Cambodia

Hello All!

I know I said "farewell" until the end of our trip (in the last post), but I had some time today and thought I could update everyone on our recent experience in Cambodia.

We just completed our last full day in Cambodia, and tomorrow morning will embark on a long bus ride to Bangkok. We had an incredible day of vising the Angkor Wat temples. We left in a tuk tuk at 4:30 this morning (in time to catch the sunrise behind the most famous temple) with a really sweet Cambodian man named Pem. He was quite a bit smaller than me, but had a great big smile :) He was our driver for the whole day. The temple complex is huge, so he would drop us off at one spot, and pick us up at the other side. Then he would take us on to the next site...and we did this all morning and afternoon. The ancient ruins of Angkor are absolutely incredible and we really enjoyed reading about the history and looking at all the detailed engravings in the sand stone...but one of our favorite parts of the day was driving an hour out of town (to visit the last temple) and watching the countryside go by while we sat in our little cart. It's fascinating to be so far away from home and to witness such a unique people group just living their everyday lives; the way they cook, clean, sleep, interact with one another, play, and work. It's all SO different from anything that we're used to...and it's all visible from the road. For the most part, the homes are open and consist of one room on stilts. The family hangs out in the shade under their home during the day. Everyone has hammocks, and lounging in them seems to be the past-time of choice. The babies and small children run around naked or with just a shirt on and play in the swamps or dirt yard outside of their home. Overall we've found that they are very friendly and often too assertive in trying to get you buy from their fruit or souvenir stand! The people are absolutely beautiful and you can just imagine how precious the children are.

Something that we weren't prepared for before coming here was the extreme poverty. We thought we had done well rounded research as we planned for these couple of days, but never saw even one forum post on what to expect in that aspect. There are crippled children, paralyzed war vets, and hungry families constantly asking for money. They follow you everywhere you walk and beg you to help them feed their babies. Many of them try to sell small things like books or bracelets, and trying to politely turn them down means to them that if they try harder you might give in. Luke and I have been struggling with what to do about this. We tried to befriend one young man who was in a car accident and lost his leg when he was 6. He was covered in scabies and hobbled around with a huge basket of books around his neck. Because of all the scams and mistreatment of these types of cases, we asked the boy if there was anything we could do for him...if there was anything he needed or if we could take him to lunch. He said that all he could use was cash. We explained that we weren't comfortable giving cash (since so many of these children are forced into this type of "sympathy begging" then have to bring the money back to an adult who forces them to live such a lifestyle, so they can take the cash for personal gain). We asked if we could take him to a pharmacy near by to get medicine for his skin, and tried to introduce him to Christ. He said that he has tried all medicine from all pharmacies in the area and they don't make it feel any better. He was quite prepared with how to respond to us, and repeated his well rehearsed answers too everything that we tried to offer. We were afraid that had not been to a doctor at all, and maybe forced to stay in his poor health condition, so that he would be "worth more." He said he was not hungry and didn't want us to buy him food (even raw rice), because he needed to bring the money back to his family for them. He also said that other tourists had told him about "God's Son" and that he should pray to him everyday...then his problems would go away!!! AHHH! How do you explain that that's not the point of having a relationship with the Lord. When I told him that we would like to pray for him, and that God loves him and cares (and wants to help him deal with everything that he's bearing)...but might not take it away, and told him that we wanted to help him in another way, he got upset and left.

This is a long explanation of just one encounter. These are the kind of things that we asked the Lord to open our eyes too as we traveled (opportunities to serve Him) but clearly we didn't realize what we were asking for and feel like we haven't done a darn thing!

Please pray for the people of Cambodia...there are legit organizations that accept donations, but we haven't done enough research yet to know how they work exactly. If nothing else, God has opened our eyes and allowed us to experience another part of the world where people are suffering and living far more difficult lives than we are. We want to help them if we can and plan to look into options for doing so in the future. We are also reminded of how satisfying simplicity can be, and how we have so much more than we need. We are so thankful for what God has given us, in health, family, and stability, but are also trying to figure out how best to follow Jesus while being so prosperous and wealthy compared to the rest of the world.