would happen.  To my surprise I had an interesting conversation with Rithy (our head medical student) in the 5 days I was in the states before my next overseas volunteer medical mission and he was saddened by the fact that some people in Cambodia have anything money can buy and other kids don't have food to eat.  So I mentioned my idea. We talked for a while excitedly and then realized we couldn't sustain something like that and decided to think about it.  So when I arrived a month or two later we talked about it again. We met up with a nutritionist who basically said education was a better route.  But as we were talking, I suddenly had this brilliant idea about having a home garden program.  Going to the villages for medical camps, I'd seen the land and how much of it is empty and could be used to start a home garden (I recently started container gardening in america) and since we do education in the schools anyway, I thought we could add this to the curriculum.  But everyone said it wouldn't work.  I couldn't understand why and although I pushed it, everyone, I mean everyone said it wouldn't work.  But I never give up when there is an idea that is really stuck in my heart.  So I invited a friend of mine who is a farmer and a nurse to come in Feb for the medical camps and thought on the side she could help. But at the last minute she couldn't come.  The day after I arrived I was talking about the program again and basically my students said they didn't know how to do it an didn't have access to anyone who could help.  But I kept talking about it.  One of our volunteers from America introduced me to an NGO who was doing a garden program in the villages. So I met up with them and found out they are getting help from the government to do it.  They pay the government to train them.  That's great, BUT, I like to save as much money as possible.  The last week one of my friends said his friend is looking for help in starting a feeding program where for 25-50 cents a day per student we could help kids go to school by providing them breakfast (or else they are too hungry to study).  I was very excited and to my surprise the next day Rithy said he would help and that we could even start a garden in the school to help decrease the costs.  I said to him that he didn't like the idea.  But he said that its a good idea and so he will do it even if he doesn't want to do it :) Now our only problem was none of us knew how to plant a real garden.  So I asked God to send me someone, like an agricultural student.  God did better than that.  2 days before me leaving I got a random email from someone in bosnia asking if I needed agricultural help. No where on my website does it talk about that! God is sooo good! I talked to him the day after I got back to America and he was sooo amazing. He was working for the government giving seeds to people to help them plant gardens.  He was willing to take a boat from bosnia to cambodia for lack of finances.  He was amazing and perfect! So God worked everything out.  Now we are in the process of figuring out details! Both my garden and feeding program will start this fall when I return.  Now all we need is money! :) But if God did this, He will do the rest too! YAY! I don't know if anyone reads my blogs, but if you do and you want to help, we would love your donations for these programs.