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.



the five-syllable challenge

Hello, all!

Happy late Easter and Khmer New Year! Katherine (my host missionary from California) and I just got back from a 5-day trip to Kompong Speu province where she and Hong Phally, the District Superintendent of KS, delivered a two-day training on servant leadership to new Christians from three different churches in the area. We then drove a few hours west, picked up another two pastors and their families, and spent a few days in Kol Kong to celebrate Khmer New Year, Cambodian style! I taught little Wesley (how very Methodist) how to build a sandcastle and collect the prettiest sea shells at the beach, laid out in the sun, gorged myself on seafood, and got some good beach reading in, which was wonderful. A few days of rays are highly underrated.   

Sok Nora and Hong Phally chasing a crab at the beach

so close!

 

but fifteen minutes later...

GOT EM!!!

Wesley proudly bringing me a tenth handful of seashells

our prized collection

Kol Kong at sunset

After a couple days of soaking up the sun, visiting the Thai border (apparently it’s the thing to do around here…), touring mangrove forests, and eating a few questionable items, we made the long road trip back to Phnom Penh, just in time to revel in a few hours’ worth of relative peace, quiet, clean(ish) air before torrents of people returned to the city after spending a weekend with loved ones.

before heading out to see the mangroves, I felt the need pause for a tribute to Texas

a pleasant meal of garlic-infused fried crickets

Sok Nora and his wife enjoying the creepy-crawly entrée 

rambutan - road food! (inside, it's kind of like a white grape with an almond-shaped seed in the middle)

to break up the trip, we did a quick pit stop at a waterfall in the mountains on the way home

for me, this was a first!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me paint a picture for you. These past two weeks have put Phnom Penh into a flurry of excitement. But instead of dying eggs in rainbow splotches, buying Peeps and green plastic grass and multicolored wicker baskets, sneaking a few Cadbury eggs here and there, praying that the lilies will stay alive through Holy Saturday, and counting down the days until a Sunrise Service, it’s been a bit different on this side of the world.

Despite my many inquiries to nationals and expats alike, I have yet to discover both the original intention and the significance of all the festivities that go on for Khmer New Year. Little ones, students, and adults have been absorbed in all of these crazy games: hacky sack with a feathered ball thing, beating up a clay pot with a stick (Cambodian form of “piñata, piñata”?), acting like a hen protecting her baby chicks when a crow tries to peck them off, some form of “duck, duck, goose” with a towel twisted into a ring, and gambling and dice. Little ancestor worship houses are lit up with incense at every door, plates of food and drink lay out untouched (except for the flies, of course) on porches and outside doorways for dead relatives, major cities are evacuated as inhabitants flee to their home provinces to be with families and loved ones, and parties rage all night and all day in pagodas, houses, and little shops with no apparent care for the expense, day, or hour.

So…what’s it all for? Still not sure! I’ll bet me pondering Khmer New Year celebrations based on the games and hyper-use of incense would be a bit like a Cambodian trying to figure out what the meaning of Easter is based on egg hunts and chocolate bunny rabbits. Not that I’m hating on the bunnies or anything, but I can see where the confusion can bloom!

So, in the midst of festivities settling down and the second half of my internship to dive into, I’m finding the true meaning of what Jesus called “patient endurance.” Gees, just the sound of that makes me feel impatient and flighty. You remember the parable of the sower? The last two lines of explanation caught me the other day:

“As for the seed that fell among thorns: they hear but, as they go about their daily lives, they’re choked by the cares, riches, and pleasures of life and their fruit doesn’t mature. But as for the seed that falls into good soil: when they hear the word, they hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and they bear fruit with patient endurance.” (Luke 8:14-15)

I have to be honest here. Being literally as far away from my family, friends, and fiancé as the east is from the west for a third of a year during the six months before I get married, move to a new city, and start grad school is a teeny bit rough. Any other logical, sane, rational creature would have surely not intentionally made plans to live in yet another foreign culture just months before her wedding. Learn how to be an unpaid intern rather than make money, gain engineering experience, and save up for her next few years of schooling. Risk getting dengue, malaria, and whatever else is floating around Cambodia while she’s still only in her early twenties. Anyone who’s known me for any length of time couldn’t have guessed two years ago that I’d be traipsing around the world doing volunteer work for the church. Sounds pretty nuts. Kinda reckless…a little too childish, perhaps? Are we sure this girl’s grown up enough to make her own decisions?

