We arrived at our ministry site the afternoon of the 3rd. I felt irritable getting into the van. Two hours later we stepped out and put two feet on the ground, I was met with a heavy weight that clouded my judgement. We were given the rest of the afternoon and evening off to get settled. Our accommodations were in the middle of nowhere, a tiny dusty village where people earned a living at the factories nearby, the factories we hear about in our worst imaginations when we describe the third world. Children ran about half naked, devoured in dirt and filth. People were submerged in a false identity of who they were. Jesus was nowhere to be found, or so I thought for just a moment.
We slept in a small house made of concrete with a tin roof that let in the mosquitos at night. The bathrooms had a recent upgrade and held actual working gravity toilets; a magnificent luxury in this part of the world. Our showers were buckets filled with dirty well water with frequent visits from our froggy friends. In the night our nocturnal neighbours Mr. Mouse, Rat and Roach stopped by and left behind literal pieces of them to remember them by. It wasn’t anything travelling missionaries couldn’t get used to. Puppies, chickens, ducks, pigs, cows and roosters also accompanied us both in the day and often calling at night. Burning plastic and rubbish woke me from my sleep every morning at 6. The house had a small working outside burner and prep table where our meals were prepared 3 times a day. Served daily were french fries and rice every lunch and dinner combined with cooked green vegetables accompanying some part of a chicken, cow or pig. We washed our plastic dishes in small tin bowls that were previously used to hold the gutted raw meat that we ate, along with a sponge that was previously used to scrub the meat. The water we used was also from the well, held in a large clay pot where fish swam at the bottom. Our whole team felt this process at the end of the month when we found out we had salmonella poisoning. One of my teammates also experienced severe food poisoning early on during the first week.
Please let me clarify, I am not complaining, although I must disclose at various points while there I wished to be somewhere else. But I don’t dare ask you to feel even the tiniest bit of sorrow or sympathy for me or my team, I ask for absolutely no amazement that that’s where we lived for 3 weeks. Every time I wished to be somewhere else I wished I was better than that. Because while we were there we were treated like royalty, because when were not there our ministry host doesn’t even have enough money to buy fruits or vegetables or medicine for his family. I barely got a slice of the smallest piece of what it’s like to live in actual poverty. We don’t deserve the good that we get from God, that is the scandal of grace. But I don’t leave this place bitter, thinking how unfair it is how some other people live and what they struggle with. I thank Papa that despite all human sin and evil that walks the earth He is bringing the Gospel of His Son to even the darkest, dirtiest and desperate places. He is doing this so human hearts can be washed cleaned and filled with the Holy presence of Him. That even in the darkest, dirtiest and desperate places on earth, we can all live in His Kingdom in our hearts, on earth as it is in Heaven.
Front shot of the family house, behind is the small concrete house where we stayed.
A classroom where we taught English classes, also were we ate our meals, and held worship nights
2 houses, a store, and a classroom around the corner from our accommodations.
Our dish washing area with the clay pot beside the chick coop; also where ministry family would shower.
The downtown area/marketplace; a 30 minute walk from our ministry site.
Please be praying for our ministry contact and his family this month, His name is Ra and his mother in law is sick with an incurable cancer without Jesus; she is a pre-believer. Thank-you.
Also, I will be writing about all my spiritual encounters in my second blog from Cambodia coming soon.
