I suppose it’s time to start writing blogs about Cambodia.
You see, normally, in countries where we don’t have access to internet, I just write blogs on my computer, save the date and then post them later.
However, my computer got a little mushed on the way from Africa to Asia, and therefore no longer has a screen. Oops.
So, there has been the odd blog that I’ve written up on my ipod, but that is currently out of battery and I really need to start blogging, or I’m never going to do it.
So, here we are.
Cambodia was a challenging month for sure.
Some months are good, some are not, but most are challenging.
Cambodia was all of the above.
We were in a small village that I still don’t know the name of and our ministry was teaching english.
Teaching is definitely not my forte, and I almost cried every day when we had to teach.
We lived in the church, and because we were in a small village,
everyone and their mothers knew where we were.
We would wake up every morning to not only children, but also grown men looking in our windows, watching us sleep.
We had no electricity, no running water.
Which meant no fans to escape the ungodly temperatures and showering with a bucket full of rain water.
There would always be constant chanting to Buddha on gigantic loud speakers – so the whole village could hear it – along with strange music that sounded like four different songs playing at the same time, all meshed together.
These would usually start at 4AM and go until 1AM.
Then it would start back up at 4AM.
Earplugs were my best friend.
Basically, Cambodia was exactly what I signed up for when I decided to do this thing.
Sleeping on floors, hot, sticky, uncomfortable, dirty.
And honestly, I didn’t mind all these things.
It was just… hard.
I’m not gonna pretend like we aren’t tired.
Constantly moving, changing, growing, loving for 10 months straight is hard, to say the very least.
But what God taught me in the sweltering heat of Cambodia’s hottest month of the year,
was that I have not arrived.
I have learned so much about myself and other people this year.
I’ve learned when to speak, when to shut my mouth,
how to push myself into uncomfortable things,
But I have not arrived.
I don’t have it all figured out.
I don’t know everything there is to know.
Go figure.
During the month of Cambodia, there were things found in me that I thought I had dealt with.
Things that were brought up in month two were rearing their ugly heads again 8 months later.
And it reminded me that the World Race doesn’t fix you.
If that’s what you think is going to happen when you sign up for this thing,
you’re wrong.
For some reason, at training camp, watching all the alumni love each other and us,
I somehow had it in my head that they were all some rare breed of Super Christians.
I couldn’t wait to get to the end of my race and be just like them.
Fixed.
But here I am, month 11 and I am no more Super than I was before.
I still struggle with things.
I still find myself believing lies.
I still find myself tired and not wanting to go to ministry.
But these things are not bad.
It just means that I still need to depend on God for absolutely everything.
And honestly, there’s no place I would rather be.
So yes, Cambodia was full of challenging situations
(some days I thought I would lose my mind if the chanting didn’t stop),
but in those moments, I was forced to rely on God for patience.
I was forced to seek Him out for solitude.
I was forced to give up my expectations to Him for what the day would hold.
I was forced to trust that He would give me the rest that I needed.
And it brought me so much closer to Him in the end.
Cambodia was hard, but so good at the same time.