Fortunately (and I need to remind myself of this every day that I’m here, I’m not ashamed to admit), I can bet my life on the fact that God called me here. And thank God that God doesn’t work according to the world’s uptight standards of prudence, restraint, and control – because without his recklessly extravagant, completely inexplicable grace, then where would we be?

But I won’t pretend that I haven’t needed encouragement to remind me that I heard God correctly when I felt him nudge me toward Cambodia. Thankfully, it’s come in droves. Twice in one day (and many times thereafter), missionaries who I work with on a daily basis came up to me a month or so ago, sat me down, and told me explicitly that I was an incarnate answer to their prayers. Irene (known around the office affectionately as “Mamí”) had asked God for years to send someone who could help her bridge the gap between what she sees and witnesses God doing through her work here and her supporters, a mostly North American audience. Capturing stories on paper and sharing them with others is exactly what I came here to do, and even though it seems to me sometimes like I’m not much help to anyone at all. But the little encouragements I’ve received from Mamí and others, I know God’s using me.

So where does that leave me? Still wrestling, believe it or not. When Jesus was talking about the “cares, riches, and pleasures of life” choking those little seeds, he wasn’t kidding. It’s so difficult for me to convince myself that what I can offer here actually has worth, even though a fat paycheck, big company name, and sometimes even remotely tangible outcomes aren’t associated with it. Like the many other missionaries who work here, I’m in danger of being caught up in the “cares of life” in Cambodia: how little I can offer in the midst of such brokenness, the rolling blackouts in 98°F+ April heat, the miles of slums where people struggle to survive with less than nothing, the struggles of trying to teach even the most basic of lessons in the provinces. Pushed down by so many cares, of course I can’t allow my “fruit to mature” – how can you see anything clearly when tear-filled eyes?

So here's the challenge. "But as for the seed that falls into good soil: when they hear the word, they hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and they bear fruit with patient endurance."

I’ve seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and felt a lot this past year. Zambia, Peru, Cambodia. I've learned a lot about Christ, his church, his word, and myself. I’ve also seen lot of things that have made me want to break down and cry. A lot that’s made me want to give up, fly back to Texas, sneak into a well-lit, sweet-smelling, air-conditioned Starbucks, and lose myself in one of those massive overstuffed coffeehouse chairs with a $4 latte and a good book for the rest of my life. A lot that’s made me angry, defensive, inconsolable, and defiant. A lot that’s convinced me that after I’ve seen what I have, there’s no way I can go back to life as it once was. 

So here in Cambodia where waiting seems for me to be the hardest it’s ever been, I’m determined to “hold it fast” – cling to the faith and trust that God knows exactly what he’s doing in my life and to the ultimate hope that when Jesus comes, everything’s going to be great – with “patient endurance.” Patient endurance. Who knew that five syllables could ever be so hard?

As always, I love hearing from y'all and getting caught up in your lives and everything that's going on this spring! Thank you for your wonderful encouragement and prayers and support for me while I'm here - it's made all the difference!!!

Many blessings,

Stephanie :)

i almost missed it

It’s so surreal that I’m here. I’m writing this from the floor of Holy Mountain Methodist Church in Phnom Penh, Cambodia while listening to 30 women from districts all over Cambodia discuss what the most desperate problems are in their respective communities. Every district reports the same problems: illiteracy, kids dropping out of school at age 7, persecution as Christians, pointless violence among young people, no clean water, drunk husbands, disempowered women, no sanitation, no concept of hygiene, no health care, migration to Thailand, babies born on dirt floors and women bleeding to death hours after the baby’s born, no teachers, un- or underpaid pastors. They’re trying to decide among themselves how they as Methodist women can use information they’ve learned from this 3-day women’s conference to counter them…as if a series of lectures, even pertinent ones, could really solve nation-wide, age-old crises of chronic poverty, injustice, and governmental corruption.

Yesterday, we had people from Cambodia (34), the Philippines (4), Singapore (2), Kenya (1), Zimbabwe (1), Bangladesh (1), and the US (me!) all in one room listening to presentations on what women leadership looks like in the Cambodian church. Most of my attention was fixed on the Khmer speaker and Tola, our interpreter, because I was taking a steady stream of dictation for future publications. But once in a while it hit me: Wow. I’m here sweating in a church cooled off by fans, sitting on a cushion on the floor or in a wire chair for 14 hours a day, complaining in my mind to high heaven about the inefficiencies of the workshop and how Cambodian Standard Time isn’t quite to my Western liking and that I didn’t get my coffee that morning…and I almost missed it.

