About a week ago, on a saturday, I was told to bring my camera somehwere because the pastor needed to take some pictures. I followed my host brother up the alley and then down a smaller path, turning the corner to find a part of my neighbourhood I didn't know was there. This man you you see, just a few weeks ago was a healthy and active member of our church. He's faced a constant battle with alcohol, but is still a valued member of the community. The last week or so he's been pretty reclusive and has turned back to the alcohol pretty strongly. My pastor found him in this state. He was comatose lying on the ground, in a room with no access to toilet or water. His room was completely filled with rubbish and old clothes (i have no idea where he got all this stuff). He was in a desparate condition and having seizures. He couldn't speak and as you can see is extremely frail. The church got itself organized and we had about 20 people helping to clean up this house and try and get this man in better condition. The house was in such a mess. All the trash was soaked in alcohol, urine and human excrement. I was careful enough, but at one point I picked up an old pair of jeans to find my hand feeling a bit sticky and looked and saw the literal "crap" that I was holding. But we all had to pitch in and we all had situations like that.

The pastor's wife is the local 'injectionist' (which means she knows how to give I.V. medicine) and gave him something (I didn't see what it was) to try and help him out. We got half the room cleaned up before dark, on the first day.

The next day, after church, we went back. The man now looked in worse shape and was going through regular seizures (although he looked a bit more responsive). We prayed for him a lot, and did what we could but he was in a pretty desparate condition (by the ammount of medicines and tablets this man had-most of them in unusable condition-, I also wouldn't be surprised if he had some other underlying condition). A few of us went home for dinner and then when we came back, we found out that he had died already. This was a sad moment. The pastor and his wife were crying (very rare for a society where emotion is not shown like that). We started getting everything in order for the funeral ceremonies. This man had no family nearby and no money to his name (he had a daughter and son, who we got in contact with, but they wouldn't be able to get here untill 2 days later, and were just as poor themselves).

I was so proud of my church. For all it's other faults, they know the meaning of community and really were this man's family. The following two days we held 3 services a day, where we prayed and sang songs. Some church members took monday and tuesday off work (remember these are poor people who need money to get enough to eat). You don't normally take off work even for your good friend's funeral. My host sister said, "he doesn't have any family, we are his only family now." We all took turns sitting by the body (there's lots of traditions and ceremony that go along with the three day funeral preparations) and sitting at the donation table.

The normal way of funerals in Cambodia is being cremated. But the only crematoriums are in Buddhist temples. Most churches are okay with having a Christian funeral and then going to the buddhist temple for a cremation, but another (richer) Cambodian pastor came and convinced my church that Christians have to get burried. This made me really angry as there is only one cemetary in all of Phnom Penh, and each plot costs $250. They bargained the price down to $150, and the Pastor who suggested the idea said he'd pay for the transportation- (but there is no way that my church could pay that much money). -You sort of get the feeling that that Pastor who convinced my church of buriel was getting a cut of the deal-but that's mere speculation and may not be the case at all-.

The church started calling up every rich person they knew. Thankfully, no one from the church put too much pressure for me to give. At that time, I was running short on money and had only $50 available to me at all, so I needed to save it for next month's rent. The pastore simply told everyone to pray that the money would come in and to give what we were able to give. I DID feel pressure though -a lot of it- from the pastor who suggested the idea in the first place. He made a big deal about my presence and repeatedly asked me to give more and more. I gave what I could, but I think he was hoping for more.

The funeral was really nice. We road out there all piled into the back of a pickup truck. It's sad to think that this is now the precedent set for my church, that "Christians get burried" my church can't afford to do this for everyone who dies, I fear that we'll get in a lot of debt because of it.

Despite all, I learned so much from my church about what community means and what it means to be one family in Christ. They live believing this, and we sing a song that says this every week at church.