Our first week of ministry in Cambodia was spent as a whole squad at the Overflow Guesthouse in Siem Reap. That week was a week that I will always look back on and smile. We had the opportunity to spend time together as a squad to relax, to go out in town to shop and interact with the locals, to to ministry at Overflow as well as out in town. I got to learn a lot about myself in the way that I acted when I was thrown into a different country, with different people, eating different food, in a different culture. I knew that this journey wouldn’t be easy at times and that was proven to me during that week. Although the week was amazing and I truly had some really amazing experiences, there were also some hard times and I was able to learn what that is like. That week just made me even more excited for this upcoming year, I cannot wait to see what God throws at me. If I was able to make relationships and be touched by the local Cambodians and our hosts in just 3 weeks I can only imagine the amount of relationships I will build and change that I will experience in 3 weeks, or 2 months, or 3 months!
Okay, enough with the talk about how that week was as a whole and let me talk about one day in particular…actually, just a couple hours in particular. On Wednesday, our team had a free day and were able to visit Angkor Wat and four of the beautiful temples there. All of the temples were so beautiful and I could not hold back my big smile, or the occasional tear. I was taken aback by the beauty of these places and the people in them. At the third temple that we visited, you were to climb up many steep steps in the Cambodian heat, it was very exhausting. But once we go up there, man, the view was beautiful. I climbed up there with two of my squad mates and after sitting there for a few minutes catching our breath and admiring the view, one of the workers at the temple approached us and started to talk to us. At first, it was just a normal small talk conversation (and to be honest, I expected that to be the extent of it). He told us his name, for the sake of his privacy, I won’t be saying his name, and we told him our names, where we are from, and why we were in Cambodia. Often times, that is the extent of a conversation with a Cambodian because due to the language barrier, we can’t always have a full conversation. This, however, was not one of those cases.
After the small talk he explained to us that he had been working at the temple for 12 years and the money that he earns isn’t enough to easily support his family, that no matter how experienced he is he will not earn enough money to not stress about it. He then proceeded to tell us basically his entire life story. He told us all about how when he gets off work at the temple, he goes home to just do more work in the rice field. He told us all about his family, about his sick father and his brothers and sister who have married off and moved away and can’t help with their family as much as he does. He told us about how hard it really is for him to have such a small amount of money as income when he needs to care for his family. He told us that he wants to marry and have a life of his own, but he can’t of that when he has his family to take care of with the small income that he has. While he was talking, he kept pausing to ask if we enjoyed talking with him, he told us that most people wouldn’t spend time to sit down and talk with him. He told us about a woman he had met a few years ago at the temple who lives in New York and he always hopes to see her again. We think that woman might have been the last person to visit the temple who actually sat down and took the time to really get to know this wonderful man.
Just this little talk really opened my eyes to what life is like to many of the people here in Cambodia. They are hard working, and don’t get what they deserve. They are worthy of love and attention, yet they don’t think they are. They have so much to offer, but don’t often have the opportunity to do anything about that. The people here are inspiring, powerful, beautiful, courageous, yet not many are able to see this in them. I am so lucky to be a part of a group that is able to see the beauty and the pain in all of this. Although I will never know what it means to have a life like anyone else, I am so lucky to share things such as a couple hour long talk in which I get to learn about the honest, truthful life of another human being.
