Welcome to Cambodia!
Hello, from Cambodia! I hope you are all doing so well, and that the Christmas season is bringing you lots of joy! I am a little more than half way through my first month in Cambodia. It has not been easy by any means. In fact, I honestly feel as though I have been being kicked in the butt through this—seemingly never ending—fourth month.
I live in the capital city of Phnom Penh (pronounced “pen nom pen”), and it is busy. I feel as though I got off the plane and hit the ground running. I have been trying to adjust to the time differences between here and home, making calls home a little challenging because I am 13 hours ahead. I am also adjusting to a new weekly schedule for ministries. In Costa Rica my team spent a lot of our time traveling to and from ministry. We were also together for the entirety of our day. Here our ministry is less than a five minute walk from where we are staying, which is a huge blessing. That also means that we have more time that we get to spend at our ministry each day.
My weekly schedule here looks like this:
Tuesday-Friday: We spend our mornings from 8:30-10:00 prayer walking. We get to walk around and pray for our community, and people we meet along the way. Then from 10:00-1:00 we have a small break to eat some lunch and get ready for our afternoon. From 1:00- 4:30 we are teaching at ACE AMERICAN ACADEMY. Our evenings usually consist of playing with the kids in the community or leading worship nights with college students at the International Theological College and Seminary School.
Saturdays: We spend the day doing village ministry our doing projects at Ace or ITCS.
Sundays are sabbaths and Mondays are adventure days.
I really love getting to spend so much time around kids here. They have been so quick to open up and let us in. Our ministry host says that it is so rare for the community to be opening up so fast, but you would have never guessed it.
I assist my ministry host Amanda teaching primary 1, which is the equivalent of a first grade level in the US. Most of the kiddos call me “teacher kimbo”, but one kid named Napath (pronounced Nuh Pot) calls me “teacher rainbow.” I fall more in love with each of them every day. It has really showed me how much I love teaching.
The kids’ faces bring me so much joy, making it a little bit easier to be away from home during Christmas season. This is my first Christmas that I won’t be with my family. I miss them like heck, and I would do just about anything to get to spend just one hour with them right now. But God is so good, and he has given me a sweet community of best friends, and an un-biological family to celebrate the birth of his son with. So here’s to a joy-filled Christmas, and a vibrantly beautiful New Year. May we all spend it surrounded by people that love us big.
Peace and Blessings!
XOXOXO—Kimbo!!!!!!
