leah sen hai, kingdom of wonder!

As a final goodbye to beautiful Cambodia, here’s my last list for Asia!

Things I’ll miss about Cambodia:

1.       The ice cream and bread carts that play “The Virginia Company” tune from Pocahontas over and over and over and over…and over and over…

2.       The sense of triumph you get from successfully exterminating 95% of the ants invading your fridge for the day.

3.       Sitting at work and hearing three different languages being spoken among five people, and none of them English.

4.       Convincing moto drivers that the fair price to take you where you want to go is in fact half of what they’re insisting.

5.       DVDs at $1 each. Now really, is it illegal if it’s the only option in the entire country?

6.       Getting whacked by police officers with a stick when you drive by on your moto (well, maybe I won’t miss this one much).

7.       Watching monks hop onto motos in twos and threes, all dressed in bright orange drapery with neon yellow umbrellas.

Monks on their morning walk

8.       Counting the number of monks you see on your walk to work (I’m up to 8 – and it’s a 10 minute walk!).

9.       Daily snack time at the office, precisely 2pm, at Sophal’s desk: coconut, grape-like furry red and orange and purple balls of goodness, jicama, fried bananas, mangoes, entire cobs of buttered corn...

10.   The 12 minutes of public campaign time candidates get per day (man, wouldn’t that be nice in the States…).

11.   You can get a killer tan in 30 minutes flat.

12.   My small group is with people my age from all over the world.

Just a pretty park!

13.   Fried smashed bananas at any time, any place.

14.   This place has fruit that’s fuchsia on the outside, white and black on the inside (?!??!!).

15.   Lizards that sound like an engine’s being revved up when they start their nightly croaking (again, ?!?!!!).

16.   Where else can you buy spiders and crickets for a street food midnight snack?

17.   You can say things like “meet me on the lawn of the royal palace” in passing and it’s not a big deal.

The Royal Palace

18.   Spanish is considered an exotic language. So I taught one of our interpreters the words to a few Shakira songs. ;)

19.   The huge smiles of recognition from local shop owners around my neighborhood.

20.   Heat indexes of 111F.

21.   My many furry and not-so-furry apartment friends.

22.   My landlady dropping by at any time of day for a one-two hour chat.

23.   Going to a church whose congregation represents over 30 countries (!).

24.   Being a cultural minority at work.

25.   The insistent instruction on how to properly peel fruit that I thought I’d been properly peeling all along (oranges, jicama, mangoes, bananas…).

26.   The (at least) 3 power outages a week in our apartments and 4+ outages at the office.

27.   Haggling over vegetable prices at the local market in very, very limited Khmer.

28.   Comparing how many Cambodians vs. how many Westerners you can fit in a tuk-tuk.

29.   Eating multiple sticky rice and pumpkin cakes (condensed, jellified, sticky mounds of sugar wrapped in banana leaves) in one sitting is perfectly acceptable.

30.   Sochiet’s insanely amazing lunches at work.

31.   The fact that pumpkin and egg go together beautifully.

32.   You get to ride around on motorcycles all day. And you're only legitimately fearful for your life half the time.

 Me with a goofy "yay I'm on a moto" smile on my face

33.   My moto driver friend at the end of my street now picks me up when it’s raining and I’m walking home from work. Yay. :)

34.   Mangoes.

35.   Riding on a cyclo with my housemate because, well, we can!

Angela on a cyclo (I'm on one next to her!)

Other side of the Royal Palace

 

36.   The sky going from sunshine to tornado-thunderstorm in literally ten minutes.

37.   Boiling all of your water in a 1-quart pot before it’s safe to drink (no, I’m not actually going to miss that one either).

38.   Little kids running up to you during your walk to work trying to practice their incredibly limited, hardly intelligible English.

