Hey Everyone,
I just want to thank everyone again for their love and support while I am on the adventure of a lifetime. I never thought I would see the day I was fully supported. So thank you, thank you, thank you. I cant thank you enough for having supported me.
On Saturday, I went to see one of the seven wonders of the world. The team took a bus to Siem Reap which ended up taking way longer than originally anticipated. The bus ride turned into a five and a half hour trip where Brian gave his seat up for a lady with a child and sat squished on a step with his shoe as a cushion. Go Brian 🙂 Moving on, this blog isn’t really about my speed tour to see Angkor Wat (we only spent a little over an hour at Angkor Wat). The point to this paragraph is that we arrived home super late around one am with church early the next morning (and to brag that I have now seen Angkor Wat). Now, the beauty to this is that we sleep in the church meaning we had to get up fairly early to pack all our stuff up before the church service.
So, the agreement with our contact was that if we went to Angkor Wat, we would not let it affect Sunday which is a ministry day. During lunch, Pastor mentioned going to a cell group and I assumed it would be like last week. We would meet in a house, have bible study and then walk around a little bit. Haha!!! Just goes to show that I shouldn’t make assumptions. In the afternoon after lunch, we drove to the bush of Cambodia. Now granted, I already thought I was living in the bush but nope we went to the middle of nowhere which was really somewhere. We arrived and were greeted by at least twenty smiling faces of children. Come to find out, our Pastor started this cell group where he drives to this off the beaten path village to teach English to the children three times a week. His ultimate goal is to share about Jesus but the villagers rely heavily on their idols and are not open to Jesus. He is doing an amazing job building relationships with the villagers and I cant wait to see how God moves in the village. So, we were taught English, played games, sang some songs, told a bible story and then it gets better. Surprise!!!! Pastor handed me a black plastic bag and told me the kids have lice so we were going to wash their hair. Ok, so you may not know this about me but I am constantly paranoid about lice. I had it once as a kid and then I was scarred for life. Just thinking about it now is making my head itch. I had one thing going through my head the entire time. Lord, I love these children…Lord, I love these children…I just repeated it over and over and over again. As I was washing the sixth head, God kind of showed me a bigger picture. I’m almost hesitant to share this but its relates to what God spoke to me about. Cambodia is known to have a lot of sex trafficking and most of the girls come from poor country areas. I was reading a book about a month ago called Road Of Lost Innocence which talks about it. I’m sure you can find it at your local public library in the nonfiction section. If I had to guess, probably somewhere in the 300s or 400s. Anyways, God spoke to me while I was washing hair that most likely well over half of the girls will be sold/forced into prostitution before they turn 13. God spoke to me a little bit about how some of the children were orphans who truly are alone in this world. That this was one of the few times that they received love from others. God reminded me of my purpose which is to love these little ones even when I can see lice crawling all over their hair. My chant of Lord, I love these children turned into prayers for each individual child as I massaged shampoo into their hair. That He would protect them and allow them to see His love through my actions but through others like Pastor who continues to build relationships with them. My hope and prayer is that they come to know God even though there is already so much hardship that they have to endure in their young lives.
Wrapping this up, I learned a valuable lesson about humility and I will happily wash lice infested hair again if it means ridding the world of lice and showing Gods love all in one.
-Rebecca
