The Itinerary

IM BACK! 

I'm back from beautiful Cambodia, but if I am perfectly honest I wish I were back there sometimes. 

The journey started in Phenom Penh where our team experienced the heart breaking night life of the KTV district by driving with through the heart of this red light district, seeing the hundreds of young Cambodian girls as they were having a "normal nights work" opened the eyes of my team real quick to the reality of some peoples lives in Cambodia. 

 After checking in on everyone and debriefing what was just experienced we settled into a nice hotel for some much needed sleep after hours of travel. The next morning we awoke to the heat of Cambodia, so obviously the next logical step was to go shopping! We shopped in the Russian market, and dealt with culture shock in the form of gallons and gallons of coffee. After a day of recovering from travel and culture shock we took a little educational trip to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum where we learned more about the Khmer Rouge and the horrific things that happened during their time in power over Cambodia. After another violent awakening to the effects of genocide on a country, we took a 2 hour van ride to a village outside of the big city and were greeted by sweet little brown faces with dirty hands and big smiles. I will always remember driving through the gate and down the dirt road and seeing little kids running around and doing chores with the biggest smiles on their faces. We were at a home that took in children who were at risk of being sold into the sex trafficking business, kids ranging from 1 years old to 18. That first night we played and fell in love with the kids who lived in the home along with their wonderful house parents. As the night wound down we met with our contact and he told us the story of some of the children in the house and their stories absolutely broke our hearts. some had no parents, some had abusive parents, some came from good but poor family's and some had been given to the house quickly because they were raped. That night I went to bed with a heavy heart.

So why would I take so much time to explain those first 72 hours? Well in those fist days in Cambodia, despite the pain and brokenness I saw, I was full of joy! God filled me with an excitement for that country in this first 72 hours that lasted me 2 months and even after getting off the plane back in the Kalispell airport, my heart was still in love with the small nation snuggled between Thailand and Vietnam.  

Anyway that first location my team did lots of manual labor and lots of playing with the easy to love kiddos. When it was time to say goodbye there were lots of tears from my team and the kids. Truly heart wrenching. Our next location was in another village in the same provence where we thought english and did house visits to pray and talk with the surrounding neighbors and in our time with each family we visited God showed me his heart for them. I won't lie I was pretty frustrated a lot of the time asking God to heal people in need or to feed their starving families but as I walked and prayed I realized 1. God was not making them starve or allowing them to starve because He likes suffering, It was happening because the effects of sin on this world is great and He would not be God if He gave us free will but didn't allow us to experience the effects of the consequences of sin. 

2. God is more concerned with the state of our heart than He is with the state of our physical bodies. 

Now don't misinterpret, Jesus 100% cares about our physical suffering in this world but during this time I needed to learn that it is all well and great to give people the needs of their physical body, but I am not truly loving them if I neglect their spiritual need for a heavenly father who loves them. There is a balance and I don't think that I have the answer about where that balance is but I know God is still showing me it. 

Next we were off to Battambang where our team stayed at the beautiful new Ywam campus that was recently built by 100 Fold. There our team was split in different groups doing ministries all over the place from helping with landscaping, teaching preschool, volunteering at a kids place, and walking around praying and talking to random people. At this base we started celebrating Khmer new year (which is a 3 day long holiday by the way) that consists of water fights and baby powder. I had one interesting incident riding my bike back to campus one day alone where I had to avoid 3 mobs of Cambodian people ready to soak and coat me with water and baby powder, and ended up in a Cambodian families front yard being force fed lots of fresh fruit and veggies and chili salt. 

For the rest of Khmer New Year the team and I spent in a village outside of Battambang, which hands down was my favorite week in Cambodia. Our days were spent visiting people, hanging out in their houses and sharing the story of a God who came to earth and died on a cross just so He could be with them and as we shared these stories people gave their lives to Jesus! CRAZY RIGHT?! nights were spent together eating and laughing and playing card games with some crazy teenagers who lived near the church and reading Gods word. It was made clear when we arrived to the village that if we chose it, this week could be a week of spiritual health and restoration. And it was! God showed up in ways that were so subtle yet undeniable, weather it was through water fights in the middle of a thunder storm or through crashing a random party down the street to dance the night away and try new foods that you wouldn't ordinarily even go near. 

the last place we went was Pailin which is super close to the Thailand border. We lived and ate and sang and played with a Khmer DTS who were also on the outreach phase of DTS. Mornings were spent doing evangelism and evenings were spent in kids ministry and running an english school. Weekends we spend hiking through jungles to beautiful waterfalls and a couple nights a week we went to the night market to brave the food (which considering how sick our team got was a bad idea) 

In this place God talked to me about grace and how much He loved the people of Cambodia. In those weeks I begged God to let this nation be the one I was called to for the rest of my life but instead He showed me that my heart could be opened to many nations not just this one. Which looking back is pretty cool. I fell more in love with the Cambodian people and the staff at this location really opened my eyes to what it meant and looked like to be a long term missionary, sometimes it looks like just loving on people and communities for years and not seeing a lot of fruit yet you continue to pursue what God has spoken and not to despise small beginnings, but rejoice in the beauty of where you are. 

Thank you for sticking with me on all that word vomit! I would love to say I will have another update soon but knowing me it might be a while again. But the most important thing to know is I have a better understanding of Gods grace and love, and that I have walked away from my time in Cambodia full of love and hope of what God wants to do in that country. The school theme john 10:10 rings true for that season and that place. The enemy had tried to kill steal and destroy but thankfully Jesus came to give life and give life abundant and that is how I would describe my time in Cambodia, full of life and life abundant.