On January 8th me and my group of 17 other people decided to start our journey around world on the World Race. In the beginning we all met up in San Francisco and we had pizza that night, which was fun. Then we flew to China and we eventually arrived in Phnom Pehn, Cambodia. Then we got a bus to the hostel and looked at all of the scenery thinking to myself, “wow I’m actually in Cambodia and this journey is really happening and it’s really nice looking.” Then I moved into the hostel and it was really nice and I was excited to be staying there for two weeks. I knew that it would be a fun one where I got to know my group more. It also had a really nice pool and the WiFi was really good, so I was very excited for the journey. I also love meeting new people so that it sounded fun to live in a place where there were new people who I felt would become my family. I knew that it would be amazing.
Then the next day we had to go outside because we had a thing that the leadership team had us do called training camp. What we had to do each day was to walk fourty minutes to the leadership teams Air BnB in like 90° weather where it felt really hot and humid, which made me extremely sweaty. At times thinking “I’m not sure I can make it past the first week because I love cold weather more than hot.” Then because of the extreme heat I learned that I really needed a lot more water than I was used to. This was also a time where I had thoughts like ”This is going to be a challenging journey for me for sure, but I’m excited for it.“ I learned that sometimes in order to grow in your trust with God, you need to be willing to do some of the things you don’t like to do.
Now I’ll share what my experience was like with training camp. The training camp was a two week period of time where me and and the other 17 of us really got to learn more about how to listen to God’s voice, got taught about how to manage our budget, learned that “ministry is life and life is ministry”, and pretty much learned a lot more about how to help people during our World Race journey, which was good things to know. However, I have to say that it was a challenging, and also really good because I learned a lot about myself through it. We also had a time where we applied what we learned out in the local community where we did a “treasure hunt”. A “treasure hunt” is a time where the leadership set the groups up into teams where we all prayed and then got words on where we all felt God was showing us go and to a certain person. For example, after we prayed my group all got that our person was a lady and that her place was very hidden. Then my group decided to go walk around the area for her. There were many times where we walked into some places and we said “nope she’s not in here“ and then God sent us to an alley off of a main road and we realized that we had come to a dead end, so we said, “okay we should probably turn around now because she isn’t down here.”, so we decided to turn around and as we did this woman Gee and her family were there. She said, “hello I’m Gee and this my family.” Then we were said, “Hello nice then meet you I’m Daniel and this is Tanner, Jacob, and Matt.” It was a very cool moment for me and then she introduced her son, who was a Christian to us and my group felt a lot of happiness and joy from that and eventually we got to all pray for her and her family. That was a great experience for my team and I’m glad that we got to meet her. We then told the rest of the group and the leadership team what had happened and they were all excited for us.
Then as the week went on we decided to continue listening to the different people from the leadership team speak. I was getting excited to eventually find out who was going to be on our teams. A team is a smaller amount of people who travel together and go their own direction with God. So it finally was the day to find out the teams and we all found out that the leadership split us up into 4 different ones. Here’s how the different teams were created and the names of the teams. The first team is Team “C.A.K.E.”, which has 4 people, Cari, America, Kaelyn, and Emily. Then my team, which we call ourselves the “Guarder Of Heartz”, which has 4 people, me, Tanner, Matt,and Jacob. Then there is another team that is called “Team Harmony”, which has 5 people, Josh, Chelsey, Jenna, Ana, and Travis and the last one is called “Team Deep”, which has also 5 people, Hannah, Sam, Lindsay, Ronny, and Hunter. After we knew our teams we then decided to ask God what our next location would be after the training camp, which would be the first time away from the leadership team and a time on our own. As we were thinking, my team decided to stay a few more days in Phnom Pehn and then travel to Seim Reap for a week or more. We were excited for this part in our journey.
Now I’ll describe my experience in Seim Reap. I’ll begin by mentioning to you that when we arrived by bus to Seim Reap we realized that our hostel didn’t send us any transportation at all to get to the hostel, so we were saying stuff like “what are we going to do? We have no ride at all. Let’s sit down and think for a minute.” As we were heading towards a bench we saw a Tuk-Tuk driver right there who wanted to have us go to Angkor Wat the next day and said that he could ”take us to our hostel for free if we leave and go with him to Angkor Wat with him the next day.” So as a team we agreed to it and decided to get up at around 4:30 a.m. to watch the sun rise in the distance, which was amazing. He also was offering to take us to the 5 other different temples and I knew that God had set the whole things up because the driver told a little bit about the other temples as we were riding to them and another cool thing was that they waited until we wanted to leave. I’m really glad that God went before us and had already a person willing to help us all out.
Then my group came back to the hostel and it was cool for our team to talk about the different things that we did in Angkor Wat. It was cool meeting people who were wanting to go to it and providing them with information about how it went. However, at times it was hard to talk to the people because we were at a party hostel and they sometimes didn’t want to hear about Jesus or it. They were people who were there to have a big party for a couple of nights and then leave. However, I did meet a few of the travelers like a guy who stayed in my dorm like room whose name was Austin. He was a guy that my team got to know really well and he was someone who my team likes being with. Something that was cool was that sometimes he even wanted to play card games with us, which was really fun. During these card games he would sometimes win some of the games and then sometimes someone else on my team would win and it was a really good time where we just got to know each other. I know my team and I are excited for the friendship that we made with him. I know that it will be a time of just having fun and telling stories of our journeys as we continue our traveling around the world.
I also met a guy who was named Douk by doing one of the ”treasure hunts” in Seim Reap and he was an amazing guy. He was someone who lost both of his hands and arms from a land mine explosion 22 years ago and he just loves being with us and we truly made him happy every time we saw him. He was someone who we probably met up with probably 3 or 4 times and I loved that time with him. One example of why I say this is because he even allowed us to come into his home on the first time we met him and so Jacob and the rest of us helped him out a lot by giving him money. We latee found out that it was worth two months of his rent in his house. He also gave me and my team a picture that his son made and I actually feel like it is one of the most special things that I’ve ever gotten. It was all out of love for what we did for him. We also got to pray with him at the end of each visit and that was awesome too.
In the end, my time in Cambodia was a great time and now I’m excited for Thailand because I know there will be divine encounters for me and my group again here. It is going to be a great journey that I’m ready to help pour out love for all of the people. I’m ready for more of what Jesus is going to bring during our whole journey because it’s going to be great. God is so good! Praise God for all of these things in Month 1! On to Month 2!
