Colors. Brilliant shades of green flowing by my window, moving endlessly, seemingly flowing on forever. Palm, Coconut, and Banana trees standing proud among their neighboring rice fields; blue water perfectly reflecting sky, not knowing where one stop and the other begins. Stilted homes built high to avoid floods, walls made of leaves and roofs made of tin. Women walking around with baskets balanced precariously on their head and men working over rice lying out to dry on tarps in their yards. Children with hair in tangles, dirt caked into skin, and calloused feet from years of playing with no shoes. Magnificence.
These are the images that played through my eyes as my team drove from Phnom Penh to our precious little village in the middle of Cambodia. These are the images that played through my mind as God spoke His love to me through His creation. And these are the images that played through my mind as my compassion grew for a country once completely off my radar.
As we drove off the main road, moving down a bumpy dirt path that was leading us into a jungle amongst rice fields my heart was being pumped with love.
Little did I know that the week I spent in a very small village would impact me with the type of intensity that it did.
As we pulled up to the compound we would be living at, we were immediately greeted by a flurry of people speaking a language we did not know. Our bags were taken from our hands and we were ushered in with awkward smiles and giggles – the universal sign of I-don’t-speak-your-language-and-you-don’t-speak-mine-so-this-is-how-we-will-communicate.
There were girls and boys and babies with no clothes and one random American boy. We spent what felt like hours attempting to put up nets to protect us from pesky little bugs and unpack in the room that would be our home-away-from home for the month. We sat down to a dinner outside with rice and meat, and ate with our aggressive friends, the mosquitos.
And when the night came we went to our beds, safe under the protection of pink and blue netting, with the sweet sounds of bugs chirping and wind blowing to lull us to sleep.
The next day we were up by 5:15 ready for our 5:30 devotionals – something that was to become our routine for the next month. We sat awkwardly around a table with the American and his Cambodian translator, Mot, two people that would end up becoming cherished friends. We read scripture and laughed at the awkwardness of our early morning get together.
We did life together that first day with our new family in Prey Veng. We did church. We did games. We did naps. We explored our village. We ate foods. We laughed. We were awkward. We loved. It was beautiful. Even after one day, these people were already becoming something special.
The next day tragedy struck my little village family and four days later we were gone. Sometimes you never understand how one mans terrible actions can cause such immense heartache among so many people until you are thrown into the middle of something so huge.
I will forever remember the moments I spent sitting at a table under the safety of giant tree leaves with a sweet Momma, looking out at the place they had been blessed to call home, not speaking a word because no words were needed. Everything was said in the silence that flowed between us. I will forever remember the moments when that same sweet Momma looked out over everything and wept. Wept for her husband, wept for their home, wept for their child, wept because the fear of the unknown.
I will forever remember the moments when a sweet daughter had to sit and listen while her parents told her that she would not be able to continue going to school, because they couldn’t afford to send her. Because of one mans selfish action a mom and a dad had to tell their child that her hope for a future was gone… at least for now.
I will forever remember the moments that two sweet sisters sat and talked with confusion and fear about their brothers. Boys who had been lured into a life that was supposed to be better, wrongly titled as orphans, and now, stuck in the system away from home, with no one to know better for them.
I will forever remember a daddy, who walked around with a lost and hopeless look in his eyes – not knowing how he was going to take care of his family.
Because of one man’s terrible, hateful, and selfish actions, children were terribly hurt, many young people’s education was taken from them, funding that was sustaining life was halted, homes were lost. People were left in a state of confusion and fear.
Real life events – things I never thought I would ever be a part of – I now was. I saw real heartbreak. I saw real hurt. I saw extreme pain.
But even in the midst of such tragedy, I saw God.
I saw God in the moment when a terrible life event brought two families, theirs, and mine, together. I saw God when, instead of eating apart, we ate together. I saw Him in the laughter that bubbled out of three sweet girls who, even though their worlds were shaking, couldn’t help but be full of the Spirit. I saw God in our nightly after dinner dance routines and I saw God in braiding hair. I saw Him in the spunk of a naked one-year-old and I saw Him in my team as we came together and chose to stand by and walk through tragedy with a family we had grown to love. I saw God in the moments when our families worshiped our sweet Savior and I saw Him in the powerful prayers lifted from small bodies in a language I didn’t understand. I saw and felt God in every single moment of that week; even the ones when heartbreak felt so heavy it could crush.
Six days after arriving, with tears streaming down our faces, we had to say goodbye to the family that we had grown to love. And as I looked through blurry, tear-filled eyes, at the stilted houses, naked children, and lush green rice fields that had captured me, I was once again overcome with a flood of compassion and love from my Father. In the moments when I fear for what might happen to my family in Prey Veng, I hold true to what my Father tells me in Isaiah 46:4. He says, “I have made you. I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.”
My team and I may have had to leave that day, but our Father didn’t. He stayed there to console, to carry, to sustain, and ultimately, to rescue. There is no sweeter truth than that.
