Wow!
What an incredible experience being in Cambodia has been. It's late Monday night here and somehow, our time with the orphans is already over. The love that we have been shown is something that I have never experienced before.
But first, Sunday...
The Church Service at Levesar was their form of a Christmas pageant, Cambodian style. I felt honored being able to sit at the front of the service when there were hundreds of other people there! I couldn't upload pictures, but you will all see how many people were at this service. The amount of people that Suk-Hom influences is just incredible. We are so blessed to have him as our contact in Cambodia. The Christmas pageants/musicals/super spectacular productions that I have seen seemed kind of similar to theirs, but theirs was so genuine. Everyone was so happy to be there, praising the Lord. The children were obviously the stars of the production. First there were dancers in Khmer dress performing the Blessing; next there was a wonderful group of senior adults who sang a few worship songs. Then of course there were some great scenes of acting in which the kids acted out the "Lost Sheep Parable" (I Think...). The kids were all very into it and just loved portraying such a wonderful story from the Bible. That parable can definitely describe some of these kids in specific ways, but watching it being performed and translated for us, it reminded me of how often we forget how directionless we are without Christ.
Also, there was a lady who is a House Mom at the orphange who wrote a song and sang it describing the life of an orphan. It was so beautiful and even though I had absolutely no idea what was specfically in the song, it had a distinct hopeful tone to it which to me was the heartbeat of the trip. More on that later. After a hilarious fashion show where the kids got to show off some clothes and perform, we were asked to go up on stage and sing a song. We sang "God of This City" and "Amazing Grace." I was really happy we got to sing "God of This City" because it reminded me of the Daraja Choir from this summer and kind of stated what God was doing in Levesar.
After a great lunch we traveled to one of many of "The Killing Fields." Greg Pick will give anyone who wants it a very detailed and wonderful history lesson about them, but to summarize, these are where the Pol Pot regime of the late 1970's basically committed genocide on those who opposed them. I was lucky enough to be able to walk through these mass graves with Kim who along with The May survived this time in Cambodian history. We were shocked to see how the graves were basically left as was with clothes of those murdered just laying on the ground, some half buried. We also got to go to Toulsone Prison in Phenom Penh where the Khmer Rough regime tortured those prisoners for future sendings off to the Killing Fields. Both of these were reminders of the injustice that continues to occur around the world. It was so shocking to hear about all of the murders and really the inability of other countries to stop it. I could talk about that all day, but let's talk about Monday!
Today was our last day with the kids and it was definitely bittersweet. For the crew who was working on the Water portion of our mission, they very nearly completed everything. If we would've have stayed all day, that crew would've helped pour all of the concrete they made in the morning on top of the structure, pretty much completing the job. That crew was definitely worn out at the end of the day because they had given it their all. The tank looked awesome and it will serve a great purpose for the orphanage.
With the kids today, we did our daily song routine consisting of a Wiggles song I think? about shaking the wiggles out. I do not frequently watch the Wiggles, so I cannot comment on that song, but we also sang O, Happy Day with them, and they loved it. We taught them some motions and made sure they understood what the song said. One of my greatest joys of the week was hearing all of the kids just randomly singing the song without us prompting them throughout the day. It's a song that easily gets stuck in your head, but it has such a great message, so i'm glad that's the song they learned.
We made some bracelets and played with them for the next few hours dreading the goodbyes that were to come. A really cool tradition-ish kind of thing is that the kids walk us to the ferry dock and wave goodbye from there. It's a great last few minutes with the kids as we walked, hand in hand for the last time for a long, long time. Some of those kids, regardless of whether or not we come back, we might never see again. When I think back on this trip, I'm going to remember those faces, always smiling; those hands, so small, dirty, and always reaching towards you; I'll remember those kids smiling, yelling, and waving at us from the shore as the ferry chugged away for the last time for us this trip, and I'll smile because I know that God is working with those kids. If you spend any time with those kids and don't believe in a God who has unconditional love, then you are not too smart. Every day when we rolled up, there were kids who just wanted to be loved, but regardless, they were going to love you. Even when I messed up every Khmer words, they wanted to teach me. Even on the way to the ferry, they were teaching me new words. It probably took like one hour for me to learn 1-5, but about 10 kids were willing to sit there and laugh their way through me trying to speak in another language.
I'll let someone else pick up from there. I'm not really sure if I covered everything, and there is so much else to say about what I've talked about, but this blogpost is long enough. So thanks for reading!
Thanks for your prayers and petitions to the Lord. Please pray for a few sick people who feel a little under the weather and for our van ride tomorrow to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat!
Thanks again for reading, and oh yea:
You should definitely think about coming to Cambodia!!
--Sam Jones
P.S. I misspelled probably 95% of Khmer words on this page, so apologies for that, but don't worry, I mispronounce them too.
"God is a father to the fatherless and a defender of widows in his holy dwelling." Psalm 68:5
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