Phnom Penh, Cambodia            11 July 2002

Hello My Dear Journey Companions!

I have now been in Cambodia for two months - twice as long as I had planned. As you know by now, however, I have stayed much longer than planned in every Asian country that I have visited. Why would I think Cambodia would be any different? I had been so anxious to get back to Seattle, and I thought, "I'll just breeze through Cambodia's main attractions, honor my commitment to help a missionary, and then I'll be on my way home."   Yeah.   Right.   As if. 

God Speaks

As is often the case when I try to make my own agenda, God intervenes and shows me he has other plans for me. As is also often the case, I realize that His plans are so much greater than any plan I could have imagined for myself. Now, it seems that God has saved the best for last on this journey of mine, and my time in Cambodia has been nothing short of the grandest of finales. 

So, What Happened? 

I arrived into Phnom Penh on May 20th after a week of rest on southern Cambodia's pristine beaches. I came here to work with Pastor Paula Guazon, the field supervisor for the Cambodia Free Methodist Mission. (Check out http://www.apfmma.org !) After working with Paula for just a couple of weeks, I found the computer work I was doing deeply satisfying, and I also found myself loving Phnom Penh. When I arrived here, I instantly felt comfortable. I found the city very livable, meaning:  (1) I could get around easily with convenient and inexpensive transportation, (2) I could get on the internet easily and inexpensively, (3) the local food was good, and I could also get Western food and indulgences such as pizza and decent chocolate, (4) Phnom Penh felt relatively safe, (5) I quickly found community among expats from Australia, the Philippines, America, and Burma, and (6) Paula and I were enjoying our new friendship and having a great time.

Phnom Penh became "home" quickly for me, and after two weeks, I was not quite ready to move on. Then, Paula received distressing news about the health of her mother in the Philippines. She would have to go as soon as possible to visit. She and her boss in Hong Kong both emphatically asked me if I could stay until she returned, and I agreed. It was then that my two-week visit as a "guest helper" turned into an 8-week stay, and I became a temporary, but full-time, missionary.

Missionary Life

If you are like I was before I struck out on this journey, the mention of the word missionary implies a brave and adventurous person, trekking in the jungles of Africa to remote villages, and sharing the word of the Bible. Well, you would be right in that a missionary is brave and adventurous but not because of trekking in dangerous jungles. A missionary is brave and adventurous because they choose to leave the comforts and familiarity of their native culture to live and work amongst another culture. For Americans, the conditions are often lower than that of the standard of their home in the States, but it¡¦s typically by no means a hut.

Here in Phnom Penh, I'm staying in a three-story concrete structure that is both the church and missionary residence. The office and one of the bedrooms have small air-conditioning units that were recently installed as a gift by visiting Americans. Before that, they used oscillating electric fans. We cook on a two-burner gas stove and have a regular refrigerator and freezer. We don't have an oven or microwave, but the heat of a regular oven would be unbearable anyway.

Day In and Day Out

A typical day for me starts at 5:30 or 6:00 with a short run before the heat envelopes the city. Even at that hour, the city is bustling, and I think the Cambodians have already been up for hours. After my run, I take a cold shower, because there is no hot water. There are also no separate tub or shower areas, so the whole bathroom floor gets wet. After I shower and dress, I usually have a cup of Nescafe instant coffee to which I've added canned milk. I like to eat the local fruits as well - my favorites being durian and rambutan.

After breakfast, I go downstairs to the office. I turn on the air-conditioning and check my email. I can usually connect to the internet at a respectable 45 Kbps, but I still download my Hotmail to Microsoft Outlook Express to minimize my internet time. When we connect to the internet here, we have to pay for each minute for both the local phone call and the internet service, so the costs can add up quickly.

After checking email, I spend time discipling Keo Senan (Sarah), the office assistant, as she just became a Christian a few months ago. Then, I work on a number of projects which have included managing a short-term mission team project, writing a newsletter to supporters, managing the computers, and creating a variety of materials for student training, church administration, and worship services. I have also found that as I have developed relationships with the students here, they come to me as they would a pastor for discussion and support. While I don't have any pastoral training, God has given me the grace to be of service in these situations.

I am typically in the office from 8A until 5P on Monday through Friday, but my work takes place outside of that time too. I also spend time in the villages visiting the mission's churches as well as visiting with other organizations here in Phnom Penh for networking and fellowship.

Short-Term Missions

Traditionally, short-term missions teams come in to an area to help build a church, give medical or dental assistance, teach English or basic life skills, or just visit with the local people. One of my projects here has been to make all of the arrangements for a team coming from Seattle to teach English. Throughout the year, a missionary can have many visitors, short-term guest helpers like myself, and short-term mission teams. A missionary must always be thinking of ways that a person or a team can come in and be useful quickly and without too much training. Many visitors may not have been in a third-world country before, so there must be sensitivity to their needs and experience.

