For those of you who don't know, Dustin and I got married on March 8th in Galveston, TX.  We had an abolutely perfect day with many friends and family.  :)

After the wedding, we had an amazing honeymoon in St. Lucia and after our vacation we immediately moved to Oklahoma where we bought our first home!

Dustin is in the Air Force and will start pilot training in December.  I have been busy settling us in our home and working on various projects and volunteer opportunities.

We have put together some information on the web where you can keep up with us at http://thosedukes.googlepages.com/.  We will be posting new stories, pictures and information on our new life together there!

If you would like to see a slideshow of our wedding photos, you can do so at http://studiovarghese.googlepages.com/dustinandbecca.

The Lord has truly blessed us and we are so thankful to Him!

Grace and Peace!

Well...guess what!!  I'm engaged!!  YAY!!   :)

Dustin surprised me with a whirl-wind trip to San Diego to propose to me on the beach at sunset.

It was awesome!  We had a great time!  We flew out there with his mom and step dad and once we got to dinner that night, my mom had arrived and his dad and step mom!  It was a complete surprise and I loved EVERY second of it!

He did a beautiful job, especially since he planned the whole trip from his tent in the middle of a deployment at Officer Training School.  I'm going to be an Air Force Officer's wife!  :)

Here are some pictures of the amazing event:

Here it is...the RING!  :)

Here we are...me, me mom, and my future mother in law!

I even got to see my World Race buddy...Morgan!  It was great to see you, girl...thanks for everything!!

Here we are! 

Thanks to those of you who knew and kept secrets for so long...mom I am SO proud of you!  Thanks to my girls: Adrienne, Brittany and Cara...I love you!

Well, unlike most of the other World Racers, I am not quite home yet.  I have some wonderful friends in Singapore that have taken me in and spoiled me rotten.  ;) 

We have been doing some sight-seeing, lots of eating, shopping and resting, it's been great!

Here are some pics from the last few days.

I was waiting for my bag, but just had to do the hand-to-hand-through-the-glass with Melvin.  :)

Kaitlyn stayed up ALL NIGHT to greet me at the airport and still went to school in the morning...now that's a true friend!

Amongst our many wonderful meals, we had Sri Lanken land crab, delicious!!  I have been craving crab for the last several weeks, so this was a special treat! 

The stunning Singapore sky line.

Here is a giant python at the Night Safari.  This was the coolest place!  They have all of the nocturnal animals out for us to see!

As you can see, we have been having a great time! 

I get home on Monday night and can't wait to see my family!!  I love and miss everyone and am so excited to get back to Houston!   :)

We made it back from China yesterday!!  It was an amazing trip, I LOVED it!  It was a long month, so I will give you a photo tour.  I hope you enjoy it!   :)   (*some pics from Stacy)

I will begin with our first 2 weeks at a cultural exchange program.  We took Chinese cultural classes at a university in the mornings and in the afternoons we held English corners so the students could practice their English.

I believe it is appropriate to begin a photo tour with breakfast.  This was our delicacy of choice many a morning.  It is called boutza (phonetically) and it is steamed bread with a meat and/or veggie filling...delicious! 

Welcome to calligraphy class!  Here I am, hard at work.  :)

Here is a look at the English teaching building on campus...nice landscaping!

Now it's time for a little exercise in the park, did everyone bring their fans??  ;)

Here are a few from our next location.  We took a 24 hour train ride to the Sechuan province to visit some "family".

Traveling on trains is the way to go!  The sleeper trains rock you right to sleep.  :)

We got to take in the sites with our friends and saw a Sechuan Opera.  It was the real deal with the flipping face masks and all!

As if the Chinese food wasn't good enough, we got to go to a REAL Tex-Mex place!  disclaimer: this does NOT mean that I don't want Lupe's the second I get home!  :)

I can't post too many pictures of our friends and family in China, but rest assured that we had plenty to do.  We attended the "expat's" family fellowship, we held another English corner for a group of Muslim minorities in China, we had LOTS of delicious meals with brothers and sisters and so much more.   It was an amazing opportunity to see God at work in China.  His Good News is spreading!  :)

Our next destination was Beijing!  We got to stay for a few days before taking another train back to Hong Kong.

