What do you see in your clouds?

I’ve been home in Canada for over a week now. Culture shock (to my own culture!)…jetlag….a different climate…different people….it’s a tough transition to be honest. Probably some of it unnecessary because I wasn’t spending ANY time with God. A wave of apathy had washed over me. It didn’t take me long to see Satan’s stronghold over this place trying to creep in on me…ummm…not gonna happen!

I’ve been in an overwhelmingly awesome season of learning so much about faith..trust. But this morning in my devotions there was something new (love it!). Oswald Chambers is so my hero and I love his daily snippets of challenging wisdom (despite the early 1900 English words that sometimes leave me more confused then encouraged…).

This is what it said….”In the Bible, clouds are always associated with God. Clouds are the sorrows, sufferings, or providential circumstances, within or without our personal lives, which actually seem to contradict the sovereignty of God. Yet it is through these very clouds that the Spirit of God is teaching us how to walk by faith. If there were never any clouds in our lives, we would have no faith. “The clouds are the dust of His feet” (Nahum 1:3). They are a sign that God is there. What a revelation it is to know that sorrow, bereavement, and suffering are actually the clouds that come along with God! God cannot come near us without clouds— He does not come in clear-shining brightness.

It is not true to say that God wants to teach us something in our trials. Through every cloud He brings our way, He wants us to unlearn something. His purpose in using the cloud is to simplify our beliefs until our relationship with Him is exactly like that of a child— a relationship simply between God and our own souls, and where other people are but shadows. Until other people become shadows to us, clouds and darkness will be ours every once in a while. Is our relationship with God becoming more simple than it has ever been?

There is a connection between the strange providential circumstances allowed by God and what we know of Him, and we have to learn to interpret the mysteries of life in the light of our knowledge of God. Until we can come face to face with the deepest, darkest fact of life without damaging our view of God’s character, we do not yet know Him.

“. . . they were fearful as they entered the cloud” (Luke 9:34). Is there anyone except Jesus in your cloud? If so, it will only get darker until you get to the place where there is “no one anymore, but only Jesus . .”

What struck me most was the part of “unlearning” stuff. It’s about letting stuff go….being healed and transformed and cleared out of junk and wrong mindsets and strongholds. Going simplier…not more complex. Just me and Jesus. Not running to people when things are hard. Not wanting someone to give you the answer. But going to Jesus and trusting Him that He is who He says He is regardless of how dark the clouds get.

the end of something great

I haven’t written on here in over a month….perhaps a bit of writers block….or lazy……

I’ve known for a long time now that leaving New Life School is what God is asking me to do. It’s time for new things. And I’m excited! It’s been a full on year…..many moments of wondering if this day was ever gonna come. Not that I haven’t been totally blessed and privileged to teach at NLS. I have poured my heart and soul into my students. But somewhere along the way I lost my vision. My passion died. But God is so good and has been taking me back to where He wants me to be. And it feels good. SO very good. The grace and love to live and serve here is being revived in my soul. I’m so pumped for life here once I’m back from Canada.

I’ll be studying Khmer. Like properly studying. FINALLY. I’ll be studying reading and writing at the University of Foreign Languages as well as studying everyday with my Khmer tutor. Equally exciting is that I will be joining the Growing Trees Internship program at New Life Fellowship as a teacher and mentor. Its a 10 month discipleship school that teaches and equips young Cambodians in their faith and gives them skills for life. It will be a great opportunity to use my Khmer language skills and mentor young women. Both of which I’m super passionate about (or trying to be…some days the “passion” to learn Khmer feels pretty weak….oh boy).

New season. New adventures:)

brownie-baking card-making fun!

Naomi, Rachel, Anna and Jessica with our “love” brownies:)

SO I realized long ago that its not all about me. I know…who knew right;) And yeah being single and free as a little birdie has its ups FORSURE but it does nothing for selfishness. Nothing good anyways. So I’ve been asking God to show me ways to SLOWLY let go of some of that selfishness and work on that servant, giving heart that I know is in there….it just has a little bit of “yeah but I wanna…” covering it at moments.

I have the most amazing friends. I love what I learn from my friends who are at a different stage of life then me. I love that we can share in each other’s lives. Challenge each other. My married mom friends teach me so much. I see such servant hearts in each of them. Serving their husbands and children with such love and care. It’s truly inspiring. They’ve invited me into their crazy, hectic lives and I love it! They can be driving in the chaotic streets of Phnom Penh, carrying on a conversation with me, texting their husbands and have 3 kids and a baby (who is SCREAMING) in the back and they are as cool and calm as anything. Meanwhile I’m secretly daydreaming about my quiet little house…. a cup of tea and a good book when I get home:) Did I mention quiet?

