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.