Our month in Cambodia has come to a close. Overall it was a great month. We spent our time living with about twenty High School students teaching classes, helping out around the facility and most importantly just doing life together. We were able to build strong bonds with them as well as form relationships with others out in the community. I was very impressed with the people we met that have been faithfully serving in Cambodia whether native to it or not. Cambodia is a country that has been through so much heartache, yet the people are so kind and that is truly inspiring.
Next, we head to Thailand and our whole squad will be together for the month. We will be staying in Chiang Mai, which is a popular tourist location in the northern part of the country. Our squads ministry will have a few different focuses. There will be a bar ministry where people go into town to minister to sex trafficked women or men trying to buy the women. There is a local café some will be working at that I believe provides a job to women who have been pulled out of the human traffic industry. Other ministries are going into villages, doing chats with monks, or teaching English. I am honestly excited for whatever my team ends up doing.
Something I learned a lot over this last month was to give God space to move in my life. Being in a totally different country away from the comforts of home was difficult at first. It is easy to let fears arise about basic concerns such as food, sleep, bathing, staying healthy ect. Just wanting to cling on to control and the comforts I am used too. I learned and am learning more and more to give those up to God and trust that he knows my struggles, needs and desires more then I do. He cares for me and his ways are higher then mine. I can already feel burdens lifted from that and the rest of the month went really well.
But these fears can arise about much bigger matters then daily comforts. Spiritual matters such as how to bring hope and healing to a world that at times can look so gloom. I’m not necessarily speaking about Cambodia or Thailand. Everywhere you go whether the wealthiest city or the poorest slum the same problem exist. People are broken, and it manifest itself in many different ways. We read in the Bible how Gods Kingdom is here now and will eventually come in all of its glory, but at times it is easy to walk down the street and wonder “Where is it?”
I found some encouragement recently from a very unlikely source, “The Genealogy of Jesus. “ I decided to read through the book of Matthew recently and was almost going to skip the Genealogy because I thought it is just a lot of ‘this person is the father of this person’ and so on. I thought I might as well read it because who knows maybe I can learn something.
Reading through you hear so many familiar names: Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon, Ruth, as well as good and bad Kings ect. Then at the end we see “Thus there were fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile in Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ.”
This opened my eyes to how God is faithful with his promises. He promised long before Jesus that Jesus would come. From that list alone there was faithfulness, disobedience, love, murder, adultery, miracles, silence and so on. Through it all, no matter how dark life was or how bright, God came through on his promise and Jesus arrived. The order of it at all is re assuring as well 14, 14, 14. God is in control even in the messiest of times.
The same is true today. No matter how dark or bright life may get for an individual, a family, a country or the world, God comes through on his promises. His Kingdom is here now and there will be a day with no more suffering.
“ He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the older of things has passed away.” Revelation 21:4
