I know that a lot of you are wondering what we are doing here in Cambodia- what ministry looks like.
Well, in this whole journey so far- pre race, launch, even now- God has been dealing with me in control. I love control. I want to know everything. I want schedules, I want organization, I want to know what’s going on. God has been showing me over and over that I need to let it all go and just trust Him. He has it. There is no need to worry. This theme has carried into our ministry so far…
We have no schedule. Every day is pretty much up in the air. Our contact speaks very broken English and there is no interpreter. So, let me tell you, we play quite a bit of charades while talking to them. :)) Good thing I love that game 🙂
As I understand it, the ministry that we are working with is TDSP. It stands for something in Khmer… basically, their ministry is helping the underprivileged. They teach English, job skills, hygiene- just self betterment things. The idea is rather than feed a person a meal they want to provide a cow- being it could provide milk to eat or sell for other things, have baby calves to sell to be able to go to school, etc. TDSP has a church that is connected to it: New Life Church. The main church is in Phnom Penh. That church has five church plants. Basically, we are going to three of the plants this month to help serve in whatever way they need.
The first church plant that we went to is a church in Sisophon (sis-o-pone). This church has the pastor and his family and like 15 youth (mostly boys 16-24) that live here. It is basically a housing compound with a church on top of it. My team is living in the sanctuary of the church in our tents. It is a nice place to stay, sans all the bugs. We have six fans keeping the air moving in the sanctuary, we have an internet connection, we have room for our insanity (we completed our first one yesterday!) workouts and we have privacy.
We got here to this church on Friday. We are leaving to go to the next church this Thursday. The kids here have stolen our hearts and we are sad to go, but last night at worship, we think that we figured out that we are coming back here for a day in a week and a half. :)) The Race so far has been, interesting, to say the least. This morning, in our team time, Caitlin prayed about God’s provision. We arrived in this country overwhelmed, I’d say. We got in at the airport and our team was whisked away from the rest of the squad as soon as we walked out of the doors. We didn’t even say goodbye, there was so much going on. But, even in our information overload, our tiredness, God provided His peace and grace for us.
On Saturday, we visited families in the village. It’s when we really started building relationships with our hosts as well.
On Sunday, we cleared our tents and such out of the sanctuary to have a worship service. That afternoon our team split up and we went to two villages to teach some children stories, songs, English and games.
On Monday, we went to different families in the villages to share the gospel/encouragement.
On Tuesday, like 70 kids came to the church and we taught them hygiene. How to brush their teeth, why it’s important, how to wash their hands and why that is important. Then we sang songs and played games.
Today, we are supposed to be doing labor around the church. Painting, cleaning, constructing… We don’t know what it is yet- we are basically flying by the seat of our pants- but God knows what it is, and just like always He is going to provide the wisdom, strength and knowledge to do it.
I love you all!
<3 Ash
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Thank you all so much for everything!!