Here is one of the numerous countdown clocks to the summer 2008 Olympics.  China is VERY proud to be hosting this time!

This is the Summer Palace, really cool place to visit!

This is the infamous Tiananmen Squre.  China has SO much history!

And last, but CERTAINLY not least: The Great Wall of China!  I know it sounds cliche, but these pictures seriously do not do it justice!

I'll close  my photo tour with my beloved team!  I love Team 61!!!!   :)

So, we are now in Hong Kong and the World Race officially ends one week from today.  I can hardly believe it, but it's really drawing to a close.  We are taking this time to try to debrief all that we have seen and done.  It has been an amazing 11 months.  I learned so much about the character of our Heavenly Father and a bunch about myself!  It's time to turn our hearts homeward and get used to the idea of life back in the States.  It will certainly be an adjustment from what we have come from, but I'm excited to come home!  Please keep us in your prayers this week as we wrap up and start saying our goodbyes.

Thank you again for your prayers and comments!   :)

No, I'm not talking limbs here!  The final leg of the World Race starts tomorrow for squads A and B...can you believe it?? 

We fly to Hong Kong first for a few days of China briefing and then we are going to that big, mysterious country.  By the way, China is a closed country and Christianity is illegal.  For that very reason we are going as students of this magnificent place in a cultural exchange program.  The government has always monitored the internet, and with the upcoming Olympics they are keeping a close eye on groups of Americans entering the country.  To protect the safety of our contacts there, I will likely not be accessing this website or my email in the country.  But, I will give a full report when we get to a secure location!  I will still be able to check email and my comments on this blog in Hong Kong, but after about the 15th, I will be incommunicado.

Thank you for your prayers!  Going to China is pretty intimidating, but I'm really excited to see what the Lord has in store.  It has been an AMAZING God-adventure thus far, and I have no reason to believe China will be any different!!

God Bess you all!!  ><>

Here is some random updates and pictures on Cambodia!

We have been staying pretty busy here in Phnom Penh. I got to go out to one of the provinces to visit with a few of the sponsored children. The kids have been sponsored through New Life Church in a program called Cambodia's Children at Risk. Sponsors pay about $30/month and the families get medicine, food, clothing and school supplies. It is a 3 year commitment and at the end of the sponsorship CC@R help the families start a small business so they can be self-sustaining. The main ways they can start a business is by purchasing a cow to breed, starting a small grocery stand, and getting a loom to weave fabrics.

This week there is a team from the Brooklyn Tabernacle who has come to give free medical clinics. I am excited to work with them later this week!

I have also made a good friend at one of the local markets, the "Russian Market". Her name is Sow (at least phonetically it sounds like it!) and she is just so sweet! She is 23 and has lost both of her parents. She lives with her aunt and works from 5am to 6pm at the market serving drinks at their stand. I took them a few brownies today and promised to go back tomorrow and bring pictures of my friends and family in America. They blessed me with a free iced coffee (heavy on the sweetened condensed milk!).

Here are a few pics I have taken recently (some are from Stacy):

Here I am getting a $1 hair cut earlier today...maybe not the best decision, but hair grows, right??  :)

This is from cooking dinner last night.  Hannah and I made a veggie curry, and it was actually really good!

This is Sow and her aunt at the Russian Market, please pray that they would see Jesus' love in me.

This is one of the rice fields in the province.  Seriously the greenest green I have ever seen, beautiful!  :)

Thanks for the comments on prayers!  :)

It is always interesting when historical things go on in the places that you happen to be.  I left for Albania years ago just as part of the country was declared a war zone.  And now, as I am in Cambodia, one of the leaders of Khmer Rouge has been arrested, just today.  Here is the story.  Thank you for praying for this nation.  I believe God is listening and desires justice for the beloved people.

