Cell groups and more

This is my Khemi father's cell group. Notice even the little baby is taken in by what he has to say. "Pah" is so excited to be the lead Pastor at "the Good News church" again. Elderly people don't like to make the trip to church on Sundays so Pah brings church to their home.

Another picture of the same group.

These are some pics of my father, wife(the one taking the pics) and I cleaning up my soon to be English Classrooms.

.............. Yea thats mud on the floor. when it rains hard the rooms flood.

This is the before picture. when we are done we will give you the after... like extreme home (err classroom) makeover. :)

These are some pics of my wife's birthday party. we had about 30 friends and family over to celebrate.....we are still working on the "kissing in public part"

Channy and I were so blessed. One of the Missionaries here made Channy a real birthday cake.

In Cambodian culture on your birthday before you cut the cake you bring your parents up and tell them how thankful you are for them. Its a really wonderful tradition, one i think we should adopt in America.

Another thing in Cambodian culture...The girls like to get all dolled up. Channy got another blessing becuase her sister is currently learning how to "doll up" :)

This is My lovely wife opening the gift i got for her (a necklace). She was so surprised because i lead her to believe that she was just getting pants for her birthday. You can see the size of the gift in the lower picture. I had put my own pants in the gift so it would weigh it down. hehe

These are some pics from the celebration dinner for "pah" becoming the new pastor of the "Good News Chruch."

This was taken at a pastor's conference. "pah" was given an award for his dedication and 6 years of service as "the leader of the pastors" (sorry not sure of the old title)

This is a picture of us all dolled up at a wedding. I'm not sure whose wedding, in Cambodia they have so many. I like to go though, you know to show off my beautiful wife and make the bride to be jealous that is not the most gorgeous women there. :)

Wedding Pics

Jeff & the lovely Channy Rasmussen

this is one of the ceremonies were family and friends bless you with money just after you were married

Instead of doing the candle ceremony we did a mixing of sand. something that won' t melt. Thanks Jon and Christina for the idea :)

These are the cakes that my mom brought all the way from the states!! she is truly amazing!

This is also the money blessing ceremony. its actually "jawng die" which means knotting hands

Me and my beautiful bride just after the wedding

This is the two families that were joined

The pastor after marrying us actually forgot to say "now you may kiss the bride" I of course quickly reminded him. :)

This is a pic of the fruit carrying ceremony. This is a Khemi tradition where the guy and his friends carry a lot of fruit over to the brides fathers house. traditional you are suppose to walk from your house to theirs but now that everyone lives so far apart that is not done.

This is everyone in the two families

these are our three flower girls

Our first dance. the song was a wonderful country tune sung by one of the pastors

We did a foot washing, which is also a khemi tradition. but in khemi tradition the girl is the only one who washes the feet. we of course added in that i would wash her feet as well.

The garter belt ceremony!! this was such a shocker to the cambodians they had never seen anything like this before.

near the end of the night.... we were both very exhausted from all the ceremonies from morning until late night.

This is the beging of the fruit carrying ceremony that i mentioned earlier

If you have noticed Channy has had like 6 different dresses throughout the day. this is also a Khemi tradition. i didnt really like this one though. it seemed like she was constantly changing and didn't get to enjoy the parties.

The grooms men and brides maids

This is my bride coming down the aisle. from an American perspective the wedding would have seemed very disorganized and cluttered. but for a Cambodian it was beautiful.

Our trip to Mundul Kiri

Sorry there are going to be a lot of pictures of elephants. i truly find elephants amazing.......sit girl

......good girl, now lay down.

So channy and I got the wonderful oppurtunity to go up to a northern province called Mundul Kiri. Its a province in the jungle! The jungle was so amazing and beautiful. Channy school where i taught for awhile was taking their staff for a retreat and since i helped them out for like 6 months the offered for me to come also. so Channy and i got to go for free! it was a awesome gift, i was very thankful.

So this picture was taken at one of the villages in the jungle. the people here were very interesting. they could not speak khemi but they could understand it. there are two main ways these people support their village. one is elephant riding and the other is selling bee honey.

What a beautiful girl! yea yea the girl on the left is pretty cute also......haha just playing.

When we went to Mundul Kiri the roads were very muddy. we not only found ourselves stuck many times but other people as well. this picture is a guy who tried to drive his "moto" through about a foot and a half deep mud. so we had to stop to get him out and when we stopped we also got stuck.

That a girl now roll over....

After are car would get stuck the rest of us had to head out on foot. naturally they trusted the x-football player to hold the baby on the un-easy terrain.....(brushes his shoulder)

This would be my lovely finance and me standing next to one of the huts were the tribal Cambodian people live

This particular hill we were stuck for about 45min. some of the Cambodians would get on the sides and behind the truck and try to rock it. i of course was to smart to stand next to a truck on slick mud on a hill.......

These are some pictures of the waterfalls we went to. they are not as grand as our multnomah :) falls but they are far more beautiful.

While we were at the beach to save money we made our own meals but for one night i took Channy out for a date. this would be a picture of that.

These are some pictures of the beach and waterfall that the family and I went to. the picture right above is the family i will be marrying into soon :) Channy's mom and dad on the left and her two sisters on the right with my lovely niece at the bottom. the only one missing from the family picture is their only son kim sua.

On our four hour trip when we wanted to eat lunch we did not stop at a fast food resturant, rather we pulled over and pulled out the food. as you can see men in america our very much like men in Cambodia....checking the car even while eating their lunch.