Before I dive into the story behind this title let me give a brief update: So some of you may already know but we got new teams at the beginning of this month and because of how teams were changed, the new team I got on, I got ATL again haha. ATL means: Ask The Lord. Nothing is set up for us- we pray and seek God in what to do and where to live.
Doing ATL this month has already looked so different compared to last month. Last month I had it in Vietnam, which is a closed country and so a lot of what we did was just try and build relationships with locals and show kindness. When I found out I was having ATL again I was not super excited because by the end of ATL last month I was ready to be done with it and work with a ministry again haha. But how stinking cool is Jesus because He knew how I was feeling. ATL month can look like so many different things.
This month for ATL we are trying to find ministries/people to work with and come along side of and help! Where we are staying in Cambodia- we found a christian family who rents rooms above their home. We found out on Saturdays the father goes into a village and so we asked if we could come with to help and we did! And that is where the title of this blog comes in.
7:30am we ate breakfast and by 8am we were ready waiting by the Tuk Tuk to head into the village. It was about a 20 – 25 minute ride out to the village. As soon as we arrive we are greeted by little children yelling “Heeellloooo”.
We pull up next to a little river/pond and they begin laying down mats for the children to sit on and the children flocked! It’s like they were waiting expectantly for us to arrive.
We sat down on the mat with the children, introduced ourselves, played games, sang songs, had a little teaching, colored, and then handed out loafs of bread. It literally was like living a story out of the Bible. When Jesus would gather people around a body of water & would teach and fed loafs of bread and fish. Minus the fish, we just handed out bread haha. But how stinking cool?!
So towards the end of our time there I was talking with the father who took us out here and he said they’ve been doing this for 3 years. He mentioned how some children don’t get to come or they come late because they are sleeping in because a lot of them are up working all through the night collecting plastic bottles and cans to sell them. And it just broke my heart because they are just young children, it should’t be that way. They are children, they shouldn’t have to wake up and work through the middle of the night. But we are the only ones who know that, they don’t. Because to them, that is a norm and how they make a living. It’s one of those things where only you can hurt wishing things wouldn’t be this way. Because to them they don’t know any different. You can clearly see that because as you can tell in these photos, these kids are filled with laughter & smiles.
It’s a weird thing to process. To see brokenness & things that shouldn’t be, but to the culture it’s a norm.
But ya know what, I see the heart of God among it all. And I see it in the smiles of these little ones.
Well that’s all for now! Till next time!
Much love, T.
