Quick summary- we made it to Cambodia!! This month, my team and I are situated in the capital, Phnom Penh, and working with a man named Rithy and his family. Originally we thought we were going to be serving in an orphanage, but upon arrival he told us that they had closed it. Woops! There are about 15 teenage and young adult orphans that still live in the building with us, along with Rithy and his family. So far, we have given English lessons, attended their church service, visited a village and attempted to help prepare and clean up dinner. I am learning how to wait and trust God to provide what our next month of ministry will look like! It has only been a few days but I am already in love with the place and the people. We are a part of the family: referred to as sister and fed so well I can barely make it up the stairs after every meal.
Now to the point, this month we decided as a team to abstain from looking in mirrors. It's a little easier than normal because the only mirror in the whole house is downstairs by the front door. My wise teammate Amy suggested it because she saw it as an opportunity to find our beauty from outside our physical appearance and also to learn to trust each other to tell the other one when we have something in our teeth or our hair is just too crazy for public. I think it's a genius plan, but also very hard for me, harder than I imagined it would be. So as I've been struggling with that the past few days we have been here, a crazy thing has been happening. Everywhere we go, I have been getting probably the most amount of compliments I have ever received in my entire life. It's crazy and completely random. Our entire team walked to get ice cream the other day and a group of women sitting on the sidewalk that we passed by told us, in Khmer, that we were so beautiful. Then I was told by multiple people that I had a beautiful smile, one of my gorgeous new Cambodian friends told me she wanted to look like me! I was totally floored. God is so sneaky in making sure that I know for a fact that it has nothing to do with my physical appearance that I am beautiful. His light, joy and love radiates out through me, apparently through my smile. I think that is the coolest thing ever; I am a precious and beautiful daughter of the King!
We will see how this continues as days turn into weeks of no mirror. I'm definitely already experiencing learning how to trust my teammate as we 'fixed' each other's eyebrows today. Compliments or no compliments, I know who I am in Christ and that God decided to reveal that to me through fasting mirrors is awesome.
