The Story of a Lifetime

    

    I left the YWAM base thinking it was going to be any ordinary day but that was not the case by any means. This past week team J.O.Y. and team Bold have been making our way out to different provinces to villages around Cambodia. It has been great to hear stories of miracles, to get to pray over people, and to even lead children’s programs on the spot. I have felt honored to get to participate in gathering testimonies. They are an intimate part of a person’s life. I love getting to hear the way the Lord is moving. It is powerful and I have felt encouraged by this whole experience.

    But this day was unlike any other day. Dan Strosky, one of my squad mates from team Pi, and I left the house at 6:45 to be at the church by 7. Almost all our team was out gathering testimonies so Dan volunteered to go and help us out. When we got in the green SUV our translator Kim, who is a college student from New Life, was unsure where we were going. She asked if it was ok if we stopped to get breakfast. We said that it was ok. When we were eating breakfast Kim dropped a bomb on us. She said she was not able to go anymore because she had band practice for Sunday morning that started at 5:30 and we wouldn’t be back before then. She told us it was going to be around 6 or 7 before we would arrive home. This was 40 minutes into our trip. So she got on a tuk tuk and left us. I asked her who was going to translate for us and she said one of the pastors spoke English pretty well. She assured us we would be fine. So it was down to me, Dan, and five pastors.

     We went out to a village that took five hours to get to and we were in the middle of nowhere. Seriously the road out there was crazy. Our car barely made it. The roads were made of dirt and there were potholes everywhere. Also on each side of the road there were fields with standing water where rice plants were harvested. It was really cool to see people ride the water buffalo though. Any slight slip of the car wheel and we might end up in one of the fields. It rained so it made it even muddier this particular day. We got stuck in the mud for a second on the way to the village but got out. Two of the guys tried to help us out and got mud sprayed all over them. It was so funny. Then we the proceeded to drop the pastor who knows the most English off at the first village and we kept going. How the heck were we supposed to communicate now? One of the other men spoke a little English so he in very broken English translated for us.

    When we got to our final destination we parked our car in the middle of no man’s land and proceed to walk down a skinny dirt path. It was too small for our car to fit down so on foot we went. It was around a mile walk to the village. At times we had to take off our shoes to get through the water, if we didn’t we would of slipped on the mud. The closer we got the more children surrounded us.  Also the sound of the music intensified. Where we about to be sacrificed? At that moment in time those thoughts crossed my mind. Once we got in the village we were greeted by many women. They touched my face and had the biggest smiles on their faces. I don’t think they have ever seen a white person before.  They were really intrigued by us and some of the children were scared. We did make some babies cry. 

 Our time in the village had expired and it was time for us to make our way back to the car. We walked back down the beaten path through even more water than the first time.  What may have been the whole village walked us back to our car. We got back in our car to go pick up the other pastors we dropped off.  At this point in our journey Dan began feeling really sick. He had a really high fever and we were in the middle of nowhere. I felt so bad but there’s nothing we could do. This is the point where the story line takes a dramatic turn. Yes this is when we got stuck in the mud. When I say we were stuck I mean we were sitting in a puddle of water leaking oil and it was nearly impossible to get out. They tried every trick in the book to get us out of there but it didn’t work. We were stuck for over four hours.

     Dan was sick, the mosquitoes were really bad, and we were afraid of getting malaria because we weren’t taking malaria medication. We also hadn’t eaten since 9am. So it was about 7pm at this time and the whole village was out trying to help us.  They were sort of scared of us though. The kids would all crowd around us and Dan would talk to them in English. It was hilarious because they had no clue what he was saying but they all laughed at him. They also threw leeches at us and Dan got one stuck on his foot just for a few seconds. He got it off though.  But anyways I kept telling the pastors we needed to get back that night because Dan was sick. So they decided to call a huge tractor truck to help tow us out. But that didn’t work. They tried that for about an hour. But they didn’t have a good cable and the truck kept sliding. Dan kept making suggestions but they wouldn’t listen to him.

    So they told us one more try and if it didn’t work we would try to get home. The bad news was it didn’t work but the good news was we would start heading home. So Dan and I along with two of the pastors got on the back of mottos. The rest of the pastors were going to stay in the village that night and try to get the car out the next morning when it was light out. But two random men from the village drove us. It took us over thirty minutes driving through the horrible roads. There were also three people on each motto (me Dan and the driver on one). My butt was halfway hanging off. So we got to the end of the road and they dropped us off on a dark road in the middle of nowhere. The only people out were creepy men on mottos and people who were closing there fruit shops. There was a huge pregnant pig right behind us and it freaked me out. A few men approached us and tried to help us find a ride. We had to find a van to get us to the ferry and we had to make it by ten. The ferry closed then.

     So we finally found a taxi. It was the first we had saw for a half an hour. They wanted to rip us off on the price but I didn’t care at this point I just wanted to get back. The broke down taxi flew down the road faster then I have ever seen any taxi go. We were dogging animals and mottos left and right. The sliding window in front of me didn’t close so I sat freezing. It took about an hour and a half and then got to the ferry. It was leaving the dock so we had to run and jump onto it. It’s something you see in a movie, if we would of missed we would of fell in the river.

    We crossed the river and had to walk down the road and wait for a ride back to the church. We went by this creepy carnival and stopped at a restaurant on the side of a dark road. We waited there for a half an hour for a ride. There some brothers of the church picked us up. It only took an hour from there so that part wasn’t bad. We got in the door at 10:30pm that’s a 16 hour day. It was the one the wildest days of my life, but we are doing ok and now me and Dan have a great story to tell.