A little preface: I meant to post this soon after getting to Ethiopia, but there’s been no wifi for the past 6 weeks. So we’re posting it now. Enjoy.
I just spent three months living in Battambang, Cambodia. How do you even measure something like that? In sweaty nights? In cups of coffee had? In meals cooked? All of these would do the job, but as it turns out God gave me a perfect way to measure that time: 3 scarves, and a medal. Let’s dissect this one by one.
The outermost scarf was given to me by the administration of the university that my teammates taught at. This one actually taught me a lot. It was the last day of the class and I decided to go watch with a few of the guys to support my teammates that were teaching. The administration had gifts prepared for them, but when the rest of us showed up they quickly threw together a few more for us stragglers. My initial thought was that I didn’t deserve this gift. I had done nothing for this class the entire month it had been going on. But the Lord let me know that he thought I deserved it. He revealed to me that by providing food for my squad (I had been cooking for them all of month 3), had a hand in every ministry that we were a part of.
The scarf in the middle came from my squad’s favorite tuk-tuk driver, Mr. Sam. He was a joy to be around, and was always so kind to all of us. The story of Mr. Sam that stuck with me the most came from when we invited him to one of our dinners (it was a taco bar). It was like any normal dinner for us, but Mr. Sam saw something different. He was sitting with my squad leader, Luis, and said, “I like Jesus.” Luis asked him why and Mr. Sam replied, “You are all so nice and love each other. I think Jesus is good.” Mr. Sam became aware of the love of Jesus because of how we loved each other, which is what we’re told in scripture. When I saw this scarf, I’ll remember that we showed that love to many other than just Mr. Sam.
The innermost scarf is my favorite. My first month on the Race consisted of doing manual labor for what I thought was a run down church. During our time there my team and I got to know many of the people that were a part of the church. The man we worked with is named Sano, and he’s one of the Elders there. He asked us to come to church as a group one last time before flying out so that the church could pray for us. When we arrived, they honored us by presenting us with these scarves. This wouldn’t have been that significant if it wasn’t for the fact that in that church only the Elders wear scarves like these. This is a gesture I’ll never forget.
The last item hanging from neck was not given to me. I like to think I wrestled this from the hands of Cambodia. It’s my Angkor Wat International Half-Marathon medal. That’s right. I ran an actual race while on the World Race. And if you know me at all you know I don’t like to run, but somehow I agreed to do this. And while it was hard on me physically, I can safely say that it was far more difficult for me mentally and spiritually. There were many early mornings that I heard lies while running, telling me that I just couldn’t do it. That I simply could not run that far and that I ought to quit. I was pretty close to taking that option. But something kept me going. My God became my strength, and I ran that half-marathon, overcoming lies one mile at a time.
So does that summarize my 3 months living in Khmer culture? Thankfully, it actually doesn’t. There’s dozens of more stories from that time in my life. But for now, here’s what I felt worth sharing. Maybe someday I’ll figure out how to share everything.
PS. Africa has practically zero wifi. Talk to ya when I talk to ya.