39.   Drinking palm sugar juice (or whatever it is the cart guys sell) from a bag with a straw.

40.   Espresso with sweetened condensed milk is perfectly normal (they call it Vietnamese coffee).

Back in the States on the 14th! Please pray for safe travels for me and my dad this upcoming week, and can't wait to see many of y'all soon!! :)

Blessings,

Stephanie

the last stretch

I’m sitting (yet again) on the floor of a church taking notes at a conference for Cambodian pastors and lay leaders, this time not for Cambodian Methodist Women at their 2^nd Annual National Assembly in Phnom Penh but for Community Health & Agricultural Development (CHAD) at an annual gathering of all the “group” leaders in Kompong Speu province. I’m “data girl:” everything I learn I’ll try to incorporate into CHAD’s files, which we refer to when writing grants for future funding. There are still fans, Khmer dishes, the all-necessary Cambodian version of “eleven-sies” (and “three-sies”), the required hour nap on the church floor after lunch, and everyone’s conducting business in professional clothing while sitting cross-legged on the floor (my body’s still not used to this...), but the focus is now on rice banks, savings & credit groups, and cow groups rather than women empowerment.

 Kompong Speu Tree of Life Church, sponsored by Korean missionaries (so pretty!!)

Before this spring, the phrase “community development” meant nothing to me. I didn’t know what on earth a “rice bank” or “cow group” even was (and I’ll assume you don’t either), so if you’re a curious soul like me, let me give you a little bit of a run-down.

First, rice banks. CHAD has quite a few of these because they’re highly successful and sustainable. So here’s the scenario: A few friends smack in the middle of Nowhere, Cambodia decide that they don’t want to go hungry this dry season when their fields are dry and the price of rice skyrockets. They’ve heard something about CHAD at church, so they ask their pastor about how CHAD can help them stop and begin to reverse their annual no-rice crisis. Representatives from CHAD (i.e. the people I work with) visit their church, meet with the interested members, and provide funds for a rice group, at least matching (usually in USD) the personal contributions that the members make (usually in kg of rice) to get their project off the ground. The members buy rice with CHAD’s funds, build a storage shed for it, eat it and loan it out to non-members and others in the community during the dry season, add to it during the wet season, and voila! A self-sustaining rice bank is born.

Cow groups aren’t much different – basically, insert the word “cow” for “rice” in that last paragraph and you get the gist. Since cows are basically walking savings accounts, one cow for one family is quite something – but, unlike savings accounts, cows can easily “lose their owners,” get sick, die, or have babies…so they’re always a bit of a gamble.

Savings & credit groups operate a little differently. Some friends would like to have the ability to loan out money among themselves and to community members during periods of crisis or to start small businesses, so they pledge to contribute a certain percentage of their income per month (this ranges from a few cents to a couple dollars per person) to a general fund, in which they have a share. As a group, they decide who can borrow from it and whether they’ll charge a low interest rate (as for a business start-up) or no interest (as in times of disaster or crisis). CHAD sometimes contributes start-up money, sometimes not; either way, the members of savings and credit groups tend to be phenomenally responsible and very influential in their communities.

So you may be wondering: where does the gospel come in? Well, everything’s church-initiated: CHAD shares the ideas for these groups with local pastors, pastors share the ideas with their congregations, and the church members enjoy the support and training they receive from CHAD. Suffice it to say, the concept of rice banks, cow groups, and credit & savings groups are brand new to rural Cambodia – and you can bet that the 97% Buddhist, 1.5% Muslim communities notice when “that bunch of Christians” don’t go hungry during the dry season, have walking savings accounts in their backyards, and are able to loan out money to friends and neighbors. They see the church in action like it was in Acts, and it’s pretty shocking.

Beyond that, these groups are not “Christian-only” clubs; a few have more non-church members than church members, actually. And that’s okay. But when group members who are not Christians attend CHAD’s trainings, they learn some things they’ve never heard about before. Remember Ed (see my last blog on Mami Irene)? Remember his misdiagnosis by multiple NGOs who treated his material poverty as his main issue rather than restoring his sense of self-worth and potential by giving him the tools and resources to earn money to support him and his family? Well, there are a lot of Eds here in Cambodia – and a lot of recovering Eds, too. When the many Eds come to CHAD’s trainings, they learn about their unsurpassable worth, that they were created for a purpose, and that they have the potential to live a full life. Furthermore, they learn that these foundational truths are compatible with solid business ethics every small business should know (how to keep records, conduct meetings, be accountable, recognize opportunities that allow your group to grow). They get interested. Ask questions.

Ta-daaaa! That’s Christian-based community development. Isn’t that cool?

