Dirt Roads, Ants, and a whole lot of Love - Explore Archived World Race Alumni Blogs

I love Cambodia. I don’t know what it is about this place, but it is just good. You know when you go somewhere and you just get a good vibe? Well, this is one of those places. Our whole squad met up to cross the boarder from Thailand to Cambodia on Saturday after hours of riding the bus, or truck. We were so happy to see each other! By Saturday afternoon, we were finally in Siem Reap staying for a few days in a nice hotel. The manager at the hotel hooked us up! He was so awesome, he cut the prices and just made us feel so welcome.. plus we got hot showers.

Now, the good part… my team is staying in a small village this month about 20 minutes outside of Siem Reap. It’s called Puot. Bucket showers, dirt roads, straw huts, animals everywhere, ants in everything (clothes, beds, food.. ) lice, roosters crowing at 4am, heat, mystery meat… I love it! We are teaching at a branch of the University of Nations, based out of Siem Reap. U of N Siem Reap has been around for about 5 years and this building in Puot was just put up about a year ago. It has 3 bedrooms, a kitchen, and 3 classrooms. There are 3 teachers living and working here. One from Sweden, one from the Philippians, and one from here. These women are so loving and caring. They are patient and kind, and the students love them.. and we do too! There are 6 English classes a day (except Wednesday which is Christian Values day), each lasting 1 hour. Students range from 7 years old to over 20. We will be helping in each class by taking over lessons and adding to them (songs, games, stories etc.) We have had so much fun so far, the students are so eager to learn. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we ride bikes out to remote villages and teach hygiene, sing songs, play games, and tell stories (with a translator). We have only been here for TWO DAYS and I’m already in LOVE with this ministry! It’s right up my alley 🙂

God has already proven faithful to us this month. When we arrived, we were trying to figure out how to get out to the smaller villages because the women who live here only have one bike, so we had to take turns going back and forth to the village. We all decided it would be a huge blessing to this ministry to have enough bicycles for at least a whole team of volunteers to ride out to the villages. We prayed about it, made a few phone calls and sent a few emails, and one of our teammates got a response within a few hours from a church that donated enough money for us to buy 5 bikes!!! We are so excited that we get to bless this ministry with them because they totally deserve it.

Last, please be in prayer about our squad getting into India in month 5 because we are struggling. It is very hard to get into India right now. We have to go to the capital Phnom Phen for a few days this month to apply for Visas. Please pray that our whole squad gets approved!

We don’t have internet here in the village, so I will update when we ride our new bikes into the city about once a week 🙂 Enjoy the pictures of my first week in Cambodia!

Crossing the Border!