I’m loving Cambodia!!! The people that I’ve met here are so sweet and genuine. We took an overnight bus from Thailand to Cambodia, and we first came to the capital of Cambodia which is called Phnom Penh and stayed for 5 days. Most of the country appeared to be rural villages until we got to the capital. The country has such a peaceful feel to it now, but they have a devastating history. There was a huge genocide in the 70’s by a group called Khmer Rouge. They killed something like half the entire population of Cambodia, and today about 80% of the population is under the age of 30. On our 2nd day in Cambodia, we went to a place in Phnom Penh where they used to torture and kill people. It used to be a school before Khmer Rouge turned it into a genocide building called S21. It was very eerie and heart-wrenching. There were some graves of the victims in the yard, and you could still see blood stains on the floors of the buildings. They had pictures and information about the victims, the torture, and Khmer Rouge. They also had skulls and bones of the victims. It was very graphic and not sugar-coated. There was actually a survivor outside of the place too, and he was selling a book that he had written. I couldn’t believe that he would still want to be near that place.
Another day in Phnom Penh we went to help clean a house that was going to become a dorm the next week provided by a Christian ministry. The dorms were for young women who were from very poor, rural villages who were going to college, but needed a place to stay. They offer the dorms for free except a 7 dollar fee for electricity and all that. The couple that leads the ministry is from northern India. They were really encouraging! Another day we went to visit a small ministry that is working against child sex trafficking in Cambodia. The woman running that is Cambodian and was really encouraging too. Later, we got to go to this ministry called “Daughters of Cambodia” www.daughtersofcambodia.org which is also an organization that works against sex trafficking, and they have a café that employs women coming out of it and they have merchandise that they sell and a massage parlor. It was neat and encouraging to see these ministries. It reminded me of the ministry that we were in last month in Thailand.
The highlight of my time in the capital city was seeing my cousin Carmen’s husband Glen!!! Glen is from Cambodia, but moved to the U.S. when he was about 10. He married my cousin about 2 years ago. Before leaving for Cambodia, I messaged my cousin to ask her where he was from and where she had been (they came to Cambodia together a few years back), and she messaged me back saying that Glen was actually leaving for Cambodia the exact same time that I was for a wedding and that he’d be in Phnom Penh. I messaged him, and we got to meet up in the city mall with his Cambodian cousins. It was so nice and cool that I was able to see him! Glen and Carmen live in Seattle, so I’m not able to see them much. They told us about Cambodia and asked us about being missionaries and Christians. Glen also told us that he was the best man in the wedding and that the woman that his friend was marrying was a famous actress in Cambodia, and later we saw her on the cover of a magazine in the grocery store. I was also able to meet up with him and his friend and cousins the next day, and they took us out to a sushi restaurant. It was so good and fancy and generous of them. It was really neat that God allowed us to be there at the same time and hang out.
Random facts- I got my bangs cut and hair trimmed by a Cambodian woman who lived where we were staying in Phnom Penh. I liked it! One of the girls on my team got a skin condition, but she’s been taking medicine, and doing better now. There was a lot of people riding motor bikes in the capital. It’s interesting here because they use U.S. dollars just as much as they use Cambodian Riel (at least in Phnom Penh they do). It can get confusing at times. We were told that this started when the U.N gave a lot of money to this country. There’s a lot of litter and garbage in the country I noticed compared to Thailand. I had heard that it was illegal to litter in Thailand, but I’m guessing that it’s not in Cambodia. The weather here has been so nice because December is actually the coldest month of the year for Cambodia- it’s been about in the 70s and 80s. The clothing style is pretty modest here- we can’t show our shoulders and we have to have our shorts to our knees or preferably covering the knee. I’ve seen some wild crabs here, and I’ve never seen wild crabs before. There were people from all over the world in Chiang Mai in Thailand where I was last month, but Cambodia appears to mostly have Cambodians or Asians.
