Adventures WorldRace SethBarnes Sponsorship Giving

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Do I have your attention yet? Oh good.

I realized today that many of you may not have any idea where I’m at or what I’m doing this month. You may not even know where I’m at, as my prayer card says that Malaysia would be month two. So here’s a little update:

My team and I are beginning our third week of ministry in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. We are working with a ministry called Kaleb. Our days here are PACKED. We leave our base at 8:40am each morning and do not return from ministry until 9:00pm.

In the mornings we play with these lovely children.

 

They are FANTASTIC. They live at the “family unit” which is like an orphanage, but functions as a family. There is a house mom and the children become brothers and sisters. Our job is to teach them English, sing songs, play with them, and love on them. There are only 10 kids living there now and 6 of us, so it has been an amazing opportunity to dig deep and really invest in these kids.

In the afternoons my teammate Matthew and I work on administrative tasks. The biggest one has been revamping Kaleb’s website. If you want to learn more about Kaleb’s ministry you can check it out at KalebCambodia.org. They are truly the hands and feet of Christ. God willing, the updates will be finished in the next couple weeks. Despite our lack of knowledge in the area of website development, I am confident God is blessing our efforts and will bring to our hearts and minds all He desires the website to become. During this time the rest of our team teaches the midwife students who also live at the family unit. This is a new, incredible ministry that Kaleb has started. They provide training, room, and board to young women who want to be midwives in the countryside of Cambodia where the mortality rate for women and their children is among the highest in Southeastern Asia.

In the evenings we leave the family unit and head over to the night shelter/men’s dormitory. The night shelter is a place where street boys can come, take a shower, eat a hot meal, and sleep. Nighttime is the time of day that these children are most vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse. It’s hard to look at their sweet faces, the beauty and life in their eyes, and realize that they spend their days begging for money or worse.
(This is the place where we got poop in our eye –by which I mean my entire team, except Chris, contracted pink eye. We are all recovering well at this point. Pray the children at the night shelter recover from it as well as we do.)
 
We spend our nights playing games with the street children (they are VICIOUS at Uno, though not as vicious as my teammate Ashley) and teaching English to the young men (ages 18-23) who are attending university or vocational training. If I ever felt inadequate teaching middle school science it was NOTHING compared to the inadequacy I feel when trying to teach beginning English. I’m learning much about patience and about the fact that I can do nothing without God.

Beyond teaching English and playing with the street children at the night shelter there is the cat. A cat who, I am convinced, is out to destroy me. Our first day there I was wearing a long yellow skirt and the next thing I know the cat has latched on to the inside of my skirt and is clawing its way up. Yesterday it climbed up the outside of a different skirt, attached itself to my pearl necklace, and began crawling up my neck. It also likes to drink out of our water glasses every.single.night. I will not be getting a cat anytime soon.!

I am loving my time in Cambodia. Since the plane landed here in Cambodia I have felt more alive than I ever did in the Philippines. It’s hard to believe we’re over halfway done with our time in Cambodia. I am learning so much about this country, its people, and its history. That being said, there is so much to process between the realities of the street children’s lives, the recent genocide, and the horrific sex trafficking that takes place here. My hope is to process through and share some of what has been on my heart over the next couple of weeks herein Cambodia.

Thank you all for faithfully following my blog, for your prayers, for your encouragement, and for your love. The past week has been a bit hard on my heart as my big bro just got married and I was unable to attend. Word is it was a beautiful celebration. So shout out to Chris and Liz Tobe! I am so happy for you two and am excited to celebrate your life together.

Love and blessings to you all.(Here’s a picture of Big Pig and my big pink eye). 🙂