Chum Rie Ab Sua (Nice to See You) (November 24)

My mentor, Pastor Tin, and his wife, Anh, picked me up today from the Duc’s dorm today. He drove his truck ahead to lead while Duc and I followed him with Bumblebee and Pegasus. The drive to his house is a lot nicer today because the Water Festival is over and everybody left. The street is a lot less busy which is good because we do not know our way around the city and we have to keep catching up to my mentor Tin’s truck. Actually, we were more trying to stay behind the truck rather than keeping up. In Phnom Penh, cars / SUVs would take roughly twice the amount of time to get to the same place as a moto due to traffic. Here are a few pictures of his house.

This is the living room. It is quite spacious. My mentor used this space to park his truck at night time.	As you can see, there are two levels to this house. But it is only considered as one level because of the high ceiling. My room is the one on top. My mentor and his wife live in the room below.	This is the kitchen area. It is quite small. However, there are additional space for kitchen purposes through the big brown door. The door to the left of the picture is the door to the washroom.
This is the other view of the kitchen with the fridge	This is the washroom of the kitchen. If you are wondering about the hose to the left of the toilet, it’s the reason why people don’t shake with left hand here.	Here is the second kitchen area in the back. Those lines that you see are to dry clothes after they have been through the washer.
This is my room. I have a work station, a closet, and a bed. Pretty simple	Pretty simple. Nothing too fancy.	This is the other room, next to mine. It served as a guest room for anybody coming over.

Immediately the next day, I attended (very briefly) the New Hope Committee meeting. New Hope Committee is mostly comprised of leaders from all 8 churches in and surrounded the Phnom Penh area as well as missionaries from other countries (for now it’s only my mentor). My mentor, Tin, wants to take the initial 5-10 minutes of this meeting to introduce me to the whole team. It went pretty well. People were happy to see me and are looking forward to working with me, so far… :-). A very noticeable person here is David Manfred, the field director of CMA in Cambodia, aka the big head boss. Through email conversation, I expected him to be a big imitating dude who does not fool around. I was right about the big part but was wrong about the seriousness of the dude. I mean he’s not like a goof but he’s a pretty relax, friendly, soft spoken dude. Kinda surprise me for a bit.

Two days later, I have a chance to meet with David again for my orientation. It went pretty well. He dispels any of my misconception of a no nonsense kind of guy. He is actually pretty chilled dude. He may be soft spoken but he knows how to get things done while taking people situation into account. A very impressive person I must say. Aside from that, he also taught me a few things which I think is pretty insightful. He taught that God can work “in me, through me, and in spite of me”; I should not close any doors to anything, God is should be the one doing the closing. Are you having problem with language study? Here is an advice that he gave me. If God can make Balaam’s donkey speak, God can make you speak any language. Are you willing to admit that you are a donkey that needs His help? I hear amazing testimony in regard to this issue. God is limitless in His power and what He can do.

And two days after the orientation, I was invited to attend the monthly men’s breakfast along with my mentor. It was quite a nice breakfast. We ate at Freebird, a very nicely Western style decorated bar, nicer than at least half of the bars in Calgary and Vancouver. Apparently, it has the best western breakfast food in Phnom Penh. I met some very interesting men here. Most noticeable is David Ens, Marie Ens’ son. The nice old Canadian granny who ran an AIDS orphanage for Cambodian children. He is quite a character, a very funny dude. And I can’t forget Bill Lobezoo, Duc’s mentor. He’s a very funny dude. Always making jokes out of everything. I cannot believe that this dude is Bernie’s best friend and best man at Bernie’s wedding. I am very interest to see how they chill when they were younger. I can never, in my mind, imagine Bernie to act like Bill. But the most noticeable one is Chris. He is a dude around my age, a little older. He left quite a big impression on me. He sat at our, Duc’s and mine, table so we talk quite a bit. He told me of his life story and how he became a missionary upon finishing seminary. It was a very encouraging story. He half jokingly said that don’t be thinking that this is a short term mission trip. He came here and Manila for his intern and guessed where he’s at now. Who knows Duc and I might be heading back here upon finishing our schooling. We already have talk of about the possibility of coming back here and serve. It is a very probable option. Like Chris, we love the people, the attitude of the people, and especially the atmosphere here. God is working here and to be a part of God’s work is an amazing opportunity.

Next is the highlight of my week. It’s the monthly youth gathering of the New Hope churches. Every month, all youth belonging to the New Hope churches are gathered at one church to have fellowship. Big churches—Saigon 2, Small Market, Mekong, and Kilometer 11—all have their own weekly fellowship. However, for others who do not have a big youth group, this is an opportunity for them to join the bigger churches for fellowship. Each month, the meeting is held at different church. This week happened to be at Kilometer 11. Kilometer 11 is like the city outside Phnom Penh. Like its name, it is about 11km outside Phnom Penh. However, it is extremely erroneous if you think that it doesn’t take long to get here. It took me nearly half an hour to get here from Phnom Penh. On my way here, I followed the leader of this church on the back road of the country, which is a faster route. The “highway” from the city to the church takes quite a bit longer because it passed two major markets and it is more used by motorists. When I say back road, I mean dusty, potholes filled, following and passing trucks with no lane. It was quite a nice ride. The scenery is amazing too. There were many farms along the way. A lot of them are filled with leftover water from the rainy season. They are not neatly organized as western farm where you have a section of something here and a section of something else there. It’s chaotic. A little here over and a little over there. It is totally different but somewhat beautiful. Unfortunately, I can’t take any picture as I tried my hardest to avoid any pothole that might topple Pegasus and myself.

