Prayer Walk
With it being week three, my team and I had become pretty accustomed with the surrounding village in the area that we are ministering to. On Monday, myself and a few others took a walk with some of the boys from the Mission Home and our Ministry Host, Courtney. Now it wasn’t a casual walk for a set period of time but rather a prayer walk where you are actively listening to where God wants you to go and who you are meant to talk to. So we walked. We ventured down a new road in our rural neighborhood and a woman and about six or seven children greeted us at the road. They didn’t speak English, but they were eager to talk to us. Courtney and one of the older boys, Sothea (Soot-I-AH), helped translated.
The woman was about 75 years old and the children around her were her grandchildren, but the child in her arms was her great grandson. She invited us into her home and we enjoyed exploring and talking to her and the children. After awhile, we said our good byes and continued on our way.
The boys wanted to introduce us to their English teacher who had just had a baby. Talking with her was easier, but some questions and answers still needed to be translated. She also invited us to sit with her in her home and her eight month old was fun to entertain and even though we were strangers, she had no problem with us holding him or taking pictures with them. This kind of hospitality is not uncommon here in Cambodia. If we were visiting around a typical meal time, it’s common to also offer a meal to your guests. After bidding our farewell, we continued on our walk, where we encountered our final stop.
A middle aged woman, who I’m going to call “Kia”, stopped us on our walk and once again we were invited into her establishment and beckoned to sit with her around her table. We talked about her house and about her. We asked her about her family and what she liked to do. And this is where it started.
Kia is a single middle aged woman who lost both parents and was abandoned by her siblings. She has no husband or children. In 2015, she was in an accident that resulted in the loss of half of her left foot. She lives alone and because of her disability, work is hard and mobility is even harder. She is alone. We listened to her story. Though it is hard to say how much may have been lost in translation, we were able to get the gist of her life story and struggles. Abandonment. Loneliness. Shame.
Naturally, I wondered is there was any labor that Kia needed help with. So I asked “Is there any work or chores or anything of that nature that you might need help with?” and the answer wasn’t what I was expecting. We found out that Kia really needed a bathroom. She had no financial means of getting one herself and she found shame in using her neighbors. And even though that wasn’t what I had meant, we told her that we would see what we could do for her. We then turned the conversation to Buddhism and Christianity and her relationship with the two. She was familiar with both. She told us that she didn’t really connect with Buddhism and missionaries from Singapore had told her about Jesus. Unfortunately, Kia kept turning the conversation back to the bathroom. We spent about an hour with Kia and asked if we could stop by again a day or two later.
Fast forward two days…
Sitting with Kia again, she became fascinated with one of my teammates bright yellow hydroflask water bottle. For those who aren’t familiar with the amazing hydroflask, it is a sturdy, and slightly expensive water bottle that keeps liquids either hot or cold for a very extended period of time. It’s a nice water bottle. We had a few good laughs about it before turning the conversation to that of God. With having a few days to prepare a few talking points, we had an idea of what we wanted to talk about. Unfortunately, Kia wasn’t open to receiving what we had to say. She kept coming back to the water bottle and when we were coming to the end of our time with her, she told my teammate that she should give her water bottle to her because my teammate should pity her because of her foot and because my teammate has the financial means of buying another one in the states because she’s an American.
The whole encounter really affected my prayer walk team because it wasn’t at all what we had expected. But looking back on it now, I realize why God led us there because he wanted us to realize another category of people that we may and will encounter when doing ministry: those who will receive our ministry with open arms, those who will avoid us because of our ministry, and then those who will only see us as a means to a financial end. Kia knew we were missionaries and very obviously American, and she saw us as people who would be more prone to taking pity on her. I’m not saying that she wasn’t in need or that she doesn’t deserve basic necessities like a proper bathroom, but where others found comfort in our words, she only found comfort in what we could physically do for her, rather than what spiritual or emotional relief we could have comforted her with. And this is ok, it’s important to realize that not everyone is going to receive what we have to say, we can only hope that we plant the seeds that God wants planted and have faith that God will do the rest. I’m not called to convert every soul I encounter, but to plant new seeds or water those that are already planted in the ones that God delievers me to.
Thanks for reading!
