God's Sufficient Grace

Journal from Friday, November 24

I’m now on a bus traveling from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap (Cambodia). The first couple hours have been spent in wonderful, edifying conversation with Melinda, while my eyes have been glued to the beautiful landscape passing before us. I feel like I’m driving through a CEF missionary story: rice fields, palm trees, one room thatch-roofed houses on stilts with white cows tied up underneath; agricultural workers in the fields wearing coolie straw hats and leading pairs of yoked oxen; Buddhist wats (and schools?) with kids running around barefoot outside, their bicycles parked all in a row beside the gate. It’s all so green, simple and picturesque – I can’t help but love it. I smile at these wonderful people and am thrilled when they give me a big smile in return. What a happy place – probably largely due to the time of peace and relief they are experiencing after their land has recently been so torn apart by war. And I wonder, too, if the simplicity of these little villages lends itself to greater contentment in life when they are so far from the materialism and rat race of our more modern culture. All in all, it is a beautiful thing to see. And so good to be out of the crowded, dirty, busy city of Bangkok.

I am traveling with two friends from Prong Jai [the smaller campus at ICS where I teach one day a week]: Melinda (K5 teacher) and Maria (secretary/nurse/substitute/aide/everything!). Our Cambodia trip was planned largely by my wonderful Thai friend, Maria, who has Thai missionary connections in Cambodia and in general, understands Southeast Asian travel better than either Melinda or I. I must admit that I am very excited to be on this trip as it is my first true backpacking travel experience. And what an adventure! I feel like I’m actually experiencing the life and culture of the Cambodians around me (although I know I’m still very much viewed by them as the “farong” tourist that I am!). I (rather uncharacteristically!) packed light for our 4-day trip, carrying everything on my back. We’re seeing the city in a tuk-tuk and the countryside in a bus in which we are the only foreign passengers. Using “toilets” (most of which are Asian squatty-potties!) at stops along the way – only partially enclosed buildings with no toilet paper (and no way to flush it if you choose to buy tissue), no soap, and a manual “bucket and scoop” flush system. (They have these in Bangkok as well – just seems more rugged here.) The girls’ dorm we stayed in last night, though spacious, was also very non-Western. No A/C, so we spent the night (still quite hot in late November) with windows open, fans on (which I didn’t end up feeling), sleeping on a platform bed with a thin foam mattress, no top-sheet and mosquito-net covering. (Other than the heat, it was actually better than being under my expensive Satin sheets and getting bitten throughout the night! I’m seriously considering investing in a mosquito net.) When I “showered” last night, the biggest question on my mind was not whether or not they’d have hot water but rather whether the running water would actually come out (it did, albeit in spurts). Cool water has never felt so good, though, after spending the day so hot and sticky and dirty. But we are traveling cheap – We are giving a comparatively “generous” donation of $5 a person per night for the aforementioned missionary dorm (they weren’t going to charge us anything, I don’t think). Our 5-6 hour bus trip is about $4/person. Renting a tuk-tuk for an entire day is $14 (divided by 3, of course). My ice-coffee and baguette breakfast on the streets was less than 70 cents. This whole experience is showing me how wealthy, spoiled, weighed down with “stuff” and snobbish I am compared to the greater population of the world. And it is helping me redefine the term “basic life needs.”

So my Thanksgiving Day was spend in such a non-traditional way that Melinda and I had to keep reminding each other what day it was! I woke up at 4:30 in the morning to take a 5:00 taxi to the airport to meet the other girls for a 7:00 flight. The flight (also very inexpensive on a cheap airline) was delayed, so after rushing to get on the little plane, we were all asked to get off 5 minutes later and ended up waiting almost 2 hours in the airport terminal. We spend that whole time in conversation with a very friendly, interesting Australian girl who was traveling alone. We arrived in Phnom Penh around 11:00 a.m. and were picked up by a very sweet Cambodian girl who works with the Thai missionary couple that Maria knows. She (can’t remember and could never pronounce her name! : ( ) took us to their house to visit for a bit before the man (OMF missionary and pastor of the church there) took the 4 of us out to lunch. He spoke English, Thai and Khmer all very well and was such a welcoming host, so we were able to enjoy a very interesting and encouraging conversation over a traditional Cambodian meal (which was very much like Thai food except less spicy). This man came to Cambodia about 10 years ago, at which time there were around 2,000 Christians in this country. He said that number has grown to the 100,000s today. In addition to pastoring his church of 100, he and the other missionaries also oversee the women’s dorm where we spent the night. Several years ago, one of the single women who worked with the team developed a heart for all the many girls who she worked with in the factory. This woman was able to buy (?) an old hotel and open it up as a dormitory for these girls to stay for an extremely small fee. There are about a dozen girls there now – “girls” between the ages of about 17-25 – and all seem to be so happy. And, although we weren’t able to really communicate with them due to the lack of a common language, they really seemed to have developed a neat community there. The Cambodian girl who picked us up from the airport, in addition to working as a security guard at the Parliament building, lives as kind of a “dorm mother” with the girls. Although she only has a 4th grade education (having had to quit school because of the war), she teaches Bible at the church and holds Bible studies for the girls at the dorm – some of which are Buddhist and Muslim, but all of which come, I think. It was very encouraging to hear these reports of what God is doing in another country.

