Well, I am currently in Vietnam. My team needed to renew our visas and took four days to do that in Vietnam. It’s currently 3:24am and I can’t sleep. Everyone else is asleep, even the guard sitting 10 feet from me. We’re staying at a hostel and I was frozen due to the air conditioning. I took a hot shower and now I can’t sleep, so it turns out to be a good time to catch up on blogs, emails, etc.
On Saturday, my team took another trip to the provinces. This time we went to Kampong Thom province. It is in the center of Cambodia. It was a beautiful area! It was very green and there was a slight breeze that day. We left early at 5:00am as it was 3.5 hours away. We were joining two university students that grew up in the province. We arrived at the Christian Coalition for Development in Cambodia. We were quickly welcomed by teenagers and university students. One girl quickly came up to me, asked me my name, grabbed my hand, interlocked fingers and led me into the house. The culture here is very affectionate within their own gender. I have gotten used to interlocking holding hands with the girls. The leader of the organization explained to us a little about how the organization started and thier plan for the future. They teach English and Bible inexpensively to people in the community. It appeared well ran as they had listed out goals and plans for the next five years. Morgan, Andrew, and I taught about leadership, while Candice, Spano, and Annie talked about discipleship. We joined them in a few songs of praise and worship and had the opportunity to pray for them.
We headed to the home of our university students, Sohpeap and Naza. We were welcomed by big smiles. We took a seat on the floor and were quickly served an amazing meal! We had rice which had been grown in thier own fields, we had chicken, gingered FROG (we didn’t know it was frog until afterwards, but it was good, tasted like chicken), beef and cucumbers, and lots of fruit for dessert. It was wonderful! The Cambodian people are amazing cooks and love to serve us.
Next, we headed to an orphanage. This was different than any orphanage I have been to. It was started by a woman from California. It looked more like summer camp. It was beautiful! It had nice spacious buildings where there were live-in host parents for every 14-17 kids. The kids attend public school, but have two teachers on hand for additional help. The children have chores, are behaved and well-mannered. The children are clean, healthy, and well taken care of. There was lots of space to run and play. It even had playground equipment. It was wonderful to see, but hard at the same time. It was hard coming from the other orphanage last week that doesn’t have enough space, is dirty and mosquito infested, and has trouble coming up with enough money to feed the children each day. It makes me happy for the children at the nice orphanage and frustrated because I know the other orphanage could be more.
So far, Vietnam has been wonderful. Yesterday, we went to the War Remnants Museum and out to eat for the biggest hamburger ever! Tomorrow, we are going on a tour of the Mekong River. I will post pictures and stories soon!
