Among the iconic images of Cambodia which have stayed with the Rev. Wes Aardahl:

* A young woman seated in a small thatched stand sparsely stocked with packets of shampoo, cooking oil and other basics, started with a micro-loan from either her village bank or Lutheran World Federation. She earns 4,000 riel per day - $1 U.S. - which makes a critical difference in her family's quality of life.

* A recently-built thatched "W.C." (water closet, or toilet) with a simple porcelain fixture in the floor with a cistern and ladle next to it for flushing, the only one serving a village of 60 people.

* A plastic chemical pail filled with stems of lotus buds for sale.

n A young woman and her child, both of whom have HIV/AIDS but are able to receive medications from a distant clinic because LWF workers provide transportation.

* At a village celebration of the completion of a small concrete dam and spillway, the village leader wearing what looked like a pith helmet but turned out to be a vintage woman's hat, complete with a bow on the back.

* Raw sewage flowing around a sports facility built in the 1960s when Cambodia had Olympic hopes. Inside, small Cambodian boys cannonball off the high dive platforms of two Olympic-size pools; one flashes a peace sign.

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Aardahl, the pastor at Faith Lutheran Church in Bismarck, took about 1,700 photos of things like these during his time in Cambodia from April 16 to May 17.

Aardahl's first church, in Chicago, put him in contact with a lot of Indo-Chinese refugees, he said. Visiting with people who had returned from spending time in the Third World had made him envy their altered view of life, he said. This is why he tagged his Cambodia trip "The Enlightenment Tour."

When he met the director of a Cambodian project that takes about half a dozen people a year, he found a chance to observe first-hand the humanitarian work the Lutheran World Federation is doing there through its Department of World Service.

The Lutheran World Federation is an organization comprising 140 churches around the world. Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Faith's denomination, is the president of the LWF.

Americans are probably most familiar with Cambodia as the catalyst for the protests at Kent State over its bombing during the Vietnam War and the genocide by the ruling Khmer Rouge documented in the movie "The Killing Fields."

After the Holocaust, the world said "never again," but genocide has become a fact of life, Aardahl said. In Cambodia, a rough estimate puts the deaths at between 1 million and 3 million, about 20 percent of the population, he said.

Land mines still maim several hundred people a year, he said, and all over, one sees people with missing limbs. It's a country where visitors can see both the magnificent temple of Angkor Wat and the Cambodian Land Mine Museum.

However, on acquaintance with the Cambodian people, "pity's not what you feel," instead, it's their dignity and sense of humor that come through, he said.

The Lutheran World Federation has been in Cambodia since 1979, Aardahl said. LWF chose to work in the remotest areas of the country, places where the Khmer Rouge were active until the mid-1990s, he said.

Of the 310 workers in LWF's Cambodia project, only three are Westerners, Aardahl said; the rest are Cambodian.

"We're not there to establish new churches, but to empower people and get out," he said.

The idea is to help those villages, "really basic work," Aardahl said, such as starting a rice bank, or writing a letter to the provincial government for help, to assist them in working together.

"Because they're human beings, they deserve a measure of dignity and well-being," he said. "The goal is to leave, to 'graduate' a village."

Seventy percent of Cambodia is rural, subsistence farming; 70 percent of people live on $2 a day, 30 percent on $1 a day or less, Aardahl said.

Some villages have only been in existence for 10 or 12 years, he said; before that, people were in hiding or in refugee camps. A plastic pail and a blue tarp might comprise the whole of a village's supplies, he said.

Aardahl was based in Phnom Penh, from where he visited the museum at the Killing Fields, with its memorial pallets of human skulls and signs inviting visitors to remove their shoes, light incense and say prayers.

Aardahl kept both a personal diary and a blog for his congregation during his trip. In a sense, he said, he took a community with him over there. Now back, he is planning a program at 7 p.m. Sunday at Faith and has some other invitations to speak as well.

He'd like to raise awareness, he said, to think globally, to focus attention on a country a bit smaller than North Dakota on the other side of the world: "If we do that, we're improved," he said.

Aardahl's time in Cambodia made him appreciative of infrastructure, he said, electricity, refrigeration, roads: "It's a challenge living for a week in the field," he said. "It's not for the faint of heart."

The thing about working in Cambodia, he said, is that simple things make a big difference.

Elementary schools have been established in Cambodia, but total cost for sending a child away to high school is $400 a year, he said. Aardahl is considering promoting a scholarship fund to funnel contributions to that cause, he said.

Since Aardahl's return, he is mostly re-acclimated, except when he looks at his photos or reads his diary.

Then, he said, "it takes me right back."

(Reach reporter Karen Herzog at 250-8267 or karen.herzog@bismarcktribune.com.)