Magic Cambodia

If you want to have one of the most meaningful experiences of your life, go on a short-term mission trip. If you want your life to be transformed, come to Cambodia. When you come, you will quickly see the obvious problems, but after a short time, you will have a hope and excitement in your heart that will overshadow any pity or despair. One could say that the Cambodians have nothing and everything at the same time - materially impoverished yet spiritually wealthy. My friend Kevin Austin in Thailand shared, "I've often thought that if I was really sick, mentally or physically, I should move to Prek Thei. It's very healing. 100 kids lovin' on you makes everything all better."

I was in Prek Thei, a small village outside of Phnom Penh, this past weekend. The Cambodia Free Methodist Mission has a church there. This past weekend, I felt that power and experienced that magic. Have you ever been somewhere as a newcomer and you feel really out of place? Then, someone comes up to you to welcome you and talk to you and all of a sudden you feel like you belong. That's the welcome I feel in Prek Thei and in Cambodia. As one example, twenty of youth that I work with - boys in their teens and young 20's - invited me to play football (soccer) with them. Even though it is unheard of for a female to play soccer here, they never once made me feel out of place or odd as we played. It's that kind of gracious hospitality that is part of the magic of Cambodia. While we are different, that sense of difference seems to dissolve away quickly.

Morbid Cambodia

As I spend more time here, I also get to see and experience the not-so-nice aspects of Cambodia. There are garbage and filth everywhere, and I wonder how a city with the help of so many foreign relief organizations can have such poor sanitation management. The crime is horrific. Just last Thursday, when Sarah went to the market to buy our lunch, she saw a woman who had been slain. It had been the middle of the day, near a busy market, and someone had killed her to steal her motor scooter. The next day, a Filipina friend of mine, Noemi, was on her way to meet a group of us for dinner and fellowship, and she witnessed a drive by shooting.

Driving is an utterly chaotic experience. I am not exaggerating when I say that the use of road rules does not exist. While talking to an American working here, he and I agreed that it is better you don't know road rules when you start to drive here. You just have to get out there and go. In general people tend to drive towards the correct side of the road, but it's not strictly obeyed, especially if you are on a motor scooter. As a driver, you become accustomed to watching for someone driving at you head on, and you simply learn to accommodate them. When you arrive at an intersection, you just proceed through slowly, weaving your way through the other traffic coming from any direction. Nonetheless, police do issue tickets, but this is more as a way for them to generate income to supplement their meager salaries. A policeman will stand on a corner and randomly wave a moto or car over. Whether or not you've committed an infringement is irrelevant. The point is that you were just selected to pay his next bribe. If you're a Cambodian, this will usually be 1000 riel (25 cents), but if you're a foreigner, it will be $5-10!

I know that health care and education are severely lacking even though I have had no had first-hand exposure to these problems. It is not uncommon for the expats living here to make trips to Bangkok for any relatively serious ailment. Many people lack housing, and I have seen many people making their "home" for the evening on a cot-sized bamboo platform covered with a mosquito net. These squatters set up their evening residence just outside the cement walls of the compounds of the typical city home. Others live in precarious wooden homes build on stilts in the rejected swamplands.

Prostitution and child trafficking are both on the rise. Many families will sell their own children to agencies who get large profits through adoptions. These Cambodian agencies then tell the prospective foreign adoptive parents that the child was an orphan, and the adoptive parents never know that the child may have been bought or even stolen. While some women voluntarily opt for prostitution as a "way out", many girls are sold into prostitution by their own fathers and this feeds a "sexual tourist" market seeking pedophilia.

Not All Gloom and Doom

While it anguishes my heart when I witness the poverty and broken lives, I then meet a young woman like Sarah who inspires great hope. Sarah's Cambodian name is Keo Senan, but the Khmer like to take Biblical names when they become Christians. She comes to work in beautiful Cambodian suits - a tailored blouse and a matching floor length skirt - that put Paula and I to shame in our simple cotton shirts and blue jeans. Yet, I have gone to Sarah's home in the inner city, and her well-manicured appearance can no longer disguise the poverty. She lives with three aunts in a two-room apartment. While this home is considered average here, it would be called a slum in America.

Sarah is a fireball, however. She does not know how to say quit, and she does not stay sad for long. When she leaves her home, she walks out with her head high because she knows that despite her current circumstances, she is someone special. With her small salary, she pays to learn Japanese in the early morning before coming to work. In the evening, she pays to learn Thai. She gets to practice and learn more English here at the mission. Sarah also dedicates time to teach some neighborhood children English and Thai for free, because someone gave her that blessing when she had little money. The rest of Sarah's small, average salary is sent to her family in the village or given to other relatives.

