We had our big Joyfest event this morning for Life University kids and children from the surrounding area. The event was supposed to begin at 9am, but at 6am kids had already begun showing up. We had 11 booths for a carnival type event, and sent out flyer invitations with students earlier this week at school.

There were no classes today because it's a national holiday (Queen Sihanouk's birthday). Setting up the booths took a while, as did making the name tags, but everything went smoothly and on schedule. So many kids came to our Joyfest event that we didn't have room for all of them, and thus had to split them into two groups and set up some events on the spot on the soccer field outside. Each group was pretty massive, and the lines at each of the 11 booths were pretty long.

I was working at the photo booth taking pictures while another team member printed them out at a rate of one per minute. Since we didn't have enough time to do every single kid, we restricted the photo booth to family photos. Managing the whole thing was pretty hectic, since everyone wanted their photo taken, the process was slow, and everyone was eager to get their hands on their printed photographs.

After all the kids had left, we had lunch and a mandatory rest time. During the rest time, the guys played king kong shower, talked, and wrestled... things we typically do here during rest times.

In the afternoon, our mission team visited the largest orphanage in Sihanoukville, which has over 100 orphans. We brought along gifts and clothes, and also had some activities with them, including skits, a message, and games afterwards. We divided the kids in half depending on how old they were, and the older kids went into the field to play games. I was with the younger children, and we started out with teaching them duck, duck, goose. When we were all tired of that, we started playing a game in which we challenge one another in rock, paper, scissors, and then progress along the stages of egg, chick, and chicken.

In the end, we made a lot of balloon swords for the boys and flowers for the girls. All the boys started running around attacking each other with their balloon swords, and a huge battle ensued.

The kids were very happy and thankful for our being there, and welcomed us into the orphanage with a lot of clapping. When we were leaving, many of them ran to the front gate to wave us farewell. Right before leaving, we all went, held the kids hands, and prayed for them.

Once we were back at Life U, we played some soccer (I got pretty muddy), had dinner, and then had some fellowship time with the college students and staff there, playing king kong shower at the edge of the soccer field.

We wrapped up the night with a team meeting outside on mats. The meeting started out with the game called something like True or False or Truth and Lie or something like that. Each of us wrote down two stories, one true and one false. They were read to everyone, and groups had to vote on which one was true and which one was made up.

Here are two daily updates that was sent to church members back home:

Cambodia Team 1 Update - Day 8

Cambodia Team 1 Update - Day 9