Want to hear the craziest story I have of my World Race Journey thus far? You may wonder what could be crazier than eating a tarantula leg and getting a bit of it stuck in my teeth for five minutes…?
Impossibilities my friends. Impossibilities.
Let me tell you a tale…
Time: early afternoon
Place: random backstreet, downtown Bangkok
Weather: HOT (just for the totally unnecessary record)
It was our second day in Bangkok. We were staying in a lovely little hostel. This lovely little hostel had a map showing us that there was a post office nearby. One of my teammates and I both had some cards to send, so we set out to find said post office.
It was a brilliantly warm sunny afternoon as we wandered some back streets in search of our query. As we walked, a couple of men wandered from another street into our path. Now it just so happens that I fight with a terribly, ridiculously over cautious nature from time-to-time. This was a time that said nature reared its head.
Backstreet, downtown bangkok, new country, couple of strange guys… I just got a bit uncomfortable. So we picked up the pace to pass them and continue on our way.
Shortly after we pass them however; much to my shocked discomfort, I hear one of them say
“Excuse me.”
I’m slightly embarrassed to say I sort of ignored the comment.
He repeated himself.
I reluctantly turn in answer.
Much to my utter dismay, he asks, “Are you from Cambodia?”
I felt so stunned by the question he repeated the himself before I answered that I was, indeed, in Cambodia last month.
“Yes! I recognize you! I saw you there. I am from Cambodia,” he answered.
I asked him if he saw me in Siem Reap, our most recent location, and he responded that he had seen me in Phnam Penh.
Now let me just take a moment to lay this out:
Bangkok is HUGE, we were wandering a totally random backstreet in the middle of who-knows-where in the city; we end up being in the same place, at the same time, on the same random street as some random guy who was in apparently in the same place at the same time as me approximately TWO WEEKS ago in Phnam Penh; also a HUGE city. And the dude freakin recognized me! (of course, one doesn’t see white girls with shaved heads very often in Asia)
Can we just take a moment to appreciate the utter impossibility of this situation?
Now I tell you honestly, at this point I was freaking out inside just a little bit. The guy was perfectly friendly. Typical backpacker. But, being totally weirded out, I talked myself out of there as fast a I could.
Now I’m afraid we have come to the part of the story that hurts. In that moment, I allowed myself to be overwhelmed by the unusualness of the situation I was in, and without giving even a brief thought to the awesomeness of it, I ran without hesitation. (No, I didn’t literally run) I didn’t take even a moment to ask God what I should do. What are the odds that I would run into this guy like that?!?! Perhaps there was something I was supposed to say to him. Or maybe there was a bit of light that God intended for me to shine into his life. Were there any spiritual seeds that I could have watered in him? Or perhaps some seeds I was meant to plant in him? Or maybe God would have told me to get the heck out of there. I will never know. It would have taken mere seconds to tune in to God and hear what HE wanted me to do in that situation. But it didn’t even occur to me. Talk about missing the mark.
Some lessons are hard-learned. Yet I feel so blessed to be on the receiving end of such an amazing and powerful lesson.
How often do encounter people without even thinking to ask God if there is anything He wants me to tell them? How amazingly will my life change as I change how I do things in this way?
Time will tell.
As always, thank you so much to all of my supporters who have helped me come on this amazing journey. I’m so much closer to my October 1 deadline than I was when I wrote my last blog! Yay, thank you, and praise God! If you feel led to support me, you can do so my clicking the ‘Support Me’ button at the top of the page,
TTFN!
