We have arrived. Physically it took us about 60 hours to reach our destination in Cambodia, but I think for some of us the spiritual journey was much longer. We had a few flights and a lay over in Korea for about 10 hours. I ended up getting sick at the beginning of the trip, but am now starting to feel better.
Cambodia is beautiful. We arrived in the city of Phnon Penh, and stayed in a hotel for the evening. The next morning a few of us went to walk around the busy streets looking for breakfast. It is an extremely busy city, and was filled with cars, motos, street vendors, and people. There is trash littered here and there. The buildings are scattered in various vibrant colors. We each had smiles that seemed to only stretch bigger the farther we walked, we were here finally!
Soon after we hopped onto a van and our team of 5 left for our ministry site which is about 5 hours away from the city. We got stuck in hectic traffic that reminded me of the city I grew up in Bolivia. The rule of thumb for driving is that there are no rules. We finally made our way out of the city and began traveling across the countryside and took in all of its beauty. The country side is so green, and lush. The tall grass moves with the wind almost like soft waves in the ocean. We quickly became obsessed with the many water buffalo we saw, and adorable kids. There was tons of flooding due to it being the rainy season, so the water covered the roads in lots of areas.
Our host let us stop for lunch in the afternoon at this sweet little outdoor local restaurant. The food is AMAZING. It is a variation of rice and different meats.
Our arrival time was around 6 that evening. To say we were tired was an understatement. Severly jetlagged, and physically tired from traveling for the last few days, Im pretty sure we went to bed at 8 that night. We have a little room that some of us are staying in, we;re sleeping in our tents and have a fan in the evening. This morning we woke up to a rooster and the ducks making noise outside of our door. Breakfast was served outside, and we got to enjoy the sunrise coming up as we ate. This life is beautiful in its simplicity.
Today it is sunday, and so we went to the church near by and got to sit through their service. They asked us to sing, and tell about our ministry. Unfortunately we don;t have singing voices at ALL, but lucky for us they seemed to have enjoyed it.
The cambodian people are literally the best. All of them have this sweet nature, and have such joyful laughs. We could absolutely feel the presence of the holy spirit during worship, even though we couldn;t understand the words. It was so amazing to be in another culture, around people that love Jesus, hearing worship in such a beautiful language knowing that the Lord hears all of it and adores every language and every people group so much.
From each person on my team, I know we are all feeling just so blessed to be here. This week will look like teaching hygiene, and english classes to the kids. I;ll update with more next weekend. God is just so good. Thank you everyone for the prayers. We absolutely feel them!
