When I say that the ministry work we are doing here is my favorite, I truly mean it. I have completely fallen in love with the people and the culture. It reminds me so much of living in Hawaii.
Our normal day here goes as follows:
We get up around 5:45am and make pancakes for breakfast.
Eat breakfast at 7:30am. Our tuk-tuk arrives around 8am. It is about a 25 min ride to get to the slums/rubbish mountain. As we get closer to rubbish mountain, the stench is so incredibly horrific and the air is like a huge hazy cloud of what looks like smog or vog.
We get to our ministry site around 8:30am. Depending on what day it is determines the specific activities that we do.
We usually work from 8:30-10:30am and then we come home for a few hours to eat lunch and rest. We go back to the slums from 2-5.
We normally walk around the village and talk to different people.
We share the gospel with them and learn about their culture and what they do for a living. We even got to experience some women making clothes in which we would all recognize the brand of clothing – “The Children’s Place.” The tags say “Made in Cambodia.” Renee and I were quite fascinated watching them make piles of little girls pants that I’m sure will get shipped to the US any day now.
After going around from house to house meeting new people, we eventually come back to the church and play with the kids for a while before heading home.
Leaving the ministry both in the morning and afternoon is one of the hardest parts of each day. The kids take our hands and walk each one of us to our tuk-tuk which is about a 2 min walk away.
When we round the corner, the kids run ahead and hop aboard our tuk-tuk and wait for us to load up and leave. It is clear that they want to spend every second with us.
The absolute hardest part of the entire day is when we drive away on our tuk-tuk and the kids stand in the middle of the road waving goodbye until we are completely out of sight.
It is so hard for me to leave these kids, even for just a few hours in the morning! My heart breaks EVERY single time we get in that tuk-tuk to leave. I never want to say goodbye to these kids ever again, let alone for another 10-15 days. It gets harder and harder each day. I have completely fallen in love with these kids and with the people in this community. I don’t ever want to leave them…
