The weekend before last was hands down one of the most amazing weekends of my life. Come Saturday morning we were met at the bottom of our stairs by Sokun and six children with their bicycles. My team and I were going to travel the four kilometers to Sokuns church to teach English and Bible stories to the children and young adults in his village. Turns out me and bicycles aren’t friends; fast forward ten minutes and there I am, clinging to a Cambodian man I hardly know while on the back of a motorbike. Did I mention we were traveling down a Cambodian highway, had no helmet on and this was my first time on anything with two wheels and a motor. For the first five minutes I couldn’t decide if I wanted to laugh or cry, so I did both. I believe at one point as we passed Alecia on her bike I cried out in desperation that I wanted my daddy and off the darn bike. Not gonna lie, not my greatest moment. However shortly after my terror induced plea I started becoming more comfortable with that whole motorbike business. By the time we turned on to the bumpy dirt road I was thanking Jesus for not letting me die on the side of a Cambodian highway and also praising Him for such an awesome adventure. How often in life is one blessed with the opportunity to ride a motorbike down a red dirt road in the beautiful Cambodian countryside; sun shining, blue skies, wind in my mess of a mane. It was glorious!
As we road down that dirt road I knew Jesus was there too. I’ve been learning how to meet God in different places and different ways this past month but never could I ever have conceived that I’d meet him on a motorbike in Cambodia. As we traveled past his children fishing in the fields and made our way around others traveling on that little dirt road I looked around and there was nothing but green rice fields, palm trees and blue skies as far as I could see. It was then that I remember why we are to thank God without ceasing, among many other things He is an amazing creator of beautiful people and places…like this country and its people and for that I am oh-so grateful! We then pull up beside a cow and I do my best to gracefully dismount off the bike. Much easier said then done, especially when in a skirt..especially in a skirt in a country where it is disrespectful and scandalous for a women to expose the knee and above. As we pulled up I expected to see a building of some sort, at the very least a concrete building with blue shutters and bars for windows like most of the schools here-if not something nicer-I mean this is a church-it’s gotta be somewhat nice right?! Wrong.
There in the middle of what looked to be a swamp stood a shack. It wasn’t until Sokun started walking towards the shack that I realized that that particular shack was in fact the school/church. I started following him only to be met by a large pool of mud. I realized the only way to get into the school was to tread through the mud…in my white skirt, of course. My first thought was ‘there are about five cows standing around here, ten bucks says this isn’t mud.’ I promptly told God that I was not walking through that stinking mud- no pun intended. That’s when he gently reminded me that Jesus would do it. In my best attempt to reflect His imagine as best as humanly possible and be like Jesus my phrase the past few weeks has been the classic what would Jesus do? If Jesus would do it, then by golly I can attempt to do it and at the very least do it joyfully. I then looked up from the mud and my thoughts to see dozens of little faces in the door way watching me-eager with anticipation. Remembering that I wanted to not only share the gospel with these children but I also wanted to show them Christ by example and knowing that Jesus would be so stoked about hanging out with those beautiful children He wouldn’t think twice about the mud. So I did what any desired image bearer would do…
