Mornings start at about four a.m., before the sun is even awake, when the roosters start crowing. (Does anyone else think we should fire roosters? They’re the worst alarm clock I’ve ever experienced.) If you’re lucky, sleep puts up a fight with noise and eventually wins, and you curl back up under your bug net until breakfast at seven. Each day, we take turns on the morning walk to the local market twenty minutes away where we buy fresh apples, tiny bananas, and the sweetest homemade waffles. After breakfast, we have the beautiful gift of slow mornings with the Lord as we sit at picnic tables, read our Bibles, and wait for the day to begin. Around 9:30, a motorcycle pulls up with three fourteen-year-olds piled onto it, a sight we have grown accustomed to by now. These three friends serve as our translators through their limited English and our spirited attempts to rephrase sentences until they understand. We head off together to do home visits, where we sit, visit, (attempt to) talk, and pray with families in the community. These times brought so much joy, so many new friendships, and even the opportunity to deliver a Bible in the local language (Khmer) to an eager man who had only just heard the name of Jesus!
After home visits is lunchtime, where we feast on rice and vegetables as the tin roof above us crackles in the sun, followed by a break from the heat (comparatively, that is) on our beloved cabana where I read book after book.
Around one o’clock, we throw on our work clothes and start digging a trench, a seemingly impossible project due to our questionable tools and the insanely solid ground. (Despite our doubts, we finished the trench by the end of the month – many blisters and laughs and gallons of water later.)
When we’re done working, we are covered in dirt and sweat, but there’s not much time before English class so we bring our soap out into the yard and take a community hose shower (life hack: washing your clothes while they’re on your body saves time and detergent). Very glamorous, I know! We pile into the lovely vehicle pictured below and arrive at the school where we teach English around five o’clock.
Ashton Paige and I walk over piles of trash into a cow pasture, where we play games, learn about our students’ lives, and sing the songs we taught them that they beg to sing as soon as they see us pull up. The sun begins to set as we sit and laugh in that field together, and I cannot imagine a sweeter place to be.
Back at home, my team and I fellowship together as we eat dinner in the dark and share thoughts, feelings, and stories. After, it is time for a real shower, followed by an early bedtime. By bedtime, I mean lying in your bed so you can soak up the precious air blowing from the fan but probably not falling asleep for hours due to the karaoke taking place right outside your window or the blaring music at your neighbor’s house. (Seriously, if noise complaints existed in Cambodia, I am convinced that every single police officer would be occupied 24/7.)
Then we wake up and do it again! In my opinion, it’s one of the best gigs yet.
