Month 1 is done…iv officially lived in Cambodia!
The past month has had its highs and lows. Living in community is truly a blessing, but takes a lot of patients and humility. This past month i lived in Siem Reap for 3 weeks. We would wake up and have breakfast at 8am then from 8:15-9am was personal time. During this time we would do our devos, and get prepared for the day. At 9 we started ministry. We would spend a couple hours fixing up the hostel. My team had the opportunity to clean and paint the kitchen and truly bless the kitchen staff in that way. we also painted around the rest of the building, planted plants, and cleaned. Then around 12 we would have lunch. After lunch we had free time. In that time we could use the pool (yes my team had it lucky for the first few weeks, we stayed at a place that had a pool), Do ATL (ask the lord ministry) or just hang out with friends and build community. Then at night around 10pm we would go out for woman’s ministry. This looks like going into bars and ministering to bar girls, sitting with the woman and their baby’s on the bridge, or just simply going out at night and praying over the streets and asking the lord where he wants you to go that night. we would head home around 12:30am. Making relationships and planting the seeds is what most of our ministry consisted of. Although it was discouraging, and sometimes felt like we wernt doing anything at all, i realized that in order to be apart of the harvest, you need to plant the seeds. And sometimes your called to plant seeds and that is just as important and if not more important that reaping a harvest, because without the people who spend day in and out planting and praying over their city, there would be nothing to harvest.
Then for the last week of the month, We bused 2 hours to Poi Pet. This is not a tourist area because it is so dusty and there is a lot of garbage so tourists dont like it much. We stayed at a Ywam base which is out of a school called Bridges of Hope. Our hosts were awesome. We learned that sometimes things wont be fully planned out and if you show up at your hosts place and nothing is organized or layed out, its . Just go with the flow. We got to go into villages and evangelize/lead bible study (differently stretching my comfort zone), teaching English to various different ages, and painting mirals. The lord allowed us to be apart of the harvest, see miracles, Lead people to the kingdom and just be the vessel.
Now im in Bangkok Thailand for debrief till Thursday. Debrief is a time where our entire squad comes together and its a time of rest. we dont have ministry for this week, we have time to explore the city, sleep, write blogs, and reflect on the past month and just get our self’s in a place to be ready to enter back into ministry at the end of the week. On Friday our squad will divide back into our teams and head out into Thailand to our respected ministry places. My team is heading to Tak Fa and we dont know our ministry yet, we will find out when we get there.
Iv been learning about loving people well, being venerable, and listing before responding. That feedback isn’t personal but when it comes from a place of love it really is helpful. Im on a journey of finding who i am, and who my father has created me to be. I cant lie and say its been flowers and candy the entire time. But i can say that slowly im allowing our father to chip away at the parts of me that arnt of him, and mold me into the woman of God that he talks about in scripture. Its a life long journey, and im just starting, but I know as long as i look to him with everything, he will guide me.
