Village Life

This month in Cambodia, we got an in-depth experience of the Khmer culture. (Khmer is the word they use to describe all things Cambodian: Khmer language, Khmer food, Khmer culture, Khmer curry, etc).

Our host was a local Khmer pastor, and we lived at his house with his family in a tiny village just outside of Kompong Chhnang, about two hours from Phnom Penh. Living with our host family was the best way for us to experience the Khmer culture. We got to just enjoy life with them and see how they function on a day to day basis. They cooked us amazing Khmer food, and they even made us some American meals like fried chicken and french fries (with rice, of course). They had a lot of animals including 3 dogs, 5 geese, 27 pigs, and too many ducks and chickens to count. The majority of village houses in Cambodia are build on stilts, and most of the daily activities happen under the house because it provides a cool shade during the scorching dry season, and a dry covering during the rainy season. Here’s a picture of Pastor Prach and the house where we lived.

 

 

 

Pastor Prach started a church in a neighboring village two years ago, and that is where we did ministry. The area is more remote and much more impoverished than the village we lived in with Prach and his family. It was about a 20 minute motorcycle ride to get there. Prach told us that he had been praying for the area for ten years, and he kept asking the elders of his church conference for permission to start a church there, but he kept being denied. He persevered in prayer for the area, doing prayer walks and interceding with his family. Eventually prayer prevailed and he was given permission to start the church. So he bought the land and paid for the church to be built with his personal money, which he is still paying off. I loved hearing about his vision, perseverance, and dedication to bringing the Gospel to this unreached area.  Here’s a picture of the church.

 

 

 

 

The majority of the church attendees are children, so our ministry for the month was doing VBS type activities with the kids. Every day when we pulled up, Prach would honk his horn and all the children would come running from all over the village. We sang tons of Sunday school songs and silly kids songs–and they LOVED it! We played games like tag and a version of duck-duck-goose where you dump buckets of water on each other (which was perfect in the 110 degree weather!). We taught them English lessons, colored pictures with them, taught them Bible lessons and prayed with them. We all got pretty attached to our kids.

 

 

 

 

 

We got to experience one of the biggest celebrations of the year, because the Khmer New Year fell in the middle of April. The Khmer people celebrate hard. It’s not uncommon for people to take the entire month off of work, but most people at least take the week off. On the day of the new year, Prach organized a church trip to a “resort,” which was similar to our state parks with small waterfalls that you can hike to and swim in. That day was a fun adventure. We got up at 6:00am and climbed into the back of a large dump-truck style truck. Then we went to the church to pick up everyone else. I think we squeezed about 80-100 people in that truck, there was only enough room for everyone to stand, shoulder to shoulder. And it was a bumpy, dusty, two-hour ride. We got to the resort and hiked a few kilometers to a waterfall, where we set up camp, had a picnic lunch, and went swimming. As the day went on, more and more people joined the party. By the time we left, there were thousands of Khmer people swimming, drinking, and dancing in the river. And everyone was very intrigued by the six foreigners, it was like we were celebrities. Prach laughed and said that no foreigners ever come to these things. When it was time to leave, we found that our truck was really struggling to make it. So we ended up being pulled the entire way home by another dump truck full of people. It was a comical setup. What was a two-hour ride on the way there became a four and a half hour ride home. It was a long day, but it was super fun to celebrate the Khmer New Year with the Khmer people.

 

 

 

 

 

Like I said, most Khmer people celebrate the New Year all week long–and boy do they love their music! All day long music blared throughout the village from enormous speakers that were placed outside various houses. For two days the house right across the street from us blared music so loud that we had to yell to hear each other inside the house. We could hear the karaoke parties blaring well into the night, and every morning we woke up to a church down the street playing hymns over a loudspeaker at 4:30am. One day after doing ministry with the kids, Prach asked us if we wanted to go dancing. We weren’t sure what he meant, but we just kind of laughed about it. The next thing we knew, he was dropping us off at a random village dance party. We were greeted with hundreds of friendly smiles and nudges toward the dancing area. So we joined the party and danced for about half an hour. Then Prach handed us baby powder and told us to put it on the kids’ faces, as a way of saying goodbye. So we put baby powder on all the kids and they put it on our faces.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cambodia was a good month for my team. It was a restful month living in the village, being disconnected from the outside world (because we didn’t have wifi), and just enjoying the slow pace of the Khmer village life. We loved the Khmer people, and we were loved by them in return.

 

 

We also got to watch the sun rise over Angkor Wat, one of the original Seven Wonders of the World.