When life hands you lemons you make lemonade, or in my case you go hang out at a coffee shop!
This past weekend, for our off days, a couple of us were planning to go to Phnom Penh to visit the Khmer Rouge killing fields. Unfortunately we didn’t know that the night buses can fill up so unless you’ve reserved ahead of time you may not be able to get on. So there went our weekend plans.
I wasn’t about to let that ruin my weekend especially since we are in Siem Riep and a twenty minute tuk tuk ride from one of the 7 wonders of the World, Angkor Wat, which I was planning to go see anyhow so we just changed our plans and went this weekend instead and are making plans to go to Phnom Penh next weekend.
Monday five of us left at 4:30 am to get there in time for the sunrise. It was worth the early morning!
The next afternoon I was in town at Common Grounds Cafe, where I had spent my morning drinking coffee and using WiFi. A tuk tuk driver was on his way to pick me up to go back to my “house” and I was gathering my stuff together to leave when a guy, who had been in the cafe, came up to me and commented that it’s not often to see a lady with a head covering in Cambodia. He said his wife wears one. Conversation in a nutshell they are a Mennonite family from Ohio that have been in Cambodia, with Christian Aid Mission, for the past year working as administrator for the SALT program.
He wondered what I was doing in Cambodia and I asked if he’d heard of AIM, he asked if they had an 11n11 program and I told him that’s what I was doing. One thing led to another and they invited me to their house for dinner the following evening.
I had a lovely time with them as well as some local Khmer friends of theirs. Homemade pizza, salad with bacon bits and shredded cheese and ranch dressing (don’t laugh, these things are rare in my current world) and fresh brownies.
Our ministry this month is called Unsung Heroes. Our purpose is to find ministries in Siem Riep area for AIM (Adventures in Missions) to partner with in the future. So when he was taking me home we stopped at his coworkers, house to talk about the possibility of AIM partnering with them. They were just finishing dinner when we walked in. When they found out I was on the race they said they had a niece who was doing the race (turns out she launched the same time I did). Turns out I also know the coworkers brother and his family from when I lived in NC, I also traveled Ireland with his niece from NC. The older I get the smaller the world is.
I was privileged to go to church with them the following two Sundays and was able to see parts of Cambodia I would not have gotten to otherwise. The first Sunday they invited us for lunch and served mashed potatoes with brown butter, gravy, chicken stuffing, salad, homemade rolls with utter and freezer jam, topped off with apple crisp and ice cream. No joke I almost cried. I had been craving real properly made mashed potatoes for a looong time (growing up mashed potatoes with brown butter was a staple) Meeting them was such a God send, there is something about talking to people of a similar background to yours that’s hard to understand until you don’t have it. God knew I needed that and he provided!
Here I was somewhere I was not planning to be on that particular day, meeting someone I’ve never met before and making a possible connection for future racers. God used my ignorance (book a night bus in advance) to have me where I needed to be. To give me a needed encouragement.
