When we got off the bus for a dinner stop on our way to Phnom Penh I couldn't help but we were no longer in Kansas anymore… or Thailand… or Malaysia.
Garbage littered the street, elementary aged boys were huffing glue, and babies ran around naked and dirty. Precious sweet little souls ravaged by their surroundings. It was hard to take in.
It was easy to give away my pineapple soda but hard to watch the recipient make intoxicated gestures, completely possessed by a chemical orchestration in his brain.
Now that we're in Phnom Penh I've seen a lot more naked babies and a lot more garbage. I'm not sure how anybody advances economically in this country when the living conditions are a reflection of the devastation of the Khmer Rouge regime, and life expectancy is 60, but grocery store prices are parallel with North American ones. It's boggling. You can get a pedicure and manicure at a neighbourhood beauty shop three houses down the street from our apartment for $1.50 but a photocopy is going to cost you $0.50.
These are some of the things that I don't understand. There are many more, but something tells me that if I'll just show up (even in my puzzled state) that God will do wonders.
The orphanage where we are doing ministry is in desperate need of some mattresses. The owner of a mattress factory lives NEXT DOOR to the orphanage. His mansion towers above it. And next to his mega-complex? The mattress factory. So we've been praying for open doors: literal or figurative. We'll take anything! So yesterday on the walk to the orphanage, I saw the door to the factory open for the first time, and coming through it was a truck loaded with freshly made mattresses.
It's possible.
Thank you, God! The impossible is possible. So Tiger Kingdom (my team nickname) is praying for mattresses and spiritual gifts and worship-filled hearts and healing and confidence of identity in Christ, and boldness, and all of these kinds of wonders to be shown to us.
We believe that we've been given the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, and along with them, the keys to the mattress factory.
Join us in prayer for our squad, our ministries, our hearts and attitudes, and that we would be prepared for what lies ahead of us in Africa.
Phnom Penh is still a city with a broken smile and frustrating economics, but perhaps there will be a few more children here that sleep well knowing there's a God who loves them beyond their wildest dreams.
