This will be a short journal.I hope to write another in a few days on recent happenings with the church and Pastor Sok, but meanwhile we ask for prayer at this time for Deb's work situation.There is an important meeting tomorrow.

I wrote much about the government clinic situation in our last journal.You may want to refer to it.Our contract to cooperate with the local government clinic expires in 4 months.Our contractual responsibility is to provide training to the government medical staff.But that is not happening.Two weeks ago, we made a proposal to the government health clinic (different than the TB clinic). We offered to guarantee livable wages to all the medical staff, provided they agree to two conditions.One, they must come to work.The second, the biggie, is that for 4 months they give our agency control of fee collection, patient reception, drug disbursal, and the pharmacy.We have several objectives.The primary objective is to see if we can create an environment where Deb or others can properly train the staff, most of whom want to be trained.To do so, we believe fees must be collected, drugs must always be in stock, the understaffed government nurses must be freed up from non-medical duties so they can just see patients, and of course the staff must be compensated for coming to work.None of this is happening now.We have a meeting with the government medical staff tomorrow, to discuss the proposal and perhaps to hear their answer.

Please pray that God's will be done.In our own limited understanding we see no other alternative.But we know God is much bigger.If this is what he wants, then may it be so.Maybe it will work and that's what he wants. Or maybe it won't work but he wants us to try it for 4 months so we can be convinced its time to move on.Or maybe he has entirely different plans for Deb.We think we are open.But admittedly Deb is anxious.She has been discouraged and frustrated with the situation.What will she do with the many sick people who will come to her if the clinic continues to slowly self-destruct?

Please pray!

John and Deb, in Cambodia