Time in Cambodia is coming to a close! Tomorrow we pack up and drive to the Thailand border to meet up with the rest of the squad and hike all of our luggage exactly 0.62 miles across the border. Woohoo! Being that it is the last day, I thought I would give a more clear picture of what living life has been like over here and what God has been doing.
First off, don’t know if I mentioned this in any previous blogs, but we’ve been staying at a high school of 1,000 kids in the village of Preah Net Preah. It’s a pretty big school grounds with at least four different buildings. However, it’s not like your average American high school. The classrooms are more outdoorsy and there are no indoor hallways connecting classrooms or anything like that. Behind the school buildings is the soccer “field” (with no grass), the barn/gym-atorium and a nice volleyball setup. We stayed in the upstairs of the gym and had our meals everyday in the outdoor kitchen area/duck and chicken pens. Although our building was hidden in the back of the school grounds, it was always poppin with people hanging out playing volleyball after school, making things in the kitchen, and occasionally the weekly duck murders where I would watch this 18 year old guy de-feather a duck and then cook it! On one occasion, he brought home a snake that he had ripped the fangs out of (it was definitely venomous) and so I got to hold him. We became friends but I was soon informed of the tragic future that awaited him. I must say, he was delicious 😬.
Anyways, everyday we would go into the classrooms to teach English. Well, the word “teach” might not exactly describe everything we did. More like play games, sing songs, learn dances, and share the gospel. But we did teach english sometimes. There are no music classes or anything musical at the school really, so when they found out that I brought a guitar, they wanted us to basically have English class concerts haha. This gave us the perrrfect opportunity. In all of our classes, we would start out by doing about five worship songs and before each one, talking about their meaning. After doing worship, we would usually share the flat out gospel!! Which was amazing and being that it was a public school, I am so grateful that we were allowed to go into classrooms and have the freedom to do that. At first, the frustrating language barrier seemed to get in the way of being able to share our passion for Christ. When we would sing songs and present the gospel, it didn’t look like we were getting a huge response. The students are generally more of a quiet crowd- when they’re not singing and dancing haha. So at first, I just didn’t know what God was doing. But I knew that he was working in their hearts! I don’t know how much of our English explanations translated when we tried to explain the meanings of the songs, but students remembered the titles and I would hear people playing the songs later in the day all over the place and learning the words! I thought that was cool. Students at this high school were the sweetest and quick to welcome us with the biggest smiles. I’m so thankful for all of the sweet times we shared keeling over laughing. I loved getting to share the gospel and our testimonies with them. I know the Lord will soften hearts, open doors, and use our words and time in those classrooms for the kingdom.
Team Harvest got to participate in many basketball, volleyball, and soccer games. However, several times, instead of integrating us into the two teams, the coaches wanted the students to play against us. I think they may have assumed that because we were these cool Americans, that we were naturally good at every sport and were their ultimate competition. Wellll we did prove them wrong during our first game of volleyball. It was a rough one. So rough, that, through difficultly translated English, the coach told us to try harder. We were giving it everything. 😂 and they thought we were just taking it easy on them! Oh man. Jokes aside, it was fun getting to know all the players well, to enjoy some friendly competition, and help improve the skills of everyone (including us haha).
We made some really sweet friends with people at the school. While staying in the building that we did, we spent a lot of time with our downstairs neighbors Kimsin and Pana, the parents of little two year old Cinica, a biology teacher named Soknoeurn, and an awesome student named Ray. We spent a lot of time with them after school cooking, singing Karaoke, goofing off, and having sweet conversations. Kimsin and Soknoeurn are like the older sisters I never had! They have so much joy and kindness in their hearts and I just love them. They also taught me how to cook a lot of their Cambodian food. Times with Ray were absolutely comical and he loves to sing and make fun of my cooking skills (it was well deserved on my end). We also had the gift of meeting Sannchhay and Hlen- two girls that became our best friends! Hlen got saved when another race team was here a year and a half ago and Sannchhay is just getting to know Jesus- I’m excited for her! They spent every bit of their free time and off periods hanging out with us and joining in on whatever we were doing. We would do worship, spend time in the word, and became like sisters just doing life together. We also got to give the family and Sanchhaay Khmer Bibles!! I’m so excited that they have a hunger for the the word and I’m so blessed that we got to give them Bibles. And the fam just sent us a video of them reading it with Cinica the other night before bed which is so sweet!!
The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. What I saw at this school was actually a big hunger for Christ. There is definitely a huge need for people to disciple others over here- so many people who want Jesus to come into their hearts and yeses being said. And what do you do when you have to leave? My heart is honestly broken that we can’t have more time. But I believe that God used us to plant many seeds. He’s not done and I trust him that he will keep calling his children back home to him!!
I’d say this has been the hardest goodbye; there have been lots of tears and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to come back. But one thing I do know- there are people that I’m going to get to see again and be with for eternity. I’m looking forward to it!
Be praying for safe travels as we make our way to Thailand for a day and then fly to South Africa for our debrief of the last few months in Asia. Which, in the next few weeks, you can look forward to a couple of late blogs covering more of Vietnam. Thank you so much for reading and I hope you have a blessed rest of your day!!
Love,
Kayley
