So sorry for the delay in writing this blog. May was a challenging month for me but I grew quite a bit. We had team changes at the end of month four so I was with a new team of six women. We were in Siem Reap, Cambodia. It was an extremely hot month reaching record highs of real feels as high as 121 degrees! It sure made me grateful for my Indiana summers! As soon as we arrived at our ministry there seemed to be a series of illnesses. If it wasn’t one person with a stomach issue it was another person with an aching body. It became apparent very quickly that the enemy was trying to attack us and defer us from our ministry. We experienced issues happening back home that were beyond our control and ached to be with our families. We had reached almost the halfway point of the Race and we were susceptible. We were susceptible to looking at the challenging things and thinking about how much we would rather be in A/C or how we wanted nothing more than to be healthy or with our families. If we gave the enemy the opportunity to steal our joy, he would run with it.
There came a pivotal moment when I realized I truly could not do this month on my own. I needed the strength of the Lord to get through it. I asked Him nearly daily to give it to me because honestly, all I wanted was vacation to myself and to be out of there. Now please don’t mistake what I’m saying as, I want to quit or for you to feel sorry for me. That is not the case but I will tell you that there are days where I have to pray and ask God to show me why I’m here. I have to ask him to guide me and to help me stop missing home. I have to ask for comfort as I miss all the events that my entire family is at without me. These are things I knew I would miss before I left but five months without the embrace of a single family member or being able to communicate efficiently can affect one differently than anticipated. I know this is where God has me in life but I have to remind myself of that daily because it does get hard when you start thinking about all the things you’re missing. Instead of thinking in that way I try to think about all the potential people around me that I am able to minister to and get to know.
We worked with Siem Reap Ministries. They are the only Christian church in the surrounding area. The pastor and his wife had been there for over six years. They had a school at their facility that was free to the community if you were in financial need. They also partnered with different schools around the community. I taught quite a few English classes and was able to help their teachers learn better English so that they could teach more once we left. The teachers working for Siem Reap were young college students that my host, Timothy, and his wife had disciples and they were living at the church. Most of them came from non-Christian homes and were trying to help their families come to know the Lord. I had the privilege of going to my friend, Sombo’s home and speaking with his mom about the Lord. She was very discouraged with her other son who had just tried to kill himself and was following down a bad path. I just thought it was a total God moment because I was able to share with her about the comfort my mom found from Jesus while dealing with the troubles from my brother. She had no idea of the joy and peace that come from a relationship with Him and the trust that she can put in Him to take care of her son. Although I don’t know if she started a relationship with Jesus that day, I do know that I was put there by a divine appointment from the Father. Something that makes it even cooler is that it was actually our day off of ministry but they asked me to go and I knew I had to and the Holy Spirit spoke through me and proved himself faithful, yet again.
Other things we did throughout the month were: helped clear fields that our ministry was going no to use for planting limes to help the church; hosted a spaghetti dinner for the parents of the teachers; taught computer classes to help the students gain some skills in Microsoft.
I learned a little about the Cambodian Genocide that happened in 1975-1979. It was a mass killing of 25% of the Cambodian population, nearly 2 million people. Pol Put had people killed if they had any form of education or someone that could be a benefit to society. Because of this tragic event only 3% of the population is over 65 years old. This makes the need for reaching the younger people so great. Over 32% of the population is under 15 and knowing they are the future of Cambodia makes them a vital part of spreading Christ in their country.
Our hosts told us that a lot of the older people were told rumors of what Christianity is which is part of the reason they do not want their children to become Christians. Some of the rumors were pretty crazy, such as becoming a Christian means you have to kill your parents… What? So because they believe this it makes them less likely to be supportive of their kids especially if they are practicing Buddhists. The Cambodian people are naturally very shy and do not like confrontation so this makes it challenging for the younger people to share the Gospel with their parents. I received number out questions about how and what to say to their parents. They are very timid and sharing Jesus seems like a scary thing. I was able to offer some insight and advice but it is not exactly my forte to be soft spoken 😉
All in all, Cambodia was a challenging month full of lots of opportunities to choose joy over complaints, it is a month that I truly understood what it means to draw strength from the Lord, I became very aware of the evil that is still in this world and how much recovery is still happening from an attack that was less than 50 years ago, and I was able to step into boldness multiple times and share the Gospel in front of quite a few people. The Lord gave me the opportunities to be bold and because of His strength I was able to take them.