Most of what I do here is help the missionaries share stories: stories about blind acid burn victims who are now struggling to keep their family alive, stories about modern medical miracles and the transforming the power of healing prayer, stories about how hard-working people with only a small micro-loan can build for themselves entire businesses and send their children to school. When you’re hearing so many stories, you can sometimes miss it. I guess it’s like becoming desensitized to violence in the US because all our movies are painted with it – or, probably more accurately, like living on your own personal island in the Bahamas and, after day after day of monotonous beauty, eventually taking your little isle of paradise for granted. It’s a fine balance, visiting children in an orphanage and having to sit and smile while they perform dances for you, their cherished American visitors; it’s a fine balance you have to maintain between holding it all at a distance – keep it in a picture or a Word document, just don’t let them get too close – and cratering into a little ball of sobs right on the spot. I’m only here for four short months. There are enough wrenching stories here to make you want to hide where it’s pretty and clean, where there’s potable water available to the public and a solid justice system and freedom and functioning child protection services. Where you don’t have to hear about a mother threatening to sell her six-year-old daughter into the sex trade unless her 16-year-old daughter reenters it…a place where you don’t have to hear about all of that unless you want to. But see? I almost missed it again.

I almost missed it as I listened to and wrote down the testimony of Srey Aun, a woman blinded by an acid attack at age 19 and now, with the help of a vision from God teaching her how to crochet (!!!), now sells bags at the market to support herself and her family. I kept her story on the page and wouldn’t let it sink in – there are so many acid burn victims here that an organization has founded BABS, “Bags by Acid Burn Survivors.” One Srey Aun is one too many. But I almost missed it, too, as I listened to my housemate talk about her work at Bloom, an organization that rescues women from the sex industry and trains them in a craft. She told me about a brothel owner who’d become so sick that he was even coming to Christians for help and prayer. Half of me tried to be indifferent to the incredible pain she deals with every day, and the other half empathized with all the women under the brothel owner’s power. And, torn between the two extremes, I nearly missed it.

On one hand, apathy; on the other, overwhelming despair that flirts with fatalism. Sometimes it’s so hard to recognize God’s face, his hope, in it all.

One Zambian song goes like this: “When Jesus comes, everything is going to be great.” I think they got it.

I’ve only been here a month, but every day it’s a struggle to wade past the incredible brokenness here to see hope. Sometimes the needs are too overwhelming, and I switch into “protection mode” – I hide in my little safe house of apathy. It’s difficult to know that I’m only one person, that God only gave me a limited amount to do here on earth, and that he will take care of the rest. I forget that he’s God and I’m not. It’s hard to remember that I’ll only be able to survive in situations like this if I cling to hope not half the time, not even most of the time, but every single moment. Without hope that this world isn’t all there is and that Jesus is coming again, I’d give up. But with it? Phew, Cambodia is beautiful.

I’m here for three more months. I don’t want to miss it again.

to thailand and back again (well, almost)

Hi, all!

A group from Virginia, a few of the CHAD (Community Health & Agricultural Development) staff, and I just got back to Phnom Penh from a few days’ excursion to Kampong Thom, Siem Reap, Banteay Meanchey, and Battambang (coolest, most confusing names ever – and that’s just the English transliteration). We were a small but mighty group: me, Tola (24-year old, newly married Cambodian translator), Romy (DS, Filipino), Mr. Thy (CHAD staff, Cambodian), and Ken (CHAD staff, Filipino); plus our entirely awesome driver, and four adults who work for the UMC in the US. Fun group!

Ok, so check this out: we started in Phnom Penh, went north to Siem Reap, then to the border in Banteay Meanchey (NW), and went south through Battambang to get back home. Quite a road trip!

Our main goal for this trip was for the VA team to see how they could coordinate volunteer teams most effectively in Cambodia in the future. With Mr. Thy and Ken, we also got to see many of the Methodist churches that the CHAD group partners with for rice banks, savings groups, and micro-finance loans for livestock. Actually, we were so far out in the provinces that we made it almost to the Thailand border (we were 10 minutes away from getting our passports out!). It was really wonderful to see in person the churches and projects that I’d heard about so much on paper. For example, check this out:

Pastor Eang Pros at Teok Thla Methodist Church has been around since 1993 (just one year after Christianity became legal in Cambodia), and they plan to build a preschool for their community and an affordable, 10-room, co-ed dormitory for university students who want to study at one of the three nearby institutions without going into irreversible debt after they graduate.

