I wake up at 5:15 in the morning here in Battambang. I take a shower and get ready, then head to the roof of my home to spend some time with the Lord. I have breakfast with my whole squad at 6:30 and head to devotion with the ministry next door at 7:00. After devo time, my team and I hop on our bikes (Our host has provided our squad with bikes to help us get to our ministry locations! so much fun. So so blessed. My bike is pink and her name is Pearl and I love her dearly.) and head to a nearby buddhist school where we teach. I have ben assigned to a preschool classroom, so it is a little less teaching and a lot more playing, which I love! The children are learning to speak the native language, Khmer, but they are also being taught English, so we sing songs and dance and run and play games literally ALL DAY. It is exhausting and so much fun. Our morning session begins at 7:50. At 10:30 we bike back home for break/lunch at 11:30. We have squad quiet time at 12:30 and bike back to ministry at 1:50. We have our afternoon session until 4:45, then bike back home for free time and dinner at 6:30. After dinner, is team-time, where we get into our teams and just discuss how our ministry is going and how we are adjusting and how we see the Lord moving in our lives, just all the things. It gets dark around 6:30, so we are all usually in bed by 8:30 lol. This has just been the general run down, so allow me to share a little story with you just to really give you a picture of what my life is like here:
So last Sunday, my teammates, Paige and Caroline, and I were biking home from an ADORABLE little coffee shop called Memory. We were just driving, laughing, having a good old time, when ALL OF THE SUDDEN I come to a dramatic stop…MY SKIRT GOT CAUGHT IN THE BACK TIRE OF MY BIKE. I could not stand up, my bike would not move. I was literally stuck in the street, so what do I do? I of course call to my friends for assistance, but Paige is having a laughing fit, and Caroline is too busy videoing the whole catastrophe to give a girl a hand. So what happens next??? A local comes to my aid. You would think the story would end there, BUT it doesn’t. The exceedingly kind local does EVERYTHING in his power to free me with my skirt in tact, (all of which involve him in full view of what is under the skirt, don’t worry I had spandex on BUT STILL) but he is unsuccessful. So what’s the next move? Another local emerges WITH A PAIR OF SCISSORS. So yes, I have been cut out of a skirt by a couple of locals in a foreign country. BUT, because the Lord is faithful, I was able to tie what remained of my skirt around me so that I could arrive home with at least SOME of my dignity in tact.
Even though I am in a completely unknown place surrounded by unfamiliar faces, I have never felt more at peace. I have been sleeping on a sleeping pad in the floor with no air conditioning and it is the most comfortable bed I have ever had; I kid you not I sleep like a brick every night. The Lord is truly blessing me so big here in Cambodia. My host house really feels like a home and my squad really feels like a family. The Lord has been so comforting and steady in a time of such drastic change. When you live with 40 other people, you don’t have much control over what you eat, where you go, or much of anything really. But the Lord is slowly but surely teaching me how to let go of that control and give it over to Him completely. And it has been nothing but freeing. He has revealed to me so much about His character and who He is to me. He has been my safe retreat, my constant, my home, my Father. And He has been all these things to me all my life I have just not realized it, until now when it is all I really have. He has been holding my hand with every step that I have taken. Here in Cambodia He has taken the burden of fear and anxiety; He is showing me freedom.