Katherine, Vannak, and I have just one more day here in Kompong Speu until we head back to Phnom Penh. Get this: two weeks from tomorrow, my dad is joining me in Singapore to hang out and get in some seriously awesome beach/father-daughter time in Koh Samui, Thailand (!!! I think he’s gonna miss me after I get married ;) ). Three weeks from today, I’ll be HOME! Very exciting.

Until then, however, my plate’s rather full. The missionaries here go on “itineration” in the States (a few months where they visit their supporting churches and make presentations on how their work is going) once every three or so years, and it’s about time for a few of them to go again. That means we’ve got some newsletters to write and send, banners to create and print, brochures to design and publish, biographies to update and upload, PowerPoints to make and edit, grants to finish and submit, policies to wrap up and implement…all in addition to making sure each missionary that I’ve worked with this summer knows how to continue the work that I’ve started with them (a daunting task in itself).

My time in Cambodia has been a good run, though, and I can already see how much I’ve learned about community development, missionaries’ dynamics, Asia, how the Methodist Church works on a global scale, how my gifts can be used in majority world mission work and, of course, my own many “areas for improvement.” But I have to say…it’s only ten weeks until I get married to the most amazing man in the world, and that’s certainly worth coming home for. :)

As always, thank you for your support, thoughts, and prayers, and many blessings to you all!

Stephanie :)

This list is a little overdue, so my apologies! But here it goes:

You know you’re still in Cambodia when…

1.       You have to describe to a Cambodian friend who just got back from a trip to the US that Las Vegas is not representative of the rest of the United States.

2.       Your stomach flu could be just a stomach flu. Or it could be malaria. Or dengue. Or parasites. Or worms. Or a severe unidentifiable virus that seems to be going around. Or…well, you’ll never really know now, will you?

3.       You’re starting to differentiate when the three-day, all-day, all-night, megaphone-blasting, dance-and-drink-till-you-drop party that blocks an entire street is a wedding and when it’s a funeral.

This one's a funeral, by the way

4.       Raw chicken legs poking out of a plastic bag in the office fridge no longer surprises or disgusts you – it means, quite simply, that you should be very excited cause there’ll be chicken for lunch.

5.       A PBJ with an apple and water for dinner is a dish full of delicacies – the peanut butter’s imported, the jam’s imported, the wheat’s imported, the fruit’s imported, the water had to be boiled and chilled…

6.       You begin to appreciate with renewed fervor when the gas, water, electricity, and internet are all working at the same time.

7.       You can ride side-saddle in a skirt on a moto like a true Cambodian: skirt tucked in, purse in front, two plastic bags in each hand.

8.       You can officially write your first name in Khmer. :)

9.       International schools (whatever that means) are everywhere: “Hello American Kindergarten,” “Rockefeller School,” “The Rockefeller School,” and “Learn American School.” Wow.

10.   You drive through New York City on the way home from Kompong Speu.

 Ohhhh, New York's that way...

11.   You recognize that sand flies are very concrete evidence of the Fall of Mankind. (I really hope that the scars fade by August 4^th!)

12.   You spend an afternoon with Windex bottle in hand following a dense line of ants that go from your front door, through the foyer, literally 360 degrees around the couch, under the kitchen table and chairs, into and out of the bathroom, up a wall, into one electrical socket, out another, up another flight of steps, across the landing, under your door, up your dresser, across a string of Christmas lights…and finally into your trash bag. For half a neglected breakfast bar. It was epic.

13.   You realize you’ve used an entire bottle of Raid (the big one) in three months.

14.   The shopkeepers, restaurant owners, and cart-pushers on your regular loop around the neighborhood have stopped looking at you like you’re a nut when you do your twilight jog and now actually smile and wave as you run past.

15.   Paying more than $0.50 for a kilo (maybe 4-5) of mangoes is absolutely ridiculous and finding a small jar of peanut butter for less than $4 is a steal.

16.   It takes an entire bottle of Windex and four rolls of toilet paper to do “spring cleaning” in your kitchen (and you just cleaned it 2 weeks ago).

17.   Your American friend gets engaged to a Cambodian guy seven months after you yet there’s a significant chance she will get married before you…twice, actually, once in the US and at once in Cambodia. Phew, and I thought that planning one wedding was a big deal!

