First few days of Chaos, Grace & Love

Hey everyone, its Steph writing....

After quite an adventurous day, we made it to Cambodia!  I'll try to make this as brief as possible... We started our day at 5:17am by Andrew pounding on the door to wake us up to inform us we were leaving in 12 min (we thought we weren't leaving till at least 5:45). Fortunately, we were packed for the most part and had to jump out of bed to get the last bit of our belongings together.  We ran with our huge packs on our backs while it was still dark, in the rain, down to the main road to get 2 taxis to take us to the bus station for our 7:15 bus ride.  We struggled trying to fit ourselves in and ended up having bags piled all over us to where we couldn't see over the packs and guitar.  We rode all the way to the main bus station and once we got out, we quickly realized that the taxi driver brought us across Bangkok to the wrong station. So, we quickly piled back in the taxis to get dropped off at the subway, where we bought tickets so we could get to the sky trek to get us back across Bangkok to the airport where our bus was waiting. 

So by 7:15am we had been on 2 taxi rides, 1 subway and a sky trek.  At this point we were 5 minutes late and were now sprinting through the airport, up and down escalators, dropping multiple belongings to get to our bus.  Being the only white people in this airport, you can only imagine what kind of attention we gathered.  And by God's grace we got to our station to find out that the bus had been delayed for another 20min.  So we were hysterically laughing as we gathered ourselves from the rush of what had just happened in the past 2 hours. After our 3 hour bus ride to the Cambodian border, we learned we actually had to get off the bus to start the next leg of the journey to Siem Reap.  We already knew not to speak to the Cambodians because they would try to rip us off but as we got off the bus we had to quickly put that into practice.  We all followed Andrew and a few Cambodian guys to an area on the side of the road to fill out the paperwork for visas.  

After we had finished, Andrew left with one of the guys to make copies of our passports.  We ladies waited, sweated, prayed and waited some more and couldn't be happier to see Andrew finally come back with a long, possibly corrupt but successful trip. We finally walked across the boarder side by side with some 'orange' monks.  As we're trying to escape the Cambodian guys, that were following us to try to convince us to take the "free bus" (that doesn't end up being so free) our hearts broke for  the trafficked kids that were hanging on us begging. While passing through the boarder, we were all startled with what we thought was a gun shot but ended up just being a car blowing up right behind us.  At this point we just wanted to find a taxi to start the 3 hour drive to our final destination: the Ywam base in Siem Reap.  We wandered the streets trying to figure out what to do since no taxis were in sight and also taking in the cultural difference we were experiencing even right at the boarder line.  We realized we now had to get our Visas stamp, so we shuffled in this small, hot room with the rest of the tourists. What we thought could be a breeze from here on out, we again found ourselves arguing with some officials with where food would be and how to get to our destination. This is when we got to experience the Cambodian "officials".  Somehow we now were on the "free"bus (that Andrew made sure ended up being free) that took us to this random, large tourist building where we would take our next 3 hour bus ride.  We waited for an hour and found our peace after praying together as a group. We then were on the next bus with other tourists and a bunch of loud college students.  This was the LOUDEST & hottest bus ride and Colleen and I got the pleasure of sitting in front of them.  We literally had our ipods turned up all the way and still could here the conversations of how Americans always burp and fart everywhere. However, we enjoyed the scenery of Cambodia.  

The cultural difference is surprising and so noticeable from Thailand... Cambodia has much more poverty and even more 3rd world conditions.  The flooding was already really bad along the way (and now being here for a few days, its even worse)!  We finally made it to this small shack that somehow turned into our bus station but fortunately there was a nice hotel down the road, where we were blessed to sit down inside to escape all the tuk-tuk drivers (taxi drivers) that constantly don't get the hint that we DO NOT need them! After the kind of day we had, we thought it was most appropriate to cheers with our pinky's out to water in wine glasses that this hotel served us while we waited for our next and final ride to the base.  As we rode in these carts where motorcycles pulled us, we found that 4 people and all our packs was a little too much weight when we were all of a sudden tipped over and sinking in the mud and dirt. So we took the initiative to walk the rest of the way while they took our belonging to the base. And 15 hours later we were so happy to find ourselves at an AMAZING Mexican restaurant (Mexican food doesn't exist in Australia & Thailand..  so we have been CRAVING it) laughing and debriefing with the kind of day we just had.  Nothing else explains how we made it to Cambodia but simply by the grace of God.

So the last few days in Cambodia have been incredible and I think its safe to say that for every single one of us the Khmer (Cambodian) people have captured our hearts. From the moment we got picked up by our first tuk tuk drivers, we fell in love with the incredibly beautiful smiles and personalities.  We have had the last several days off for our mid-way debrief and re-treat.  Our leaders surprised us with really nice accommodations at a villa in the middle of Siem Reap's cute little town. We are truly blessed and God is so good to us.  After the first day here, we get the pleasure of experiencing the flooding.  Even though the whole town has now flooded, it hasn't stopped us from trekking through the knee high water (with snakes and fish). 

This culture is amazing and even though we haven't started the ministry in Siem Reap, we have had awesome encounters and experiences with bringing Gods kingdom, by praying with these beautiful people on the streets & building relationships. Its been gnarly experiencing the trafficked kids that hang all over you begging for formula to fill the babies bottles who they carry all day long to reel you in.  After multiple times following them to the store to buy them the formula we learned that the milk never really goes to the baby but to the men who traffic them.  It was the hardest thing and breaks our hearts but there is nothing we can do at this time but pray for them.  Also there has been 2 men that have captured our hearts.. they walk around the town offering books for people to buy that refer to the 1975 tragedy of the Khmer Rouge attack.  One of the men, Douk lost both his arms in the bombing and sells book to try to support his family of 4 kids.  This man is so precious and I cant put it in words with how much joy he has.  He is constantly smiling, always positive and has the sweetest heart; we were blessed to be able to pray for him.  

Yesterday we had our new friends (the most adorable 2 tuk-tuk drivers) take us to Ankor Wat which was an experience itself.  It was amazing to see these temples and learn of the history and how big of a part it has in Cambodia.  Afterwards we took our tuk-tuk drivers to dinner with us and in return they took us to a Cambodian Carnival.  This carnival was tiny, old fashioned but an exciting event for the Khmer people.  It was awesome to spend a day on the town with our new Cambodian friends and have them take us to all the happening spots! :) Tomorrow we start ministry with White Dove, who works with women that come out of the sex trafficking and prostitution. Although the ministry is in a whole other country, its awesome to now work with a ministry that helps girls after they are out of the scenes, where as in Phuket we built relationships with the girls to get them out of the scene.


Prayer Requests:
-God to move in RADICAL ways.
-for the Supernatural 
-health and of course safety
-open hearts for the Holy Spirit to direct us
-receiving hearts