The past few weeks of my life in Cambodia, to simply put it, have been chaotic. Working at an orphanage in a rural village is no easy task. It is actually quite exhausting. I wake up every morning in my sticky and humid guesthouse room and never know what the day will hold. My mornings entail eating mystery meat and rice with soy sauce and going to visit the schools where hundreds of Cambodian kids run up to me and cling their sweaty, dirty, little hands all up and down my arms. It melts my heart every time. We put on skits, dance, for them, and sing songs. All my specialties! Not really… but their laughter and giggles and hugs make it all worth it. We then go for some more mystery meat and more rice and soy sauce for lunch. The afternoon time before the orphans come home is usually a surprise. Sometimes it looks like taking a itty bitty, sinking boat to a remote village down a river, or going to see a village on the side of a mountain, or climbing a mountain to see ancient temples and ruins. Other days are less exciting, like hand scrubbing dirty clothes until your knuckles are rubbed raw! When all our favorite kiddos come home, we are greeted with squeals and hugs and kisses. We teach them an hour of English and they attempt to teach us Khmer (hardest language ever)! Evenings are always fun playtime. For a bunch of kids that live on nothing but rice and vegetables, they have an insane amount of energy! We go on walks through the village hand in hand (sometimes finding 4 foot long snakes), run through rice fields, go for swims in ponds, play volleyball and soccer, do each others hair with flowers and sticks and leaves, and have the best dance parties ever! We wind down with some more rice and soy sauce for dinner and nights full of devotion and worship. I love seeing the light in the kid’s eyes as they sing and clap their hands together and cant help but giggle at them all nodding off during devotion! Then after a hundred hugs and kisses and goodnights, it is bedtime for me, back at the guest house with our mice roommates! Then we wake up and do it all again!
Life has become a beautiful chaos. I am learning to marvel in the beauty and laugh in the mess. Cambodia is bright and hectic and a place that I know God wants to overflow in. The children at the orphanage have become my world and I have been dreading our goodbyes since the day I met them. God has placed so many amazing things in my life this month to smile about. So much joy and laughter and moments where my heart just flutters because I can’t imagine being anywhere else with anyone else. God is also the only way my team and I have gotten through some of the trials we have encountered this month. We have faced overwhelming amounts of illness amongst the team these past few weeks. Some nights we go to bed overly physically and mentally exhausted and wake up still sleep deprived and sick not knowing how we will make it through another day, another week, another month of this chaotic life. But through the mess and not so fun parts of the race, He is always at the end of it. Calling you back into His presence and peace. I have learned so much about life and love and how to enjoy life this month. I am learning that we live to be loved and to love. And no matter how much chaos life throws at you, this will never change. God loves us so much and just wants us to put our eyes on Him in the mess. That is exactly what these children at Takeo New Hope Orphanage have taught me. They have nothing and really no one. Yet they fix their eyes on Christ and live and love life. It is crazy how much you can learn from a group of 6-15 year olds.
The kids are in desperate need of a new building to live in with enough room to sleep and play, with running water, sanitary bathrooms, and a kitchen indoors. Their current building is only two rooms for all of the kids and the care givers, one bathroom with a squatty potty, outdoor showers using rainwater, no running water, and an outdoor kitchen. New Hope currently has a beautiful plot of land to try and give these kids a new home, but is in need of $60,000 to build the new orphanage. If you would like to donate to this project, you can do so through SEAPC and specify “New Hope Takeo new orphanage” in the “other” box to let them know where to spend the money. The kids also don’t all have sponsors. They are all amazing, God loving kids and I would love to see them all having great sponsors to help financially support them and send them goodies to make their childhood a little bit better! Here is more information on the sponsorship program in the link below. You can also contact Sokhom Sor with New Hope for sponsorship information! https://www.newhopecambodia.com/project-detail.php?id=7?
They have stolen my heart and I hope you consider helping these children through prayer and financial donations!
“We love because He first loved us.” 1 John 4:19