18.   You wonder why they call it the “rainy season” rather than the “monsoon season.”

I had the blessed privilige to take this wet pic of Phnom Penh "factory" traffic (everyone gets off at the factory at 5) from inside a car. Although if you're not on a moto in PP, you might as well add an hour to your commute.

19.   You get very, very excited that you’ll be staying in a guess room that has air conditioning.

20.   You quickly learn that Cambodia’s sun is much, much stronger than Africa’s, Peru’s, and certainly Texas’ sun. And that your roof is an excellent place to lay out on sunny days. (I’m now officially darker than a number of city-dwelling Cambodians.)

 SW Phnom Penh from the roof of my apartment

21.   Your landlady begins to point out how you’ve become “less beautiful:” your hair is bleached from the sun, you have a colony of freckles on your cheeks, and your skin is several shades darker than it was three months ago. I choose to take those as compliments. ;)

22.   Paying more than $8 for a dress is just plain prodigal.

23.   The thought of a bed that actually gives a little when you sit down on it brings tears to your eyes.

24.   You see a truck bed full of monks, little yellow umbrellas and all, on the way to the province.

25.   A cow on a moto doesn’t startle you anymore.

26.   Seafood-flavored crisps (think Bugles, only tasting like shrimp, crab, or oysters) are integral road snacks.

27.   You haggle for five minutes with a moto driver over a thousand Riel (a quarter) because it’s expected.

28.   Mexican, Italian, Indian, Greek, French, and American restaurants all have just as many Khmer dishes as anything else.

29.   You unwittingly start an “eat less rice” dietary trend at work because you only have a bit of rice with lunch and someone caught wind that you don’t eat rice at all for dinner (shocker!!).

30.   You get in the habit of double-checking that the eggs you’re buying from the market aren’t already half-way cooked…halfway developed baby chicks are a delicacy here, apparently. (Ew.)

31.   The concept of eating a spider isn’t quite as gross as it was three months ago.

32.   Your jicama girl, potato girl, tomatoes lady, mango lady, apple guy, and egg guy at the market all know you so well that they start weighing your produce before you even reach their stand.

33.   You realize that, surprisingly, women you’ve only just met who are now stroking your arm don’t bother you quite as much as they used to.

34.   Everywhere there’s a television (i.e. every Cambodian restaurant), there’s Taylor Swift, Adele, and random Japanese boy pop bands… in karaoke.



mami irene

Well, it’s finally hit! After three months, I feel fully settled into Phnom Penh. Too bad I leave in three weeks.

As I’m writing this, Heng, my fabulous landlady, is showing my apartment to two sets of potential renters who will both begin leasing at the end of June. Man, that’s soon! When Daneth, one of the lovely Khmer girls who works with CHAD at the office, realized that I’d be leaving in only a few weeks, she asked me what I’d learned about “mission work” (whatever that is) while I’ve been here. It seems like such a ridiculously easy question, right? Well, maybe. People talk about “mission work” all the time, and there are all these rather vague definitions floating around in the church and out of it, but is that really what I’m doing? I’m creating policies, writing grants, publishing newsletters, posting blogs, interviewing locals, taking pictures, designing brochures and banners…that’s not exactly what I call “mission” anything. Volunteering, maybe. So what’s the difference between “mission work” and volunteering? Working for the church in a majority world country and doing development work outside the church…isn’t it the same?

Huh. Quite a question. Maybe I should have known a little bit more about what it means to do “missions” before I flew halfway across the world to round out a year of doing “mission work.” But I don’t really think I was prepared to answer Daneth’s question until this past week, when I had the pleasure of interviewing the lovely Ms. Irene Mparutsa (affectionately known around the office as “Mami”) of Zimbabwe to update her biography for GBGM.

About thirteen years ago, Irene was working in relief with the Red Cross in Africa as a midwife and nurse. She felt called to continue her medical work in Cambodia, where she eventually served as the “midwife” for the birth of Community Health and Agricultural Development, i.e. CHAD (one of GBGM’s main programs that I work with here). During her transition, she asked essentially the same question that I just have: What’s the difference between volunteering (with the Red Cross) and doing mission work (with the United Methodist Church and GBGM)?

