The late afternoon flight out of Kathmandu provided a flawless and almost photo-shopped panorama of the Annapurna Circuit, and pinnacle of Mount Everest. We were awestruck at the beauty of the grandest mountains on earth, and we all took pictures and shared them to Instagram as soon as we hit the Wi-Fi hot spots of Malaysia International Airport. With everyone peering out the left side of the plane it’s a wonder we didn’t tip over.
As the flight began to make headway, our pilot informed us that we were flying at thirty thousand feet with half a tank do to the cost of fuel and the fuel shortage in Nepal. I was half way through Spectre on the little screen in the back of chair in front of me when we started our landing approach in Bangladesh for refuel. We began our decent, and then we very abruptly escalated in altitude.
When we quickly ascended again, our pilot informed us that another plane was taking off the same time we were about to land. To avoid a mid-air collision he decided to shift course a nudge by pulling back on the controls like a cowboy pulling on the rains of a horse who had gone insane. He also said that we were almost out of gas. Sounds like a crazy situation right? Maybe it was miscommunication or someone was asleep in the control tower. I just laughed and shook my head as I watched the other plane leave the ground.
Anytime someone spoke over the intercom James Bond would pause. I had wanted to watch this movie for six months, and now potential imminent death was interrupting it. I needed to sort out my priorities, but I also trusted that I was safe in God’s hands. I did, however, humbly acknowledge the fact that this was a Malaysian airlines flight, so this is just a normal Tuesday for them. I finally finished the awesome movie after we refueled in Bangladesh and started our flight back towards Kuala Lumpur.
We made it to the Malaysian airport and none of the ATMs accepted my debit card. I was genuinely dehydrated, hungry and tired, and just needed to sleep but I couldnt. My Friend Andrea bought me food and water and it made my night better, but I still couldn’t sleep. I was a restless dude. Now I can fall asleep whenever I get a chance.
We flew to Cambodia a few hours after dawn and landed in Phnom Pen. I hadn’t slept and I felt like death, but then the warmth of the Southeast Asian Cambodian sun kissed my skin. Now I felt like death warmed over, but I was a lot happier. I was also able to get money out of the ATM (Cambodia uses USD as currency by the way), which also made me happier. I wasn’t happier with my credit union, but at least I could buy some water.
My team and I met Jack and Everson, our hosts for the month. We would be serving Jack at his church on the weekends, working with the youth, preaching, and teaching English and music. Then during the week we would be with Everson at a school about two hours outside of the city doing manual labor and English classes with the little kids. We had dinner with Jack at a restaurant a stone’s throw away from his house. It was delicious.
That night all my lack of sleep and the new food of Southeast Asia caught up with me. I got crazy sick and spent the next day close to a bathroom, laying in air conditioning, which was a godsend, watching Walter Mitty on my iPad. The day after that we went into the city for shopping and some cultural education, going to markets and museums. I had to find a bathroom every chance I got while we were out that day, but I eventually recovered well.
Our taxis brought us to S21, a former torture camp of the Khmer Rouge, turned genocide museum and memorial. This was one of the darkest and most spiritually heavy places I had been on the race. My Asics turned into concrete boots inside the rusty barbwire-topped confines of that place. We met a survivor of that very torture camp who had written a book about his time there, and we got to talk and pray with him.
On the weekends we went into Phnom Pen to the riverside for food and super cheap Asian market shopping. This was a very cool and absolutely touristy area with bars and coffee shops and one USD movie stands. Everyone’s favorite place to go on the riverside was Daughters of Cambodia. It’s a restaurant, coffee shop and boutique staffed entirely by former victims of sex slavery.
This place showed young women and men who used to sell their bodies for money that they haven’t lost their value. That they aren’t used up and that they have purpose. This is a place that stops you in your tracks because you know God is doing something powerful in so many lives through one place.
This place is literally like redemption has a voice, and it is singing right on the waterfront where everyone can see
belting out loudy
that you can make it out alive!!
