When I found out where my team would be working in Cambodia
I couldn’t believe my ears. I had just been talking to my pastor in Gilroy via
email about an organization called Teen Challenge that I was interested in
getting involved with. I had been praying about direction for my future upon
returning to the States in September and of course God was already making plans
for me to work at Teen Challenge Cambodia as a test run!
So far we are “roughing it” the most in Cambodia compared to
the other 6 countries we’ve stayed in. I know it sounds ridiculous, but most of
my teammates have been looking forward to a rougher month. Despite some of the
discomforts, we absolutely love it here. The Teen Challenge ministry has been
amazing and the relationships we are making with the boys are priceless. At the center there are 31 boys and men that stay for a 1 year rehabilitation period to beat their drug addictions. Saying goodbye is going to be extremely difficult this month and I am trying to prepare myself for it already…
Here
is a little photo journal of what life is like here.
PS I finally got a camera so I’m really excited to share all
my photos with you!
This lovely specimen is our own handy rooster, which crows for several minute intervals between 3:30 am and 8 am. The walls are very thin and it usually sounds like he is standing next to my ear. Around the time we’ve started tuning him out, the little children from the town start arriving for school at the church downstairs. This is definitely the month of abundant noises and little sleep :p
This little cutie is our pig. He is very sweet, though I’m not sure how long he will be around for. The other day the lady of the house was measuring him while he slept 🙁
This is where we brush our teeth outside next to the pig pen.
And our lovely squatty potty next to the questionably colored water, aka our source for bucket “showers”(I guess if you call that green thing a bucket lol). Using that water to cool off is actually the highlight of my day since it is blazing hot and I never seem to stop sweating.
Our laundry facilities. We wash our clothes in a metal bowl outside and hang them here. You wouldn’t believe how fast they dry!
We live upstairs in what we call our “tree house.” We sleep on the floor with mosquito nets around us and recently I’ve discovered that we have friendly little mice that like to squeak and run around our nets as we slumber.
We only have 2 hours of electricity from a portable generator every day, so we’ve learned to charge our ipods to drown out some of these disturbing sounds.
Internet is also about an hour away.
He’s just cute.
Lisa is one of the dogs at Teen Challenge (which is a 15 minute walk from where we live). She reminds me of my dog Chloe back home and I adore her.
At the center we teach English and Bible classes 5 days a week.
On Friday and Saturday “we” (as in not me…) teach a music class. Luckily we have some team talent- Cody is teaching music theory here and letting them practice reading the notes with a keyboard. “We” will be doing guitar lessons too.
One of the boys showing off his classnotes.
Our “agriculture class” is basically just the Americans going out into the field and watering all the plants with giant watering cans. None of us really understand why they make us do it instead of the boy, but we don’t mind. A few of them always come out to help us. (I think it might be because we told them we didn’t know enough about Ag to teach a class…so maybe this is them teaching us! lol)
We have a sports period every day too, which usually consists of us getting out on the volleyball court and playing with whoever is interested at the time. You would think my skills would be improving by now…unfortunately not the case 🙁 But still so fun 🙂
The boys love having their photos taken and taking turns wearing my sunglasses
This little guy above is 6 and his brother below is 5. I am in love with them. They are little wild things- running around all over the property, but slowly I am winning them over 🙂 The little one lets me pick him up and carry him around. He especially likes spinning and getting piggy-back rides.
