Expectations. Something we were told from the very beginning of training camp to lay down because we would have no right to them in this next year of our lives. And yet, how quickly my expectations began to formulate after only one month on the field! About 3 weeks ago, my team and I were informed that our placement in Cambodia would be working with a program called Teen Challenge in the capitol city of Phnom Penh. Teen Challenge is a program that started in the United States and is a one year program that teens with drug addictions can check themselves into to receive help and rehabilitation. So naturally, Team X-Stream was looking forward to our second month in a major city, expecting dorm-style living and the fast-paced, 21st century life that Manila had so generously provided us since the World Race began. Today we arrived in Cambodia, and after about 2 hours of the bumpiest off-road van-riding experience any of us had ever encountered, we slowly began to realize that maybe Phnom Pehn wasn’t our destination after all. Teen Challenge, while based in Phnom Pehn, hosts its program at the base of a mountain in one of the most rural parts of Cambodia! Expectations. Demolished. My team and I are staying this month in a wooden room on stilts, equipped with wicker mats on the floor for beds, mosquito nets, and an hour of generator-run electricity every night. There is no running water, so our showers will consist of rinsing off with collected rain water at the end of the day. But praise the Lord for a porcelain squatty potty! We will be eating our meals (or should I say, our rice) every day with the amazingly hospitible family that owns the room where we are staying. For $3 a day we will have all our meals provided, which is nothing considering that the family is letting us use their home for free. Internet this month will be obsolete, as the nearest internet cafe is over an hour away, so blogs this month may be sporadic, but if you subscribe under updates you’ll receive an email notification for when I post again! Pray for my team this month as we get into the real aspects of community with each other and learn how to interact with this new culture. Pray that God would break us in the best way possible as we are removed from all contact with the outside world and are forced to fix our eyes on the incredible depths of need here. Pray for boldness in our faith, a willingness to stick to things when times get rough, and for an underlying sense of unity as a team. We will be teaching English classes at a church twice a week, as well as doing a number of different music, art, English, health, Bible, and sports classes with Teen Challenge. I know God has great things in store for us this month, check back soon for more updates!
Our “treehouse” home for the month
Where we brush our teeth in the morning, by the pigpen of course 🙂
The road in front of our home…pray for our feet as we travel down it every day!
