Hey friends! I know that I haven’t posted in a long (long, long, long) time and I am really sorry about that. I hope you have been keeping up with my adventures via Facebook. I don’t have a blog for the months I was in Malaysia and Thailand, but if you want to hear about them I would love for you to email me. I am just going to jump back into the blogging game where I am right now.
While I was growing up, I would look ahead and imagine all the amazing things that would make my life complete. I think we all have at least some of those dreams: either a general idea of what we would like our life to look like or a very specific plan that we intend to follow. I was somewhere in the middle for most of my adolescent life. I knew that I wanted to go to college, get a job, and hopefully meet the man of my dreams. I didn’t know what college or what job or even what I wanted in the man of my dreams; I just knew I wanted those things and I had a pretty specific time-line for when I wanted them. Needless to say God threw a wrench in those plans, as He has a tendency to do to people who cling too tightly to their own ideas. So here I am, sitting in an airport in Malaysia where I will be sleeping for the night, on my way to the Philippines for month 8 (!!!) of my 11 month mission trip. I don’t have a degree, a job, and I certainly don’t have the man of my dreams. But I have found that the joy I can experience in the plan of the Lord is so much greater than anything I could have thought up for myself.
This past month my team was living in Battambang, Cambodia. I didn’t have very high expectations for Cambodia. From what I had heard crossing the border was a ridiculous process, the temperatures were in the 90’s with a heat index in the 100’s most days, and living situations were less than ideal. All in all I was preparing myself for a lot of hard days. As usual the Lord blew my expectations out of the water. My team partnered with an organization called Sending Hope Cambodia, which is a Christian home for young girls whose parents can’t or won’t take care of them. When we pulled up in front of the house on our first day, ten young girls between the ages of eight and thirteen came running out to greet us. I had a stirring in my heart even then that this was going to be one of the hardest good-byes I would face on the Race. These girls didn’t care that we don’t speak the same language or that they had just met us; they circled around us making sure to hug each of us. They were literally jumping for joy at just our arrival and we hadn’t even told them our names yet. Over the next three weeks we shared an abundance of fun memories together: climbing 378 stairs (I counted) up a mountain, going out for ice cream, digging and planting a garden, planting 60 bamboo trees, participating in a nation wide water fight, learning new games, and putting on a camp for the neighborhood kids. My team spent most mornings in Bible Studies with our girls and most afternoons teaching them English. At the end of our first week, one of the girls, Sivan, grabbed me by the hand and took me over to her house mother/translator, Vottey. Sivan said something to Vottey and then turned to me with an expectant face while Vottey translated her request.
“She wants to know if you are her sister,” Vottey said with a smile.
I looked down at Sivan’s shining face and replied, “Yes, I am your sister.”
Sivan tentatively tested the new English word, “Sister.”
When I smiled in encouragement she said it again with more confidence and from that moment on there was no more definition between Americans and Cambodians; we were all sisters.
On our last night with them we took all the girls to a local amusement park and as we were leaving Vottey told us they had a surprise for us back at the house. I walked into the house expecting some treat for us, but instead I found chairs lined up with buckets of water sitting in front of them. I knew immediately that they intended to wash our feet and I had to step back outside because I was NOT emotionally prepared for that. But Srey Mom, a girl that had been attached to my side after I played with her while she was suffering from chicken pox, came out, grabbed my hand, and led me to a chair. She hadn’t even touched my feet yet and I was crying, sobbing actually. They each stood in front of us and told us how much we meant to them, by the time they were finished there was not a single dry eye in the place. These little girls bent down and washed my dirty, sweaty, stinky feet and they did it while smiling through their tears. They took such care to wash every part and then dry every toe. The whole time all I wanted to do was pull them up from their knees and draw them into my lap and cradle them and pray over them. Vottey then asked us to wash their feet, which was a surprise for the girls. So I took Srey Mom’s hands and led her to the chair I had just been sitting in. I got down on my knees and washed the feet of a little girl who taught me about wisdom, joy, laughter, and unconditional love. I prayed over those little feet as I washed, that they would be the feet of a strong woman of Christ. That these would be the feet that carried the Gospel to the nations. That these would be the feet of a girl who refuses to settle for less than all the Lord has for her. I washed and prayed and cried. Before I could even finish drying them, Srey Mom dropped to the floor on her knees, threw her arms around my neck, and cried into my shoulder. When she finally pulled back, I held her hands in mine and asked if I could pray for her. As we were praying for each other, my eyes were drawn to the ring I always wear. It is a ring that I got on a different mission trip to Guatemala. In that moment I really wanted to give Srey Mom the ring, however, all my training told me not to; we are not supposed to give gifts to children because it can cause jealousy and set expectations for future teams. With that in mind, I settled to just pray for her and hold her tight while I could. Then this 12 year old girl took one of the only pieces of jewelry she owned, a small gold ring with a purple stone in it, and slipped it onto my pinky finger. I took that as a sign from the Lord and didn’t hesitate to take my own ring off and slip it onto her finger.
This certainly isn’t the exchanging of rings that I originally wanted for this time of my life. In my plans, I would be well on my way to marriage. I would be slipping a ring onto the finger of the man I love and he would be giving me a large valuable ring in return. But, as I look down at the inexpensive, too small ring sitting on my pinky finger, I feel no sorrow or regret. I only feel an extreme sense of joy and humility. As much as I want to get married and have a family of my own, I can’t help but feel that this ring is infinitely more valuable than the one I will get in the future. This ring symbolizes my own obedience to follow the Lord around the world and a little girl’s generosity as she gave away one of her few possessions. It symbolizes the Lord’s amazing love as He dragged me to the other side of the world to have my heart broken for His people. It symbolizes the piece of my heart that will always love Cambodia and my hope to return one day. The Lord gave me sisterhood when I wanted marriage, little did I know sisterhood is exactly what I needed.