Thirteen years later, she has an answer. And over a decade in the making, it’s a rather good one, in my opinion.

With the Red Cross, Irene and her coworkers distributed hand-outs for relief in projects that were externally-initiated and externally-sponsored. They often left sites wondering, “What will happen to these people when we leave?” but with a firm conviction that they’d at least left people in a better place than they’d been when Irene and her team first arrived. Oftentimes, Irene told me, their “relief mode” mentality made them all too ready to help people – to baby them, in a way. To lavish those poor helpless souls with as many resources, medicines, clothes, and supplies that they could before they got back into the helicopter and flew away.

Now, Irene knows that her work with the Red Cross was valuable and that many of Red Cross’s projects are incredibly necessary, effective, and efficient. Red Cross is one of the smoothest-running NGOs out there. But bragging on the Red Cross still doesn’t answer Irene’s question. What’s different about working with the church for Christ?

Well, to Irene, she found that two main things make the difference: the diagnosis of the problem and the treatment. As Irene transitioned from the Red Cross to CHAD, she moved from working in externally-initiated relief to community-initiated development. When and where appropriate, relief work is wonderful if it is immediate, temporary, and does not create dependence. But Irene found out quickly that, if relief doesn’t point recipients to self-initiated development, it’s doing more harm than good. In Cambodia, as in most situations around the world, people don’t need hand-outs or more stuff or other people to come in to tell them how to do things. They don’t need money or food or donations. While working with CHAD, Irene discovered that most materially poor people’s problem isn’t material-based; it’s about how materially poor people view themselves.

For instance, let’s take a look at Ed. Ed is a materially poor person. Ed sees himself as having less value, less ability, and less potential than the people around him, principally because he appears to be (and is) poor compared to his neighbors. Ed therefore has a broken, distorted image of himself in his head that affects everything he does. He believes in three lies, which means that he has zero confidence in his worthiness as an individual (his “worthlessness” lie), zero confidence in his ability to secure and keep a job (his “inability” lie), and zero confidence in his potential to overcome his current impoverished situation (his “lack of potential” lie). Ed feels stuck. Dependent. Worthless. And with his current mentality, he is stuck. He has allowed himself to become dependent. But he is not worthless.

Although Ed may look and be materially poor to an outsider (“Easy fix! He just needs some food and a wheelchair ramp! Short-term mission trip, here we come”), actually, Ed’s poverty goes much deeper than just “stuff.” In fact, NGOs and churches that come in to do an “easy fix” like throwing food and resources at Ed (who, by the way, is not a “relief” candidate) make him feel even more dependent, less self-reliant, and more ashamed at his circumstances than if people had just left Ed alone. NGOs’ and churches’ well-intentioned, externally-initiated projects and programs have misdiagnosed Ed’s problem and, therefore, prescribed the wrong treatment. And the wrong treatment can be fatal. Unfortunately, many fall into the trap of applying “relief” treatment – immediate, temporary, comprehensive help after a catastrophic event – to “development” situations – community-initiated, sustainable, long-term processes that concentrate on the development of people rather than the finishing of projects. Ed, suffice it to say, is in a pickle.

So what’s the proper treatment to Ed’s problem? As Irene says, that’s where Christ, acting through the church, comes in.

Irene says that the most exciting thing she gets to be a part of in Cambodia is CHAD’s “Mobilizing the Church” trainings at local churches out in the province for lay leaders, church members, and the community. The content of these trainings may not seem like much on the outside, but they get to the heart of Ed’s problem. They teach that…

We were all created with the image of God.

Because of that,

We can claim our true identity and unsurpassable worth in Christ.

(First, you combat the “worthlessness” lie.)

God created each person for a purpose and with a plan in mind.

(Then combat the “inability” lie.)

Therefore,

All men are equal and uniquely beautiful in God’s sight.

This equality means that every person – yes, even the materially poor – have the potential to live a full life.

(Then combat the “lack of potential” lie.)

And

This fullness of life is sustainable because the Holy Spirit is inside every follower of Christ because

Christ is the Sustainer of all things.

(And now Ed can see that Christ is working to make all things – even him! – new.)

