Solidarity from Beirut

Just got an email from our friend from Lebanon:
"I really cant express how sad i was, reading about JF crisis :(:( even if I have that familiar nudge inside of me saying that it will all be alright, because HE is building HIS church (JF).. we went through a lot of similar events (i would guess), even if it's at a much smaller scale, but i think i know how u guys feel. All the gang here in Leb have been prayin for JF and we all agreed to be one with you in the Spirit."
Their group is doing great, they meet weekly with around 15 people, and recently a whole band came to faith in Christ, and now they formed a new band that play death metal and sing about God. Some people try and prepare to visit Freakstock this coming summer, but they need financial support. We would love to have them over and pray it will work. It's almost one year since we've seen them for the first time at the global day of prayer in Beirut and talked the first time later after an the Apocalyptica concert.

statistics - one year on the road

best fruits: Thailand
highest rice-per-day-quota: Indonesia (three times a day)
speeding tickets: one (Rebecca in NZ)
musical instruments bought: one (Tabla in India)
beds shared with bedbugs: three (Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hat Yai)
borders crossed: 26
longest stay at one place: 10 weeks in Kerala
cutest ex-drugaddicts: Laos
hours spent on buses: countless
bribes: one (Cambodia)
books bought: around 20
best food: Bedouin style rice with chicken and veg in Palmyra (Syria)
flights taken: 13
longest train ride: 2000 km in 34 hours (Goa to Delhi)
tattoes: one
shoes thrown out: 2 pairs
shoes bought: 7 pairs :-)
nights slept in tents: 22 (Freakstock, our little tent-house in our friends garden
in NZ, on the beach in Thailand)
Germans met outside Germany: 39 (apart from masses of anonymous Germans in Thailand)
worship languages heard: arabic, hebrew, english, hindi, thai, lao,
snakes encountered: 7
pets: mosquitoes, geckos, spiders (small-medium-large), snake, rats (ate T-shirt, cookies and didn't like Durian), frogs, bedbugs, ants
days sick: 5
best beaches: New Zealand
most helpful tool bought while travelling: a water heater the size of a cell-phone
haircuts: 2
boat rides: 21 (ferry from Jordan to Egypt, boats to islands in India and Thailand, ferries in Sydney, ferries in Bangkok)
car accidents and break-downs: 2 in NZ while driving ourselves, 1 in Cairo sitting in a taxi, 1 on the bus in Jordan, 1 on the bus in Cambodia (flat-tyre)
cutest punks: Jakarta
nicest approach by street vendor: Where are you from? ... Ah, Germany!! Comme ci comme ca!
nicest pisang goreng (fried banana): Jakarta
insulting host countries: once (I don't tell you which one...)
best family holidays: Mangawhai with the Sinclair family (NZ)
most frequent drug offers: Goa
nicest hang-out place: Gokarna (India)
easiest country to travel: Singapore :-)
slum-ares visited: in Cairo, Delhi, Jakarta
travel companions: Niina in Lebanon, Sam in the Netherlands, Miriam in India, Kim & Kuky in Thailand, Debora in Thailand
best metal show: Apocalyptica in Beirut
most pictures taken in one spot: the cedars of Lebanon
phone-calls to Germany: 13
cutest metalheads: Beirut
gravest medical conditions witnessed: India
hours spent in Internet cafes: countless
most frequently used electronic device carried with us: ipod
new sports tried: boogie board surfing, juggling with Pois
pictures taken: 1800
stuff stolen: zero
diaries filled: 2(Hajo), 3(Rebecca)
currencies used: 16
food I will miss most: rice & curry on a daily basis
Jesus Freaks met (apart from Freakstock...): 9
...

Little Cambodia

Back from the Angkor Wat pilgrimage... We spent just three days in Cambodia, which is far too short to become familiar with the country, it feels like being part of a japanese group doing Europe in two weeks... But anyway we wanted to see Angkor and this we did. And it was worth it I would say - though getting there overland from Bangkok is quite an adventure. Roads in Thailand are good, so traveling by bus is no big deal. As soon as we crossed the border to Cambodia the road turned into a muddy something with enormous holes. The rainy season had started on time, so all vehicles are covered in mud - not a nice time to ride your motorbike... The bus we went from the border onwards was one of those old rattling types and provided some 6 hours of bumpy zigzag turns. After three hours we stopped - flat tyre. It was fixed in 30 minutes in a tiny garage... It was nighttime when we arrived and we where tired, so we accepted the offer to stay in "my uncle's guesthouse" the guy accompanying the bus made...

Cambodia is still a very poor country - looking out of the window I saw people working their fields with a pair of oxen and a wooden plough, there are small villages with simple huts - just some impressions that give a different view from what I saw in Thailand. From what I've read around 40% of the population live below the poverty line.
Cambodia has suffered much during five years of civil war followed by the rule of the Khmer Rouge from 1975-1979. The revolution was aimed at reshaping the country according to Marxist-Leninist principles - within weeks people were forced out of the cities to work in the fields, money was abolished, schools closed and religious activity banned. During those four years one in five died as a result of the regime, the majority died from malnutrition, overwork or mistreated diseases, thousands were executed for allegedly opposing the regime (some were killed just because they wore glasses). At least 14000 were killed in a secret prison called S-21 in Phnom Penh.

Walking around in Angkor Wat we were reminded of this dark era in Cambodia's recent history when seeing scenes of torture and killing on one of the reliefs covering the walls surrounding the temple complex. We've read about Cambodia's history in David Chandler's "Voices from S-21" - he quotes one of the tourguides linking those pictures with the cruel practice of the Khmer Rouge. It is frightening how over thousands of years not much seems to have changed. The horrors people are capable of doing are still the same...
So we walked around the vast area surrounding the main temple and found many thoughtful faces...
Reading about the Khmer Rouge has touched me, especially because David Chandler doesn't just stop at giving an analysis of what happened at S-21 - he compares it with the Holocaust and similar incidents. He tries to answer the question how these things can happen again and again with half the world watching from a safe distance. He quotes a british journalist writing about the Holocaust and writes "to achieve the murders at Treblinka, the Nazis could count on the spiritual deadness of the world at large". He continues:

"I suggest, we allowed S-21 to happen because most of us are indifferent to phenomena of this kind happening far away to other people. Evil, we like to think, occurs elsewhere."

Far away to other people... At the time of the massacre between Hutu and Tutsi in Ruanda I was 14, at the time of the killing of 8000 people at Srebrenica I was 15 years old. The same age many of the victims and perpetrators had. And today?
It's challenging to have all this information...



The next border we'll cross will be when returning to Germany. I wonder how that will feel like...