Let me tell you about our ministry contact this month. His name is Dara.
Fun fact:
His name means ‘star’. Last night, we were talking about middle names- his middle name (I forget what it it) means ‘golden’. Dara is our ‘Golden Star‘. Haha. :)) We love him.
Dara is so genuine, so kind and caring. He totally looks at us like we are his family to take care of. He is so smart and understands English extremely well. He is super hard to understand sometimes- I think that it is because He is so confident in English, so he thinks that he can talk really fast. He can’t. When we talk to Dara, we can hardly understand him unless we are beside him and being extremely good at lip reading is certainly a plus in dealing with him. And talking on the phone… forget that- unless your name is Asia (she totally aced talking to him on the phone…. soooooooo… whenever the phone rings- we all laugh and say that it’s Dara, because when he is away from us, he calls us
Every
HOUR.
So, we just automatically pass the phone to Asia- You go Girl :))
When he left us at the first church, New Life, he called the pastor every day to check on us and to make sure that the pastor was taking care of us. He called to ‘make sure that we were getting our snack’- I have a feeling that he got pretty upset if we didn’t things that we liked.
I wrote in a previous blog that we went to a restaurant to eat some noodles before church and there were these fried dough stick things. We liked them, I asked if we could get more and then two days later (and every morning since) the people bought Beneighs (that is the name that I gave them- it has stuck- we all call them that) for our breakfast. Well, we found out that the reason that we have been getting them is because Dara would call the host church and tell them to get Beneighs for us.
Everyday (when he is with us), one or even two times a day, Dara gets coke and ice for us. It is normally accompanied with some fruit or fried potatos or fried banannas (our ‘snack’). EVERY DAY.
Can I just pause here and remind everyone that knows me how much I LOVE ICE. If you asked me at all before the race (and a lot of people did) what I was going to miss the most on the Race- I would answer ICE.
Ice.
We’ve had it like TWO times almost every. day. I just can’t get over it.
Okay, bringing it back in. Back to Dara and his English skils. Often times, when we ask Dara a question: about our ministry, what we are doing, where we are going, what time we need to do something, what he just said, anything- he will answer us with “Yeah, Sure Sure”.
“So, we need to leave to teach English to the children at 1?”
“Yeah, Sure Sure”
“The children are in the village?”
“Yeah, Sure Sure”
*the kids weren’t in the village- they were downstairs
“Dara, the Tuk-Tuk almost flipped over and we almost died!”
“Yeah, Sure Sure”
It’s just a common response for him and our team is taking it and going with it. We have mastered how to ‘fly by the seat of your pants’. Now our response to anything that we need to do is “Yeah, Sure Sure.” We say it in fun, to giggle about Dara, but that is how it has been in our ministry.
“You want me to eat some cow lung?”
“Yeah, Sure Sure.”
“You want me to help 70 children wash their dirty hands?”
“Yeah, Sure Sure.”
“You want me to clip their fingernails?”
“Yeah, Sure Sure.”
“You want me to teach a kid’s club to 40 kids in an hour?”
“Yeah, Sure Sure.”
And let me tell you, in every circumstance (maybe not so much with the cow lung), God gave us success and provided just what we needed to get everything done. The energy, the understanding cross language, the supplies, etc…
It hit me that “Yeah, Sure Sure” is the attitude we need to have when it comes to God. We need to just be willing to do what He calls us to do. This morning, Martha shared a devotional about Moses. Instead of making excuses about not being able to speak, he needed to have the attitude of “Yeah, Sure Sure”. God was going to provide. God is going to provide. We just need to be willing vessels.
I challenge us all to try to always say “Yeah, Sure Sure” to God.
As for Cambodia,
Are we sweating like pigs?
“Yeah, Sure Sure”
Are we eating interesting food?
“Yeah, Sure Sure”
Are we flying by the seat of our pants?
“Yeah, Sure Sure”
Are we having the time of our lives in Cambodia?
“YEAH, SURE SURE!”
I love you all!
<3 Ash
