Location: Sisophon, Cambodia
Date: January 23rd, Thursday, 2020
Time: 5:30am
God saves lives! Do you want to be a part of it?
The 5:15am morning wake up call hits me in my hammock on the rooftop of a school in Cambodia. This was the daily grind to work-out and get my “Dad time” in before having breakfast served at 7:00 am.
As I laid there the thought of letting my eyes close back up and resting for just a bit more sounded wonderful. As I dozed off, the daily 5:20 am mega speaker blaring of “Barbie Girl” began which meant the 40-60-year-old Cambodian ladies were ready to bring it! I actually loved these jams and how loud they were so early in the day because one, the songs were hilarious and two, I knew our teams “loved” waking up to them. Though this morning as I was real sleepy, I wasn’t amused by it, instead, I got super fired up and motivated when hearing it!
Really? From Barbie Girl??
Oh yeah!
Similarly, my awesome friend and morning workout partner Austin was also fancying the thought of going back to sleep. He told himself that if I were not at the stairs and ready to go at 5:30 am that would be his cue to return to beautiful slumber.
Unfortunately, extra sleep lost the battle and we both got ourselves up to make our way to the park across the street. Austin had his usual spot nearby a Buddhist temple. We get there, take the shirts off (like super manly men), and we’re just about ready to go for our warm-up run.
Just as we take our steps to go a mid-aged Cambodian woman approaches us with a straight, slightly solemn look on her face. Mt first thoughts are, “oh poo, she’s offended that we’re shirtless in this park and wants to give us a hard time for it”.
She reaches out her hand to me.
I reach back and hold her hand. She begins to weep.
We stand there for some minutes as we look into each other’s eyes.
We then sit with her on a nearby bench, Austin on her right, I on her left. She takes our hands and brings them to her stomach. Austin asks her “baby?”, she nods. We try to speak more to her but it’s clear she knows almost no English and our Khmer vocabulary of about 3 words wasn’t very helpful.
She points to her fingers for counting and communicates that the baby is 3-4 months along. We ask if we could pray, she nods again and so we lay our hands on her stomach to pray for her and the baby.
She then motions to her hand purse which has a small purple bag tied to it, asking Austin to take it off. Inside the bag is mosquito poison (picture below). Austin asks “baby?” again, she nods and looks straight down.
She was attempting to kill her baby and possibly herself.
We continue to sit with her and pray. She then stands and asks to pray by the nearby temple. Wanting to honor God we stayed seated and prayed for her to encounter the Lord in an amazing way regardless of the temple.
Just a few minutes pass, we open our eyes and she’s gone.
Then behind us, she comes back and sits down with us. We sit there for a while just staring.
She then begins to gag. We continue praying and Austin asks the Lord that if there is anything hurting or causing pain to her or the baby that it be released. Immediately following that prayer she vomits.
Looking down at it there are several pills amidst it.
After a few minutes, she asks me to leave. I walk away then a bit later Austin comes back to me. We start walking out of the park then again she comes from behind and takes our hands. She walks us to a grassy area to sit there.
We do some more staring at each other. She points to her necklace and asks me to help take it off. She tries to give it to me but I’m not really a necklace guy. She hands it to Austin more persistently, he takes it. She then points to her stomach, then to the necklace, then to Austin’s crotch. Mmmk, as if things weren’t weird enough already she definitely took it there now.
We stand back up and begin to walk out of the park. She attempts to give me a surgical face mask thingy, I say “nah, I’m good”. She then calls out to a rando guy on a scooter. He drives over, they talk some, then she hits the seat asking for us to get on. Austin and I discuss it real quick for me to tell him there’s no way I’m getting on that scooter. He drives away and we continue to walk.
Thankfully earlier in the month, the Lord had Austin and his team visit a clinic where they do baby things (don’t know the name). We were walking in the direction of this clinic so we stayed with her. Walking down the streets we eventually reach the place and find where she can get checked in. Of course, no one spoke English here either.
After about 15-20 minutes of sitting with her, she gets called into the baby room. Austin returns the necklace to her and we say our goodbyes.
That was it.
We were given the beautiful privilege to see God save a life that morning.
I have no words for how I felt after this encounter other than thankful and amazed. He does such crazy things! It would have been so easy, nice, and comfortable to have gone back to sleep that fine morning but the Lord called us and He calls you out of bed to be miracle workers alongside Him.
I don’t like writing blogs, that’s why I’m doing the whole video thing. But I really wanted to share this story with you because a story and opportunity like this isn’t limited to the spot by the temple in the park across the street of a school in Sisophon, Cambodia! This can happen right outside your front door, at the grocery store, at work, heck even at the stall next to you in the bathroom (if someone has a story like that, please share with me).
This also isn’t a blog to tell you that to see God move you need to wake up early and work-out, no! But I do want to tell you to push in, throw laziness out the door, do hard things, and be interruptable! Honestly, I can’t tell you how much I actually wanted to just ignore that lady and get my run in. But when you ask the Spirit what to do there can be things so much greater than a 2-mile run and a lil workout. Things like saving a life!
All that we’re asked to do is love!
Now, there’s certainly no guarantees of what is happening in this woman’s life after that morning but God moved in a big way and I am continuing to pray for her and her baby boy. And I would like to ask all of you to join me in that. Pray for her and for all women who are contemplating ending a baby’s life.
I love you all so much and I’m praying that you do what the Spirit is asking of you so we can see God move in even greater ways than this!