Bour Methodist Church’s rice bank stores and lends 5,600 kg of rice to the community, and two members became Christians because of the church's witness.

Daun Meay Church in Battambang is led by a young, single, female pastor whose rice bank is doing phenomenally well, and her congregants save 5000 Riel/month ($1.25/month) in their savings group (it’s basically a small community-led and run bank – people contribute a monthly portion of their salary, and they can borrow larger sums of money to be paid back with interest). The nearest hospital to this church is kilometers away and transportation is difficult to find, so many women deliver their babies on the side of the road, in transit.

There’s nothing like attending a district meeting with 15 pastors to find out what the true needs of the people are. In Ban Teay Meanchey, we found out that the main problem here in Cambodia was lack of education. To help flesh this out, here’s a scenario of a typical Cambodian family:

Mom, dad, sister, and baby brother own a bit of land out in the province where they grow rice during the wet season. They are far from any river or irrigation system and the dry season is very, very dry, so for most of the year, dad goes to Thailand along with the rest of the men in the village in a mass exodus to find work as an itinerant farmer or laborer. This leaves mom, sister, and baby brother in Cambodia, struggling to grow whatever crops they can on their parched piece of land until the rains come again. Since mom’s busy with cooking, cleaning, washing, and selling whatever food and trinkets she can at the local market, sister has to stay home from school to do all the actual planting and harvesting. Eventually, dad comes home from Thailand for the season…but it looks like he’s not making enough money to supplement his travel expenses and pay for the land that his family owns in Cambodia. So everyone picks up and moves to Thailand, where sister can work, too. If for some reason dad gets sick and dies or is duped into working for a company that enslaves workers for forced labor, mom and kids have to move back to Cambodia – but now they have nowhere to go, mom has no marketable skills because she’s illiterate, sister hasn’t been in school for years, and baby brother’s future is no brighter.

Seems a bit of a stretch, like I’m being overly dramatic for effect, maybe? Not so much. Apparently, this happens all the time. This is why the pastors here are so desperate for help – in the US, members of congregations support their churches and pastors with offerings and tithes; in Cambodia, pastors support their churches, congregations, and entire communities with what help they can. Needs are devastating and resources are scant, so sometimes, all they can do is pray. For a long while, prayer came with intense persecution because of their faith (remember, a 1.3% Christian nation!). In recent years, however, Christian churches are beginning to gain some respect in their communities because of their engagement in social activism – rice banks, savings groups, loans, and the like – so although times are rough, the pastors’ outlook is bright!

On the way to visiting churches and meeting pastors, our team got to pass through Siem Reap. Nearly everyone who’s been to this part of the world has told me that I had to go to Angkor Watt before I left – and lo and behold, I’ve not been even a month in Cambodia, and we got to see the temple!

Angkor Watt - main temple

Temple of Many Faces

There are monks everywhere! In the city, they walk from door to door with little yellow umbrellas to protect them from the sun, asking for food in exchange for prayers. We usually see them in the mornings only, because they aren't allowed to eat past 11am.

Since seeing the largest and most impressive of the 1,100 temples in Cambodia isn’t quite enough excitement for one day, we also went to a fair-trade silk farm to see how silk’s made. So cool.

Mulberry leaves (worm lunch)

The stars of the whole show themselves

Silk worms make cocoons and eventually turn into moths. One cocoon is just a really, really long thread that can be untangled to make silk!

So now it’s back in the office for a few days with occasional day-trips out of Phnom Penh, mainly to accompany CHAD staff members to their sites so I can help them write up stories for newsletters and inquiring supporters. In the meantime, I’m working on starting several newsletters with GBGM staff, getting ready for Women’s Week at the end of March, and getting to know Phnom Penh more with every day.All my love to y’all, and a huge digital hug!

Hugs and blessings,

Stephanie

(As always…) A dozen ways to know that you’re in the provinces of Cambodia:

(1) Something new is to be used. For example, if you buy a super-sharp knife for slicing beef, it will work excellently for cutting wire or tin cans, as well.

(2) Squatter toilets suck.

(3) With only Americans, it’ll take you just five hours to get from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap; with Filipinos, it’ll take you eight; but with all-locals, budget ten or more. Godda have your snack stops.

