Day 3
The Crazy Grandma
Disclaimer, she isn’t actually ‘crazy’.
But we as a team have a Cambodian Grandma. She speaks no English, except for water, eat rice, and sleep. She can and will carry a full conversation with you, all the while, you have absolutely no idea what she is saying. Let alone the topic, so you kind of know or guess what she is trying to say. But nope, you are worse than a deer in the headlights with the grandma’s conversations. But hey, she wants to talk with us. She truly tries to bring you into her life.
But his grandma is a serious prayer warrior. When I mean serious, I mean waking up at 3am to pray. Praying specifically everyone on our team, and everyone in her family. She has 9 kids, not counting spouses and their children. And she prays SPECIFICALLY for each and every one.
I’m writing about her on Day 3, because as we meet at 6:30 to study the book of Daniel as a team, she was the one who started the day She was talking to us, thankful for Tony who translated. She has always said that she sees us (the team) as her daughters. I didn’t understand the full extent until she told us again this morning. She said, with tears in her eyes and chin quivering, as we works on the farm/field, she is praying for us. So not only is she waking up early to pray, she is praying while she works. Talk about praying without ceasing!
She told us about her hard childhood. She was a child, an adolescent, during the reign of Pol Pot, the person responsible for killing thousands of people in Cambodia. She grew up during a time with people were brutally killed for sometimes no apparent reason.
I went to the school, or S21, where thousands of people were ushered through, interrogated, tortured within inches of their lives, and then killed. Tortured enough to want, to get, to just let death come. But the Regime wanted ‘statements’ (mostly made up) and would get them any way possible. People feared for their lives. People changed their names to escape the torture of death that would eventually catch up to the power their name held. But people worked hard. People had to work like slaves to stay alive. Men, women and children were forced to work tirelessly or else they faced capture and death. That mean our Cambodian grandma (and grandpa) lived through this.
During this time, food rations were minuscule at best. Hoarding food was seen as a crime, as well as picking a mango from a tree to eat. Crimes meant death. Sometimes the people had to work 19 hour days. Let me remind you that the day only has 24 hours, meaning that it left only a couple hours of sleep and rest before the next day starts. Working hard out in the field, the sun, the heat, was a life or death situation.
And this grandma lived through it, during her adolescent days. She grew up during this. So it is instilled into her to work hard. Harder, and constantly active in work. So she wakes up at 3, prays and starts work. I have never seen her stop. Even when she pulls one of us aside to study the bible together, she is constantly moving. Her spirit is so selfless, giving up herself for others. So much so, that her diabetes is through the roof, but she feels like she can’t slow down to take care of herself.
I don’t honestly know how I feel about her. She pushes my limits, often. She talks super loud, all the time. She has horrible timing when she wants to show you something. (like when I was packing up my bag to leave, and here she has pulled out her nail polish to give me—me the person who loves painting my nails—a lesson on how to ‘properly’ paint my nails.) She never stops, ever. She decides to do things on the extreme scale, like moving dirt and sand outside in a downpour. And then she offers me peanuts one night. And she wants me to teach her English words for milk, peanut, ice, and bowl. So I just don’t know. Yet through frustration, I know she cares. I can’t fault her on that.
This grandma might talk a lot, to herself and to us, in Khmer. She might never stop moving. But she loves the Lord our God with unwavering faith. She is a true prayer warrior. She works hard to help provide for her family. She is our Cambodian grandma. It just wouldn’t be the same without her!
