Tuesday's Entry

It’s amazing how refreshing sleeping till 3 am can be. What is it about travelling that does this to me. Perhaps someday throughout my travels I will achieve super-human ability to simply not need to sleep. In brief, we are having a fantastic and productive time here in Cambodia. It’s great to love and feel so intimately connected what you “do.” I’ve felt very alive and productive over the past few days… if only I could figure out the way to have a keener sense of this back home.
Yesterday we had the opportunity to share words of encouragement with most of the pastors presently involved in the ministry here in Cambodia and a number of others who will be involved in the season to come. I spend some special time with Samoeun, a pastor that my small group at youth is partnering with to do ministry among children here in Cambodia. I asked him to share with me some of the burdens he carries as a pastor in this country. I sense he was certainly one, who much like us, wants to desperately to see change in his country but feels somewhat helpless to accomplish something of significance. In our hearts we know there is great wisdom in investing in children but yet it is so hard to see these children continually wounded and their futures slowly stolen from them. He shared how the people of his village were very poor and often had to travel some distance to find work to feed their families. Often parents would take there children away from the things that would give hope for their future. Things like school, community and most importantly spiritual guidance because of the necessity to search for work (it doesn’t seem to me like many of the people in the villages have regular jobs but rather bounce from odd job to odd job). This pastor wishes he could offer more that would permit the children to stay at home to receive education and discipleship. But for now he strives to teach the children to love and support their parents (which has been a real challenge). He is seeing promising change in his village. And we know that as spiritual change comes to many of these communities we will also see change to the physical circumstances. It was a blessing to close our time together in prayer for the challenges he faces.
It’s been really great to share this adventure with my Dad and I feel so cool cruising through the crowded Asian streets on the back of a moto taxi with him. We had some fun snapping pictures of each other and only wish we could have better captured the scene. I also love the little victories of travel like flagging down your own moto taxi and successfully getting to where you want to go without the help of a local (and then only paying double fare instead of quadruple - you often get charged a little more for being a “big guy.”)
Today we will take part in the counsellor training sessions and I’d bet by the time I get this posted I’ll have a few short details about that event. Sorry again that there is no pictures… the internet connection we have here is very slow and somewhat unreliable. But there will be pictures. Perhaps we can upload a bunch once we get to India and have better internet access (although Antony informed us of our itinerary last night and it looks like we will keep “on the move.”)