Each weekend I ventured into the seedy and fancy areas of the city on my own and shot video and took pictures that I knew I would eventually be able to edit when I got a computer again. I actually explored most of the city that tourist taxis would take me to, taking obscene amounts of time to record time-lapses and hyper-lapses while avoiding wild hounds and the glares of impatient taxi drivers. I road on motorcycles, and spent a ton of money on Cambodian snacks and Thailand Red Bull because I was just having too much fun.
On Saturday evenings we played soccer with the youth at an AstroTurf field a couple of gritty blocks down from Jacks Church.Then on Sundays we would help in the service, spend time in fellowship with the community, teach English classes to the twenty somethings, teach music classes to the twenty somethings and have a great time.
I made great friends with a young guy named David who loved music and making videos. Jack’s Family is beautiful. They all live together in Jack’s father in laws house on the weekends and with Jack’s parents during the week when his wife “Somady” worked at the school where we would be serving.
In the wee small hours of every Monday morning that, we would all start to shuffle and get our packs and bags of groceries together into the back of Everson and Jack’s vehicles and make our way to One Hope International School. We would arrive in the village early enough to get our stuff into rooms just before we would start ministry for the week.
We cleared land of weeds and rocks for a larger parking area, and I cut the grass on their soccer field. Our team taught English classes to kids so little they were still learning Khmer as well. We helped the staff of the school teach the kids proper hygiene by showing them how to brush their teeth and washing their face and hands.
The only access some of these amazing little ones had to running water was at the school, so they would come back from the bathroom to class soaked from head to toe because they had showered with their uniforms on. The water at the school wasn’t water you could drink. So bottled water is your next option, but that sometimes costs more than Coke. So these kids would get coke or sprite at home instead of water, causing tons of different health issues. We spent a day doing hair and nails on the kids, and wiping their faces and arms down with baby wipes.
Derek and I taught guitar classes in the afternoon, and we named our students, Sir Edward, Frank, and Bob because their actual names were super hard to say. I love those boys; I pray God is blessing them. They were such a great class, and they actually learned some basic progressions that sounded great when they played. I felt warm and bubbly inside when I listened to them jam.
The sunsets were perfect every day, making the shadows of the two story coconut palm trees grow even longer, and the nights were even more incredible. There was nearly zero light pollution, and you could see our solar system’s gas giant Jupiter along with a fellowship of stars every night. I have one of those apps on my iPad where I can point it to the sky and it shows me what constellations are what and tells me about them. I learned a lot about the wonders of the heavens as I sat out there on the steps of the flag pole of the school. We spent three weeks at the school and three weekends in the city.
Our time came to an end in Phnom Pen and waved we goodbye to all the youth of the church, reunited with the chunk of our squad, and made our way to Siem Reap on the other side of the country. This was so we could meet up with the rest of our squad who was already there, go to Angkor Wat, and meet up with X-Squad, another World Race Squad who had launched with us, for a massive worship night.
We arrived in Siem Reap and walked down an incredibly long dirt road from the main road to the Hostel, got all of our stuff into our rooms, and chilled out for a while after such a long travel day. Scott, who ran the hostel, was a former world racer who had heart for business in missions. He planned for this awesome place to be a premiere place for people to stay in Siem Reap. The rooftop Worship Night was Incredible, and it was great to see all of my friends from X-Squad again. Sitting on the rooftop sharing experiences with all these beautiful people filled my heart with joy and gave me new energy.
Next morning we left the hostel around five AM in a tuk tuk motorcade to go to the Ancient and beautiful Angkor Wat, the largest religious structure on the planet. Our Tuk Tuk drivers raced by each other in the early morning mist, laughing and joking with us and amongst themselves as they swerved through the traffic. Most of our squad was there to watch the sun slowly rise over the top of the main temple.
We explored all morning and by early afternoon we did all the exploring we could do. Not that we saw everything, but it was so hot in the dense Cambodian jungle that we had to head out. Angkor Wat was my wallpaper on my old computer all throughout high school, and I got to walk through it.
We made our way back to the hostel. I got to talk to my friend Michaela from X-Squad for a good bit of the afternoon, and I helped Scott with a few things around the place. We had great Mexican food for dinner and spent the evening shopping in the markets, and I had a few conversations about Jesus along the way.
The next morning Z-Squad boarded a bus to Bangkok.