The youth gathering is quite nice. There were around 40-50 teens here. A lot of them cannot make it as they have to work on Sunday. Teens here are totally different from western culture. By the time they are 15, most of them would drop out of school to find a full time job to support their family. There is no such thing as an adolescence period. You become a man instantaneously. What is even more surprising is that there is no janitor, each church would cast lots to see which part of the clean up duties they are responsible for. Such responsibilities includes cleaning the sanctuary (collect all the garbage, putting away chairs, sweeping the floor, and mobbing the floor), cleaning the yard outside the church (pick up garbage, sweeping the yard), washing the dishes (a lot of plates and dishes), cleaning the eating area (there were many rooms), and the worst job of all, cleaning the toilet. All these responsibility belong to the teens. However, the teens from the hosting church are excluded from these responsibilities as their job was to prepare the food for everybody prior to the service. Needless to say, it’s something that you don’t see a lot in western church. I think this is quite neat. Something I am hoping my home church would adopt.

It was a great event. I was able to meet a lot of teens from different churches. The event was extremely simple but there is something beautiful about its simplicity. We started out with prayers for the opening service. Then followed by the singing of hymns. It was extremely simple, two guitars and everybody belching out the lyrics from the overhead. People were a little bit off key but you can tell people’s hearts were in it. Afterward, it was the time where each church brought a little something to the worship. One church did a mime dance, one performed a dance to “Every move I make” in Korean, another presented a hymn, other presented dance, etc. After the worship was the prayer for the sermon. Surprisingly, the speaker was David Manfred, the field director. The sermon was entirely in Khmai. Obviously, I did not understand a single thing that was coming out of his mouth. Some of the teens did not understand Khmai as well. Luckily, their friends translate for them. I got a translator as well. She is the leader from Small Market, Oanh, whose job is to run one of a shelter houses for girls who were sold into prostitutions by their parents. His sermon was the usual Western type sermon which encourage the teens to think. However, some of the teens complain afterward that he was so loud that it seems that he was yelling at them. I thought that was pretty funny. After the sermon was the end of the service. WHICH MEANS FOOD TIME!!! I love the Asian culture. Church is not church without food. We have lunch together and have an hour to go around and get to know teens from other churches. I made use of this time quite nicely. Going around talking to teens from different churches. Food is a great way to get people talking. The later part of the day includes girls vs guys dance off, games, fellowship, and of course bible trivia.

At the end of the day, there is a surprise for me. There are two teens who are joining the New Hope youth committee (pretty much an interchurch youth committee). All the leaders from different churches were to come up and pray for them. Being “respectable”, they invite me to come up and pray for them as well, IN VIET!!!! You cannot imagine the horror that went through my head as I walked up to the front. This is my first time praying in Viet, IN FRONT OF ALL THESE PEOPLE WHO I JUST MET FOR THE FIRST TIME. Lucky for me, the person who prayed in front of me did an extremely long prayer. So my extremely short prayer in broken Viet was quite welcomed by many.

But the most memorable event here at the youth gathering was not the event but was actually the conversation with one of the leaders whom I prayed for. Her name is Bich Thuy. She is 17 and is attending Khmai public school here. She is one of the few who has the opportunity to do such. You remember one of those stories that your parents / grandparents told you about waking up early in the morning before the sunrise, walked a few kilometers in the freezing cold to school to study, etc… Well, it’s her story. Not to such extreme but close. She has to wake up at 5:30am every day (Monday to Saturday), ride her bicycle to a friend’s house, pick up her friend, and ride to school. School starts at 7:30am and goes till noon. She get one hour break for lunch and then school again until 4-5pm, depending on the day. After school, commuting home is probably another hour or so. So technically she spend around roughly 12 hours a day, commuting to school, school, and commuting home, six days a week. She considered herself pretty blessed. It was an extremely humbling experience as I recalled my luxury of picking the time of my class. Some days I will sleep in until noon, wake up, and go to class at 1pm. So this is quite a contrast from my western lifestyle. Yet, when I go to school, I always considered it is my right that I am in school. A story like this really gives me a different perspective at looking at life. One of the things I realized while hearing this story is that the amount of blessings God has poured out into my life which I am totally oblivious to. The sad thing about it is that I do not realize the blessings which God has given me until I hear stories of somebody who is in a worse situation.

Another story which I got from talking to one of the youths here was this dude name Hoai. He is 15. He loves school. When I say love, I mean extremely love. This dude never missed a day. However, this year, his mom, due to financial situation, coerced him into dropping school to help out with the family finance. He got a job for two months as a carpenter but was laid off after because there was no job. He can’t go back to school because the semester is already started and they don’t want to let him in. It was pretty bad. This guy situation was special because he has funding for school through New Hope organization with the condition that HE MUST NOT MISSED ANY SCHOOL YEAR. So now, he missed this school year and he will never go back to school again because of the lack of funding from New Hope organization. Such a wasted opportunity. Now he is unemployed with no opportunity to go back to school. PLEASE PRAY HARD FOR THIS DUDE. He is a pretty bright, friendly, and very nice guy. Pray that God will open the door for him to go back to school with funding, either through the organization or from somewhere else.