So, to sum all that up, Irene has found that to her, “mission work” is about working together to walk alongside the materially poor to discover the potential that everyone has for goodness and a full life. And the difference between working for Christ rather than anyone else? Instead of being the one with all the resources, you point to the one who is the source of everything. And although this world and its stuff are passing away, he’s going to be with us forever and ever, because he is the reason we are alive. How about that for sustainability.

Well said, Mami.

life is in black and white...right?

…No, no actually it’s not. Now when you’re little, things do seem to be in black and white. Take the dentist’s office, for example. Sweets are bad because they make your teeth fall out. So, brush your teeth for exactly the amount of time that it takes to hum “Twinkle, twinkle, little star” and you’ll never have any problems. Of course when you pass the age of 5, you learn that sugar is okay in small doses and you don’t actually have to hum a full song every single time you brush your teeth, but moderation and obsessive compulsiveness aren’t terms you usually find in a child’s vocabulary.

Even grown-ups see some things in black and white, though. Funding child exploitation is a bad thing. Giving poor people money so they can go to the doctor is a good thing. Helping helps. Hurting hurts.

Black and white. Right?

Well, as in many places, here in Cambodia, black and white fight against one another in ways you wouldn’t normally expect. For instance, what if I suggested that child exploitation isn’t too terribly bad after all, even in a country that thrives on a tourist industry centered around sex trafficking? And what if I argued that giving poor people money so they can go to the doctor is actually one of the worst things you can do for them, even though thousands die of improper and non-treatment every day? What if I said helping can hurt?

See, now, things just got a little confusing…things just got a little gray.

Let me try to explain.

Dancing is a culturally celebrated and revered form of expression in Cambodia. At the opening of a Women’s Conference a few weeks ago, for example, our translator Tola danced a “Blessing Dance” for all of us, welcoming both nationals and foreigners to the conference. Just like kids in the US are taught how to hold a fork and knife correctly, boys and girls in Cambodia are taught how to dance – it’s been a part of Cambodian culture for centuries.

There are also many orphanages in Cambodia. Contrary to popular belief, many children in these orphanages have at least one living parent. But because the tourist industry is booming in Cambodia, and tourists are bombarded with signs like “Orphanage, 2 km, Dance Entertainment, Tourists Welcome” when they get here, orphanages actually make more money per child from tourists who go to see orphans dance traditional Cambodian dances than many families are able to make on their own. In some cases, dividing the family by sending a child away appears to be the best option, even when the possibility of the child being exploited and developing attachment disorders (as is often the case in orphanages that entertain many outside visitors) is high. Even when most orphanages don’t know what a child protection policy even is. Even when it rips families apart for good.

So on the one hand, you have the black. Sometimes orphanages purposefully keep orphans in poor living conditions to pull at the heart strings of visitors and tourists. Requiring children to work for their keep is against child labor laws (although those are broken all over the place here) and is destructive to children’s self-image, demeans their view of their own self-worth, and teaches them that it is okay for others to use them to make money (which easily leads to them succumbing to sexual and other forms of exploitation later on).

But on the other hand, you’ve got the white. The child will receive education, food, and a safe place to sleep that’s not in a slum. He or she will likely be cared for until he or she is at least 16, which is a much better scenario than most children living in Phnom Penh’s many slums could possibly hope for. You see, most “street children” as they’re called here pick through trash heaps for glass and plastic bottles to sell instead of going to school, hoping to get a few cents each day from a middle man who then sells the bottles for a bit more. An orphanage with adult supervision, meals on the table three times a day, and classes is a much more appealing alternative.

Hm. That’s a little gray.

This mom lives on my street. She collects glass and plastic bottles during the day and washes them on the sidewalk outside her door at night so she can sell them for a bit of money the next morning. (Her son is about the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen!)

Switch gears for a minute and think about the insane poverty in Cambodia for a moment. Most people here earn somewhere between $1 and $2 per day, per family. Now picture paying for rent, food, and…well, that’s about all you can cover, really. Schools here are free, but the uniforms aren’t – a uniform half a month’s rent down the drain, per child. And health insurance, preventative vaccinations, prescriptions? Unless someone’s so bad off that they’re dying, it just ain’t gonna happen.