What a sweetie pie:)

So anyways, I wanted to do something special for them and nothing is more special for moms then taking their kids for a day. Now I love little girls. Especially when they are old enough to actually do stuff with. And I LOVE baking and being crafty and making cards so I decided to combine all three and have some of my friends little girls over for a brownie-baking, card-making, lots of giggling afternoon at Aunty Eileen’s house.

Some ladies from my church back home had sent me a bunch of supplies for crafts and cards and the girls loved it! SO many stickers and cool paper! So as the smell of brownies (we added about 15 oreo cookies to the batter:) filled my house, we made birthday cards and bookmarks and ended up playing house (of course) and making “mail” to deliver.

It’s cool to be a part of these girls lives. I remember growing up and thinking how special and fun it was when my aunts or older cousins would hang out with me. How precious it is to spend time with them and invest in their hearts. I feel blessed:)

 

Climate determines the forecast

Listened to a podcast yesterday by Jeff Henderson who pastors at Northpoint Community Church in Georgia. It was the first part of a two part series on how the climate of our relationships determines how well or how awful things are going. Some of it had to do with relationships in the workplace and stuff but what went straight to my heart was this:

He challenged everyone to ask three significant people in our lives AND God this question. “What’s it like to be on the other side of me?”

What a wise question to ask. Not an easy one but worth it. It’s taking what they say…the good and the bad….and bringing it to God and humbly asking for help, grace, transformation and praising Him and thanking Him for those people that He’s brought into our lives. Whatever it is that I need to work on, I want to do it!  Sometimes its hard to see yourself clearly. Sometimes it takes a friend to lovingly point out things in our lives that we are doing awesome at and things that we aren’t doing so awesome at. It takes guts on both sides but aren’t those relationships worth it?

I’m certain of this. If we fight for those relationships and do everything we can to make ourselves more like Jesus with more love, grace and a servant heart…the forecast will be looking pretty sunny:)

Listen to the podcast

Roasting peanuts

One of my co-workers, Vandeth is the BEST at teaching me about this crazy Khmer culture. The latest endeavour has been showing me how to roast peanuts. His parents grow them out in a rural province so he brought a big bag of raw peanuts into the city after Khmer New Year. Have you ever eaten a raw peanut? They’re pretty gross! So, he went and got a couple of cups of sand from the sandbox outside and put it in a big wok. Turned on the gas and got the sand real hot. Added in the peanuts and flipped them around in there for 15 minutes and BAM….roasted peanuts. Best roasted peanuts EVER!

 

dirty dishwater puddles

My good morning welcome

Funeral music blaring from the funeral tent set up next door. The not so great smell of raw meat, veggies and garbage. Dirty dish water puddles. A bowl of de-feathered chickens waiting to be chopped up. HUGE pots of water boiling atop rickety, make sift burners. A vivid description of a funeral “kitchen.” And this one was set up in front of my gate. Literally IN FRONT. Yesterday I came home from work to find a stack of big metal bowls and a pile of empty pop cans up against my gate with a woman sitting on the ground doing dishes. It took her like 5 minutes to get everything out of the way so I could wade through the disgusting puddles of water (which had an electrical cord running right through it) and get the gate unlocked. Oh the joys of living in Cambodia:) Never a dull moment!

You know its hot season when….

It hit about a week ago. Temperatures have sky rocketed. Humidity hangs in the air like a forever damp t-shirt that refused to dry. Its clear to see that the hot within the hot season has settled over Cambodia.

Here are but a few things I’ve observed this past week.

1. My Cambodian co-workers are seeking refuge in the AC office at work (their tolerance for heat is phenomenal but even this is beyond them.)

 

2. After a shower I go straight from wet to sweat. There is no period of dryness. I’m up to no less than 3 showers a day. I’ve started to question why I even bother…

 

3. The street is empty at a red light only to find 35 motos squeezed into a teeny tiny piece of shade 500 m back. 60 seconds at a stoplight in the sun feels like burning alive.

 

4. My laundry is drying out on the line in under 30 minutes.

 

5. Number one prayer request at all times is “Please God don’t let the power go out!” Last night the power went off for only a couple of minutes but within 25 seconds I was sweating and starting to panic. “AUGH! NEED……FAN…….NOW!”

 

6. My living room is strategically set up so that I have a fan hitting me at all angles.

 

7. My glasses slightly fogged as I went out of my AC bedroom into the rest of the house. Reminded me of taking freshly baked cookies out of the oven and having my glasses fog as I open the oven door. There were no cookies waiting for me outside my bedroom door.

 

8. Restaurants without AC were instantly ruled out for Sunday lunch.

 

9. ANYTHING other than sitting still with a fan on me results in profuse sweating. Profuse.

 

It may seem like there is absolutely nothing good about life right now in the sauna of Phnom Penh. You’d be right if it wasn’t for one delicious, yellow, redemptive fruit that is in season right now. Mangos:)

A handbag jam packed full of generosity

Some of the most precious gifts I’ve got were ones you know came straight from the heart. Not expensive. Not always useful. But precious non-the-less.

