When did this life start to feel normal?
I talked to my dad on the phone today and he was so encouraging, when it hit me that this is NOT normal. Telling him that we are living in the slums of a third world country and making some of my most favorite memories…
This is so much better than what normal was to me!
A joke our team usually says right before getting to a ministry is "were just waiting for it to get hard." It is a joke because truthfully none of REALLY want it to get too hard.
There have moments that are hard, times when there isn't running water, food is than appealing, sleeping on the ground wares on your body, and the heat can be exhausting but all of that is easily pushed aside when I see what the Lord is doing in our team and where were living. Lives changing, us pushing the bar up in our lives and deciding we need to do more.
This month we are living outside Phenom Pehn, Cambodia in the slums. We are living at a home that was started two and a half months ago by Teen Challenge Cambodia and a local Khamir man, Koy.
This week we have been joking that The World Race really started! We are living in harder living conditions than we have been for the first four months, but it only makes it that much sweeter! Because we are living alongside women who have spent there lives in the trafficking industry, from labor to sex. And now we get to live and love on them and their kids. We are teaching english, working with the women during the day on the prooperty and just building relationships. I can tell you that these women are for the first time being exposed to a life where they are not treated as an object. They are not for sale.
They have a house mom who teaches them about the bible and does daily counseling with them and they have world race teams coming in each month to live with them and teach english and other trades to help them become self sustaining.
Here are some photos of our first week–
Worship with James and Samuel
Hanging with the women
Getting rid of grass with pick axes
Haircuts are too expensive (thank you Logan and Graham for the lessons before my trip!)
New haircuts!
Seesaw champs
