Adventures WorldRace SethBarnes Sponsorship Giving

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I figure you guys are probably wondering what I have been doing all month so I’ll use this blog to give you the rundown.

First of all, I don’t think I ever let anyone know that all the teams changed as soon as we got into Cambodia. My team wasn’t completely torn apart, but we did lose two members, Brian and Sarah O. It was harder than I thought it would be to say goodbye to them and to Team Gozo. But that also means we gained two new members; two ladies named Katie and Erin making us an all girls team. It has been so fun getting to know them and making our new team. We are all excited for the journey we will be sharing for the next 7 months (maybe). This new team now travels under the name, Undignified, but I prefer Barenaked Ladies (please reference 2 Samuel 6:12-23 and the 90’s band, Barenaked Ladies).


Also, you probably know some of what happened during the Pol Pot regime in the 1970’s and the genocide that went hand in hand, but I didn’t really know a whole lot (thanks a lot, US history teachers). We spent the first few days in Phnom Penh taking a crash course on what happened and got to visit some of the museums and landmarks associated with what happened. Its crazy because it was not so long ago and there are still plenty of people around who were a part of it. It was a mini-Holocaust but no one really knows about it… In the village we lived in, we met a lot of men and women who were a part of it and remember it very clearly.

My team was one of two that left the capital, Phnom Penh and went out to live in a smaller province. And as you might guess by my lack of contact with the rest of the world, it was pretty remote. I am really glad we got outside of the city though because I feel like we got to see the real Cambodia, and it was beautiful. The place we were in was a tropical countryside full of fields of all kinds of crops. There were also many types of fruit trees with the Mekong River (Asia’s largest river) running through it all. There is so much I have seen and learned about Cambodia and I want to share it all but that would take awhile 🙂

I think I could write an entire blog on the men that we got to work with (I didn’t, but Amy did! read it here). We stayed with three brothers and their friends and they were such amazing men of God with the biggest servants hearts. They are so young (21-30) but they pretty much run the Christian community in this area. People listen to them and they have so much love exuding from them, I don’t know how anyone could not follow them. They were a huge blessing to us and we had so much fun getting to know them! Their mom cooked all of our meals, which were delicious and included rice at every meal. She also taught us how to make fried bananas, we learned to make sticky rice that you stuff into/then eat out of a bamboo stick cooked in a bonfire and we even got to eat fresh honeycomb (like with the bees still buzzing in and around it) with bread.

Us and part of our new family (Utry, Uee, Sitai and Song)

Our ministry days consisted of prayer walks/meeting people in the surrounding villages, teaching English and speaking at small group meetings and church services. We got to do a lot of Christmas programs and we tried our best to represent the American way of Christmas in the middle of nowhere Cambodia. It was a really great place for us to start as a new team and just a great ministry month in general. We felt so blessed all around! Please continue to keep us in your prayers as we move forward as a team and head into Africa for the next three months. Thankssssssss.