(4) Women are expected to ride side-saddle on moto-dops (on the back of motorcycles – the cheapest and most popular mode of travel). Suffice it to say, I haven’t quite got that down.

(5) When a package says “mint,” do not automatically assume that is mouthwash, however similar the package might be to Scope. It may, in fact, be shampoo. (A rather unfortunate blonde moment there!)

(6) Speeding tickets cost a whopping 5,000 Riel ($1.25). But no fear!! Our driver talked it down to 3,000 Riel ($0.75).

(7) Tree branches are handy replacements for construction cones when your tire goes flat in the middle of a busy two-lane highway.

(8) Side-street vendors sell gasoline in 1L glass Fanta bottles right next to the Fanta in 1L glass Fanta bottles. Personally, I think they look a little too similar for that.

(9) Having a little ancestor house perched in your front yard is essential – it’s like a front door. Everyone has one.

(10) It takes four people and two rounds of ice cream to decide if the vanilla is really coconut, why they call coconut something that tastes like peach, what kind of fruit “fruit” ice cream is supposed to be, and how on earth ice cream can be so different here than it is on the other side of the world.

(11) The insatiable desire to pass other cars on the road is even stronger here than it is in Peru!

(12) Palm trees aren’t just for Florida – they’re the national tree of Cambodia!

man, am i getting old...

Until about three weeks ago, I never even dreamed that I’d go to Asia, for vacation or mission work or just about anything. It was really a God thing that less than a month ago Katherine (my “host” UMC missionary here in Phnom Penh) contacted me with a perfect volunteer job description, available housing, and an incredibly flexible schedule for my arrival and departure. Maybe I should blame my 9^th grade World History teacher for his fascination with Mexico and resulting general neglect of the rest of the world, but I didn’t know a thing about Singapore, the Vietnam War, or even where Laos was before I came to Cambodia! So suffice it to say, when I got here, I had a lot to learn.

If you, too, were deprived of learning about Cambodian history in its full, here’s an appalling simplification of the basics and (more importantly, I think) the effect it’s had on the current population living in Cambodia today:

1.       Way back when, the Chinese dynasty began taking control of northern and middle Asia, pushing the Viet and Thai dynasty and their peoples to southern Asia (i.e. Cambodia, the land of the Khmers). Cambodia was effectively controlled by Vietnam leaders until the French came and took their place.

2.       When the French left, they allowed the Vietnamese to stay in-country as the upper-middle class. Obviously, this caused a bit of dissention.

3.       In a style very much like Hitler in Germany, the Khmer Rouge, a small purist group of Cambodians, decided to rise up against the Vietnamese in power and exterminate all non-Khmer peoples (including Chinese-Khmer, Viet-Khmer, Thai-Khmer, and the like). The group’s goal was to effectively start over – their dream was for Cambodia to be a feudalistic, purely Khmer, communist society. This meant that all non-Khmer and educated peoples had to go. Some were targeted and killed, but something like half of the population died in labor camps.

4.       After lots of bombing and general chaos, peace came finally by the late ‘70s and ‘80s, and the remaining population started having kids again. Christianity only became legal in 1992.

The effects? Over half the population is under the age of 20, and 70% is under 30. Since the educated were targeted, Cambodia is incredibly far behind other Asian countries in education, technology, and development. Since many young people’s parents are farmers in the provinces, they are unable to earn enough money to send their kids to school, and many don’t have a choice but to work for minimum pay ($1-2 a day) or crowd Phnom Penh’s slums, trying to find odd jobs to support themselves and their families.

Since Christianity’s only been around for 20 years, you can imagine how crazy it’s been for the Church – not only is there institutional poverty juxtaposed by ostentatious wealth (of the king and the upper, upper class) nearly everywhere you look, but the church itself in Cambodia is in its infancy. Persecution for being Christian is a real deal in a country where only 1.3% of the population claims itself Christian; the other 98.7% is mostly Buddhist.

So a country dominated by kids and teenagers: give that a second to marinate. The younger majority of the population have few, if any, positive older role models to follow and learn from, so in their place, hyper-consumerism – iPods, iPhones, diamonds, jewelry, designer shoes and handbags, cheap alcohol, and everything else that the media has told them that they should have and want – makes a fabulously convenient substitute. For those who desire a higher education, scholarships aren’t available, so they have to find a way to pay their own way through school or just not go.