Today I walked into Grade 5 for English class. A normal day. They were even already sitting in their “English spots” (my ruthless seating plan that has no two girls or boys sitting beside each other). And before I could get “Good morning” out of my mouth, Srey Noch sitting way in the corner said, “Miss Eileen this for you. My mom made it for you,” and handed me a beautiful, handmade crocheted black bag. Lined with traditional Cambodian patterned material.

Srey Noch is one of five girls from the Sok family. I’ve mentioned them a few times in other blogs. A family that I’ve helped out over the years and a neighbor back in Canada helps provide them with some money each month for rice and other things. We were able to buy them a family bike in February. So great! Those girls are dear to my heart. Anyways, it was through the money that was given to the family by my neighbor that the mother was able to start up a crocheting business (she also washes clothes for the neighboourhood for a dollar or so a day). But she really loves to crochet so we helped her with start up costs to get her on her feet. She’s even branched out into making hats for newborns and other things here and there. It’s pretty awesome to see. I doubt she makes much profit from it with all the hard-work she puts in but every little bit of income helps.

To know that she gave up the money she’d make off of this bag she made me and that she had to put money into making it makes it oh so special. A humbling reminder of Cambodians generous hearts:)

How amazing is God’s heart for us…

Come away with Me, Come away with Me
It’s never too late, it’s not too late
It’s not too late for you

I have a plan for you
I have a plan for you
It’s gonna be wild
It’s gonna be great
It’s gonna be full of Me

Open up your heart and let Me in

“Come Away”~ Jesus Culture 

Did these parents sign a release form?

7:30 AM. 40 people crammed in a 25 person mini-bus. Hats. Cameras. A cooler full of rice and pork and Coca-Cola. Sounds like the makings of a great field trip. And so we headed off to Kirirom National Park and 3 long, bumpy, many games of Uno played hours later…we arrived. The bus was instantly swarmed with sellers sticking flower wreaths in through the open bus windows. I never knew my students were so good at wrangling deals! So with all the girls (and one boy Panha) decked out in pretty flowers on their heads, we headed down to the picnic area. An explanation of “picnic area” is needed I think b/c I know you have a different idea in your mind right now. There wan’t any wide open spaces of lush green grass, fire pits and a beautiful array of trees. Picnics in Cambodia are a mish mash of little bamboo huts with low floors and thatched roofs with no walls. Mats are laid down on the floors and everyone sits in circles and eats communally. We had rice and fried pork (one of my fav Cambodian staple meals) and lots of Coke. It wouldn’t be a picnic without carbonated drinks right! Some students brought watermelons so we passed around hunks of watermelon. Eating and laughing. Everything a picnic should be. Ants and all:)

After lunch it was time to swim. And swim they did. In the dirtiest water I’ve ever seen. It was browny red. Nasty. A parasites haven. Clips of “The Monster Inside Me” from Discovery Channel kept playing through my head. *whole body shiver* But they had an absolute ball. Until the boys started doing back flips off a rickety old dock into less than a meter of water and I had to be the lame teacher and tell them to stop or they’d break their necks. What a fun wrecker!

We also went to see a waterfall. Or so we thought. We also thought it would be a 2 km walk. The next hour saw us cascading down a rather steep mountain with no path and jagged rocks sticking out everywhere. The thought of “Did the parents even sign a release form that would cover us if one of these kids falls and impales themselves?” ran through my mind but I was quickly jarred back to reality as I just about slipped and became the impalee myself. So with enough complaining verbalized to last these kids a lifetime we finally made it to the bottom. To a lake. No waterfall. What the? You have GOT to be kidding. Nope. No waterfall. I think it was at this moment that Teacher Eileen stopped having fun and joined the complaining. I still don’t know how we made it back up that hill. Let’s just say “The Burn” was felt by all. Atleast I wasn’t wearing heels like two of my Grade 6  girls. WHO wears heels on a field trip to a national park? Haha. Cambodian girls. Their poor bare feet where pretty raw and bust up by the time we got back on the bus.

You’d think after that we would have had a bus full of sleeping kids on the way back. Nope. It seemed that the trek had somehow weirdly given them even more energy and I vaguely remember drifting in and out of sleep being serenaded by the girls (and Panha) singing Taylor Swift songs and a game of Uno getting way out of hand.

A day some of those kids will cherish. Most of them had never even been there before. It’s not everyday that they get to leave Phnom Penh and do something fun with their school friends. And like I knew it would, the mountain trek is already funny to look back on. I’ve forgotten the searing pain that was shooting up my calves as I tried to make it back up. All that’s left are some good memories and a few Taylor Swift songs stuck in my head:)

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