We left for a rural village after the 5 days in the capital city to a place called Kampong Speu. The village is really peaceful and beautiful. The ministry contact here is Cambodian, and met Jesus when he went to college, and then started his ministry in his village here. When you walk just out of it, there’s tons of rice fields with sandy roads and scattered palm trees, white cows, and workers with hats. We’re staying in our own 1 concrete floor house. We all pitched our tents inside the house to keep out the many mosquitoes, cockroaches, and lizards. We were told that there was no running water and that we’d have to walk outside to go to the bathroom in squatty potties, but when we got here, we discovered that there were toilets and a shower with running water in our house. We just have to dump water in our toilet to flush it and not put toilet paper in the toilet. There’s electricity, but no internet, and we hand wash and dry our clothes There’s sometimes roosters and chicks walking by our house, and there’s motorbikes and cows pulling carriages that go by. There’s also a lot of kids that play outside of our yard and swim in the little pond. A lot of the really little kids don’t wear pants or underwear when walking around. All of our meals are made for us by our contact’s wife. They’re actually yummy, varied, and healthy! I was a surprised since it is such a small village. We’ve eaten apples, bananas, rice (at almost every meal), fish, fries, green beans, pork, and other stuff that I don’t know what it’s called. With our breakfast, we can have either an iced coffee, a coconut, or a Coke (they have a little store). We’ve been getting some coconuts sometimes and drinking them out of straws. It looks pretty cool haha. We wash our own dishes using the well water, and it is just really funny because there is a crab and some minnows in the water, but that’s the water we use to wash the dishes. I just think that if I was in the U.S., I’d never use water that had a crab and a couple of minnows in it to wash the dishes, but here for some reason, I really don’t care haha. I’m here with just my team of 6 women, and I like and connect with them a lot. I was feeling a little unloved and unsupported this week even though I know that they do love and support me, but we worked through it and are stronger now. Each night we get together and talk about our day and work through things.
Our schedule here is pretty busy, but we do have some down time. Our assignments for this month are to teach English, lead Bible studies/devotions, and do some light chores. The light chores are in the morning and this week we picked up litter and garbage and burned it (they burn their garbage here), fed the pigs, and worked in the rice fields. I enjoyed all of it because I’ve never really done those things before. The pigs were so stinky and so hungry and like pig-piled each other for the food- seriously some pigs were like tackling the other pigs haha it was pretty sad. I liked seeing the piggies! The rice fields were really interesting and fun too- we picked up the bales of rice and put them in a pile, a lady was teaching us how to tie the bales together, and we did some chopping. December and January are the harvest times for rice in Cambodia. I was told that in America, it’s cheaper to just buy a tractor or a machine to harvest the crops, but here, since they pay them so little, it’s cheaper for them to have workers pick the crops. We did it for an hour, but I couldn’t imagine doing that all day, every day.
There’s five different times for English classes here which are free, and they’re held outside. Each person on my team has their own class and then we all are available for the conversational class which is just talking in English with whoever comes. We’ve also been rotating teaching a class for the advanced English speakers. The classes are supplementary to their own public education, so they come by choice, and they really want to learn English here because it will help them to get better jobs. One of the students told me that. I think that it’s so exciting for this village to hopefully have better job opportunities in the future because of the free English classes provided by volunteers. I’m teaching the 12-1pm class which are the very beginners. I only have about 3 or 4 in my class, but my teammate teaches the little kids and she has over 20 in her class. I have a 23-year-old man and a 29-year-old man and a 10-year-old girl in my class. The men are actually in the Cambodian army, and they come to class in their camouflage. It’s really fun for me to teach them- we’ve been going over what sound each letter makes in English, emotions, body parts, and some phrases. There’s Cambodian girls from the village who know English well who volunteer to help us with the classes to translate things into Cami (their language). The conversational time is fun too just to talk with the students, let them practice, and get to know them.
Then, we lead a Bible study/devotional time each night for the village. As a team, we’ve been going through an Advent devotional, so this week, we had the devotionals based off of those- basically preparing our hearts for Christmas. Speaking of Christmas, my team and I got red and white paper and made some chains out of paper and hung them up to decorate for Christmas. We made a Christmas tree out of green paper, and made a sign that said “Merry Christmas”, and we put it outside of our house. There was also some balloons that were left here, so I made a holly out of red balloons and green paper. We also decorated the classrooms a little, and it brightened them up a bit. It was nice to get a little Christmas cheer. I don’t think that this village normally decorates for Christmas. It has been a sad to not be home during this time of year, and a bit strange since each day is sunny and hot, but it’ll be a blessing to celebrate Christmas with this village, and also my team leader said that we’d be able to Skype our families on Christmas, so that’s good!
As I mentioned in the title, we’re now half-way done with the Race! It’s interesting to know! In a way it’s been going by so fast, but in another way it has been going by pretty slow. When I used to run races in track, I remember running the 400 (1 lap around the track), and when I got half way to the 200 mark, I would always try to give it all I had and end the race stronger than I began. That’s what I want to do with this race; give it all I have and end it stronger than I began.
I miss and love everyone, and hope you're doing well!
