Cambodia

Good morning. I just wanted to send out a quick note letting you know
that I am heading to Cambodia tonight. Yep, in 13 hours I will be on
my way to the airport for the long flight overseas. I am very excited
to be going, but totally bummed that I will be away from my family
for the next 3 weeks.

For those of you who don't know why I am going I will explain. My
home church, WEFC is sending 23 young adults to Cambodia for 2 1/2
weeks and myself and two of my friends will be leading it. We will be
hosted by the YWAM base in the capital city for the first couple of
days. While there we will be going to the Killing Fields, where
thousands of people were buried in mass graves during the reign of the
Khmer Rouge. We will also be spending some time with IJM
(International Justice Mission). After this we will be heading up to
Angkor Wat to see the temples.

The majority of our time will be spent in Sihanoukville working with
the Samaritan Love Mission. We will be reconstructing their worship
center. We will also be running a children's program, teaching
english, visiting an orphanage and a hospital (the HIV and
Tuberculosis ward), and spending a day at a local Cambodian village.
I am very excited at this opportunity to be able to work and minister
with my home church. This is the first time we have done a trip
together.

Please keep us in your prayers and I will continue to send out
updates to let you know how things are going. Have a great Sunday.

Thanks.

Phil, Amy, Emma and Abby

Displace Me

I spent today at Magnison park with a few friends helping out with the Invisible Children’s Displace Me event. There were approx. 5,000 people who attended the event. Basically, they are sleeping outside in a simulated displacement camp to say that we see the displaced in N. Uganda and we want to do something about it. They are sleeping in make shift cardboard boxes, eating crackers and drinking water until 9am tomorrow. It was amazing to be apart of.

The thing that was most amazing and encouraging is that three guy's with a passion went to N. Uganda a few years ago and their passion is bringing change to the night commuters of N. Uganda. I am encouraged to continue to follow the desires and passions that God has put on my heart, even if I am the only one. Thanks Amanda, Bubba and other Amanda for coming and helping out.

The local news did a report as well. You can read it here.

A weekend with Lars, Charlie and Nickleback

I am sitting in the Kansas City airport using the free wireless on my way home from Dallas. This past weekend I was hanging out with my good friend Pastor Rood. Lars invited me out a month or so ago to be involved in bringing awareness of social injustice to his youth and college age students. It was a great opportunity and privilege to be able to share my heart about the lack of justice in the world and also the lack of Christians who are doing anything about it, or worse yet, don't even know about it. I am seeing more and more that justice is very near to the heart of Jesus and so I feel that it needs to be close to our hearts as well.

It was a also a great weekend just hanging out with Lars and his family and friends. When I arrived on Friday Lars took me out for half price Mexican, which was delicious. We also went out for coffee a lot, walked around Dallas and spent a good amount of our time in the car listening to Nickelback. I am pretty sure that Nickelback is the official band of Dallas they were played so much on the radio. We were joking this morning about hearing them on the radio on the 5 minute drive to the airport and we were not let down. Kinda makes you want to smash your radio through the front windshield of the car.

We also went to The Den, which is worship night started by Keith, the college director. It was a great night. The set up in the room was great as we were all facing each other and were able to interact with Keith who was speaking and one another. One thing that was funny though is that this one older lady brought her dog Charlie. She brought Charlie over to Lars and I and introduced him as her Christian dog who travels with her and is involved in the college groups because he likes the music. The thing about Charlie though is that he is a stuffed dog. No, not a real dog who is stuffed, but a toy dog. Wow, that was awkward.

So, needless to say this weekend ruled. I am excited to get back to my girls in a few hours and am still contemplating buying a Dorothy doll from the Wizard Of Oz for Emma since I am in Kansas.

Thanks for reading.

Good Friends and Rosie Thomas

Tonight Amy and I went out to the Rosie Thomas show at the Triple Door. It was the second time we have seen Rosie there and like the 1st time it was fantastic. Amy had the Manderin Chicken and I had the Pad Thai. The chicken was great, the Pad Thai was horrible. Anyway, the evening was super. Thanks Katie for babysitting.

During the show the waitress came over to us with a couple of drinks that our friens Billy, Rachel and another Rachel bought for us. I have seen this in movies, but I have never had a drink sent over to me. It got me to thinking about being a blessing to others. It was a total blessing that our friends were thinking about us and spent money on us and it got me to thinking. How do I bless others, not just with money or gifts, but with words? I want to be more intentional about being a blessing to others. What do people need to hear from me? What do they need to recieve from me? Even buying someone a cup of coffee or writing them a hand written note to say hi could make all the difference in someones day. I hope I can do this better tomorrow.

Good night all.

Baby Doll Karaoke To Rage Against The Machine

This past weekend myself and a few of my friends attended the Film Faith And Justice event here in Seattle. On Thursday they showed Camden 28. On Friday Amy and I watched Born Into Brothels and on Saturday I attended a previewing of Sentenced Home in the afternoon and in the evening we saw Iraq In Fragments. On Sunday evening we had the privilege of hosting an evening with the guy's from Invisible Children and heard about what is going on over in N. Uganda and how we can be involved.