Within this reality, it sure does seem like donations from well-meaning sponsors should go directly to funding patients’ entire medical costs, including all prescriptions, treatments, and follow-up appointments. It helps. Right? But check out what hospitals have found: when 100% of medical support is always provided for patients free of charge, it’s not actually valued. You know those free samples that sales people try to force into your hand as you’re walking through the mall? Of course you throw them away in the next available trash bin. It’s kind of like that. There’s no investment, no partnership, no incentive to take advantage of “free” because, well, it’s free. But it’s much deeper than that, as well: you’re flirting with the distinct difference between enabling and empowering. When health services are provided for free, local people are enabled – permanently placed in the “recipient” category – while donors are in the “donors” category. Us, them. Rich, poor. Being classified forever as the needy person in that kind of relationship does something irreversibly destructive to a person’s dignity and feelings of self-worth as a child of God. Helping can hurt.

That’s why Mercy Medical Clinic, one of CHAD’s partners here in Cambodia, has developed a graduated system of payment so that patients have both the opportunity and responsibility to invest in their health care. Depending on a patient’s income, he or she pays 80%, 50%, or 20% of their own medical costs and the hospital and partners like CHAD cover the rest. (In special cases, 100% of medical costs are covered, though it’s more the exception than the rule.) It’s actually worked out phenomenally well, and more hospitals and health programs are adopting their own versions of graduated healthcare assistance.

It’s taken a long while for hospitals and community development programs to get to this point, though. It was pretty gray for a pretty long time. Even with this newly implemented system, each individual case seems to have its own shades of gray, its own very legitimate reason to be an “exception” to the rule – the hospital should cover 100% of their costs rather than just part – than an adherent.

While wrestling with whether helping helps or hurts, the blacks start to bleed into the white. Suddenly, things aren’t so easy anymore. There’s charcoal gray. There’s slate gray. There’s steel gray. There’s that gray that people have the audacity to call “silver”…but it’s still gray. It’s almost too much to take in. Oppressive, even. It’s just so gray.

But what would happen if we decided not to play the world’s games according to the world’s rules? What would happen if the church decided it wanted to do more for orphans than fund institutions that “seem to be the best option out there”? What would happen if the church partnered with more organizations that valued the long-term holistic health and realized self-worth of individuals rather than quickie, fix-it, Band Aid methodologies? What would happen if we paid attention to how our help can hurt? What would happen if we dared to let our creativity bloom with ideas of how to celebrate the dignity, worth, and holistic well-being of every one of God’s children?

Well, call me a dreamer and an idealist, but we might start to see the world as it was meant to be: dazzling with hope, love, peace, and color. And that, I think, is something worth wrestling for.

ballet slippers and juicy juice

When I was in a little kid, I could count on a specific weekly outing: dance class.

Picture yourself as a four or five year old. Once a week, you’d pile into the big Honda minivan with your leotard and little pink skirt on, blonde little whisps of hair somehow pulled back into a scrunchie, ballet slippers in hand, and probably a Juicy Juice for the ride. At class, you simply follow the leader: what teacher does, you do. Occasionally you’ll have to recall a previous lesson and built upon that, but your teacher and fellow dancers are always there to help you figure it out. Then at the end, never fail, you always get a few minutes of free time to leap and twirl and spin and play with all of your friends at your heart’s content.

You have a vague idea that all of these weekly get-togethers are leading up to a main event (your teacher keeps saying the words “spring concert,” whatever that means), but at the moment, all you’re interested in is leaping and twirling and spinning and playing, occasionally complaining to teacher that you stubbed your toe or you don’t like your hair like this or your skirt got untied or the Juicy Juice you spilled on yourself in the car makes your leotard look less pretty than everyone else’s. Which is okay. Because you’re four.

After class, you pile into the minivan again, forgetting a few important items that mom faithfully scoops up and brings along, and you entertain yourself in the back seat by watching all the pretty trees and signs go by. Eventually, you see that the car’s in the garage. You press the little automatic door opener button, rush into the house, and say hello to the fam’s not-so-little chocolate lab, Tootsie.

Ah, how blissful life is when you’re four.

