If you had asked me a month ago where Cambodia is on a map, I probably couldn’t have pointed it out to you. This small country that borders Vietnam is absolutely amazing. The people here are loving and beautiful.
I had the wonderful experience of spending this month at Teen Challenge Cambodia. (If you don’t know what Teen Challenge is you should look it up because it is a great worldwide ministry that started in New Jersey) We worked with guys ages 6-46. We taught them Bible in the morning and then in the evening we taught either English or Music, depending on what day of the week.
We also got the privilege of being there in the month of April which is the month when they celebrate Khmer New Year. (pronounced: Km-eye) This holiday is alot like our Thanksgiving in the way that all the family comes home and spends some time with the family. The buddhist people also got to the local temple, or Pagoda. As christians we just went to the Pagoda for the experience, and what an experience it was. At the Pagoda’s they have a tradition of putting baby powder on peoples faces. So basically everyone walks around with their hands full of baby powder ready to pounce on any unsuspecting passerby. The locals found it extremely attracting to powder the faces of us foreigners. It was a blast. We actually went to the Pagoda three days in a row to experience this. We would load up in the back of a truck all of us with the 30 guys from the center standing in a truck with rails built around the side and chant and yell all the way to the site where we would be “attacked” as soon as we arrived. There were also Cambodian Carnival games to be played. They had a type of ferris wheel that looked pretty sketchy along with a large carousel sans any safety equipment.
At the Pagoda we would also play traditional Cambodian games. Some that were similar to duck duck goose and others that I had never played anything like. Again it was lots of fun.
We lived in the pastors house with him and his family. Mr Mop is his name and he is such a generous man. They do not have running water or electricity barring a generator that was turned on for about 2 hours each night for us to charge our electronics. This was easy, actually, to adjust to. You realize when you don’t have, how much you don’t really need. These people are some of my favorite on the race so far and they have forever touched my heart.