Understandably, that’s quite a problem for a developing country. To counter it, Clara, a missionary from Bangladesh who works at the GBGM office, heads up “Street Kids,” a program designed to help children living in Phnom Penh stay out of trouble, go to school, and have a chance for a better life than their predecessors. I’ll work with Clara mainly before and around Eastertime, when she’ll be putting on a huge Easter celebration for the kiddoes.

Issues aren’t only with the inner-city young’uns, however. CHAD (“Community Health and Agricultural Development”), the group I’ve primarily worked with up to this point, mainly focuses on increasing the standard of living and well-being of the people who live in the provinces by providing micro-finance loans, introducing systems of saving money so farmers can buy more seed when they need it, and starting rice banks so communities can have extra stores of rice during times of drought. Their revolving credit loans are really cool: CHAD loans out $125 for 5 people ($25/person) with the understanding that each person will pay back $5/month. Within one month, the program has $25, another person can take out a loan, and the cycle continues. They do the same thing with cows and rice – it’s working beautifully!

This weekend, I’ll be heading out to Siem Reap (a historic city in the province…I’ll find out why it’s historic there, I’m sure), Anker Watt (!!!), and other towns with a couple of the CHAD staff and a few people from Virginia. They’re visiting to see how their church can best offer its assistance, support, and future teams to help the church in Cambodia, and I essentially get to tag along on their “exposure trip,” getting to learn a ton first-hand about what CHAD does within local congregations outside of Phnom Penh. I know I act like I’m allergic to taking pictures, but I’ll try my best to bring back some good ones. Exciting!

Hope y’all are doing wonderfully and are enjoying this new week! (Downloading pictures isn't exactly happenin this week...the internet's not that good!) All my love and many blessings,

Stephanie

PS – In case you’re feeling an itch to relocate, here are a few perks of living in Cambodia:

1.       You’ll get off women's day (this Thursday)!

2.       Tired of plain orange juice? OJ + mint + condensed milk is an acceptable substitute here.

3.       No more embarrassed whispering about feminine products…”sandwiches,” "bread," or "hamburger" are code words (oops! Secret revealed).

4.       Dislike the no-texting laws popping up all over the place? Texting while driving a moto on INSANE streets is actually legal and common.

5.       No more hundred-dollar tickets: a ticket for the passenger not buckling their seatbelt is just $1.25.

6.       You get to risk your life daily if you decide to venture out onto the main roads. Although people generally “drive on the right,” that’s basically a suggestion – if there’s more room on the left, then drive on the left. Just remember: the biggest vehicle always wins (it's a rough world out there).

7.       Apparently, dogs can ride motos, too.

8.       Your 8.5 women’s shoe size is monstrous for little tiny Asian feet shoe stores…so make sure to bring your own!

9.       You can actually talk down $40 to $9 in a mall – bargaining to a quarter to a fifth of the price is expected.

10.   Tired of feeling youthful? Half the population of all of Cambodia is under the age of 20, and 70% are under 30.

11.   Ants invade everything within minutes, even dried packaged noodles and canned items…aaahhhh!!! You will develop red ant paranoia…but hey, having the kitchen all to yourself is no fun anyway.

12.   Off-brand windex kills ants (hooray!!).

13.   Scratch that…off-brand windex kills ants for an hour.

14.   Raid kills ants for 6 hours.

15.   Ants are immortal.

16.   Instant roommates! Mice will move into your broken clothes washer.

17.   In the mornings, monks go around barefoot in bright orange robes with little umbrellas and homemade baskets, asking for food donations (they can only eat before 11am) in exchange for prayers. So hey, you’ve got that goin for you.

18.   Bored? There are weddings all over the place. If you’re really bored, you can get up at 3am when the ceremonies and rituals start. It’s a long day…so to keep their guests entertained, the bride and groom change outfits about every hour (do the math – from 3am til midnight means a ton of clothes!). A “poor” family will have seven outfits, minimum.

19.   Looking for a free workout class? Drive to the center of town, where you can join tens of men and women doing step aerobics on a sidewalk facing the middle of a busy traffic center.

84 degrees at 6:30 am (and it only gets hotter from here…)

Ah, Cambodia: the land of smiles, humidity, the Khmers, Watt temples, and (ah, yes) the Lexus.

And man is it hot.