Now that I’m nearly 24, I can better appreciate all the effort that went into making those weekly outings to dance class actually possible. First, mom did a bunch of research to find the best dance class for four-year-olds in all of Kingwood, work around her and your schedules to find the perfect time, and buy specific types of leotard, skirt, and ballet flats in specific colors and in specific sizes to make certain that you matched the rest of your class. She needed to make sure Jenn, my sister, was taken care of during that hour that she was out, that gas was in the car, Juicy Juices were in the fridge, I was washed and decent, dinner wasn’t going to burn when we were away, and Tootsie had some plaything to keep her occupied while we were away so she wouldn’t chew up the entire house (again). She must remember her keys, license, vehicle registration, cell phone, book, purse, extra quarters in case I wanted something from the vending machine, glasses, shoes, makeup, that little volunteer form that my teacher needed filled out. Once in the car, she’d navigate around the hundreds of other people also trying to get somewhere at 5 o’clock with driving skills perfected after 10+ years behind the wheel. There were bills to be paid and broken appliances to fix, but she still loved bringing me to dance.

At the dance studio, a few someones woke up early that morning to pay the electric and water bill, sweep the floors, unlock the doors, clean the bathrooms, Windex the mirrors, and fix the broken sprinklers. My dance teacher had spent the week preparing an entire lesson for us, praying that we’d actually remember what she’d spent so much time choreographing for the dance studio’s annual spring concert. The costumes were back-ordered, she was low on parent volunteers for the big night, there was some problem with rental contract for the concert hall, and her daughter just brought home a C in biology, but she still loved to watch us dance.

Sometimes it’s just easier to be a four-year-old.

We’ve been talking a lot about the difference between faith and belief in church and Bible study this week, and here’s my very simplified, “working” conclusion: belief is the knowledge that something is true, and faith is holding onto something with so much assurance and conviction that you can act upon your belief that that something is true.

Jesus teaches us to have faith like a child. So in reality, that means that I even though God wants us to be mature Christians, not shy away from the world’s problems, go deep in relationships, and make sacrifices on the behalf of others, we can still dance in the trust that he is good. He wants us to trust that he’s got us in the palm of his hand, he reconciles all things, and he already won.

But here on my walk to work, I see 8-year-old children who should be in school pushing carts full of plastic bottles and aluminum cans that they dug out of the trash dumps to sell for next to nothing. I see and hear domestic and child abuse on my street. I see the debilitating effects of a whole generation who was not taught how to read or write. I see girls trying to get free of the sex trade but having to go back again and again because it’s the best form of support they can provide for their families. Sometimes, it doesn’t seem like Jesus has already won.

Seeing the 24-year-old bigger picture is hard…and sometimes I don’t know if I can keep standing, much less dancing and twirling and playing in my tutu.

When I was four, running out of the grape flavor of Juicy Juice was a big deal. All I saw was that the fridge didn’t have any – we only had orange juice. Little did I know that there was a shortage of grapes that season or the truck that carries Juicy Juice to HEB got a flat tire somewhere near Dallas and didn’t make it to the grocery store in time to restock the previous day. I was just upset because I saw I wasn’t going to get my grape Juicy Juice that day.

I may be 20 years older, but I still get miffed when I don’t get my grape Juicy Juice. I’m discouraged when I don’t see instant results in my work or relationships don’t happen overnight. I’m frustrated when I can’t see how my impact here is so little compared with what God-sized tasks need to be done. I’m annoyed when the perfect apartment doesn’t land neatly in my lap after only a few weeks of searching. I feel helpless in the midst of all of the brokenness I see in Phnom Penh. I’m upset when I don’t get my grape Juicy Juice.

So here’s the thing: with mature belief and faith like a child, I can follow the leader at dance class despite all the mess that I see in Cambodia, delighting in what God delights in, twirling when Jesus twirls. When I forget what Jesus taught me last week, because I will (already have?), Jesus is patient – I’ll learn it again, in a new and different way this time. So even when we complain about our Juicy Juice, ask silly questions, don’t keep with the beat, get frustrated with our own blunderings, and don’t know how we’ll ever be ready for that spring concert, it’s okay. Just like mom and my dance teacher, God just wants us to dance.