Khmer Rouge 'Brother Number Two' faces court Ek Madra | Phnom Penh, Cambodia 19 September 2007 12:18 Khmer Rouge "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea, Pol Pot's top surviving henchman, was arrested on Wednesday at his house on the Thai border and taken to Phnom Penh to face the United Nations "Killing Fields" tribunal for the first time. A terse, two-sentence statement by the $56-million court said the octogenarian communist guerrilla would "be informed of the charges which have been brought against him" -- in all likelihood genocide or crimes against humanity. Nuon Chea was arrested by a squad of Cambodian special forces soldiers, police and Western security guards who surrounded his small wooden home in a forest on the Thai border. He was questioned inside for a short time before being taken away by helicopter and flown to Phnom Penh. "My dad seems to have no worries, but my mother is worried about him," his son, Nuon Say, told Reuters. Papers and photographs were also seized from the house, Nuon Chea's home since he and the final remnants of Pol Pot's ultra-Maoist guerrilla army cut a deal with the Phnom Penh government in December 1998. "They confiscated the documents written by my dad about the Khmer Rouge," Nuon Say said. "They took all the photos from his home before they put him into vehicle, took him to the helicopter and flew him off to Phnom Penh." On his arrival in the capital, he was whisked to the tribunal compound on the Western outskirts for a closed-door hearing. Nuon Chea is accused of being the surviving Khmer Rouge commander most responsible for the atrocities of the "Killing Fields", in which an estimated 1,7-million people died. In July, the long-awaited tribunal charged chief Khmer Rouge inquisitor Duch with crimes against humanity, the first formal indictment of any of the top cadres of the 1975 "Year Zero" revolution. The black-shirted Khmer Rouge meant to transform the heavily forested South-east Asian nation into an agrarian peasant utopia. Instead, it descended into the nightmare of the "Killing Fields", one of the darkest chapters of the 20th century. The Beijing-backed regime was toppled by invading Vietnamese troops in 1979 and Pol Pot died in the last Khmer Rouge redoubt of Anlong Veng in 1998. - Reuters

Michelle wrote a magnificent blog about our time in Phnom Penh thus far, especially our tour of the city and learning about its history.  I am copying it here:

While in the Phnom Phen, we were able to tour the city and learn a bit of the history of Cambodia.   It is hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that only 30 years ago a genocide occurred here … but what is more astonishing is the fact that I had never even heard about it.   The Khmer Rouge … the Killing Fields … 1975-1979 over 2 million Cambodians murdered.   In his insanity and drive towards creating a Communist Cambodia, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, killed off anyone in his way - the educated class and their families, doctors, teachers, students, engineers, Buddhist monks, foreigners, etc.   He believed that by having an uneducated mass of followers, he could more easily create a working class which would help to establish the Communistic "equal" society that he dreamed of for Cambodia.  

It's all just REALLY messed up.   We were able to visit the S-21 center where approximately 20,000 Cambodians were imprisoned, tortured, and killed.   The statistics say that of the thousands of citizens who entered S-21, only 7 survived.   The sick part of it all … the center is directly in the center of the city and was once a high school before Pol Pot and his regime transformed it into a killing center.   Makeshift wooden and brick cells in the classrooms, cruel torture methods, bar on the windows, barbed wire across the length of the school buildings.   It's like a terrible, unbelievable nightmare.

There were rooms and rooms of snapshots of the prisoners killed at S-21.   Apparently the center kept incredible records of the men, women, and children who were funneled through there.   This included mug shots with their numbers on their chests and the many pages of "confessions" that were extracted out of the innocent prisoners.

We spent several hours at the center.   It was all overwhelming to take in.   It was hard to understand how we can as human beings continue to do such appalling things.   And that we sit thousands of miles distanced from it and don't even know that it is occurring.   And that we don't intervene when we DO know it's happening.   It all gets really messy, I understand … but 2 million people in the span of 4 years is a high price to pay for our ignorance, blind eye and politically "neutral" stance.

