Did You Just Fall into the Trash Can?

       After a few crazy travel days we are now in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. After sorting out a miscommunication with our original contact, we will now be splitting our month between two ministries. For the first week and half we will be partnering with KALeB, a ministry that reaches out to the street boys of Phnom Penh. The ministry includes a family style home for three street boys, two widowed mothers and their children; a night shelter that provides eight boys with showers, laundry, dinner, games, and a place to sleep every night; and a midwifery school for five Cambodian girls who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford an education. We will be spending the second half of our month in Kampong Cham. We are not sure what our ministry there will look like but we do know that we will be coming alongside a local pastor to help in whatever way necessary.

       The Lord has lavished us with SO many blessings since setting foot in Cambodia. There are too many to list in this blog so check back for another blog about the blessings we have received since being here. I absolutely love the atmosphere and the people here! This country has been through SO much and the people are in desperate need of hope, and I can’t wait to share the hope of Christ with them throughout this month. I can’t wait to share what God has done and will continue to do this month! In the mean time, I wanted to give you a glimpse of our crazy journey from Malaysia to Cambodia by sharing some highlights from our travel days. Enjoy!

• After a five hour bus ride to Kuala Lumpur ,we found out that instead of one more bus directly to the airport, we would have to take two buses and a subway. Which means unloading, carrying, and reloaded our huge 50lb bags along with our daypacks multiple times in the mid-afternoon heat.

• In order to get to the subway station all 18 of us crammed in to the back of a public bus with our 50lb big packs and various other bags while being stared at by locals for the entire 20 minute bus ride. Although I can’t say I blame them because we were a site to see.

• After carrying our packs through the streets of Kuala Lumpur, we all managed to cram ourselves and our stuff on the subway for a two minute ride to the central station where we hoped we could catch a bus to the airport.

• We arrived at the KL airport at 6:00 PM on 3/30 for our 8:30 AM flight on 3/31. World Racers claimed a corner of the KL airport with an explosion of bags, which is a normal occurrence when traveling with 61 people. Spent a couple of hours catching up with other squad mates before attempting to fall asleep on the granite tile floors.

• After trying to fall asleep for an hour (Surprisingly, granite floors are not conducive to sleeping. Imagine that!), I decided that I would not be getting sleep that night, so I made my way down to McDonald’s where the other insomniacs were hanging out. Thank goodness for a 24 hour McDonalds with free coffee refills!

• I managed to drink three cups of coffee in a two hour period in order to make it through the check in process and two security check points. If you thought going through security once was fun, twice is even better.

• After a sleepless night, we finally boarded our plane at 8:00 AM. After much resituating, I managed to find a comfortable position and fall asleep for about an hour before our plane landed in Singapore.

• Once we claimed our space in the Singapore airport I found a spot to lay down as soon as possible on the granite floor. I actually managed to fall asleep for an hour this time, despite the floor being rock hard.

• Five hours after landing, checking back in and going through another two security checkpoints, we boarded our second plane for what we thought would be a three hour flight. Once again, after some trial and error, I found a semi-comfortable position to sleep in, or so I thought.

• Two hours after taking off, we were informed that we would be landing in Siam Reap for a security check before heading to Phnom Penh. Upon waking up, I realized that I had fallen asleep on my arm and it was completely numb.

• After carrying all of our carry on bags to another security checkpoint, we were informed that we needed to take out all books, journals, papers, folders, laptops out for the security check. This was complicated by the fact that I could not feel or use my right arm. I was a sight to see trying to carry all of my stuff through security and then back on the plane that was about to take off without the use of one of my arms.

• After another short flight, we finally landed in Phnom Penh and were headed to a place to stay overnight, just over 24 hours after making our way to the KL airport in Malaysia.

• We ate a delicious Cambodian meal and upon arriving overly exhausted to the place we were staying, we were informed that we would be having a cultural briefing that night.

• All 18 of us struggled to look awake and alert during the hour long briefing after over 36 hours of traveling. Some of us were more successful than others.

• Woke up on 4/1 after the best 10 hours of sleep I have had in a long time ready to head out to Kampong Cham for our month of ministry.

• Three “tuk tuksâ€� (the local transportation here, kind of like a carriage but pulled by a motorcycle instead of horses) and three bus stations later we managed to find bus tickets for an afternoon bus to Kampong Cham.

• One of the highlights of my travel days happened as we were waiting for our bus. While sipping a smoothie, my teammate Angela somehow managed to slowly (almost in slow motion) fall into a trashcan. Luckily she managed to keep most of her body out by putting one of her hands in the trashcan to brace herself. However, upon getting up from the trashcan, we realized that her smoothie had splattered all over here face. Her little trash can incident provided us with some much needed laughter as we waited to move to our next destination.

• About an hour before our bus left. we called our contact in Kampong Cham to let them know what time we would be getting in. We find out that our contact is actually on her way to the Philippines and thought she had told our main contact that she needed to cancel.

• After a phone call to our main contact, we pile all of our stuff into two more tuk tuks to head back to the base we stayed at the night before to figure out a different ministry to do for the month.

• Our main contact got us connected with two ministries that we will work with for the month. We then realize we have a weekend off before starting ministry, so we make a last minute decision to catch a bus to Siem Reap for the weekend to see Angkor Wat having no idea where we would stay. Nothing was for sure except our bus tickets, but it turned out to be such an amazing weekend that I will never forget.