Why do I tell you all this? Well because I feel like something significant happened in my life this weekend. I am really trying to see a regular, monthly gathering of people happen where we look at different areas of injustice and see what we can do about it. I also want us to see Gods heart towards injustice. Lately I am looking and reading the bible through different eyes, eyes of Justice. Why didn't I see some of these things before? Things that show so clearly that God is not just about a deity in the sky that is just waiting for you to say a prayer and go to heaven, but He is a loving God who cares deeply about people and hates when they are treated with injustice. He tells us to love the poor, visit the sick and care for the orphan. This weekend there were new areas of injustice that I was exposed to and I pray that I don't forget, but that I continue walking this road that I have found myself on.

Film, Faith And Justice

Tonight I went with a few friends to the Film, Faith and Justice night at the University of Washington Campus. The night was put on by The Other Journal which is an online quarterly publication promoting vibrant discourse surrounding the intersections of theology, culture, and social justice (a quote from their page).

The key speaker for tonight was Shane Claiborne who is a part of a community in Philadelphia called The Simple Way. Shane is a follower of Jesus, an author and an activist. I was blown away by his words and life. The thing that really struck me is that he is very intentional about what he does. He is intentional about where he buy's cloths, living in community, and how to fight for the rights of the oppressed. The way he talked about Jesus was so beautiful and so true.

As Christians I feel like we spend most of our time trying to be better people. Read your bible more, pray more, go to church, be a good friend, don't do bad things and don't drink cheap American light beer. Well the last one I would have to agree on. What Jesus focused on was caring for the poor, visiting the sick, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, hanging out with orphans and widows, and loving your enemy. How many times in church or at camp do we hear those things? Now I am not knocking church or camp, I love them both, but I am saying that there is more, much more.

"Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you." James 1:27. Shane talked a lot about this. Who are we caring for? Why do we do the things we do? What can we be doing less of and what can we be doing more of? How do we love our enemy? How can we, little us, change the world? These are the ways we need to be thinking. The thing is that the more we pray, the more we read our bible, the more we spend time with believers the more we should be doing the James 1:27 stuff, but it seems as thought so many times we just stop at the growing in Jesus part.

Jesus got away from the crowds to spend time with the Father so that He could go back and be doing His will. It shouldn't stop with growing in Jesus, that should be the beginning and the thing that sustains us till the end while we are doing His will. I encourage you to buy and read Shane’s book The Irrresistible Revolution.

He has risen. He has risen indeed.

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 'The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.' " Then they remembered his words.
When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.

Thank You Jesus

IJM and sex trafficking

In 25 day's I am going with a team of college students from Winnipeg, Canada to Cambodia. I have fallen in love with this little country in South East Asia and am excited to go back for my third time. Cambodia is a beautiful country with a horrible past and a ongoing horrible present. Sex trafficking is a major thing in Cambodia. Even though prostitution is illegal it still has a strong presence there. I was listening to a pod cast the other day and they were covering some people from the International Justice Mission (IJM), who went into a brothel undercover to shut it down. I was listening to it today in my local cafe and crying as my heart broke for this country and the corruption that exists there. I have attached the link, please take 5 minutes and listen and let your heart be broken for the children of sex trafficking in Cambodia.

Sex Trafficking

Take Me Out To The Ball Game

Today was opening day at the ballpark. The Mariners were playing the Oakland A's and I thought it would be a good time for Emma and I to check out the game. This was going to be Emma’s first time scalping tickets with her old man so I was not sure how it was going to go. I knew one thing; we had Emma's cuteness going for us.

There were a couple of things from the get go that were already not in our favor. We got down to the ballpark in the middle of the 3rd inning so parking was tough to find. What do most good Christians and non-Christians do when they can't find parking? The pray. So Emma and I proceeded to ask the Lord for a spot. We ended up finding one like 5 minutes later about a 1/2-mile away from the park. Then came the fun part. The game was sold out with over 47,000 people in attendance. We asked around for a while and were about to give up when this lady approached us and told us that her friend had won 2 tickets and she wanted to give one to us. Yeehaaa. Now how do two people get into a sold out ball game with only one ticket? You just go in I guess. The ticket checker took Emma’s ticket and told us to enjoy the game and let us in. Thanks ticket checker guy.

The first place we went was to the kids play area. It was pretty packed and you needed a ticket to get in, even though it was free. We didn't have a ticket because they were all given out when the game started, but some people didn't show up and so the guy let us in. We played for a while and decided to leave early to go to our seats. On out way out we saw the Mariner Moose in his moose house and we were the last people to be able to see him before he went out into the stands. That was great as Emma got to give him/her a big hug and check to see if he/she had real moose hair or not.

As we were walking up to our nose bleed seats we saw one of 2 home runs in the game where the Mariners won 4-0. We sat there for an inning and a half and then got up during the 7th inning stretch to sing Take Me Out To The Ball Game. As we were singing we saw the Mariner Moose come into our section so I grabbed Emma and we ran down and were able to stand right beside him. We all sang the song and Emma and the Moose proceeded to give each other high fives.

All in all I'd say it was a great day. I love doing things with my little girl, especially when it involves really cool things for free.