Month 1 of my route is over. I’m comfortably wallowing in air conditioning, reminiscing as first debrief has just come and gone. The next chapter is just beginning to unfold, and I’m fingering through the pages and stories of month one. Looking back I continually find myself asking the questions, what am I doing here? Why are Kit Kats so expensive? Am I actually making a difference?
These questions have been posed to many. The truth is I don’t know what my impact has been or the mystery behind Kit Kats obnoxious prices abroad. What I do have is my experiences. I don’t remember the way every song goes. I can’t recall every person I’ve met. I’m terrible with birthdays. I remember all the ways people have affected me. How our stories became memories, and if you made an impact then you’re in there somewhere. I remember how things felt, which in turn makes me remember how things happened. Like my first attempt at the monkey bars, where I received a crescendo of cracks in my left wrist in response to the ground “breaking” my fall. These stories aren’t all great, but they’re mine.
My time in Cambodia hasn’t always been great, but the experience has been mine. My days weren’t made on an assembly line. They weren’t prepackaged with stories and memories. I had to make my own. But of all the places that have affected me, none comes close to the scenes that have played in the slums my team has been assigned to for ministry.
So, without further explanations, a scene from the slums of Cambodia-
My bike screeched to a stop. As our team’s destination came into view the first thing we noticed was the stench. It streamed in from somewhere ahead, hitting like an avalanche, filling in every open space and fouling all the air it touched. Looking around the street the smell begins to fit into context. Trash burns in witch-like cauldrons, half-tailed cats run and hiss at random, shacks and lean-tos line the path filled with families who lie together at night like a pile of dirty laundry that someone has been meaning to clean for the large part of a long while.
Armed with a bag of fruit and the mentality that “we’re going to change the world” my team and I walk through the slum reminding ourselves that we can make a difference. The truth is if we consider that the universe is never-ending, then we’re not even a microbe. We’re like a death threat from a pacifist, we’re nothing. But I think that’s what makes God so beautiful. In the grand scheme of things we are barely a moment in an endless eternity, and if we believe ourselves to be the center of this universe, we’re so wrong. Though our time here is short, God can and does still use us.
As we walk kids start to pour out from every nook and cranny. Their faces lighting up at the sight of us. As I hand out oranges and papers that read “Jesus loves you,” in Khmer, the kid’s faces begin to brighten. Though I can’t do much more for them we know this is the best we can for now. We continue to walk, and as we do the street comes alive. People pour out like a river strained through the beaver dam of self-containment. All in awe that a group of young white people would care enough to be found in a place where you don’t know when the dirt ends and the floor begins.
While walking we find ourselves drawn to a child we call Mowgli, whose name remains a mystery to this day. Allowing the little man-cub to lead us we find ourselves welcomed into a large room strung with hammocks filled by the elderly members of the “untouchables.” Looking around we spot a woman sitting curled up like a fist protesting death. I don’t have to ask what she’s got; the glazed over stare and skin and bones frame speak volumes. She’s dying. I manage a smile the first time I see her, and it feels like the biggest lie I have ever told. So I hold my breath thinking any minute she’s going to call me on it. But I am met with silence and an out-reached hand. You see I love the way a unfurled fist becomes a hand again as if to welcome us every now and then. So we hold her hand tightly, and we meet silence with the same level of noise that the parents of dying nine-year-old boys make when they take liberties in talking with heaven. We let our prayers swell into crescendos that are met with the melody of the way God’s heart beats.
As much as I want to say that she was healed that day, I cant. I don’t know why people suffer. I don’t know why some of us are going to get cancer or fall in our showers. But I do know that we are called to love others because love is a feeling that in me and through me others will often see God. If I have learned anything so far it’s that as a Christian you have to care about the world, because it doesn’t care about you.