In addition to blessing us through this man’s hospitality and conversation, God also used him to serve us as a fatherly protector of us single girls in a foreign country. He asked Maria about the details of our trip and then recommended the safest, cheapest, and all-around best modes of transportation and places to see. He put us in contact with another Christian man and travel agent in Siem Reap and before we parted ways, sat our tuk-tuk driver down and told him exactly where to take us for the remainder of the day. It was a beautiful picture to me of the body of Christ and the bond we have with other believers that supercedes all cultural and language barriers.

The most impactful event of the remainder of the day was our visit to the Tuol Sleng genocide museum. It was a former Khmer Rouge prison, used for housing, interrogating, torturing and killing over 12,000 people during the Khmer regime between the years of 1975 and 1978. It was probably the most horrific thing I have ever seen, between walking through all of the stark prison cells to reading personal journals written by relatives of the prisoners and other historical markers and information about what happened. We walked through room after room full of billboards that were covered with photographs of the prisoners – men, women and children – both before and after they were tortured. One room showed many of the torture devices used as they mercilessly interrogated these Cambodians. It’s hard to believe that the human mind could invent something so barbarous. As I walked slowly through the prison cells, I wondered which was more shocking and horrifying: that a group of government officials could actually carry out such a massive slaughter of people or that no one tried to stop them, no one was willing to fight on behalf of these oppressed. (I do not know the whole history – I certainly want to read more now – I’m sure there were people who tried, but I’m amazed that the majority of the world was either apathetic or ignorant of all that was going on – and all this happened less than 30 years ago!) And as my eyes beheld these sickening sights, I wondered why I or anyone else would even want to see them and take an afternoon to learn more or remember about what happened. As soon as the question entered my mind, the answer followed: we all need to know about this so that it will NEVER happen again.

The visit to the prison showed me how low mankind can stoop and the true nature of sin – how sickening, deceptive, merciless, and binding it really is.

I am so grateful Melinda was on this trip with me. Before bed we had a long discussion about all that we had seen – I certainly needed a debriefing session to sort through all the emotions I was feeling. We talked, prayed, and cried about it all – and actually much of our conversation led to thanks and praise to God, especially as we were thinking of it all in light of our American holiday and comparing it to our own incredibly blessed lives. I learned so much from being there and talking with her that it would be impossible to write it all down. But one of the most important things I saw in the pictures of captivity and torture was my Savior…

As we prayed, I saw so vividly the cross and my Jesus. As I thought about the torture that so many Cambodians had undergone during their time at the prison, I realized that Jesus Christ went through that exact same torture on the cross. Somehow in my safe, PG-rated world, I’m not used to seeing such horrific pain and agony. Seeing all of the photographs gave me a picture of what the cross and road up to it must have looked like. Jesus suffered just like these – but with one major difference: Most were innocent and did not deserve to be there, just like Jesus, but each of those Cambodian nationals was helpless and had no means of escape. They were taken from their villages and homes without time to run away or place to hide or power to fight. Not so with Christ. He who made the heavens and the earth, for which nothing is impossible or too difficult to carry out (Jeremiah 32:17), willingly submitted Himself to this kind of pain and torture. The high priests, Sanhedrin, Roman government, Jewish people did not force Him to be beaten, scourged, nailed, pierced – He could have broken away from them at any point. No, He laid down His life at every turn during His time on earth and ultimately to the point of death. Why? For me. For this lost world. For all of us who wouldn’t ever understand, truly “get it” or thank Him rightly for it. So great is His love for us!

posted by Catherine Rogers @ 5:21 AM