Week One in the Provinces

Ok, I’ll be honest. As far as weeks go, this was not one of my best on the World Race. It started out very promising because when we were expecting to have to spend $50 to hire a van to take us to the village (plus a daily fee to stay out there), we ended up only having to spend two dollars per person to take the local bus! Hallelujah for cheap transportation! Then, basically right after we arrived at the church we were staying at, our contacts asked us if we would go with them to pray for some of the people in the villages that were sick…and so we did! We got on the back of their mopeds (don’t worry, we didn’t drive) and whizzed off to go pray. Very good stuff. However, that night… I got food poisoning, or at least something very similar. I spent that whole night freezing and burning up and sweating and running to the toilet again and again. Brutal. Then, I find out in the morning that Jordan had the very same thing, and we were probably alternating in our trips to the bathroom. Needless to say, Jordan and I spent the better part of the next two days layed up on our sleeping pads trying to recover. Also, Katie got sick the next day, and actually had to come back to Phnom Penh early because she was so drained! Talk about a rough start for Team Jubilee…

 

Because of this I probably have a skewed perspective on the week, but Janna and DJ definitely loved it (DJ preached twice Sunday and did a great job!). Neither of them got sick at all so they were able to do all of the ministry that we had scheduled, whereas some of us were very limited. These activities included going into the village to pray for the sick, visiting nearby churches to encourage and pray for the pastor and the leadership, and teaching English at the church in the evenings. The English classes were crazy! They are normally taught by a few of the young men and women from the church, and so when we were asked to “help teach,” we had noooo idea what to expect…and, in typical non-Western fashion, they didn’t tell us anything! We were kinda thrown in there alongside them to perform a weird sort of teaching/helping/speaking role…never sure exactly what they wanted anyway. I don’t know if the students learned any English from us, but at least they got a change from the norm – and who doesn’t love having a substitute teacher?!

 

We are now spending a couple days here in PP relaxing and resting up, getting ready to head out to our next village Friday morning (Thursday night for most of you). We are making sure to get some good non-Khmer food during our stay, i.e. pizza and burgers and ice cream. I will try to post another blog as soon as I know what our plans are for part two of our Cambodian ministry!