Dear Cambodia (a message from my heart)

Dear Cambodia

You’ve wrecked me.  I left your soil just over 2.5 years ago, yet my heart remains broken for you.  My feet yearns for the day that they will walk upon your land once again.  My eyes cannot wait to look upon the beautiful faces of your people. My soul is restless, begging me to return to you and share with you, the hope in which you have renewed in me.  I’ll be honest- I never thought I would fall in love with you in the way that I have.  Truth be told, at the time I thought you were ‘just another country’ in South East Asia.  A country in which I had to spend time in before returning to the red soils of Africa.

Isn’t that how God works though? Revealing Himself to us in ways we sometimes least expect it?  Ironic isn’t it? That you, Cambodia, were the one country in which I spent 2 months in?

Cambodia, I miss walking among your streets; taking in the many sites and smells.  I miss buying fresh pineapple for 10 cents from local vendors and walking among the rice fields.  As the rain hits the ground outside my home here in Canada, I recall sitting beneath the shadows of palm trees, sipping fresh coconut milk while enjoying the company of the local people.  Oh the lengths I’d go for a roadside smoothies consisting of dragon fruit/pineapple and apples and to taste a deep friend banana for breakfast once again.  Playing hide n seek among a Buddhist temple (opps!) and even hearing off tune karaoke…praying that it would end, now becomes a moment in which I yearn for.  Waking up early, reviewing the English lesson for the morning and then finishing up the day with worship, songs and testimonies from local Khmer university students, renewed my soul in a powerful way.  Time spent with my Phnom Penh Cambodian contacts, turned family, at “Beautiful Feet” dorm, are precious precious moments that I will forever be grateful for.  Words cannot express how they changed the course of my life in 3 short weeks.  To Ango, Asui and Kaka…thank you.  From the bottom of my heart, with everything that I got, thank you so very much.  Your friendship, your mentorship, means the world to me.   

Is this all Ironic? Coincidence? Perhaps a ‘freak thing’ that the one country that I had to spend two months in, is the one country in which I yearn to return to the most?

Or is it a part of God’s continual plan to break my heart for what breaks His? 

Cambodia through you, God began to begin to stir a passion deep within me, not only for a foreign land and its people, but a future career as well. Yes Cambodia, it is because of those two months of teaching English to your people, that God revealed another calling within my life, to me. A calling that came full circle in just over a year, when God led me back to Zambia to teach English.  February 18, 2014 while I was in the middle of my second month teaching English to local Cambodian university students, I journal the line, “I want to use my TESOL to be able to go back to Zambia, and teach at Seeds of Hope.”  May 1, 2015 I found myself back at Seeds of Hope at the start of a 3 month term of teaching English.  So Cambodia, today is April 16, 2016 and I cannot help but wonder at what point I will look back upon this entry and realize that it has once again come ‘full circle’.

James 2:14-19 says, “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food.  If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.  But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”  Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds.  You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder."

Cambodia, you are no longer simply a place on the map to check off that I have been too…rather you have become a ‘home away from home’ and one day I will return.  More so, now that I have seen, I know that I am responsible.  I know that my faith also requires action.  I know that it will be a few years yet before I return, but know that God is preparing me during this season of my life to better able to serve HIM among your people and your land.

You have captured my heart, Cambodia, in a very unique way.  You’ve captured my heart in a way that I thought only Zambia would ever hold.  I don’t know when God will lead me back to you, but I am praying and believing that He will…all in His due time.  Until that day; know that I am praying for you.  That God will continue to move through you and your people; to bring darkness into light, bringing about rescue and restoring justice in places of injustice.  Until that day we meet again, I promise I will continue to do all that I can right here and right now, trusting God each and every step of the way.

