Alright sorry you have not heard from me in so long. Here is the deal…
After arriving in Cambodia, my team was picked up from the airport by someone with Teen Challenge. Teen Challenge is the ministry we are working with this month. It is a yearlong Christian rehab program for teenagers with drug and alcohol addictions. We were told….or maybe we just assumed that the program was located in the same city that the airport was in (which is supposedly a big city with access to just about anything we would need)…….WRONG! We asked the man who picked us up, how long the drive would be and he said two hours. Hmmm, clue number one.
The drive was long and bumpy. The roads were all flooded, so it was like we were driving through a creek for two hours…with really huge rocks at the bottom of it. We were making bets on who would be the first to get car sick. When we finally reached our destination we all crawled out of the van stretching and trying to adjust all our dislocated joints (slight exaggeration…but the ride was pretty rough). I looked around and saw a mountain behind me and flat land and dirt roads for as long as I could see in every other direction. There was one building on the land in front of us…which of course was Teen challenge. After we walked around and had lunch (which they had prepared for us before we arrived), we were taken to the place where we would be staying. It is not even a half a mile down the road from Teen Challenge.
The best way I can describe the place we are staying is to call it a tree house (which is kind of cool…reminds me of Swiss family Robinsons). It is not really in a tree but it just has that kind of feel. All six of us are staying in one empty room, where they rolled out wicker mats for us to sleep on, and hung mosquito nets for us to sleep under. So it is going to be a slumber party for the next three weeks. There is no running water or electricity. They have huge pots full of rain water sitting around the living quarters (this is where we will be bathing and washing our clothes). They cook all their food over fires and eat rice for EVERY meal. This is definitely not anything we are accustomed to but it’s so clear to see that they are going out of their way to give us the best accommodations they can. The first night they made dinner and watched us eat (I’m not sure why they didn’t eat with us). But we get to sit on the table to eat, which makes eating 10x more fun.
There is a small preschool right below us, so we are woken up by children screaming “hello” each morning. “Hello” is the only English word that most people here know. The language barrier has probably been the hardest thing for me to deal with. I can take baths in pots and use a head light to read at night but not being able to communicate with anyone has made me feel super useless. Communicating and building relationships are what I’m good at, it’s who I am….but no one here understands me.
We were all stranded in our tree house for the first couple of days (the director…and the only one that speaks English… was sick), not really knowing what to do with ourselves. The days were long and hot and we wandered if the director might not ever show up… what we would do all month. Fortunately, he did show up and we all got assigned a class or two a day to teach. I am teaching English, Art, and Bible. I don’t really consider myself a teacher and expected to really struggle with it since the boys don’t know English but it has been surprisingly fun. They don’t speak English but they still have a sense of humor and a crazy desire to learn whatever we are willing to teach them. I think I laughed for two hours straight in my last English class. At one point, I was teaching them how to say “see you later” and I kept walking out the door as I was saying it in attempt to demonstrate the meaning…. And they would all yell “No.” It took about ten tries before they understood that I wasn’t leaving and that I was trying to show them how to use the phrase. It was hilarious. Then I was trying to teach one of the boys how to say “pink” and I felt like I was saying it so clear but when he would repeat it, it sounded nothing like “pink.” I didn’t realize that I was getting louder and louder until the whole class busted out in laughter as we were shouting “pink” back and forth at each other. He still doesn’t say “pink” right but at least we got a good laugh out of it….. and I’m pretty sure we successfully learned quite a few words. So teaching is entertaining to say the least. But unfortunately that only consumes about two to three hours of my day.
I think God has been telling me to slow down for quite a while and now He has done for me what I refused to do for myself. I am forced to slow down this month. It’s time to really learn what it means to rest in Him and it’s time to process through my feelings. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t have to set an alarm when I went to bed, could sit down and read a whole book, or could go on a walk and not have anything to get back for. Some days I wish life was more like this all the time and other days I have no idea what to do with myself and want nothing more than to buy a plane ticket home. But I know I’m here because God put me here. I would like to think God has a really good sense of humor and has been cracking up at my team’s bipolar mood swings. One day is up and the next is down…never the same for everyone of course. So one month seems pretty long and eleven is looking really long…. but we are in this together and we are in this with Him. So right now we are doing all we know to do…… giving our two to three hours of teaching all we have, getting to know each other, and LEARNING TO DEPEND ON GOD AS OUR COMFORT!
