Week ONE

Hello American friends and family!

Ok I'm in Cambodia right now. It is very hot and humid here. We are entering the rainy season and it has rained almost every day that we've been here. It doesn't rain all day, just for a short time, and then the sun tries to shine behind overcast clouds. We eat fish, rice, more rice, squid, dragon fruit, fish with its head still on, fish with teeth still in, more rice, and some types of meat with various bones that I cannot identify. The people here are beautiful.

So for this first week, we have been working with a youth camp. The children we have been working with are anywhere from 12-25 I think. They have had us staying on a sort of camp site--more like a group of beautiful buildings with constantly opened windows and beautiful tile floors. Our rooms are like bare american hotel rooms with tiny air conditioners that give us just enough cool air to sleep without sweating. We can't flush the toilet paper but we had toilets and they only clogged twice. Anyway, we stayed at this camp/building site that overlooked the Indian Ocean. Every morning we woke up at 5:30 to pray with out team. At 6 we exercised (Asians value exercise and the well being of the body). Exercise consisted of us doing silly arobics moves and playing games that you played in P.E. in elementary school. 7 was breakfast which was either American (eggs) or the common choice of rice and noodles and soup. Then we worship, then we have sessions, then free time, then worship, ...it's like a normal camp.

We got to swim in the Indian Ocean our first day here with all of the Cambodian kids. It was alot of fun!

Me, Becca, and Melissa have been giving two sex talks to the girls a day. That's a total of 6 sex talks which were exhausting but so good. We got to talk to two girls after the talks one on one about personal problems that they have not talked to anyone about, and it was really neat to watch God use us to encourage them. Their culture is very modest, but that doesn't mean they don't have just as many problems as anyone, if not more.

So we have been working with a youth camp up until now. We are currently in the capital about to work with the Asian Hope organization where we will be doing VBS's everyday.

It's interesting because the youth that we worked with were so on fire for God. This country is full of brand new Christians and they are so excited. We got to worship with them all week and dance and sing.

God has been moving alot throughout our team. We have had many many conflicts so far, but we are currently in sync. It's hard to typed everything that has been happening, it's so much.

Today we are in the capital and we went to the killing fields and the genocide museum from the Khmer Rouge. I think its important to understand the context of the people here, and it was very eye opening to see the towers and towers of skulls and bones. We basically walked throughout a field with visible bones beneath our feet.

Even though this culture has face extreme genocide and tragedy in their past, the Christians here are so excited. It's like a place of renewal.

Please pray that our team would continue to unify and that God would be in control of our minds and words. Pray that God will push us to give everything, and that He will be in control of everything we do as we move from place to place doing all of these scattered tasks. God has a purpose for each of us being here, and I have seen Christ constantly in everyone on our team, and overflowing in the Cambodians we have been around in the past week. Praise Him for surrounding us with so much light our first week being here.

Pray that God's will be done as we work with Asian Hope with children, and in the dumpsite (a place of poverty we are going to tomorrow).

Thank you for your prayers, I hope you were able to follow this scattered update. I love you all!

Love,
Hailey