Finishing up outreach March 6, 2010

I’m writing this on the afternoon of Thursday, March 4, sitting on the upstairs porch of a house in the city of Banlung in Rattanakiri province.  After just over two months in Cambodia, our outreach ministry time is finished.  Tomorrow we’ll take the 10-hour van ride to Phnom Penh, and the next day we’ll leave for Sihanoukville, where we’ll spend our 5-day debrief time before heading back to New Zealand.

The last two weeks have been a dramatic change from our time in Battambang.  We arrived in Rattanakiri province on Sunday, February 21, and our two-ish weeks here have been alternating between relaxing and intense.  The first couple of days, we spent most of our time getting acquainted with our host, Bi, a missionary from Thailand, as well as Gordon, a missionary from Australia, who has been doing relief work with NGOs (Non-Government Organizations) in the area.  The two of them have been working on a project that helps villages of indigenous people start dry-season gardens – this is to help the people recover from a flood that wiped out their whole rice crop.  Our task here was to interview the people involved with the project and write up a report.

For three days and two nights of our first week here we stayed in Kate Village, a remote village about an hour-and-a-half drive from Banlung.  While we were there, we interviewed leaders from Kate, as well as two other nearby villages and visited their gardens.  In each interview, we had to go through two different translators (English to Khmer, and Khmer to the local language).  We stayed in the home of one of the Christian families (there were two or three Christian families of the 23 families in Kate).  We got a small taste of village life – we slept under mosquito nets on woven plastic mats on the wooden floor of the house, which was raised up over the open kitchen area below (you could look down and see the kitchen through the spaces between the floor slats).  Our “bathroom” was the area around the outside of the village, among bushes, trees, pigs, and chickens.  We bathed in the river and drank boiled river water when the drinking water we brought with us ran out.  We had electricity for approximately two hours each night, and only because we brought diesel for the generator owned by one of the neighbors.  It was intense.  I can’t say I enjoyed every bit of the time, but looking back on it I’m thankful for the opportunity to experience life in such a different way.  It was very interesting talking to the villagers and learning about their way of life, not just by hearing about it but also by seeing, feeling, smelling and tasting it.

We’ve been staying in Bi’s house in Banlung the rest of our time here.  It’s a cute little house with an upstairs porch area that we spend most of our time on.  Bi cooks for us and there is even a washing machine for our laundry – a treat we haven’t had in a very long time!  The windows don’t have screens, so we sleep under mosquito nets.  It’s blazing hot during the day, but it cools down at night so most of us sleep pretty comfortably.  The scenery around the house is beautiful – rolling hills mostly covered in trees.  I love looking up from my morning devotions to such a beautiful view.

After we arrived “home” (Bi’s house) from the village last weekend, we had a free day (during which I tried to get on the internet, but was unsuccessful in the attempt because the electricity was out in the whole city) and then spent the next couple of days working on the report, spending time in prayer, and relaxing.  On Monday, Anna, Seang and I put in a drip line at the house of a man who lives nearby, and on Tuesday morning a group of us went to another village to observe a garden there.  Wednesday we had a fun day visiting the sights of Rattanakiri – we saw two beautiful waterfalls in the morning and spent the afternoon at a lake that formed where a volcano used to be.

Today (Thursday) we had intercession for Bi and Gordon, tied up loose ends with our report writing, and got all packed up for tomorrow – we leave at 6 am.  I’m looking forward to some much-needed relaxing on the beaches of Sihanoukville.  We have a lot to process from the last two and a half months of outreach in Bali and Cambodia, and a lot to celebrate as well.  God is at work in Southeast Asia.  We’ve seen it, and we’ve even had the privilege of joining in for a season.  I just can’t believe we’ve come to the end of this time.

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