As I sit here on a balcony overlooking the beautiful city of Siem Reap, Cambodia, I figured it couldn’t hurt to catch you up how I got here and what we’re doing.
After our couple days of mini-debrief in the Philippines, we jetted off from Manila last Friday night to Phnom Penh, including a nice midnight-6am layover in Singapore. Miraculously, I managed not to sleep during our entire time at the airport and didn’t terribly regret it the following day. We stayed at the YWAM (Youth With A Mission) base in Phnom Penh from Saturday until Monday morning, at which point Team Shabach had the privelege of partaking in a 6-hour bus ride up to this incredible city of Siem Reap.
We are being housed at the YWAM base here in Siem Reap, which is honestly much more luxurious accomodations than anybody was expecting. As in: beds, showers, electricity, and MIRRORS. It’s amazing the little things you appreciate. We’re blessed with another amazing contact, Phonkie (pronounced Funky). Di, our squad leader, is joining us for the first part of the month. She worked with Phonkie and the YWAM crew here on her race, so she’s very excited to be back and we’re glad to have her insight while we’re finding our feet here. As new as everything still is, it’s a pretty fair assessment that Team Shabach is incredibly excited to be in Siem Reap.
<—YWAM Siem Reap base – 17 rooms for $800/mo., not too bad
During our couple days in Phnom Penh we got a crash course in Cambodian history, particularly the horrendous reign of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. We visited S21, a high school-turned-torture prison used by the Khmer Rouge, and the killing fields where thousands were murdered at the hands of Khmer Rouge soldiers. It was an incredibly heavy day trying to process the reality under which the Cambodian people are living, but I’m very grateful to have the history in mind. The Khmer Rouge only disbanded in 1998, meaning the country has only been at peace for 12 years. I’m interested to see how this pivotal and quite recent part of the country’s history impacts other aspects of life.
Cambodia is approximately 95% Buddhist, an undeniable shift of perspective to the Christianity-dominated (if by name alone) United States (and Philippines, too, for that matter). I’m really interested to see how the Buddhist religious majority influences the general societal mindset as a parallel to Christianity in the States. We pass a couple monasteries on the bike ride to the school each morning, so I’m hoping to have some good conversations with some monks before the end of the month.
<—visiting a VERY touristy temple
Our primary responsibility here is teaching at the University of the Nations, a YWAM ministry that offers free English and computer classes to help better qualify individuals for employment. I am currently teaching a Powerpoint computer class as well as running 2 math tutoring sessions each day. This morning nobody showed up and this afternoon they were asking about calculus, so time will tell what that is really going to look like. The guys in my powerpoint class are great, we tossed the frisbee around a bit after class, so I’m really looking forward to some great conversations with them. You can be praying for opportunities to build those relationships!
Sorry about the delayed (and long) update, I’ll try to keep ’em consistent (but not too consistently overextended)! I’m going to go refresh myself on limits and derivatives…
