We slept a lot later today. I guess our late night chat put on schedule to wake up at just before 5. I excitedly when downstairs in hopes that I would get a good, fast internet connection but today, nothing. That’s a bit of a disappointment but I guess that means you’ll get a two for one day soon.
Yesterday was another really good day. We started off the day by heading out of Battambong into the rural areas where a training program for approximately 100 young people was taking place. CCI here in Cambodia has a really great working relationship and partnership with an organization called Child Evangelism Fellowship. When we arrive the staff from CEF were doing an awesome job of teach these young people how to communicate the gospel to children through songs and dances and other things. Apparently they too were excited about working together and they asked if we could help them get camping programs started in the Phnom Phen (capital city/province) area.
Immediately you could see something great was going on the in room as there were huge smiles on everyone’s faces and they attentively listened to what the leaders had to say. We also got an opportunity to share some brief words of encouragement with them. That was good for a laugh as I think a couple of the things I shared kind of got lost in translation… but we all had a good laugh.
Along the way (about a 45 minute drive) we had a great opportunity to speak with Kalyan and ask her many of the questions that we have about the country and it’s history. She also shared with us bits and pieces of the family’s testimony and how they came to faith. As it turns out Kalyan’s dad, when he was much younger and before he came to know Christ, served in the Cambodian military. That meant when the Khmer Rouge came into power he was forced into carrying out many of the atrocities of the holocaust here in Cambodia in the 1970’s. I asked if he ever shares his story (guessing that it probably carries a lot of weight) and she said no. She mentioned that she only came to learn of this fact just a couple years ago and she said that it is obviously a difficult topic to discuss. I guess it explains some of the heaviness that you can see in his eyes… you know how difficult it is at times to live with the mistakes we make. I couldn’t imagine carrying that burden even though we know through Christ we can find forgiveness forgiving ourselves can be a long and painful process. I guess another challenge within the Cambodian culture is that many of these things are dealt with by pushing them deep, never talking about them, in essence the strategy is to just forget about it.
After a good morning and a beautiful drive through fields of lotus flowers we returned to Battambong to make a quick stop in the market place and spend some time with the Crosscurrent students. Today we will go to the training program here in Battambong and perhaps go looking for the local remenant of the Killing Fields. We also need to relocate hotels (ours has no vacancy) and maybe, just maybe the next one will have a good internet connection. I’ll cross my fingers.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
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.”)
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.”)
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