My month 5 in Cambodia
has definitely been different than I expected…
Teaching
I got to teach Personal Development and have patience with the language barrier and the blank stares. The girls smile and call me Teechah, and we push through an hour of talking about how special they are, how different they are, and how God made them that way. We talked about the fruits of the Spirit, and what it means to be a good tree and bear good fruit.
That’s what I do for 5 hours a week.
What else am I doing here?
Prison Ministry
I was in a prison here for 2 days out of this last week. I got to preach in front of 29 male prisoners for about 45 minutes, and do an “altar call” so to speak, and most of the men raised their hands and prayed out loud for Jesus to be their Lord and Savior. Hallelujah! They have a pastor who preaches and disciples them every single week, so I have full faith they will pursue their faith and God will reveal Himself to them the same way He did for me.
Prayer Walking
We prayer walked through a Muslim village It was intimidating to walk through the Muslim village, because we were warned that missionaries have actually been persecuted there. We were told to keep walking and to greet people in Arabic if we were greeted. We also prayer walked through the streets beside floating Vietnamese village, handing out candy and greeting the people.
We attended a church service entirely in Khmer, and didn’t understand a single word of it. We clapped and sang along in English, and took turns between pretending to listen intently and blatantly reading our Bibles.
Random Voyages
We got to visit Angkor Wat, Sihanoukville, genocide killing fields, and super random places and temples.
Here are a few pictures of me being crazy, because that's what I do.
I am afraid of riding a bicycle (please laugh! Yes, there’s a story involving blood, sweat, and tears) so while my team rides effortlessly to get food on the weekends or to get some coffee and wifi during the week, I run. I run alongside their bicycles. Cool part? I keep up. Funny thing that happened today was passing by a few Cambodians and they screamed out “Muy! Ping! Bay! Muy! Ping! Bay! Muy! Ping! Bay!” That means “One! Two! Three!” in Khmer. They were counting for me while I ran. I laughed so hard!
Aside from all that, we spend our time praying, having morning worship, breaking bread, cleaning up, meeting for feedback, watching movies, and sleeping.
We said goodbye to Becki, my teammate, who felt called to go back to Texas, and that was really tough on me since I’ve had Becki around since the beginning with Team Tharros. AHHH I miss PEQUIIII!!! I know she’s happy, so it helps me to cope.
I got to play crazy Cambodian dodgeball with the students yesterday, where you throw balls at the people in the middle and they just lose! They weren't allowed to catch the ball! It was a very unfair game, so we Americanized the game and made it so that both teams had a chance to win. Figures. The fun part was watching them giggle and squeal and scream like little children.
Today I got to fix our nasty sink, unclogging the pipe. It’s clean and working now, to the joy of all the people! There are rats in the house, but I’m still convinced I will get to kill one at some point in the next 2 days.
That’s what we’ve been up to in Cambodia. We have 2 more days here, then we head to Phnom Penh for a couple more days, and fly out to Malaysia on June 1st!
MONTH 6!!! AHHHH!!!!
Keep me in your prayers for safety in this transition. Prayers are also needed for my bag to miraculously weigh less than 44lbs and my carryon to weigh less than 10lbs, as those are apparently the weight limits of our airline.
Love and miss you all!!!
