Phnom Penh Pals: Team Helm in Cambodia

People who don’t know where their power is sourced have probably never had to ask. Admittedly, most of my life I hadn’t the faintest idea. When we first visited Southeast Asia, I was struck by the innumerable electrical wires tangled up like piles of fresh spaghetti on forks high in the air. I remember wondering: where does all this electricity come from? Where does it go? Why isn't everything ON FIRE?  This week, our neighborhood has been without power six or more hours each day due to a rotating blackout schedule. We are the lucky few with a generator in our apartment complex that runs intermittently throughout the day, keeping our food from spoiling.  Friends, 95 degrees is hot with an enormous fan pointed in your direction. Without it, well, that’s another level of sanctification. Turns out half of Cambodia’s power is generated by hydroelectric conversion. Also turns out the nations' many rivers are flowing much slower than usual due to a severe drought and

"Sometimes I'll be answering a question our toddler asked about God and think, 'This sounds totally nuts'." I was a new Mom, relatively sleep-deprived, and conversing with a friend I had known for nearly half our lives. She smiled encouragingly at me. The rest of the conversation is a fuzzy memory, but that line has come back to me time and again. Routinely, I've wondered what that flicker of honesty was meant to illuminate. Until tonight. After dinner I watched our 13-month-old explore his small world -- climbing over the clothes rack, scaling all the beds, filing books into a small case. He can produce several words and understand a plethora more in two (!!) languages. He effectively dodges tackles from his older brother and escapes snuggles from his older sister. Less than two years ago, he was a bundle of cells growing in my pelvis. Out of nowhere, the thought hit me: this is totally nuts. Suddenly an avalanche of moments when I had experienced the