I’ll admit to you that I was nervous about going to Cambodia. Alumni racers told me time and time again that it was a difficult month for them. A difficult place. And after I watched my friend get hit by a truck on our first day there, I was pretty much ready to leave. I prayed and asked God what I should do. I thought about going home. I counted the days until we left Asia behind for good. I cried a lot. I spent entire days in my tent. I was angry. I felt like I was living in a black hole. The enemy was not holding back on me. I tried everything. Still, God told me to trust Him. Even though I was living in a glass case of emotion, I knew that He had a plan for me in Cambodia. For some strange reason, He wanted me here.
After the week from hell, it was decided that my team should be moved to a different town about four hours away that held the hospital where my friend was staying. I was excited to be out of the jungle and back in civilization. I was REALLY excited to see Jillian and have our team back together. There was another team doing ministry just down the road from us there. After spending so many days alone, I was just thrilled to not have to weather that storm anymore. Since there were only three of us left, Dee Dee, Vanessa, and I packed up seven racers’ worth of stuff (that’s seven BIG packs AND seven day packs) and, by the grace of God, managed to schlep it all cross-country on a bus. That was a long day.
We were going to be working with an organization called Lighthouse Battambang, which affords young people from the rural areas of Cambodia the opportunity to finish secondary school. Kids that live in the provinces typically don’t go to school beyond 8th grade, so Lighthouse helps them finish their schooling, get extra tutoring, and even get part-time jobs. We were their first world race team, and they took us in with about six hours’ notice. Our mission? We had to move a shed. And by “shed,” I mean “large garage.” We had to move it back about 20 feet. To do that, we first had to knock down a few brick walls, move a compost heap, attach long wooden poles to the sides and middle of the building, and PICK THAT THING UP AND WALK IT BACK 20 FEET. It sounded impossible to me, but with the help of about 20 Cambodian teenagers, four grown men, and five american girls, we managed to pull it off! Afterward, we built a fence and dug a sewage trench. No big deal 🙂 Another part of our ministry was to spend time building relationships with the teenagers that lived in the house. There were about 17 of them, and most of them only knew a few words of English, but we took whatever opportunity we could to joke around or spend time with them. One of my favorite nights the whole month was when we had a “family night” and they taught us some traditional Khmer games and we taught them some from our own repertoire. That night, I learned that the Cambodian version of a piñata is a clay pot filled with candy, hanging from a string from the ceiling. After spinning around a hundred times with a blindfold on, you are then handed a stick and urged on with the intention of smashing the aforementioned pot with the aforementioned stick. It seems and probably is very dangerous, but it was a blast. I really loved the time we got to spend with the kids there.
On a personal/spiritual level, I felt very differently than I have in previous months. It’s a common joke that I’m the only extrovert on my team, but after the accident, all I really wanted was to be alone most of the time. After ministry each day, I’d grab my headphones and walk to the nearest coffee shop to sit in the air conditioning and watch YouTube videos. I know I wasn’t really being productive, pouring into my team, or growing significantly in my relationship with God. I just wanted to feel safe and alone. It was a short season, and it has definitely passed now, but that’s how my month was spent (besides sleeping on the floor of the hospital and moving whole buildings with a bunch of high school students).
At the end of the month, we celebrated our host’s daughter’s birthday with a massive dance party and a Barbie cake. As we laughed and danced and joked around with our new friends, I realized that God DID have a reason for me to stay and invest in Cambodia. It wasn’t the month I expected at all, but God definitely showed me how to rest and trust Him. As we prepared to leave for South America, I felt really grateful for a lot of things: Jillian was alive and out of the hospital, we had been taken in and welcomed by a new ministry, we made a bunch of new friends.
If in the future, someone asks me about Cambodia, I’ll tell them the same thing I’ve always been told: It was challenging. But in Christ, all things can be redeemed.
Thanks for reading. Pictures next time. Love ya’ll!
Erin
