Greetings from Cambodia!
It's been a while, eh? Almost 2 months. But here were go.
We arrived here nearly two weeks ago from Taiwan, spending 4 days in the capital city of Phnom Penh, having orientation, learning some history, and working with a children’s slum ministry then getting to take a three day rest in the city of Siem Reap, visiting ancient temples and enjoying some down time as a team to reenergize for this second half of our outreach.
We are currently in central Cambodia in the Kampong Thom province working with a local church, a (incredible) filipino missionary couple, and living in a two story house in a village far from the comforts of home. Our ministry started on Saturday and Tuesday began the start of our village outreach. Our team is broken into 5 teams, heading out into 5 different villages 4 days a week to teach the bible and english to youth and children. I’m heading solo into a village for 4 hours on the weekends to teach youth and during the week will be taking more of helping role for the students as they prepare to teach in their own villages and even going out with them as they get used to teaching and leading their own ministries.
On top of teaching those classes, everyday we are going into villages to evangelize, teaching youth leadership courses, preaching, teaching Sunday school, and some other random things. Yesterday was my first trip to the village to evangelize and as we were leaving, my contact said with the most saddened voice, these people have never heard the name of Jesus. How is this? How have they never heard?
To some of us, that was like, "man, that's cool! We get to be the first." but as those words were being said, I was struck again with this sense of, holy crap, these people are lost. They don't know the Lord. And we are the FIRST to tell them so how many generations have been lost to buddhism and darkness because of this? I can tell you guys about all this stuff, but even as I sit here, I still have a hard time believing it’s real. I was sitting in a house yesterday made of wood planks and bamboo in the middle of some randar Cambodian village wondering first of all, how I ended up here and second of all, how is this even real? I’ve been in all kinds of places, houses, environments, but I think the reality of the lives that people face is really starting to hit me.
The biggest lesson I’ve been learning is really about God seeing people as individuals. Last year my focus was more about people groups and nations and this year it’s like God is showing me his heart for individuals and has given me this heart to proclaim his love and freedom over these people on a personal, individual basis. These are all people with faces, names, lives, emotions, hearts - no different than me. Which is easy to say but when that reality sunk in, I felt like I really had his eyes to see people the way he does.
80% of the Cambodian population is under the age of 30 because of Pol Pot's regime in the 70's. Look it up. It's unbelievable. 2 million people were killed. 2 freaking million. This is a really young nation and last night as we had worship, I got the picture of this nation being one that should be filled with joy and life like kids generally are when they're young but because of the darkness clouding it, it's shut down and oppressed. Jesus came to bring life and to the full and nothing should hold these people back from experiencing that joy.
Since I last wrote, we’ve been in Indonesia and Taiwan taking part in the most random things you could possibly imagine. I won’t drag on except to say that we’ve sung on street corners, been on TV, taught the electric slide to hundreds of youth, had some team members wearing giant strawberry suits, and have had the opportunity to preach the gospel to kids who had never heard the gospel before.
Bali and Taiwan were both incredibly sweat your face off hot and humid all day and all night but we’ve finally gotten a bit of relief from the humidity here in Cambodia with rainy season having just started. We have this balcony on the second floor of our house that overlooks the land. The land is all flat - no mountains, no big houses - so we can see forever. The clouds here are unbelievable (comparable to New Zealand) and there have been lightning storms every night so the view is incredible.
We decided to have worship up there last night and something broke in our team - just like, some freedom to truly worship - and we spent the evening worshipping God and interceding for this nation and these people. At one point I looked around and saw almost everyone standing on the edge of the balcony looking out over the land in different directions, watching the lightning, singing praises to God and it felt like we were truly proclaiming God’s name and his authority over this nation and that nothing - absolutely NOTHING can hold us back from what we came here to do.
Last night me and another girl slept out on the balcony and it got so cold that I needed a hoodie. I had never been that excited in my life to go downstairs and put more clothes on. I haven’t been cold for 6 weeks and it really was a great feeling. That was also the best sleep I'd had in 6 weeks.
Please continue to keep our team in your prayers. Since we arrived in Kampong Thom on the 26th, several of us have had a difficult time adjusting to life here. It hasn’t been easy and while we are on the up and up, things still are a bit tough. Most of us have been sick - vomiting, diarrhea, headaches - and some of us haven't been sleeping well. On a personal note, for the last nearly 4 weeks, I’ve not been able to get a full nights sleep, only getting 2-4 hours maximum every night. Monday afternoon to Wednesday morning I literally slept all day and night because the exhaustion I was feeling had finally caught up with me and I hit a wall. This was a really good time of resting both physically and in the Lord and I’m so thankful I was able to have that time because I was crashing fast.
Overall, outreach has been really good. We only have four weeks left until our debrief and that is ridiculously hard to believe. Our team has really grown together in love and unity and we just have a crazy good time hanging out together.
As I'm writing that last sentence, I looked out and saw a truck with at least 25 people stacked on it, on top of a bunch of cargo. Ahh, outreach.
Anyway, I am blown away by how blessed I've been with this team and the privilege it's been to lead them. They are a great crew and it's been sweet to see how they are growing, gaining more confidence, and starting to step out more. My focus this second half of outreach is going to be centered around pushing them to step out more and challenging them to do things they aren't comfortable with. Hah... easy for me to say, harder for them to do. They're ready though and I'm stoked about what God is going to do.
Thank you guys for your prayers, love, support, all that.
much love from southeast asia.
-kim
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