April 4th: Moving in with Ingrid.
Our spontaneous & touristy weekend at Angkor Wat eventually came to a close. We returned to Phnom Penh, and bright and early on Monday morning we set off to meet our new contact.
When we pulled up to the iron gate, we were greeted by a beautiful German woman named Ingrid who led to a table filled with fresh mango’s, sticky rice filled with bananas, and an assortment of soft drinks…with cups of ICE! We later realized her generosity and this unexpected blessing would be the first of many more to come.
Ingrid is the director of KALeb, a ministry whose mission is to “restore broken lives� focusing on kids living on the streets. KALeb’s has two homes, one is a night shelter for boys, the other a more permanent home where up to 8 children can live after they have stayed in school for 3 months. She invited us to stay in this home with her, saying we could have the upstairs apartment to ourselves…and for free! How amazing is that?!
The only down side is that we share the apartment with a zillion sugar ants, and they don’t understand personal space. They seem to think my mattress on the floor is their new bed, my cereal is their cereal, and my dirty clothes bag is their new hang-out pad. Not cool, little ants. Not cool.
In sincerity and all silliness aside, we are amazingly blessed. We live with the kids and every day wake to their happy faces smiling and calling us by name. We eat meals with them, teach them English, and play an unbelievable amount of Uno together.
At night we take a tuk-tuk to the Boy’s Night Shelter and spend from 5-9 o’clock with the boys living there, watching Korean music videos, dancing, playing Ninja, eating dinner, and falling in love….or at least that’s what’s happening to my heart. I have fallen so hard for the boys at the shelter. I’m dedicating an entire blog to them because I could type forever about them…but, I will save that for later.
Below, left to right: little “Mowgli”, my favorite boy (even though I shouldn’t have favorites!!) and eating the most SOUR fruit I’ve ever put in my mouth! They boys thought it was sooo funny watching us eat them…and apparently they weren’t all sour…they just passed the sour ones to us which we didn’t discover until after we ate like three!
For now, I’ll share about our afternoon in the slums.
April 6th: the day I died. 
As part of her ministry in Phnom Penh, Ingrid goes into the slums by the river and brings fresh bread and bottled water to the community. On the 6th, we joined her. We bought 40 loaves of bread and just as many waters and distributed them to the naked and unsupervised kids in the slums.
We also did a small “program�; through the help of a translator, we acted out the story of David and Goliath. Tracy narrated, Rebecca was the hero David, and guess what my part was in this drama…you guess it! I was the fearless villain, Goliath. It was so funny- Rebecca was on her knees and I acted like this horrid monster, and in the climax of the “sling shot-fatal blow� I slow motion get hit, and plummet to my death, sprawled on the dirty, slum ground. The kids LOVED it! They probably thought we were insane, but hey, I fully believe God spoke through our ridiculous acting and the translator’s words and Truth touched their little hearts.
On a related note, the slums broke my heart. Again. Every time we go to places like that and I see the conditions in which kids are growing up, I feel more and more called to do something about it. God is beginning to bring my passions and future into focus, and in an upcoming blog I’ll share the form upon which my dreams are taking shape.
So, keep your eyes peeled for my “crazy-boys� blog, what God may call me to after the Race, and what my FAVORITE day thus far in Cambodia was like!
