Next week is Khmer New Year, celebrating the start of the 2,570th year of the Buddhist Era in Cambodia. In the Chinese Zodiac this also will mark the beginning of the Year of the Horse in Cambodia. On Monday MCC Cambodia held a joint Easter and Khmer New Year celebration. This included a time of worship, foot washing as well as traditional Khmer New Year games and lots of good food and fellowship.

Khmer New Year is based on a lunar calendar and is often close to Easter (9 days apart this year) which is also based on a lunar calendar – falling on the first Sunday after the first ecclesiastical full moon that occurs on or after March 21.

After the devotional we played traditional Khmer New Year games like Throw Seeds, Smash the Pot, and – a new one to me – Grab the Leaf (ដណ្តើមស្លឹកឈើ). It is bit like capture the flag but the tag game only starts after someone picks up the branch. So there are a lot of mindgames. As is normal for Khmer New Year baby powder and water were thrown with increasingly frequency as the day went on.

We also welcomed a new team member – Sovanich Chhoun – who just started on Monday as our new Program Assistant. Sovanich is a regular of Nations church in Phnom Penh and previously joined MCC’s YAMEN program spending a year of service in Nicaragua.

This is always a fun activity with our multicultural team. I think they did pretty well this year even if it doesn’t quite look the same as the professional dancers.

We have regional meetings in South Korea over the upcoming weeklong holiday so we won’t be in country for the actual festivities this year. More on that in a future update.