TRAVELING
We flew from Dominican Republic to Miami
to LA (which we had one glorious day of rest in America and restocked at Target:
). Then we flew from LA to Tokyo, Japan and had a fun 3 hour layover in Tokyo’s amazing airport! It was pretty fun to explore. We then ventured on another long flight to Bangkok, Thailand. From there we took a bus to the border and
immigrated. Then we got on another bus
to our ministry site. In .JPG)
all of this
travel we definitely skipped over half a day and we travel for 4 days a total
of 82 hours!! Yeah get your time travel
calculators out! Seriously get
digitizing…or calculating…which ever word works for you🙂
HISTORY
Here we are in Cambodia! We have spent a day getting our bearings and
being introduced to some cultural norms.
We also received a history lesson on this country which I found
amazing. Some of the most interesting
facts are how many times this land has been conquered and fought over and
rebuilt. It has been fought and
conquered by the Thai, the Cham, the Vietnamese, the French, the Japanese, the
Americans and the Vietnamese again. Between
1864 and 1940’s the French had control over Cambodia. They lost control during World War 2 to the
Japanese which allowed the Cambodians to have more reign over their government
than with the French. The French later
returned to Cambodia
to regain the land but the Cambodian people fought for freedom and acquired it
in 1954. .JPG)
Soon after, the American war with Vietnam in the 60’s affected the ruling of the
leadership of Pol Pot in the northeast of Cambodia. During the American-Vietnam war the
Vietnamese troops were traveling through Cambodia to get the South of
Vietnam. The Americans would bomb Cambodia to try
to kill the Vietnamese people. This caused an uprising in two different governments
that began the civil war.
The civil war here was a fight
between the Lon Nol’s government and the Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. When the Khmer Rouge took power they began to
kill anyone who was associated with the government that they were fighting
against. They began a genocide that was
bigger than the Holocaust. The Khmer
Rouge killed anyone who was educated, because they had been corrupted by
Western thinking. They also killed
Buddhist monks and over 90% of the Christians.
By the end of the Khmer Rouge rule, as many as 2 million people had died;
about 1/3 of the population! The Khmer
Rouge then went to invade Vietnam,
but by 1979 the Vietnamese troops had seized Phnom Penh (Capital of Cambodia). (Fast forward…) During the 90’s the United Nations
has set up treaties and elections. In
1999 there was they first year of peace since 1989!
VISITING THE PAST
We had a chance to visit the high
school (above) that the Khmer Rouge turned into a torture facility. We also visited one of the many killing
fields where the Khmer Rouge took bus loads of people and killed them. The least I can say is that the entire
experience was really intense. To hear
and walk through places that a third of their nation was tortured and killed at
was insane. This entire experience
helped me understand more about the grief and loss that this place and its
people have suffered. As we minister to
these people we need to always keep in mind that the people who survived that
ti.JPG)
me period are still alive today. They
are still hold the scars and memories of what was ripped away from them during
the Khmer Rouge. (pictures: Left- me reading history and walking through halls; Right-Victims pictures)
But Hallelujah
that this nation is on the uprising and recovering and they are finally in
charge of what is going on in their country.
As we walk around to different places we can see that work is being done
to make help the people here. We see a
lot of non-government organizations contributing to the community’s here-
schools, clinics, etc.
As for religion this country mainly
celebrates Buddhism which in actuality here is a combination of Hinduism,
Buddhism, Animism, Ancestor worship and Humanism. I’m not sure if I got those all right but all
religions right but they all exist here.
In 1989 there was about 300 Christians here but nowadays there are more
than 200,000 Christians!
OUR MINISTRY
We are located in the slums near Rubbish Mountain. Rubbish
Mountain is a trash dump
where many people make their living trying to make use out the garbage. They collect bottles to sell the plastic back
and old shoes to restore them and sell them.
I am still not sure what else they collect but they sell it back to
companies I believe on the mountain.
They make about $1-2 .JPG)
dollars a day for about a 10-13 hour work day. That is enough to have food for a day and
maybe pay for rent. If the kids want to
go to school they work one day and maybe go to school for one or two days. We are working alongside Tree of Life Missionary
Network which YWAM connected us to. They
teach the community about health, play with the children, tell people about
Jesus and work at the clinic. (picture: In the distance is rubbish mountain; we were not able to get closer our first day)
PRAYER
Our team/squad:
Pray against disconnect between team members (THIS IS
HUGE!!).
Pray for clear communication with the Cambodians. Also that
we do not offend anyone.
Pray that we follow Gods direction in everything.
sin in our face to get us down. We heard
that any sin that people struggle or struggled with is intensified here.
