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This month, our team is focusing on finding and sharing about Unsung Heroes in Cambodia. This post is part of an 11-blog series about our efforts. This post written by Cara Wood Traveling to Battambang to continue our Unsung Heroes ministry this month has brought some changes from life in Phnom Penh. First, life is slower here. Battambang is the second most populous city in Cambodia but it is so much more peaceful than Phnom Penh. It is a place where English is hard to come by but smiles and loud hellos from children playing in the streets abound.
Second, I’ve started running with a teammate. If you know me well, you know I enjoy exercise but hate to run. Nonetheless, I’m doing it for several reasons… 1.) It’s good for my health…living the dairy-free, gluten-free life in Cambodia means A LOT of rice with a little peanut butter and eggs (yup I eat eggs now) thrown in for good measure. 2.) 7 people living out of 2 hotel rooms doesn’t provide much personal space or quiet moments to think so I’ve got to create my own quiet moments. 3.) It’s teaching me about endurance, giving all I’ve got and then pushing to give a little bit more because that’s how you grow. On one morning run, Rihanna’s song “We Found Love” came on my iPod and it hit me that my time in Battambang has really been a chance to discover love in a country that is fighting to pull itself out of such a treacherous past.
The heaviness of this reality can be a fog over the fight for a better future. But in the midst of that fog, in the midst of the need for development and bigger dreams for the future, we’ve found love. True, lasting, fight to the finish love. The presence of the Lord is all over Battambang. Meeting unsung heroes like Sam, who runs an English school and a girls home, and getting the chance to spend time with my old Young Life leader’s sister, Whitney, to hear about all that God is doing through YWAM here as well as the plans He is putting on their hearts for the future has revealed so much of the Holy Spirit moving in this city.
This is the love. This is the hope. This is the future God is building. This is a place where God has called these unsung heroes to give all that they’ve got and then push to give a little more. Because if you just push yourself to your limits, your limits never change; you must push past your limits to change, to grow and to expand your understanding of what it means to follow a limitless God. The lessons God is teaching me as I try to become a runner are the lessons these missionaries are already living. Battambang is a city for which God has big plans. It’s a city where missionaries from all over the world are coming together with the Khmer people to build God-sized dreams and spread the hope of the gospel to this nation.
Even though I’ve only gotten to spend a week in Battambang, I’m so grateful for this time. The opportunity to see another side of this beautiful country and the chance to experience so much love in a place that yearns for more. As I leave this place, Battambang will stay in my prayers. Will you join me in praying for God to wreck this city for His glory? To overwhelm these people with His love? To encourage the laborers because God is preparing a great harvest in Cambodia? |
Cambodia is a country that has been torn apart by war over much of its history. For hundreds of years it was continuously fighting with neighboring countries over land and power. Then it faced a devastating genocide under the rule of the Khmer Rouge. As you travel around to different sites in the country you can still feel the weight of those wars and the devastation of the Khmer Rouge. So many tourist attractions include visiting museums, fields and caves where mass killings took place. 
The expectancy with which each of the missionaries we’ve met here live—confident in the Lord’s provision for the next day, week, month or year—shines a light so bright no darkness has a chance.
