Can anyone define “flying by the seat of your pants” for me? If you answered, “To have no idea what you’re doing, have all conditions change on you, and therefore, to think on your feet to redeem the situation from utter chaos to some type of order” then you would be correct! Shout out to my Knox Camp peeps who know allll about that. Thankfully, this is another skill that has transferred nicely from the summer into our time in Cambodia.
Our contact, named Darra, is very thoughtful and kind. He insists on bringing us Coke Cola with a deep fried banana-potato snacks (SO delicious) some afternoons, makes sure that our hosts are feeding us food that we like (even though we make no requests! …he’s good.), and being sure that we complete some reflections about the ministry we’re a part of so that he can help to improve it. Let me tell ya, Darra likes to respond to many questions with; “Yeah, sure, sure.” Don’t get me wrong, he is very helpful and an awesome contact! But the odd time, “Yeah, sure,sure” can be….vague, to say the least. However, our team has rolled with the punches and taught some hygiene to the children of the nearby village (brushing teeth, washing hands, clipping nails), “destroyed a room” as they put it (demolished a broken-down part of the building), and built strong relationships with the youth at New Life Church – even visiting their families and praying with them…and whenever we find out that,for example, we’ll be entertaining the children for 4 hours instead of only teaching them some basic hygiene, well, “Yeah, sure, sure” has become a staple to our current lifestyle. Haha!
Whenever instructions aren’t quite the clearest or time-frames are super loose (“So that will be today at 4:00″…a.k.a 5:00….a.k.a tomorrow at 5:00? A.k.a sometime next week?) we’ve learned to say “Yeah, sure, sure” then take on whatever is tossed our way with the utmost energy and excitement possible! We’ve moved from New Life Church to the Methodist Church about 10 km away now. The Methodist Church was built by a pastor who paid for it completely by his own pocket ($20,000 American which is A LOT here), tirelessly harvesting rice to be able to support it. We’ve seen him work in the hot sun, hour after hour for his family and for his church, and I can’t help but think that his labour puts all North American jobs to shame…
Our goodbye to New Life was actually pretty sad, but beautiful. All of the youth prayed over us in the Khmer language before a few of our team got onto the took-took and a few of us (myself included) got onto the mottos to leave. Sorry mom, it was dark, there were no helmets, no dividing lane-lines, no signaling (shout out to Dad, you’d fit in here) – but it actually feels quite safe! I promise! Haha! Half of the youth ended up accompanying us to the next location anyways because they wanted to stay with us – and three of them have ALREADY visited in the last 36 hours that we’ve been here! It’s AWESOME! …Because I already miss them. Today is our day off, and so we’ll be going into town and also visiting the youth from New Life Church -they have been such a blessing to me.
So far, we’ve taught the English alphabet and basic vocabulary to a nearby primary school (even a few teenagers and parents popped in to get in on the lesson!) and had another solid soccer game – that’s gotta be the simplest way of bonding EVER. Definitely going to be a reoccurring pattern of the year, I’m sure.We helped the Methodist pastor’s son, Nune, study for his university english exam which he is writing today also! And have begun to build relationships with the kids from this new church family – which I believe will be even MORE of a reoccurring pattern throughout the year.
Honestly, when people ask me what I’m doing this year on the World Race, I’m going to start responding with; “Just doing life with people in different parts of the world, sharing God’s love, and learning that my way isn’t the only way.” Language barriers? Pffft. If anything, cutting down your words to what is most important gets rid of all the unneccessary fluff that we say. If you let God speak for you, there’s nothing that will get in the way of another person understanding what you’re trying to get across.
Know what I’m sayin’?
Yeah….sure, sure 🙂