As I've been discipling Sarah, we have grown close. For those of you who don't know it means to disciple a Christian, it means teaching the spiritual principles and fundamental beliefs of our faith. I am using a workbook that is designed for non-native English speakers. It often takes us an hour just to read one page as we look up words she doesn't know in an English-Khmer dictionary. We spend a lot of time discussing the meanings of individual words before we can talk about concepts and ideas.

Sarah has taught me a lot too, especially about Cambodian culture. She tells me Cambodian women are obsessed with their weight. It is so bad that they will not drink much water because they are afraid it makes them fat. At night, Pauline, a helper who lives here at the mission, will cough for hours from a dry throat before she will sip water. At the same time, however, Cambodian men like to be fat and consider it a sign of wealth and health.

Cambodians are dark-skinned people, but they want to be as light as possible. The women use "whitening" creams in hopes of lightening their skin, and many wear long gloves and hats whenever they go outside. Once, Sarah said of another woman, "She's good. Not black like Sarah."

Overall, my time with Sarah has been inspiring. I have been awed as I watch her newly discovered faith transform her life. It's in the simple things really. Before she became a Christian, she shared that she did not get along with several members of her family. "Now," she says, "I love them all," with sincere earnestness. We have shared tears of joy as she tells how worries disappear when she relies on her faith and how she can still find peace in the presence of difficulties. I also have watched her struggle, however. She is only 19 years old, yet her family has arranged for her to marry her 32-year-old cousin. She is torn. She wants to obey her parents, as that is a critical part of Cambodian society. Yet, she doesn't want to marry this cousin. For now, Sarah has managed to buy herself time by delaying the wedding until 2004! While it's not a solution, it's a start.

I find that it is when I am sharing the basic foundations of my faith with a new believer like Sarah that I can really appreciate my own faith journey. My participation has been moving and transforming in a way that is similar to the early days of my own coming to know God. Through the eyes of this new Christian, I can see how far God has brought me on my own life journey. Now, I feel even more blessed as I get to share my blessing in the lives of others.

Geek Missions

The early part of my day, then, is filled with an enriching time of spirituality. Then, if I don't move on to another project, I become the computer nerd missionary. I have been focused on getting Paula's two computers healthy and set up for optimal use. Before I came, she had just one computer that had been plagued by viruses. Now, I've worked to update her systems with the latest operating system patches and anti-virus definitions to help in the never-ending battle against these devils.

Besides the individual computer work I'm doing, I've been doing loads of training. During the day, I've trained Sarah in Office applications and a university student, Jonathan, in computer maintenance. At the end of the day, I am often asked to go to the houses of other expats and missionaries to teach them Outlook, Word, Excel, or other software or simply help them install and configure programs.

In all of this, I have recognized a growing need in what I call "computer missions". Not only is there a critical need to give missionaries computer support, but computer skills training has great potential as an outreach ministry - similar to that of teaching English. I see the opportunity for both long- and short-term missions. I know many missionaries who would love to have a computer-knowledgeable person come and help them for just one or two weeks.

All Work and No Play?   No Way!

Even though I am working hard here, the work feels effortless. Isn't it true that whenever we do something we love, we seem to have boundless energy? Still, I have managed to find many pleasures here. First, there are the amazing $3/hour massages at Seeing Hands, a shop started by an American to train and give blind Cambodians a decent occupation. It has been fabulously successful with two locations in Phnom Penh and another in a city called Siem Reap.

Out in the village, I can get full pampering for just 50 cents! A haircut, manicure, and pedicure each cost me just 13 cents! With a tip, the whole deal costs me 50 cents, although I did have to fork out another $2 as I was advised to bring my own instruments. AIDs and hepatitis are viable threats here.

I've also enjoyed getting to know and going out with other expats, and I am amazed at how big the expat community is in 'Nom Penh. Even though I've never been much of a shopper, I find I can't resist the Russian Market. There I can buy clothing for a few dollars a garment that are made here in Cambodia for Gap, Old Navy, Columbia, Ann Taylor, J. Crew and other Western brands.

All Good Things Must Come To An End

I have really been savoring and enjoying these last days of my journey. Paula is due to return tonight, and I expect to head out a day or two later. I will work my way across Cambodia and then back to Thailand where I will visit with friends before coming home. I have been looking forward to my return home with great anticipation, and I have even taken an apartment in Seattle for August 1st. I'll see many of you soon!

Warmest Blessings to You All,

Heather