Cambodia!!

Well first thing is first.  The Challenge was completed and I ate more bugs than I ever want to again. It was soooooooooooooooo gross!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I mean, I wanted to get sick for the next day or two just thinking about it. I am going to try and get the video loaded of it. However, it is now a bit more difficult because…..

I AM IN CAMBODIA! Friday night we left Chiang Mai with many sad goodbyes. We got on a bus and headed down for a 12 hour bus ride to Bangkok. The bus was pretty awesome.  We all slept most of the time on it. Saturday morning we arrived in Bangkok, and after searching around to find someone who could speak both Thai and English we got a van that would take us as far as the border between Thailand and Cambodia. At this point the team is Bethany, Akari, Justin, Clark, and Ange as our leader. The border crossing was quite different. You could feel the entire atmosphere was totally different. Thankfully some guy lead us to where we could really get visas as opposed to the numerous stands around that would just swindle your money.  We made it across with the help of our next van driver.  We are all travelling with just a backpack for the next 7 weeks(along with a varying bag of snacks).

We are staying at a University of the Nations(affiliated with YWAM) house in Siem Reap. It is terribly terribly flooded here. We ride everywhere on bikes and it will sometimes get as high as 1ft in the middle of the road. The sides of the roads are far worse. However, life seems to continue on as normal, people just moving things around to make adjustments.  The rice fields are really flooded badly though, ruining much of the crops. We were warned at church this morning though to keep an eye out. With the flooding have come CROCODILES! Yeah… not a church announcement I intend to forget anytime soon. Talk about practical applications. Tomorrow we start working at a school helping teach life skills including English, Math and Music.  We will be here for the next 3 weeks. We will be teaching life skills at the Center here. I will be teaching English Pronunciation with Ange at 5-6 different classes a day. While here, we have very limited access to the internet, so I apologize for not replying to any messages in timely manners. Living in Cambodia has made us realize how spoiled we were in Chiang Mai in many ways including here there is no hot water, a/c or flushing toilets. It is a really good experience. J

Please keep our team in your prayers as we continue to grow closer and just that we can really reach the people here in a practical way and be able to show them God’s love for them. Also please keep in your prayers the friends we left behind in Chiang Mai. We built many relationships there. Bethany and I especially got to know this lady who made Rotee for us. She was awesome, and even though we didn’t speak the same language, we built a unique friendship. We hope to see her again and maybe figure out how to communicate better once we get back to Chiang Mai. Also please pray for my roommate Bethany as she has officially decided to stay next spring also. She has lots of logistics to figure out as well as just the pain of not being home for the holidays etc. Please continue to pray as I also work everything out for my extended trip this spring. Lots of love to everyone!!!!!! <3