Here is the summary of this last month in Cambodia.
Here are the numbers
Number of different beds slept in: 13
Number of times we packed our big bags: 5
Number of meals that included rice and/or rice noodles: 12
Number of tuk tuk rides: impossible to count
Number of markets shopped in: 5
Number of tuk tuks we broke: 2
Advice to Future Racers
The Phkar Chouk Tep II hotel in Phnom Penh is very good at serving World Racers, has sweet air conditioning, and is very affordable. It’s near the City Mall and the Olympic Stadium, so if you are here and you just need somewhere to get away and be in some climate control for a night, check it out.
The Blue Pumpkin. On the Riverside. Go there. Great food. Best wifi of the entire race. Enough said.
If you have extra time and want somewhere to have a weekend getaway, or if you’re here during Water Festival and your ministry closes down like ours did and you want to get out of the city, hop on a four hour bus ride south to Sihanoukville. There are tons of beaches and places to stay, and it’s all relatively cheap. We spent five nights at Serendipity Beach in several different hostels and hotels. There is really good Western food, nice places to stay, snorkeling, scuba diving, and obviously the beach. If you need suggestions of good places to stay at Serendipity Beach, feel free to email me and I’ll hook you up!
Ministry Summary
Those of you who know me can attest to the fact that I’m a huge nerd. I always loved school and enjoyed studying most of the time. I constantly miss college, and I’m seriously contemplating going to grad school in the near future. So it makes perfect sense that I got to go back to school for the last month of the race.
This month we’ve been in Phnom Penh, Cambodia teaching English at a language learning center that is really all about telling the students about Christ, leading them into a relationship with God, discipling them, and planting a Khmer church here. We spent our afternoons teaching various age groups, from 3-year-olds to university students. Even though I think kids are adorable, my favorite classes were by far the older students. I studied Spanish in college so I have an unhealthy appreciation for grammar that I never get to talk about…until now! I had a fun month of unashamedly nerding out and explaining the active voice, the present perfect tense, and the unending variety of homophones and homonyms in the English language. We played lots of Hangman, Catchphrase, and 20 Questions, drew a lot of unfortunate looking pictures on the board, and sang more off-key English songs than anyone should be subjected to.
On Thursday nights and Sunday mornings the English center becomes a church where the students come to worship God or learn about him for the first time. Our teams became the preachers and sometimes the worship leaders for the month. My teammates encouraged the believers to persevere in the face of persecution and rejection from their families and challenged this young generation in Cambodia to be the change that their country is desperately seeking. We saw several students accept Christ and make commitments to deepen their relationships with him.
This was the perfect last month. We had a ministry contact who we loved, a ministry we looked forward to getting up and going to, and fun people to spend our time with. I am definitely going to miss Asia!
We figured we might as well teach them the proper way to speak English.
And because English isn’t a confusing enough language, we thought it would be a good idea to go ahead and throw some Spanish in there too.
Affectionately known as Justin Bieber.
Pictionary and an accurate history lesson…yes that does say that the pilgrims sailed over on the Mayflower and the Santa Maria.
Tiffany, Joel, and Jeremiah leading worship in the Thursday night services.
Team Wreckonciled on our last day of World Race ministry. We did it!!
Prayer Requests
We are now in Siem Reap at final debrief…I seriously can’t believe it!! We’ll be on US soil in a mere three days, and I’ll be in Atlanta in seven days. Between now and then I will be debriefing the year with my team, saying goodbye to my squad, making some videos about our year, visiting Angkor Wat Temple, traveling back to Bangkok, flying to China, flying to LA, visiting a grad school, spending time with some friends from Wheaton, and flying back to Atlanta. I would appreciate your prayers for these next nine days are they are going to be extremely busy and full of transition, sadness, excitement, and more emotions that are probably healthy to pack into that short of a time frame. Please pray for our travels from Cambodia to Thailand to China to the US. There is still a good bit of flooding in and around Bangkok, and we have to go there to get our bags and fly out.
Thank you SO MUCH for all your prayers and support throughout this year. I am by no means finished with this blog. I have a sticky note on my desktop with more than twenty future blogs in the making, so keep checking this site because I’ll be telling all the stories I never wrote about from the year, posting the videos we’ve been making, writing about the transition to home, contemplating God’s plans for the next chapter of my life, and hopefully also making you laugh from time to time. I have much more to say about the World Race that I just haven’t had the time to put into writing, so that’s to come as soon as I get a few minutes and some good wifi. Most of all, I can’t wait to see all of you in a little over a week!! It’s going to take me awhile to process this last year, so I may not always have the perfect answers to your questions, but please ask them, and please know how happy I am to see you and how nice it is to be missed and be welcomed home. Your prayers and encouragement have literally meant the world to me this year.
