So here I am in Cambodia, and for a couple weeks now I’ve been struggling with what to write about. There’s so much on my heart that I really don’t even know how to put it into words. The past places we have been have all touched me, but none in the way that this place has. I guess it’s not fair to say that I feel more connected to the people and the villages here then the months before because each place I go to it seems I feel more intensely about the last. But I can honestly say there is just something about these people and this nation that hits my heart in a very different way then I’ve ever experienced.
I can’t lie – our first couple days in Cambodia I was not too thrilled. The whole process of getting into the country was long and tiring, and it seemed as if we went back 20 years when we crossed the boarder from Thailand. Strange sights, strange language, and very strange smells… it was by far the most “foreign” feeling place we’ve been to yet. Cambodia is also referred to as “Indo-China” because of it’s strong influences from China and India, and I could clearly see the aspects of both cultures right from the beginning. Not that I’ve ever been to either place, haha. But from what I have heard and seen and read about, I gather it’s spot on :). The country is on the up and up right now, coming out of a 20 year genocide called the Khmer Rouge. Thousands upon thousands of people were brutally murdered, women and children included, simply for being educated. The leader of the regime would go to the villages and ask for all of the educated people, and trick them into thinking he had jobs for them if they left with him. Instead they were taken to concentration camps and killing fields and murdered because he wanted to wipe out anybody that could potentially be strong enough or smart enough to rise against him. This all completely ended in 1997, and some of the people we are working with have shared with us the things they have experienced and seen in their lifetime.
Although the country is growing tremendously, it is still facing huge problems with poverty and hunger… and alcoholism is a huge problem here. It’s not like in the states where college age kids go out and drink too much… it’s fathers of 4 and 5 children literally selling the roof over their heads for alcohol. It’s 10 year old girls and boys raising their younger brothers and sisters because their parents have either drank themselves to death or are on their way to it. It’s enslaving the elderly and the crippled and the tiny children out to beg for money – which they then take and use for themselves. I was sorely mistaken in thinking that human trafficking only effected young women… there’s many different forms of it, and although the sex industry is a huge part of it, it’s not the only one.
It’s not all hopeless, though. The ministry we are working with is absolutely amazing and I am so grateful that we have fallen into their hands. They take “at risk” girls and provide them with a skill that gives them an out to the lifestyle they had been living before. They have youth group and church for the villiages out in the countryside which I’ve been working at, teaching English and even teaching piano to some of the staff (whom I have slowly but surely become very close with). We also drive from home to home to teach english to the orphans that don’t really have a way of getting to the youth center/church they had built. They “bring the church” to the people that can’t get there. There is a woman who is crippled from polio and can’t leave her house – it is built up on 15 foot stilts because of the flooding in the rainy season, but there are no steps for her to get down even if she could. When I asked about it they explained to me that’s where she stayed all day every day, and because of that they bring the church to her – because that is what God intended the church to be. Talk about a gut check. It really put a lot of things into perspective for me, especially my view of “the church” and how many are run in America. On a different note, we also were lucky enough to hand out the shoeboxes from Operation Christmas Child… to say that I was the person who got to hand that box to a naked little kid covered in dirt in a village in Cambodia is almost inexplainable! Especially to see that those boxes we pack up at church really do make it to the children across the world.
We are usually out literally from sun up to sun down, working 12 hour days. We are hungry and exhausted by the time we finish in the evenings, yet I have never felt so fulfilled at the end of a day. I love love love it here… I don’t know how I’m supposed to leave in 8 days! I know I have to, but it won’t be easy.
Miss you and love you all back at home!! Thank you for all your support and encouragement. I’m sorry I haven’t blogged in a while, I promise I will be more faithful with it in the weeks to come. 😉
Until next time…