After the museum, we visited one of the actual "Killing Fields."   The Khmer Rouge would transport truckloads of Cambodians to these locations for either death or burial.   The site is currently the location of a monument to the victims.   I would ask that you would respectfully read what information that you can from these photographs and consider looking up more information about the tragedy of the Khmer Rouge and the Killing Fields.

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Well, I got my purse snatched right out of my hand about an hour ago.  It was kind of scary and I was pretty shaken up, but doing much better now. 

Us 61 girls along with Yeti went out to dinner for Jon's birthday and took a tuk-tuk back to our apartments to play some games.  I had just stepped out onto the street and was in the motion to swing my purse from my hand up to my shoulder and a motorcycle with two men on it drove right up next to me and just grabbed it!  I held on as long as I could, but it was just ripped out of my grasp.

I made the necessary calls and cancelled my credit cards.  Thanks to Katie and the McCarty's our team credit card is also taken care of.  I didn't really lose much that can't be replaced.

So, yeah...it's a bummer.  My arm is a little sore, but no lasting damage.  I am increasingly thankful for Skype so I could call my bank immediately and also my mom for some encouraging words, admonitions and prayers.  :)

Another day on the World Race...I still wouldn't trade it!  :)

After an 18 hour trip from Bangkok, we made it to Phnom Penh, Cambodia!

We stayed at the YWAM base in the city and since have moved to an apartment right across the street from the church where we will be working. 

We got to meet the pastor of New Life Fellowship yesterday, Jesse McCaul, and learn all about the work they are doing here, in Phnom Penh (sounds like p'nom pen) as well as out in the rural areas of Cambodia.  Pastor Jesse gave us a briefing and then took us on a tour of the church campus, which is in the heart of the city. 

New Life has more to offer than just about any church I have ever seen.  They start free English classes at 5:45 am and go all day!  They have a "street kids" outreach once a week, they offer computer skills classes and cell groups.  They also offer free dorm-style housing to the people that come from the country side to look for jobs in the city.  Of course all of these opportunities...and there are more I haven't even mentioned... are just saturated with Jesus so the people that take them are shown His love.  Pastor Jesse described his method of evangelism as, "if you hang around the lake long enough, you fall right in!"  This is actually exactly what happens!  Some of the associate pastors on staff actually first came to New Life to take skills classes!

We have another meeting today with the departments whose ministries intrigue us the most.  I am leaning towards learning more about their Children at Risk program (it is similar to Compassion, you can sponsor children and New Life makes sure they go to school, have food and clothes, etc.) as well as possibly working in the dorms.

Due to many variables including rampant poverty as well as the regime of the Khmer Rouge, the majority of the population of Cambodia is very young.  If I remember correctly, about 80% of the population is under 30.  That being said, New Life is a Body of believers that are just about my age!   In fact, their Saturday youth outreach meetings are pretty much made up the entire church!   J

Life in Phnom Penh is quite a drastic adjustment from the time we spent in Bangkok.  We are all feeling the change this month.  It is actually reminiscent of the time we spent ministering in Peru, if you happen to remember any of those blogs.    

There are some highlights that are like sweet breaths of fresh air here, too!   There is a great restaurant just a few blocks from where we stay that we can get awesome Khmer and Thai food…and iced coffee…one of my latest obsessions!   I was also able to get up bright and early this morning and hike it to a nearby stadium and run and do some bleachers.   If you know me very well, then you know that exercising regularly will help keep me sane!   So those two things alone are wonderful gifts from my heavenly Father!   J

Well, thank you for letting me spill my guts all about what we are doing and how I am feeling!   I appreciate you reading and sharing this journey with me this year.   Please continue to pray and leave your comments…you don't know how much that means to us World Racers!

Until next time….     ><>

Check out New Life's website at: http://www.cambodiaoutreach.org/home.html