I have been in Siem Reap, Cambodia for almost three weeks now. It’s crazy to think that it has been that long, and I feel like I have grown so much already. I’ve eaten the crazy foods like tarantulas and scorpions, seen the sights like Angkor Wat, played with kids, and had ice cream almost every day. Tuk tuks have become my favorite method of transportation, and I’ve named the lizards that live with us.
Our ministry consists of working at Overflow Guesthouse, a base of Adventures in Missions, ask The Lord time, and night ministry. My team has been deep cleaning and renovating the kitchen at Overflow. We have made some fruitful relationships during ATL, where we pray about what The Lord wants us to do for the next few hours and then do it. Night ministry, or bar ministry, is when we go into bars and try to reach out to the women there. It has been hard. Other people on my team have had success in starting conversations with people, but I didn’t feel like I had. It is hard to walk into a bar in another country as an eighteen year old already, and each night I left feeling exhausted and incompetent. So many people were coming back from their ministry with amazing stories, and I even though I was doing the same things, I wasn’t having the same result.
Our squad mentor, Kate, hit us with some truth last night by sharing a story of another squad on the field right now that is experiencing great success. Hundreds are coming to The Lord, people are being healed, and many have been set free. They realized that they were reaping what had been sown by faithful people before them. I then realized that I had the wrong mindset the whole time.
We are sowing what we may not get the chance to reap. The harvest hasn’t come for us yet. We haven’t experienced hundreds coming the know Jesus’ name, but we could very well be planting seeds that lead to that. What a privilege that God uses us to plant seeds in the hearts of his people. He doesn’t need our help. He doesn’t need efforts, but He allows us to work alongside Him furthering His Kingdom. I was convinced that I was a failure because the seeds I was working so hard to plant were not producing an immediate crop. I believe the harvest will come because the Lord says the Kingdom is at hand. I was too focused on having a great story for a blog, that I almost missed how God was already using my team and me.
My team is in Siem Reap for one more week before we go to Poipet for a week. After that we will travel to Bangkok for five days, and then my team will be in Tak Fa for the next two months! Thank you so much for your prayers and support. It has been an incredible journey already, and I can’t wait for the adventure to come!
Kate
