Here in Battambang, Cambodia have been awesome! Our ministry partner “Lighthouse” has been amazing, the culture is great and the food is on point. However these first few days I have come across more people begging for money than in any other country I’ve been to yet.
Back at training camp for the world race we did a training scenario to simulate a foreign market experience. All of the staff and volunteers dressed up and acted like vendors, tourists, thieves, and… the poor. I knew it wasn’t real, heck one of the poor people actresses was my squad mentor, but I couldn’t emotionally deal with the reality. The reality that their are real people all around the world every day who are starving and have to beg for money to feed their families. The thought of it caused me to break down and cry shortly after the exercise was over. That day at training camp I was so emotionally disrupted that I had a hard time focusing on anything the rest of the day.
Here in Cambodia I am facing the reality of the training camp scenario. Not being able to help them in their brokenness has been the hardest part of the race so far. Personal money is low. Early on in the race I got to the point where I understood the most important thing I can do is share the love of Christ with them, but how seriously will they accept this love from God to be true if I, as a follower, don’t support them in their present time of need. As it is, it has been so hard having to turn people away who are asking for help. To cope with the pain I’m feeling by not giving to them, I end up regrettably hardening my heart to just try to not feel anything at all, and I hate it.
I don’t know how many of you have heard the concept of a God pocket but basically it’s the idea of having a reserved part of your wallet (or purse) dedicated to being given away to someone who needs it. It is true that not everyone who asks for money truly need it so good judgement/discernment is important. Overall though, it’s something I highly encourage you to pray about including in your life back home but today I am asking for you to prayerfully consider helping me with my God pocket here on the race. I want to help the broken people I see here so badly but I can’t without your help once again. Meals here can be bought for even $1. Whatever you can give will be a great help. Thank you so much to all who have supported me to even get here. I know not all of you are in financial position to give, but if you feel led to give that would be amazing. This time the money will have to go through my personal bank account and won’t be tax deductible, but all 100% of it will go to blessing the locals. I hope to post future blogs with stories about how that money was used to bless the people here in the next 6 countries. If you would like to give thank you so much! You can,
Venmo it to me at Jonathan-Anthony-77
PayPal it to me at [email protected]
Give it to my parents to put in my bank account.
Or contact me through email at [email protected] to figure out another way.
Also if their is a specific country you’d like me to use that money in because that country is special to you let me know! (Also if there is a specific day even I could try to make that happen as well!
The countries we have left are
March: Cambodia
April: Thailand
May: Malaysia
June: Nicaragua
July: Costa Rica
August: Panama
Thank you all as always for your support and following along in my once in a lifetime journey!
