Monday, October 20, 2014

The Honeymoon is Over


With anything new, adventurous, and exciting in life there is always a honeymoon phase. Things are fresh, they breathe newness of life, they are exciting and keep you on your toes, and give you something to wake up to everyday. But with the hands of a clock ticking, it wares off. Patience wares thin, and frustration can set in if you let it.
Things don't happen as fast as you thought they would...
People don't change like you thought they would....
You see more hardship than breakthrough...
And those new experiences that brought you excitement are just plain annoying now.

To be honest this describes my heart well lately.
I spend many moments frustrated that things take ten times longer in Cambodia. Riding my motto to work everyday sounded so adventurous to me at first, but with enough times getting stuck in traffic while its pouring down rain, almost get run off the road by brick trucks, and eating dust every time I drove the excitement was replaced with down right annoyance. I walk out of work far too many days heavy from not being able to do anything about a student being abused, and I've seen more cases where freedom hasn't come than when it has. And thats reality of ministry here.

Today I drove around Svay Pak and got to really see where a lot of our teachers, students, and their families eat, sleep, and work.
Take a five minute drive off the beaten path, down a bumpy dirty road in Svay Pak and you will start to see brick factory after brick factory line the road. Next to each factory is small shacks (if you could even call them that) made from cheap rusting metal, and wood pallets. the entrance is so small you would have to crawl on your hands and knees into a room the size of dining room table. Whole families live in these shacks, after grueling hours of often times indentured servanthood (modern day slavery) in brick factories. These are the homes our students are coming from.
Thats reality here.
Its the kind of reality that shakes you, and leaves your heart clenched.
That's how I felt this afternoon anyways.
And it reminded me why I'm here, why this school is here, and what God is doing.
For the days I feel like theres more injustice surrounding me than God's victory- I can just look at those shacks and see the hope we are bringing here.
I can see the miracle that God is bringing children out of the brick factories and into our school to learn and break the cycle of poverty in their families. The miracle that the student being abused is safe within the walls of our school and can feel the presence of God.

Agape has made huge strides in Svay Pak and fighting child trafficking here. Svay Pak even now is still not a place that you proudly say you are from, or even mention at all. Its a place where brothels once lined the streets and it wasn't safe to even walk by yourself in broad daylight. We've taken out the brothels, replaced them with school, church, work, transitional homes, and life. But even still there is brokenness, poverty, abuse, and drugs on these streets. Hope has already come, God has been living here for quite some times now- but healing and redemption takes time.

I am here to stay and walk through the pain, brokenness, and poverty with these people until God has revived it all and tells me to move on. I'm not leaving this place just because the honey moon feelings have worn off. My passions still burn deep in me to fight this injustice and to walk through life with the broken and hurting.
God is moving here. He is dismantling the strongholds that satan has been building for far too long. Light is here, and its here to stay. The darkness cannot overcome the light in Svay Pak. 

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Where the Wild Things Are

Do you really want to know, where the wild things are?
Do you really want to go where the wild things are?

These song lyrics have been running through my head the past month or so here in Cambodia and I wasn't really sure why my heart was singing it out. There isn't anything Spiritually obvious about this song but somehow it has become my weapon of worship here.

Last week I watched Where the Wild Things are for the first time. It was never a story I read as a child, but the fact that these song lyrics had become a familiar song on my lips lately intrigued me to see what the story was all about.

To summarize, the story is about a child Max who runs away from his family and to an imaginary land where these wild creatures live. He weathers a storm on this old wooden boat and ends up on this island with wild things that are unhappy, lonely, and searching for something. He convinces them to be their king, and begins to build relationships with them, and helps them to build a new kingdom- one that they have dreamed of for a long time.
He delegates responsibility and calls out their giftings.
He shows them how to laugh and have fun again, and essentially how to love each other again.

Max had no special qualities to be a king. He was frustrated and lonely and running from his own family when he finds the wild things. But he comes in and changes their whole outlook on life.

As I was watching this movie, God was hitting me with the truth of why I'm here. To find the wild things.
That is exactly what Jesus did. 
He went to the wild places. 
He found the wild people. 
The hurting people. 
The lonely people. 
He brought them back to life. 
And He taught them to build His kingdom on earth. 

I am no different than Max. I have no special qualities that set me apart to lead the people God is allowing me to here. I come from a broken past, but I know who I am in my Father God and He has given me a heart to find the wild things in the world. To seek out the hurting, lost, lonely, and searching and to lead them back to Christ so they can build His kingdom too.

It all comes with a cost, and in the moments where I am overwhelmed and asking God why I'm in a foreign land He sweetly reminds me of my heart to go where the wild things are.

I got to spend a couple days last week with my Cambodian family here in Kampong Speu and just being with them reminded me of how blessed I am. I am here to go to the villages in the middle of nowhere, to bring laughter, love, and joy to the desolate and hurting places. To sleep under the stars on bamboo and get woken up by Cambodian babies, roosters, and the sunrise. To listen to their story, and love. To ride bicycles down worn dirt roads and rice fields, and to bath in mucky swamps while the sun is setting. To go to the wild places on this earth and love radically until His people come back to life again.

My journal today:

I've been searching for home lately. 
Home is somewhere between my passions and the sound of airplane wheels touching down on new land. 
Tears that have been shed over different lands & seas. 

Bumpy roads & wandering cows,
fields of water lilies, palm trees and rice, 
teetering shacks on stilts over mucky water, 
Fish farms where children are bathing, 
worn temples, and rusty mottos. 
For now thats home. 
Its where the wild things are.  

Followers