Cambodia

(* I was not originally going to post this, as I wrote it for a scrapbook that my mom has been putting together for me, of my entire 11 months on the World Race, but I have realized that, in writing this for her...it has served as a good 'tool' for me to continue to 'process' my experience.  I would like to share it with you as well, because sometimes feelings and emotions are easier to explain through words like these*)

Cambodia.  Prior to coming to small South East Asian country, all I knew of it, was the story of a Cambodian that I had to read for a class while at Steinbach Bible College.  The author shared his story of witnessing his family being murdered right before his eyes, before he too, was hacked at by machetes and fell atop of his slain mother and siblings.  This was a time in Cambodian history, where The Khmer Rouge was following orders under their leader, Pol Pot.  At the time of reading this account, “The Khmer Rouge”, “Pol Pot” and “Cambodia” seemed like a far off land.  A land that I would never personally experience within my life time, let alone walk on the grounds of where a complete generation was annihilated simply for having an education.  Not only was I able to spend one month here, but 2 months there as part of the World Race experience  

It was during my time IN Cambodia that God began to really direct me to His calling for my life.  January 2014, I spent teaching English at a rural (private) Christian YWAM base school.  My team and I also spent a few hours a week teaching at a local public school.  We taught the children their 123’s, ABC’s and grammar structure (for the older grades) and we spent hours going over the pronunciation of sounds while repeating rules to them time and time again.  Our rural classrooms were made of bamboo, surrounded by palm trees and rice fields.  The public school was just off a ‘major’ road and they used the grounds of an old Hindu temple, for their school grounds.  During our time teaching the private school kids, we shared Jesus with them through songs, skits and games all in English.

The following month (February) my team and I were re-located to Phenom Phen, the capital city of Cambodia.  This city, was also were the heart of the Khmer Rouge Regime, took place.  Our ‘mission’ for the month was to help kick-start an after school English program for the female and male dorm students.  These students where under the care of a married couple and a sister, who had chosen to give up their life in Northern India, to become missionaries in Cambodia.  It was easy to see their vision and heart were they were.  It was simple quite simple really.  Mentor and disciple the students under their care, while providing access to English lessons to help the students in their own university studies to become bankers, doctors and lawyers. 

While in PP in particular, God really began to speak to my heart specifically with furthering my own education to become an ESL teacher.  Through ‘teaching’, and talking with these students, I began to see (and realize) their push to learn English as a second language.  Their replies were simple, “Teacher, I want to help my family.  I want to help build back my country”. Something so basic as a language, yet powerful enough to convict a generation thus enabling them to change a Nation, was a new ‘revelation’ for me.  I found myself thinking, “I could be a part of this change’, on a daily basis.  God further opened my eyes beyond my English classroom in PP, into a world of culture, custom and the Khmer language itself found on the streets and in the markets.

I did not ‘go into the race’ expecting to ‘come out’ of it with such a direct, personal, career choice.  Instead, my prayers were that, through daily interactions with the people God was to place in my path, that He would lead me and give me a possible direction.  Beyond that, God broke my heart for a part of the world, I never even had any desire to even visit.  He used the young people from the nation of Cambodia, to speak this Truth into my heart and life.  He used missionaries consisting of both local Cambodians, North Americans and especially, the individual stories (and later, combined story) the married couple, to convict me and to truly break my heart in a brand new way.

Teaching English for those two months in Cambodia, changed my life in a way I do not think I will ever fully be able to understand.  It’s a Nation of people that have found its way into a special part of my heart, a part that I thought only the children of Zambia, would ever hold.  Yet, the letters of two simple, blue bolded words, remind me of a different Truth.  A Truth that rung true to me to me that day, and words that have stuck with me since.  BEAUTIFUL FEET.  BEAUTIFUL FEET, a calling upon my life to live different. TO push the boundaries of society’s ‘norms’.  To live, to laugh, to teach, to LOVE.

Truth be told, I do not know if I will end up back in Cambodia for the rest of my life.  I wish I could give a 'for sure' answer, but I cannot.  What I do know is that, God is currently shaping and molding me right here and now, to BE a better teacher regardless of where I end up teaching.  One thing is clear, I am a teacher.  Not only a TESOL 'in training' teacher, but a teacher of life and ultimately, of God's Truth in this world. 

Regardless of where I am in this world, that will not change.

Some of my 'Students' in PP.