I apologize for falling behind on the blogging the last two weeks…I have been in Phuket, Thailand for almost a week now and we have hit the ground running with our ministry here, but before I transition into writing about our time here I feel the need to write one last blog about Cambodia. Our last week there was extremely fast paced and exhausting, but also very rewarding at the same time.
My team worked all month on developing a program for the girls at Transitions Global, to get them involved with their community and teach them the value of giving back. Transitions Global firmly believes that teaching the girls to give back is a vital part of their restoration and reintegration process. So we worked really hard all month, making contacts with local NGO’s and organizations to find places that would be a good fit for the girls from T.G. At first the work was very time consuming and we felt like we were making no progress, despite the amount of contacts we were making. Towards the beginning of week 3 in Cambodia we started to hear back from some of the organizations and we set up meetings and went on tours to evaluate the possibilities. Some fell through, but as we continued to pray over our work, we began to see God pointing the way and opening the right doors.
As we ended week 3 we had a promising contact for the girls’ first outreach; it was an organization working with girls the same age as the girls from Transitions Global, and our team, along with the staff from T.G. felt like it would be good for our girls to reach out and build friendships with some girls their own age. So we worked to find a time that worked for both T.G. and the other organization, and we settled on Saturday, February 12th. As this was only two days before my team was leaving the country, things got pretty crazy for us during week 4. As most of the other teams on our squad were winding down their work with their ministries, we were scrambling trying to find enough time to iron out last minute details and get everything together.
I’m pretty sure we arrived out of breath at Transitions Global on that Saturday from all of our running around. But despite our physical and emotional exhaustion, God showed up on that Saturday in a neighborhood courtyard in Phnom Penh. As soon as we walked through the door, the girls were quite literally all over us. They had all gotten dressed up in their nicest jeans and dressy shirts and had fixed their hair in the amazing ways that I’m pretty sure only Asian girls can, and they looked so precious…and we felt really underdressed in our T-shirts and gym shorts. But they hugged us, and grabbed our hands, and when we asked them if they were excited about the day their smiles spread from one ear to the other and they couldn’t stop giggling.
As we walked with them to the place where we would be meeting the other girls, I couldn’t help feeling like a sort of mother hen…as we walked past men on the street the girls clung to our hands and held onto us, and I felt more protective in that moment than I have in my entire life. It broke my heart all over again.
But it was a short walk, and as soon as we arrived, the girls’ high spirits returned and they were laughing and running all over the place. The other girls came outside and the contrast was astounding; from the outside looking in you would have thought that the roles were reversed, and that is when I realized just how much of an impact Transitions Global was having on the lives of these girls. The T.G. girls were outgoing and immediately introduced themselves and started interacting, while for the other girls, it took a few games for them to begin to warm up to all of us. I must say, having 23 new people arrive in your neighborhood is probably pretty intimidating, to say the least! But the T.G. girls taught the games that we had taught them the week before, and they took ownership of the day and led beautifully. We were all so proud of them. And it was very encouraging for my team to get to see the fruit of our labor as everything we had worked for all month finally came together.
After the outreach, we walked back to Transitions Global where they had dinner waiting for us. And I must say, it was an amazing dinner! As we were all finishing our food the girls turned some music videos on the tv and started dancing along to them in their living room. It wasn’t long before they came over to us, pulled us onto the floor with them and started teaching us the Khmer dances. At first coordinating the steps with the Asian hand movements seemed pretty impossible, but by the end I had started to get the hang of it. Apparently I did ok because several of them told me “oh, you very good!” and Sakada, our translator said, “I can’t even do it!” Haha, who knew I could dance Asian style? Then they changed the music back to hip-hop and my white girl genes kicked back in really quick.
I was sad to leave Cambodia. It was hard to say goodbye to the girls and the staff at Transitions Global. As we left that night, Sola (one of the staff members) looked at me with tears in her eyes, pointed upwards and said “see you one day.” It is amazing to think that God brought me halfway around the world to touch the hearts of my sisters in Cambodia…and to have my heart touched by them as well.
