This past weekend, I spent a day and half on a little field
trip of sorts. It all started a couple of days ago when Reaksmey asked me if I
wanted to visit one of the other provinces were many of the church plants are
located. We started out Friday morning at 8am (1 hr. of me waiting on him to
arrive.) We rode out of town on a dirt back towards Takeo province. After about
an hour of travel, we stopped for breakfast (pork, rice, veggies, and iced
coffee.) While eating he asked me if I had talked to Karen, the church
coordinator and our contact, about spending the night and collecting info for
the website both Friday and Saturday. I was quite surprised because I hadn’t
planned at all to stay the night. After talking to Karen via cell phone, we
worked out the kinks and returned to our busy day which was now 2 busy days of
interviewing pastors.
Our
agenda was to visit with 7 of the provincial churches in the area to collect as
much valuable information as possible to put on the new website. I had a long
list of questions from Karen, and a translator so we went to work. Reaksmey, my
first translator, is the head of the men’s ministry at New Life, as well as,
one of the administrators of the provincial churches. He visits 3 times a week
to meet with pastors. On this day, I was tagging along. We were able to visit a
couple of churches before going to lunch. We then headed to Kraing Throng
Church which is one of the “mother churches” for a number of churches in the
area. Here, I met Pheakday, who directs the Children at Risk program at New
Life. He was to be my translator for the rest of the day. After a little
relaxin in the hammock and eating mangoes, we again headed out. We were able to
visit two more churches before once again returning to Kraing Throng. Other
than Badminton, volleyball is all the rage in Cambodia, so Pheakday took me to
a court in the community were the best players play. It was a dirt court behind
someone’s house. After watching some rather athletic Cambodians do work, we
were able to play a game. We lost, but it was a lot of fun. We returned to the
pastor’s house at the church for dinner. Dinner consisted of pork ribs,
chicken, small fish fried whole, (you eat them that way, just pop one in your
mouth and be sure to chew carefully and thoroughly to get through the bones),
veggies, rice of course, and a couple different sauces for dipping. The food
was great.
I soon
headed to my room to read and listen to my I-pod. The next morning, I woke up
and got dressed, but I couldn’t find anyone that I had met from the night
before. So I wandered around the property taking pictures of random things.
About an hour later, Thorn pulled up on his moto and asked if I had eaten
breakfast. After another 20 minutes, the pastor returned from the market with
food. I had a big piece of chicken atop my rice with two sliced mangoes and
iced coffee in a bag on the side. After breakfast, Thorn, my new translator,
and I headed out once again to do work. We were able to visit with another 3
churches before returning to Kraing Throng. I finished the afternoon by meeting
with Pastor Pros of KT. I returned to Phnom Penh in the back of truck, like any
good little world racer would do!
It was
a really good two days. I was able to see the lifestyle of Cambodians who live
in the countryside. I also got to see how the provincial churches worked. I was
able to here some amazing testimonies from the pastors and their churches that
really touched me. In the next blog, I will share some of their testimonies I
was able to collect.
