Our squad met up for our third debrief in Siem Reap, Cambodia at the beginning of this month. After not seeing my squad mates since January, it was a great reunion. And after surviving the “month seven slump” in Laos, we were in need of some rejuvenation. Our squad mentor and squad coaches from the States, and our alumni squad leaders flew to Cambodia to meet us, and provided us with wisdom and encouragement to keep running the Race with perseverance.
During debrief I felt refreshed and re-energized to keep giving my all to Jesus through serving the people He puts in my path. And I had a couple great opportunities to “make my own ministry” by serving people in the streets of Siem Reap.
On the first night we were there, while out enjoying the city, my teammate Jenna noticed the poor people who live on the streets digging through the trash that the restaurants put out at the end of the night. As she talked to Jesus about it, He asked her, “Why don’t you do something about it?” So she asked our squad to donate a few dollars so we could buy fried rice to hand out to the street people the next night. She ended up collecting $100 and we used it to buy 110 boxes of fried rice to hand out. Most of the squad showed up to pass the rice out that night. We split up into groups of three and went out to love on people and pass out rice. My favorite encounter from that night was with a mentally disabled man who just sat on a street corner. We gave him a box of rice and he opened it, checked it out, and then smiled at us. We tried to communicate with him, but he wasn’t speaking English or Khmer (the language of Cambodia, pronounced Kuh-mai), he was just mumbling. When I asked Holy Spirit what we could do to show this man love, I heard Him say, “Just sit with him.” So Rhema, Jake and I just sat down on the street with him. It was a little awkward at first. He looked confused, because he’s not used to having anyone to sit with, especially not three white foreigners. But we just embraced the awkwardness and sat with him, smiling. We were able to get a few points across through gestures and lots of laughs, and Jake ended up giving him his shoes. It was neat to see the change in the man’s countenance during the 20 minutes that we sat with him. When we first approached him, he looked sad and lonely and skeptical. But after about five minutes of sitting with him, he was smiling and laughing. And when we left, it was clear that we were his friends. A few days later, we met up with a friend of ours who has been living in Cambodia for a year, and she gave us some pointers about the Khmer (Cambodian) culture. One of the things she said is that Khmer people love relationships, and they especially love sitting together, not talking, but just enjoying each other’s presence. I hadn’t known that about Khmer people a few days earlier when I heard God say, “Just sit with him,” but it was affirming that God knew how this man would receive love best.
My second night of street ministry in Siem Reap occurred on the last night we were there. Bree had told me a day or two earlier that she had a vision of me and her, with a cardboard sign that said “Free Prayer” and me with my guitar. So on our last night in Siem Reap, I asked her, “Are we going to do this?” She agreed, and after our squad meeting, we set out on our mission. We found a good piece of cardboard on the street, and met a friend along the way who had a permanent marker. Then we walked around until we found a good spot to set up, and we sat down with our sign and I started playing. We just sang and worshiped for a while, people were giving us strange looks as they walked by, but no one was approaching us to ask for prayer. Bree asked a few people if they wanted free prayer, and they all said no. But shortly after, three guys stopped and asked us if we were with YWAM. We said, “No, we’re with the World Race” and they got super excited. They work at a YWAM base here in Cambodia and they had just finished hosting a World Race team in March. They prayed for us (in Khmer) and we prayed for them (in English). Then one of the guys said he felt like they should stay and worship with us a while. We ended up worshiping with them for about an hour and a half, and one of them got to have a long conversation about Jesus with a man who had been sitting nearby. It was so encouraging to meet these brothers of ours and instantly feel like family, because we have the same Father. They were encouraged to see us out on the streets, praying for people. It was a great night of mutual encouragement, as we worshiped God on the streets of Siem Reap, with our brothers from across the world.
