Rice paddies and Rice Storage Building

The above picture is the old fashioned way to plant rice. The top pciture is the churche's project.

Next up is a building where rice will be stored. Many people will benefit from this people, that is why the church is helping with it. Anyone will be able to buy rice from here, and also businesses can order rice here. So, it will be a great thing because there is no other building around this area to house all the rice. We stopped to take a picture of how most Cambodians plant rice. They take many stalks and plant them together, then it kind of goes yellow as it goes into shock and then they have to come and thin it out. The way the Church has it done is that they put one stalk in at a time. They are all planted in rows and spaced about 3-4 inches apart so that they can weed it (they do that with a water buffalo and a little plow) and I think they said fertilize it. I took a picture of the old way and then one of one of the church sponsored paddies. We got back in our vehicles and road a loooooooooooooooong ways on one little path after another, with water deep enough that we hoped our vehicle would make it back out of the hole. Sister Whitesides was riding in the back and I took a picture of her holding on with both hands. When we got to our destination, we got out and walked about a half mile along little paths in between rice paddies. We took pictures of the cows along the path and Elder Whitesides seeing if he could get up a tree, but it wasn't quite safe enough! We walked back to a home where the woman received a loan from the NGO that works with the Church to start her own chicken business. She raises them for eating. The first year she made $1000 (which is a pretty good wage here for the year) and the next year she made $1500. She has improved her home, bought a moto and a couple of pigs. So I guess she will start raising pigs. She also has a large rice paddie to the side of her home that is well taken care of. Her and her husband have 4 children, but only 3 of them would pose for us. We got back in the vehicles and went on some more interesting roads, and walked back into a lady who is very poor and so she was able to get aloan to raise frogs (people eat fat frogs here), and mud fish. To feed the fish, she took two pieces of dead wood and tapped them together over her little homemade pond that is surrounded by a little fence and out of the wood came hundreds of termites. The mud fish come up from the mud and eat the termites. They have wide mouths and big whiskers. The frogs are also in a fences enclosure with lots of greenry and bugs to eat. She took a stick and hit it around and the frogs were jumping all over. She wanted us to see her other ponds, but we were ready to eat and then go home or it would be too dark for us to drive on these little roads. The scenery is gorgeous, the people genuine, sweet, and wonderful and so happy that they will be able to improve their lives. Last year through the projects that were done, the church working with the NGO's were able to helpe hundreds of people. It was a very long, but very rewarding day with great company and good experiences.