Have you ever sat beneath a night sky, stars so vivid and so numerous that your eyes crossed just looking at them, pupils straining to take in every last shining diamond as if you were collecting jewels for the soul? And has your heart ever fluttered in that moment, knowing that your spirit was taking in the notes of a symphony worked together in the most excellent harmonies by a Composer far more talented than the likes of Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, or Brahms? Welcome to Cambodia. Month 2 for me has been like the shooting stars I have observed nearly every night here in Takeo Province: blazing, blinding, and gone within the span of one blink of an eye. Which has left me here, sitting in a hotel room in Phnom Penh, waiting for the bus to arrive tomorrow to whisk my team and I away to our first debrief in Siem Reap before we board the plane to Malaysia, scratching my head and trying to process where I’ve been and where I am going. Another country. Another month. Another culture. Another set of people who may be looking at the stars and hearing the symphony and needing a person, just one person, to tell them of its origins and teach them the notes and point them towards its Composer. Yet I am sitting in this hotel room, reflecting on the fleeting shooting star that was Month 2, and if I’m being honest my heart is stinging with a twinge of discouragement. My team and I spent the month living on a rural farm, teaching classes at Teen Challenge Cambodia, a rehab center for teens addicted to drugs. And while our ministry was great, it was brief in that there are 6 of us and only 3-4 classes per day that needed instructors. My daily routine was to teach piano for an hour every afternoon to a young man named Manith, who was desperate to learn the instrument so he could get a job at a nearby church playing for their Sunday morning service. Besides a few scattered English, Bible, and Art classes I taught each week, that was it. Two students at Teen Challenge spoke English, as well as the niece and son of the family we were staying with. One month with a total of four people in our village with whom to converse. The rest of the time was left for me to observe the residents of our village working on their farms, going to school, offering sacrifices to idols (96% of Cambodians are Buddhist), and going about their daily lives. All the while all I had to offer them was a smile or a simple bow. humans worshipping idols who will never hear or respond, 10 year olds addicted to crystal meth and glue, drug addicts who simply can’t break free. I spent a month looking up at the stars, wondering how humanity has gotten so horribly out of tune and desperately wishing I was equipped to do something about it. How easy it was to come off this month of ministry feeling like I did so little in light of a problem that is so large. New boys will come in and out of Teen Challenge every week. Some will drop out and some will stay. Some will go back to drugs and some will not. And life in Takeo will continue tomorrow, the village possibly never being the wiser that 6 Christ-followers lived among them who desperately wanted to share the Gospel but had no way of doing it. But I am beginning to realize that “missions” may not always look like the picture we’ve all grown up with in our heads. Sure, there will be times when we’ll preach the Gospel Lottie Moon style, but sometimes missions may just be a smile, or a bow, or a music class once a day. Who am I to say that Christ can’t reveal himself to a people of a different language and culture through such things? For as it says in Romans 1:20, “
I pray that I may never forget the symphony that all of creation sings that points our human hearts towards the Cross. May I never forget that I am a single note, woven into an intricate melody of notes, and that my role on the page of this life is to simply play where I am placed.
