The first week of this month we worked with a YWAM base. It was a busy schedule including cleaning projects, working with some local schools, slum kid ministry (possibly the best afternoon this month), praying around ground zero of the new base YWAM is working on starting later this year.
Since then we’ve been stationed at an orphanage in a village about an hour from Battambang, Cambodia.
It has been a glorious 2 weeks of slowing down in pace, appreciating the simplicities of life and digging in deep with God, my team mates and my heart. I came face to face this month with a lot of lies I didn’t want to admit I believe, guilt I didn’t want to admit I feel, and questions I was too scared to ask.
It was hard. It was different. But it was simpler than I had thought it would be when I finally opened my mouth and spoke.
I’d be lying if I said I’m done working through all that. I’m not. But I’m finally in a place where I can appreciate the freedom of not being guilty over feeling guilty or afraid or whatever. There’s a reason I’m feeling all these things and I’m going to sit in it and work through the grime until it’s done. No jumping around from thing to thing, causing me to have to come back to what I thought I was done with. This ends now. (I’ve become a lot more determined about these things lately haha)
But on to what I was originally planning to write about~
There are a lot of things different about living out in a village, things I personally wouldn’t experience in day to day life back home. These things have now come to feel normal to me. I thought you’d get a kick out of some of them like…
Not having plumbing…. or a sink
Showering in a tin hut with chickens and a duck (bucket style of course)
Eating freshly picked tropical fruit (there are a bunch of dragon fruit tree-type plants past the church)
Chilling in a straw hut (aka the kitchen) learning how to carve pineapples spiral style and talking about how odd it is to be 85 degrees in January
Typing a blog only to be distracted by chickens pecking at leftover noodles approximately 1 foot away from me (I was sitting over by the kitchen).
Seeing a Toyota Camry drive by with 6 adults pilled in the front seats (who knows how many were in the back?)
Walking 20 minutes to the “market” which is comprised of a dozen or so booths, mostly of produce
Drinking sugar cane juice (which tastes like slightly sweetened meier lemons)
Paying $.13 for an ice cream cone (made of coconut milk~ yum)
Learning to communicate through smiles because only 2 locals can speak English
Going to sleep at 9pm because there’s nothing better to do and you’re actually tired
Sleeping in a room with 6 girls in 3 tents (makeshift mosquito netting)
Waking up at 2 in the morning because a cat jumped in the window and landed on my head
Finding 2 cats snuggled into one of our packs when getting up in the morning (where did the 2nd one come from?)
Having blaring music come on at 4 in the morning because someone died that week
Hearing village announcements over an extremely loud PA system at random points of the day
Taking a walk along the “highway” and happening upon a pet (?) monkey chained to the plank of a market booth
Using paper towels (which we haven’t been able to find until now) in place of tp because that’s all we could find
And the list goes on, but you get the point. As always this month was filled with hilarious misunderstandings, unusual epiphanies, and mysterious situations. Everyday is amazingly ordinary. It kind of feels like one really long day with naps to break things up. It’s crazy to think about how NORMAL everything feels. I guess normal is relative.
PS: I have found that our opinion of what we need in the states is ridiculously off. We don’t need a thing. God, clean water, sustenance and shelter of some sort, that’s really it. And love- you gotta have that. 😉
