I would like to begin by thanking you all for your financial, spiritual, and emotional support before and during this trip.
As you all know, this month in Cambodia has been a real
struggle for me. I got Dengue
Fever, was frustrated with our ministry (since it wasn’t Christian and we were
not allowed to talk about God), and my biggest support system- the hubbs- is
deployed with sporadic communication.
Also, I am drawn to a different facet of the
anti-trafficking movement than many of my contemporaries. I am surrounded by all of these sweet,
loving, godly women who love children and have degrees in things like social
work and counseling. They are MADE
for working with children and MADE for aftercare- they are made to sit “shiva” with those who are grieving and
help them put their lives back together.
But that isn’t me.
I don’t want to do that. Trying to help reconstruct a broken life scares the crap out
of me, to be honest. What if I say
the wrong thing? What if I
don’t say the right thing? What if
this person comes to me and puts their faith in me to help them through their
tragedy, and I fail them?
But criminal prosecution, on the other hand… THAT is more
like it. Going toe-to-toe with a
pimp to bring justice to the women and children he has destroyed… sign me up!
But here is the problem with a missions trip. You don’t get to do that. You are never in a situation where you
can bring consequences down on the oppressors. I don’t get to hold any of these people accountable for what
they do. Maybe it is my military
background, but I have a really difficult time sitting with someone
who is grieving when I know that the perpetrator is still out there. I want to go and get him.
So what does God do?
He brings me here to Cambodia. He puts me into a ministry where I am NOT busting down the
doors of brothels, carrying children out, and hauling the traffickers off to
jail. (Don’t worry, I didn’t
REALLY think that would happen.
But a girl can dream, can’t she?)
Instead, I am doing “prevention” work. Organizing a storage room and teaching English.. to kids who
for the most part do not care about English and do not want to be there. A ministry where I am not allowed
to talk to these kids about God- not that they would understand me anyway, with
the language barrier as massive as it is.
So what does God do?
He SHOWS OFF this past week.
I know that many of you pray for me a lot, and a couple of you even pray
for me every day. I don’t know
what you are praying for when you pray, but here is what our Abba Daddy did for
me this week:
I went into ministry on Wednesday ready to be done. I couldn’t wait until this coming
Monday when we leave for Thailand-the country I am the most excited about on
this trip. The kids were being
rowdy as usual, and I felt myself getting super frustrated. I slapped the white board so that it would
make a loud sound and I would get the kid’s attention (since they don’t
understand much English), and then it happened…
Rather than seeing 9 little bratty faces- faces that I would
dread having to face each morning… I saw 9 little girls and boys all looking up
at me with their angel faces.
(My classroom- yes, it is on a roof-top, separated by the classroom by a bit of ply-wood)
Our interaction was totally different after that- for the
remainder of my ministry with them.
This whole time, they have not wanted to learn my name- they usually
call all of us “cha” (many of the teachers who come here are Australian and pronounce
“teacher” like “teacha”, so the kids call us “cha”). I don’t mind being called “cha” and I find it pretty cute,
actually. But it seems like when
they are REALLY trying to annoy me, they call me “Sara” which is the name of
the “cha” I replaced. But not
anymore… after I began to see them differently, they each were coming up to me
asking what my name was. Then they
wanted to know how to spell it, and wrote it down.
During “computer time”, the girls who were not on a computer
wanted to sit with me, and look a books- and teach me the Khmer words for the
thing we were looking at. So I
would tell them the English word, and they would repeat it, and they would tell
me the Khmer word, and I would repeat it.
I am certain that their attempts at English were more successful than
mine at Khmer… based on their giggles… but we had fun.
One of the books was a Children’s Atlas. I showed them where Cambodia was and
where America was, and I drew my finger over the page to show them how far I
had come to be with them. They
smiled. The very next day, when we
went into the computer room, one of my girls ran to get that atlas, opened it
to the page with the world map, and drew her finer from Cambodia to America and
smiled at me.
In the first weeks of this ministry, if I did not have an
interpreter, I would struggle through the lesson anyway. All that I accomplished was that I
frustrated the kids who didn’t understand me, and I frustrated myself since no
one knew what I was trying to say/mime/sign. What I learned this week was that if I have no interpreter-
I am just not going to teach.
Instead, I will play a learning game with the kids to review what we
have already gone over. They stay
engaged and have fun, I don’t get frustrated, and most importantly they get
excited about school.
One of the other teams here on the race (Team Wellspring)
was praying over me on Tuesday.
They prayed that God would put so much love for these children and for
this country in my heart that I would have no choice but to leave a part of my
heart here in Cambodia. That I would
never be the same. That my heart
would be broken for this nation. I
kind of laughed about it because I just knew THAT wasn’t going to happen. I was counting down the days to leave
for Thailand. Don’t worry about
me, God- I’ve got this.
And then He wrecked me. Again. I will
never be the same. These kiddos
have pierced my heart. This was a
great first month of the Race because I think that God used it to set up a
solid foundation for me. He has
shifted my mindset- this is not a human trafficking trip where we include
Jesus, this is a MISSIONS TRIP where we primarily minister to
possible/current/former victims of human trafficking. This is all about Jesus- and the love that HE HAS for
everyone that we meet. We just
happen to be fortunate enough to have the privilege of joining Jesus on HIS
MISSIOSN TRIP. We are joining HIM
in HIS ministry of reconciliation.
This week blew my mind with the love of Christ. I have a lot more stories to tell you-
so more to come.
