Saturday, January 21, 2012

Grapevine House: A Home for Many


Soon we'll have a website up for our house.
Our house is a charity venture trying to provide a Christian home to young Cambodians. So now we're starting the new Hair Salon in our living room! Soon we hope to have a Baby Daycare Center too. There are about 16 of us that live together. 3 of us are White, and the rest are young Cambodians that needed a place to live... One of the girls is a 16 year old single mom who recently left a 5 year long career as a prostitute.

The girls need stable income otherwise their subject to abusive working situations. The factories here are like things you read about. No clean air, 15min lunch breaks for $50 a month. We just want to make sure that local young woman have another option that factories and prostitution, which are the main to industries around here.

Yes, it's a crazy life. And it's insane to try this in our first year of marriage while we are both still teaching, but we felt God lead us to this house...

It would be so great to have some financial support. We can't do all of this without some help.

This is a picture of Baby John. His mom is 16, so we're helping to raise him.




For those of you that don’t know. We have joined another English lady in a venture to create a discipleship living environment for young Khmer adults. We have an adjoining apartment to Christine’s apartment that houses young Khmer people. One such person, is a 16 year old mother who recently got saved and left prostitution. Another is a young woman who finished cosmetology school and can’t find work. By providing these young people with housing, we are allowing them opportunities to live in Christian community and enabling them to move out of the shack in the slums. We take the household to church every week, and we disciple them, as most of them are very young Christians. It’s an opportunity to train them in life skills and provide safe housing for them.
In addition to running a household, we are both still teaching at Hope. Working with missionary kids has been extremely rewarding. The students are so sweet and the parents are appreciative to have a quality education for their kids while they work in the mission field.
Mark has been very busy these past few months. He’s been tutoring, running an half marathon, and acting in a pantomime. He’s really enjoying teaching the little kids though. His 6 year old students have loved having him as a teacher.
I took Mark’s old job as 6th grade teacher. It’s been very challenging for me because I was trained as an English teacher. The other subjects in 6th grade have been difficult for me. I find myself using Google in the classroom constantly. On top of teaching, I’ve been working on a Masters in School Counseling. I’d really like to be able to work with missionary kids on their culture separation issues and other counseling needs.
Pray for us. We’re obviously very busy. We both are still trying to balance all the new areas of our lives. It has been a slow learning process. Also, I’ve really struggled with my health in the last 6 months. I had to make an emergency trip to America in November to see doctors and get proper medications.
Financially please pray for our newest project. We are trying to start a hair solon in our downstairs living room. It would be a great opportunity for Vanda, our housemate. If we can get her furniture ready, then she can get a client-base and support herself.
Please keep us in your prayers! Things aren’t always easy here, but we know that we are following God’s will. And if any of you would like to visit, you’re more than welcome. We have a spare room for visitors.
God Bless,
Carrie and Mark Twine
P.S. the pictures are of our housemates