Bus rides are interesting when you don’t speak the language and you have no idea what to expect. You may find yourself sitting in an empty bus, wondering if you’re supposed to get off; all the locals did, but you just got on 20 minutes ago and you thought it was going to be a 5 hour-long bus ride.
Just a week ago, we left Siem Reap to head to our ministry site here in Cambodia with Transform-Asia in Kampong Chhnang. Each time we got ourselves settled into our seats that morning, ready for a long bus ride, we found ourselves having to pack up and lug all our things over to yet another bus. An hour and a half and 3 buses later, we couldn’t help but laugh when the bus drove by our hotel where they picked us up earlier that morning. All the locals got off an hour before our ETA in Battambang, our final stop for the day. It was funny to see that it was all the barang (foreigners) who were left on the bus once again, wondering what was going on. Half of us tried to get back to sleep after all the commotion, while the other half tried to figure out if we were supposed to get off the bus as well.
It’s the 9th month of our Race already. It’s easy to get comfortable when you’ve been doing a thing for a while and sometimes getting comfortable means that you get complacent. It gets tempting sometimes to coast on by till this thing ends. During our last debrief, Hollis, one of our squad leaders, reminded us that real life is happening right now. It doesn’t start when the Race ends. Every day is just as important as the next. I love what Jim Elliot says about how we should “Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.”
We’ve got 3 more months on the Race. Though it’s now less than 3 months before we’re home again, that’s 3 more months of opportunities to share God’s love with 3 more groups of people in 3 countries,
3 more months to see miracles happen,
3 more months to learn new languages and experience new cultures,
3 more months of accelerated growth,
3 more months to share the Gospel with the nations,
3 more months of training ground for intense spiritual warfare,
3 more months of dying to oneself for the sake of community,
3 more months of laughs and hugs and tears,
3 more months of who knows what else!
And when those 3 months are over, we’ll journey on to new and different adventures where we’ll continue to live one day at a time with eyes wide open, expecting to encounter the unexpected.
