I stood alongside my seven teammates on the bank of the Stoeng river, fishing poles in our hands, feet slipping and sliding in the wet Cambodian clay. We’ve been here in Kampong Thom for less than a week and I’ve known from the moment we arrived and met our host family that this was going to be the best month yet—and I was so right.
Our hosts, Sok Eng and his wife, Khema, have showed us nothing but love and kindness since our first day here when they picked us up at the bus stop and brought us into their home. They moved here from Phnom Penh to begin their ministry just one week before we arrived and they’re still busy making their new house a home, but already they’ve welcomed us in. They’ve shared their home with us, shared meals with us, let us love on their sweet little children, shared with us the vision the Lord has placed on their hearts and given us the opportunity to help make that vision a reality. Their very first ministry team—what a blessing it has been!
Our days here are long and busy, but in the best possible way. Our week days have been spent teaching English to people of many different ages and levels. Elementary school teachers here in Cambodia are now required to teach their students English, but most of the teachers in this area don’t speak any English at all—so we get to teach them so they can teach their students! We spend our days going back and forth from school to school and church to church, teaching English to people old and young and loving on them in whatever ways we can along the way.
————
During our first day here, Sok Eng was telling us about how most of the people we’d be working with here in Kompong Thom speak very little English. He also told us that we wouldn’t be able to openly talk about Jesus in the public schools.
Just for a moment, I remember having the fleeting thought, “But Lord, how can we tell them about you if we’re not allowed to?” Nothing about this is new. I’ve had to deal with these barriers during every month of my race so far, but still these same questions inevitably arise.
But the Lord is patient with me. He replied with a gentle, “Show them.”
Oh, you’re right. Duh. Ok, Lord.
————
And that brings us to Nhor. In order for us to get from place to place every day, Sok Eng has asked his neighbor, Nhor, to basically be our own private driver for the month. Every morning, we hop into the bed of his little white pick-up truck and he takes us wherever we need to go. When we get to our ministry sites, he sits outside and waits for us until we’re ready to go on to the next place.
We aren’t able to have a conversation with him because of the language barrier, but Nhor never fails to greet us with a big, warm smile and such kind brown eyes. While he waits for us, he patiently watches—never in a weird kind of way, just in a way that we know he’s interested in what we’re doing and the way we interact with one another. After a few days of teaching English to the elementary school teachers, I had Sok Eng ask Nhor if he’d like to join us in the classroom and learn English. The next day, he took a seat at one of the desks with his notebook and pen, and an eager smile on his face telling us he was ready to learn.
On Saturday after our first week in Cambodia was finished, Nhor drove us the half-hour drive to a nearby water park for a day of fun. My teammates and I swam in the pool, laughing and splashing around like children while Nhor and Sok Eng sat on the side. After a while, I glanced up and noticed that Nhor was gone. I was just beginning to wonder where he went when he returned with his swim trunks on and a big smile on his face as he carefully stepped into the pool.
For just a few hours, Nhor got to remember what it felt like to be a kid again. We may not have been able to carry on a conversation with him, but it didn’t matter. We swam and laughed and raced down waterslide after waterslide, and the joy that radiated from him was so evident it was contagious!
The next day was Sunday. We piled into the back of Nhor’s truck and headed to church. Nhor sat outside at a small table, sipping coffee and smiling the way he usually does, and eventually he made his way into the back of the church. He sat and listened while one of my teammates shared her testimony and another shared a message, with Sok Eng translating. After church was over, Nhor drove us home and we told him we’d see him tomorrow.
————
So there we were on Sunday evening, standing on the shore with our hand-crafted fishing poles that Jabe (Sok Eng’s cousin) made for us out of sticks and fishing wire. We laughed at each other in frustration as we cast our empty lines into the shallow water over and over and over again. An hour ticked by and we had nothing to show for it except for the tiny little fish that Anna Bonita had caught and then proceeded to toss back into the water, causing a bit of an uproar among the small audience that had started to gather around us.
Eventually, Sok Eng arrived and joined us with his three-year-old son, Omnor. We told him about the little success we’d had and he laughed at us while he cast his line into the water.
It was then that he told us he had just spoken with Nhor. He said that after taking us to church earlier that day, Nhor had decided that he would like to bring his wife to church and start following Jesus!
The eight of us burst into celebration, clapping and cheering on the riverbank, the sun just beginning to sink behind the trees. Sok Eng went on to tell us that Khema’s family had been trying to lead Nhor to Christ for years, but he had never been interested. And now, after only one week of driving us to and from our ministry sites and witnessing the tangible love and joy we carried with us, he had decided that whatever we had, he wanted it too.
I laughed at the irony of the situation. All of us standing there with our fishing poles and not a single fish to show for it–“follow me, and I will make you fishers of men!” I thought about earlier that week when I had been so worried about all the barriers that stood in the way, and how the Lord had reminded me that all we had to do was “show them.” And that was exactly what we did.
But I think it’s important for us to remember that none of this began with us. Though we’re just now beginning to see the first fruits of the labor that’s been done, those seeds were already planted long ago. For years they were watered and nurtured, scorched away by the sun, dug up and re-planted again and again. And now, through seeing the love that our team has for each other and for the people we’ve been teaching this past week, those seeds are finally beginning to sprout and produce fruit.
Last month in Vietnam, I experienced what it was like to be the one planting the seeds. I felt the frustration of planting seed after seed and not getting to see the fruit of those seeds (check out my last blog post, “ATL in Vietnam”). But He is so faithful. This month, the Lord is allowing me to experience the pure joy of seeing the first fruits of the seeds that were planted long before I arrived here in Cambodia.
He’s teaching me that all I have to “do” is live out of the overflow of His love, and the rest of the pieces will fall into place. He’s showing me that even if I am “just” the one planting the seeds, in time there will be fruit—whether I’m around to taste it or not. But right now, He’s giving me a taste of it. And it is so, so sweet!
