This month our team is focusing on on finding and sharing about unsung heroes in Cambodia. This post is part of an 11-blog series about our efforts.
Today's post by Cara Wood
Some days the World Race is so fun. But some days the World Race is hard. When I feel worn out. When I don’t feel like dying to myself or preferring my teammates. And as much as I am learning to go with the flow and embrace a life without structure, I’m still working at it. And the work can make me tired.
Rest isn’t something that comes naturally to me. It’s not something that I always remember to seek out. It’s hard but I’m learning to find it in new places.
Meeting with Unsung Heroes and different ministries throughout Phnom Penh is not only allowing me to see how the Lord is at work in Cambodia but it is teaching me about rest and refreshment.
Within just a few days I had the opportunity to meet with two women, Amy and Tanya, who are serving the Lord in Cambodia.
Amy is a former World Racer (from the original Q Squad…#Qbelieveit!) who is working with street children and women in the bars in Phnom Penh. It was amazing to hear the journey the Lord has been taking her on from country to country and how God has met her in each place. She was honest about the hard parts of being a missionary and the difficulties of getting the organization she now works with set up in Phnom Penh. But even with these struggles, she never complained. She just wanted to be real with us.
As Amy spoke, I was drawn in. I could have listened to her for hours and to be honest I had no idea why I was so captivated.
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Meeting Tanya was not planned. In all honesty I almost missed it because I almost didn’t choose to love my teammate out of my own selfishness. Thankfully I did because meeting Tanya was a special treat. She is a missionary from California. She is currently helping to open a café with the specific intention of ministering to university students through friendship and teaching English. She also has a huge passion to plant churches in the villages around Cambodia where many people have never heard of Jesus or are walking with Him without the community of other believers.
As Tanya shared with us her story, I became captivated again. I was hanging on her words and this time I recognized the feeling. It was the same feeling I had when I was talking with Amy. The only way I can explain it is refreshing.
Talking to these women provided refreshment I couldn’t get enough of. I just wanted tp basked in it.
But in reality it wasn’t Amy and Tanya who provided refreshment. It was the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit who is living and active in their lives; the God they know so intimately.
The way they live and walk in the Spirit provides refreshment to everyone they encounter whether they know it or not.
This refreshing presence of the Holy Spirit is such an indicator of an Unsung Hero. They are living out a crazy faith. They are rooted so deeply in God, trusting the calling He has placed on their lives with reckless abandon, leaving His presence wherever they go.
And want to know what’s even better news??
You and I can be those same kind of Unsung Heroes. We can refresh those around us with the presence of the Holy Spirit.
Asking the Lord what He wants for your life, really listening for His answer, and then walking in it isn’t reserved for a special few.
It was never meant to be, but so often we look at others who are doing it and think…”I could never do that” or “ Wow, I don’t hear from the Lord like that.”
But you CAN do it; you can live it. And the more you sit with God the more you will recognize His voice.
The refreshing presence of the Holy Spirit is scattered all throughout Cambodia. I am so thankful to have gotten to see and experience it here in Phnom Penh through these and other Unsung Heroes and I cannot wait to see what the Lord has in store for us as we move about the country.
