easter in phnom penh

happy easter!!!!!!

we've been in cambodia for two weeks now and have been so blessed since the moment we stepped off the plane. (that is, after i stood in the middle of brisbane international airport with my beautiful and intelligent co-leader, endre, unpacking all of his luggage looking for his passport (while simultaneously having a heart attack, i might add).
turns out, he had put it into the travel folder with all of his airline tickets that i had just handed to him about seven minutes earlier. good start, leaders. good start.

we got picked up in a huge mercedes van - which just FELT wrong and selfish (but, no, i didn't say anything. i mean, if that's what was sent to pick us up in...who am i to turn it down??) and were taken to our home for two weeks. it's the university of the nations - cambodia team house for teams that come in to work in phnom penh. we are SO blessed! they just moved into this new building the day before we got here, and can i just say that i have not seen ONE cockroach since i've been here. not one. i'm a happy girl.

the house is a seven story building that houses the u of n cambodia offices on the bottom floor, and teams on every other floor. we happened to be the only team here for these past two weeks, so we kind of owned the place. we've loved every minute of it. they have a team of cooks that make lunch and dinner for us on monday-saturday, and the food is AMAZING!!! lots of rice, but such good fruit and vegetables. we are able to go to the rooftop of this building, as well, which has given us many memorable nights. one night, i went up there and could see all of phnom penh and there was a lightening storm in the clouds over the city...no rain or wind, just the most incredible light show i have ever seen put on by the One and Only. i stood up there with a couple of girls for about two hours. in silence. i wish i could put into words what it looked like...the picture of it is burned into my memory.

we've all been doing well here - staying healthy and [relatively] sane. we've been working with the sweetest missionary couple from canada, joe and lisa, originally from asia. they have blessed us so much, even though we've come here to bless them! they've been like a set of grandparents to us while we've been here. the day after we met them, they moved into a brand new church that they just had built. we helped them clean it and move into it, and then we had the privelage of leading the first ever sunday morning service in their new facility! one of the students preached the sermon - which was so special because this particular student has had a lot of problems in the past and is actually on his second dts right now because he didn't graduate his first one. it filled us all with so much joy to watch him up on the stage preaching, especially knowing how much God has done in his life. endre and i were like parents running around the sanctuary taking pictures of him as he preached.

we also performed a drama to the song 'Everything' by Lifehouse which went so well that we've been invited to perform it again tonight at the International Christian Fellowship meeting!

in addition to preaching (a girl on our team preached the sermon today, on Easter sunday!), we've been teaching sunday school, coloring and playing with the children and leading youth group on sunday nights.

on the weekdays, we've been playing sports with neighborhood children, teaching english classes every night and interceding in prayer for the city. there were a couple of days where our schedule was painfully open and i just felt defeated. i didn't know what to do and didn't understand why God had brought ten of us to cambodia with no plans. endre and i prayed about it and our team prayed about it and just felt confident that God would fill our schedule with the perfect agenda.

the very next day, we were given the opportunity to visit an orphanage abot 40 minutes away at the transportation cost of $10/day (huge answer to prayer...our finances are tight!). at this christian orphanage, home to 90 kids, we would be splitting them up into young kids, middle school and high school groups, and teaching them in english, geography and Bible, along with playing sports and games with them. our students did an incredible job of preparing lessons, and we spent two full days at the orphange teaching and fellowshipping with the children. the precious, precious children. we had communion with them as we taught on the last supper, crucifixtion and ressurection. we taught them about our home countries and traditions as they learned where we're from, and we played soccer, painted nails, picked wild flowers and hula hooped all afternoon! it is an amazing orphange run by a man that gave his career up to go be a father to the 90 children living without theirs.

the orphanage is out in the country...it feels like you have completely left cambodia when you go there because there is green grass and blue sky and no traffic and it's just absolutely beautiful. not that phnom penh isn't, but the country is just so different. the orphange is on a farm, which helps with their food costs- they have their own eggs, milk, fish, pig, etc. a short walk down a dirt road and you enter an AIDS orphanage/community. there are several homes for families living with AIDS, along with homes for orphaned AIDS children. we walked around this place one afternoon with the 60 year old canadian woman that came to cambodia in 1961 and opened this facility in 2007. i hugged a 5 year old boy living with AIDS whose stomach was painfully puffed out due to malnutrition. he was so sick, but managed to stand up and bow in greetings to me as i walked in. his mother died of AIDS, and his father gave AIDS to another woman - they are now both in the hospital. this little boy is in the orphanage and talks of how his father used to run around chasing bats for him to eat.
a little piece of my heart was left with that little boy.

we're having a wonderful easter celebration here. this week is also the khmer new year, so the city is clearing out. i miss being with my family and celebrating with them, but i've found 9 incredible replacements. our team has been amazing to endre and i. they are always gathering around us, laying hands on us and praying for us and our role as leaders. this morning (easter morning), two of the girls woke up and cooked breakfast for the team. we have a prayer/worship time as a team every day, which has been invaluable to us, our unity, our relationship with God, and our focus on why we're here.

yesterday, endre and i took the afternoon off and surprised the students by having fondue and ice cream on the roof of our building, overlooking phnom penh at sunset - complete with candles in old, used coke bottles. we also had candy bags for everyone to indulge in. it was the best we could do, but we wanted to celebrate the holiday as much as we could, and that's what we could do. we melted chocolate for fondue in a rice maker (okay so it wasn't perfect, but it's all we had) and spent the night as a group around the table talking about our easter traditions with our family and past easters we've had. today, we went to church and took several "easter pictures" in our outfits, as we would do if we were at home!

i'm absolutely loving phnom penh. on our first day here, we visited S-21 and the killing fields which taught us about cambodians extremely sad and extremely recent history. this country has been through so much in the past thirty years, much of which i hadn't heard about. learning about their history has given us such a heart for this nation and it's people. many of them don't choose NOT to follow Christ, they've just never heard of Him because all of the Christians were killed off thirty or so years ago.

we've also visited the russian market, and that, too, made me a very.happy.girl.

tomorrow morning we're leaving to go about an hour outside of the city. we'll be spending the next two months at an AIDS orphanage, housing 90 or so kids with AIDS. so that'll pretty much break my heart, i'm sure.

thank you so much for all of your prayers and emails. i think it was all strategic when God gave me such a physically, emotionally and spiritually exhausting outreach to Indonesia, because now all of this seems much easier! phnom penh often reminds me of jakarta, but not quite as busy. leading a team is so much harder than i could have imagined...it just takes so much out of you, but endre and i love what we're doing and love the students. we're really like parents, cheering them on when they succeed and encouraging them and pushing them and helping them and taking pictures of them when they're working. we've been able to really "vent" to each other and encourage each other, so we make the perfect team. we've put out 'encouragement bags' for our team - one bag for each member on the team - that we can drop notes of encouragement and love in, which always seems to help the morale and unity. all in all, we're doing really well and are excited for what's in store!!

i'll do my best to keep you posted. thanks for everything. i love you all and happy easter!!!!


xoxo,
mal