“You eat my peanuts, and I will eat all the words and teachings that you give me” Chom said as Katie, Jenny and I stood again on the front porch of his shop, munching on lemon grass soaked peanuts that his soon to be sister in law brought out for us.
Our daily visits have continued strong, we’ve shared more laughs, listened to him tell us about his culture and given him a Khmer Bible. I don’t know of a better way to give you a look into those visits than to share with you some Chom quotes, left in his broken English because I don’t want to mess with how sweet they are:
-“You must understand in my culture if we do not like something we do not spend time on it. I think the Bible is hard to read and I do not really like it, but because we are friends I read some last night”
-“I am thinking that maybe the things I don’t like are right and the things I do like are not right”
-“I see that you have purpose in your life and that it is good for you”
-“People who believe in Jesus are warm, you are warm people, not cold”
He explained that he wants to be “warm” too but that belief is hard for him because he likes logical explanations. Sometimes we have answers for him and I have to say I really love explaining things to him because like he said he readily eats up information, other times he’ll ask tricky questions and we’ll just let him know that were happy to look it up for him and let him know the next day. He’s asked about church and we are setting him up with our host family so he can keep learning once were gone.
We’ve spent hours sweating on his front porch and I wouldn’t trade one of them, they’ve been so jam packed with good conversations. Each day I walk away thinking “who would have imagined us three girls would all feel so connected to this Cambodian man behind the counter at a iPhone case stand…what a crazy life”
I prayed that I would feel purposeful this month and that I could reach the un reached in some way…and along came Chom.
-Megan
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If you missed the story on how we meet Chom here is my last blog:
“You’ve Got Mail: From Megan”
The Vacation Bible School flyers had been printed and we were ready to hit the streets in search of children to invite. My friends Katie and Jenny accompanied me as we choose our route, we took a right and so began our adventure….
After passing out a few flyers and convincing a couple of neighborhood kids they would enjoy VBS we came across a little corner store shack-like building selling I-phone cases. There was a woman at the counter, a hammock swinging behind her. Perfect we thought, there’s bound to be a kid in that hammock. As we got closer the hammock stopped and out popped an adult man, grinning ear to ear, we soon learned his name was Chom.
After we shared some smiles and laughs and as he introduced us to his sister and his cat we began to explain what we were doing and asking if he had children. He didn’t know any little ones we could invite to VBS but as it turned out he had some questions of his own… He began to tell us about Buddha and his beliefs and as he did he reveled his heart;
“I believe in Buddha because most people do, but I am actually very unsure”
Katie and I gave each other a side glace; Oh boy we thought…its going down!
Chom asked us if we were scared of dying; we explained that because we know Jesus we know that dying leads to eternity in heaven, so while death is still sad it isn’t scary.
He asked us how we talk to our God, we told him we can pray whenever and wherever, because God is all ears about any topic.
He wondered if it was okay to pray even if his mind was “un-pure”; we explained that our God loves us unconditionally despite our mistakes
“I am not sure of my religion, are you sure of yours?” He asked. He locked eyes with me as I replied “Yes!” His eyes skipped over to Katie as he stared her down expectantly “Yes!” she replied. He moved right on down the line, glued to Jenny’s face now, “Yes” she replied.
Three people confident in what they believed left him surprised, he spit out “Wow, wow, wow” and told us in the best English he could muster up that he needed time to think and then he wanted to ask us more questions.
Man, we thought, this guy is full of good questions! We promised to come back the next morning and parted ways. As you can imagine we spent the walk home distracted from the heat and sweat and instead focused our conversation on the craziness that just went down seemingly out of nowhere.
After a pep talk and prayer the next morning we practically skipped back to our friend Chom’s and sure enough there he was smiling as we walked up. He asked us about prayer again, he wanted us to show and teach him. So, we did just that, Katie prayed and with his eyes closed and hands folded his little whisper repeated each sentence after her. He asked if God listens and how you know if he has, we each told stores of his provision and how we’ve seen his plans unfold in our lives. We talked, we laughed and we learned from each other. We left again with a promise to return Monday morning.
Our host mom gave us a Khmer Bible, we’ve left a little note on the inside flap and highlighted some good places to start… come on Monday, we’re ready to see what God has up his sleeve for us and Chom!