Thankfully, I’m in a two-bedroom apartment that’s just downstairs of Katherine, my “host UMC missionary,” which has a fan in most of the rooms and a small AC unit in my bedroom that works beautifully (my saving grace!). I’m living in the apartment by myself for the time being, but I hope that I’ll get to have a suitemate soon. The apartment complex in our neighborhood is four stories tall and connected on the third floor to the neighboring apartment by an outdoor balcony, so I basically have Katherine as my upstairs housemate and easy access to my neighbors, which is infinitely better than living all by myself. I live in the bottom two stories of one apartment, Katherine lives in the upper two stories, Anita and Angela (ex-pat professors who teach Khmer/English to highly vulnerable girls) live next door to Katherine, and Heng (my sweet Cambodian landlady who recently became a Christian) and her many nephews live under them. To keep ourselves centered and to give Heng daily opportunities to learn about the Bible and Jesus, we all get together at Anita and Angela’s place for devotions in the morning before work and sometimes vespers (evening devotions) at night. We’re the only ex-pats on our street, which is awesome, because there are always tons of little Cambodian kids running around shouting “Hello! Hello!” morning, noon, and night. No annoying roosters waking me up at 3am, though…God must have heard my prayers. :)

So despite my fans and even moderate air-conditioning at the office, I’m still experiencing these lovely hot-flashes, major fatigue, and headaches. I’m hoping I’m just getting used to the weather and have prolonged jet-lag, but there’s a pretty high possibility that I’m allergic to MSG…which happens to be in everything local and that I don’t prepare myself, unfortunately. So I’m being careful over the next few days to see if I see much of a difference. I’m just glad I don’t have to make myself sick from taking malaria medication!

The heat and MSG aside, I really think this internship is going to be amazing. I work closely with the CHAD (Community Health and Agriculture Development) team who focuses on providing health care access, agricultural training, water purification techniques, and microfinance loans to communities in Phnom Penh and out in the province (Cambodia’s version of the Zambian “bush” or Peruvian “jungle”). There are only seven of them: Katherine (my “host missionary” from California), Vannak (23-year-old Cambodian office assistant), Daneth (Cambodia), Sophal (Cambodia), Mr. Thy (Cambodia), Mr. Ken (Cambodia), and Mamí Irene (Zimbabwe). I can understand Katherine and Mamí perfectly, but I’m having serious difficulties understanding the Khmer (“Kah-my”) accent. Apparently, in Khmer, the subject is often dropped and the verb is always unconjugated but hierarchical (you use a different verb for when a child eats, a monk eats, a king eats, a woman eats, a man eats, women or men eat…the list goes on and on). Once I figured that much out, it’s a bit easier to understand native Cambodians. Still, it’s kind of like interpreting “jungle Spanish” in Peru…I’m hopeless! Since a bunch of my time is going to be spent communicating, I’m praying for the gift of tongues or interpretation or something. Kidding (well, sort of). :)

The rest of the GBGM team at the office are working with the Methodist Women’s division, Street Kids (outreach to educate and improve the standard of life for kids in Phnom Penh), and other programs are from all over – Helen, our financial girl, is from the Philippines; Esther, the volunteer coordinator, is from Kenya; Marilyn and Joseph are survivors of the Khmer Rouge and lived in the US for 20 years before they returned to Cambodia to be missionaries in their home country…the list goes on and on. Such cool people! I’m so incredibly blessed to be able to work with them so closely this summer!

In other news, I’m going to be going to a taize service this afternoon after work (kind of contemplation meets meditation for an hour or so…I think? We’ll see how it goes!) and I’m invited to an all-day wedding this Sunday. Cambodian weddings are supposed to be nuts with all these cool rituals and fun dances, so I’m so excited! :)

So many hugs and besos, and more updates (and pics - see the tab up there that says "cambodia pictures!") to come!

Blessings,

Stephanie

PS - You know you’re settling into Cambodia when...

13. The water is shut off in your apartment for a day and a half…oh wait, no, the little kids outside were just playing around and turned the valve to divert the water flow.

14.  Mangoes are as popular as rice.

15. Beans are for dessert. Sorry, I still can’t get over that…!

16. You’re served cold tea when you sit down at a restaurant instead of iced water. The water you’re gonna pay for.

17. You start to think “TIC, TIC, TIC” (“This is Cambodia”) on a regular basis.

18. All your food is crammed into your mini-fridge because the ants will get to it otherwise.

19. MSG is in eeeeverything. They like the flavor (!?!).

20. A mouse joins you in your morning shower. Glorious.