Goodness of Heaven

Happy Holiday Season!

The squad has been back together in Siem Reap, Cambodia for around three weeks now! With the transition of everyone coming back together there was some initial awkward tension in the air, but now after a couple of weeks, it feels like the squad has come back to seeing and loving each other! In these past weeks, that honestly felt like only a few days, the four teams (Arukah, Epimone, Manna, and Selah) have been either going into the villages to minister to the kids or staying back at the base to discuss a variety of spiritual topics!

Village Ministry

During these past weeks, we’ve been traveling to rural villages that are one and a half hours outside of the city. Prior to our arrival in Cambodia, our ministry hosts at New Day New Life, Shannan, Vikki, Sreymom, and Peach, were pouring into these children for around a year. God is working through New Day New Life’s ministry outreach in the villages and we get to participate in this ministry by teaching the children about Jesus! We would typically have two days in the village per week.

The second week in the villages, our squad planned a VBS schedule with the wordless book (a book that goes through the Jesus story using colors) as our structure. Our team was assigned the last day and taught the Gold page which symbolizes HEAVEN! We taught how Heaven does not have tears or sadness, darkness or fear, or even shame and guilt. Heaven is filled with eternal light, happiness, and rejoicing! The bible verse for the day was John 14:6, “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'” I love this verse so much. The kids drew symbols to represent the verse (a road, checkmark, flower, etc). The reality is these kids live in constant darkness in their homes since there’s a lack of love expressed by their families; so when we come bearing the truth and goodness of Heaven, the kids find it quite interesting! At the end of the lesson, I asked the kids if they would be interested in going to Heaven one day and mostly everyone raised their hand! Although it’s hard to get all the kids silence to listen when teaching, God is working through the wordless book and our perseverance to speak life into the kids of Cambodia! I will miss these sweet kids when we leave Cambodia, but know God is going to continue working through New Day New Life even after we leave for Thailand!

Base Day Ministry

When a team stayed back from the village, they participated in a base day. These are special days because our amazing mentor, Bill Swan, leads a group discussion on themes like fatherhood, the soul, humility, prayer, the Holy Spirit, vulnerability, and forgiveness. This safe space allows for individuals to hear multiple perspectives and ultimately grow with wisdom in these general topics. We would have two base days per week! Base days where slower paced than village days yet still very productive and informative. I’m going to summarize the fatherhood, humility, and prayer discussions in bullet format, to give you a better understanding of what we talked about! After the summary of what I learned from everyone’s perspectives in the discussion setting, Bill gave us a couple questions to reflect on and I added them below if you’re curious about answering them yourself!

Fatherhood:

• When used right, father figures provide safety, protection, and a sense of identity and belonging
• Good fathers provide opportunity and guidance for their kids; they invite their children into work, but don’t actually need help to preform the task
• Inheritance from our earthly father is a precious gift
• God’s family is a culture and every action influences the culture
• Males are encouraged to express their emotion and talk about feelings in safe environments

Questions on Fatherhood:

• • Who’s my earthly father? How did he love me? Where did he miss the mark? What did he do well? What do I still want from him?
  • With the three identities: safety, identity, and purpose, where are you at in relation to the Heavenly Father?

Humility:

• Part of humility is having an accurate perspective of yourself, your strengths & weaknesses, gifts & talents
• A humble person accepts themselves for who they are
• Verbally accepting compliments, is a gift to the person giving the complement, and a way to lessen your internal ego so it’s not consumed with pride
• Jesus left the familiarity and comforts of the kingdom to live on earth as a common man which is an act of obedience to the Father
• Don’t worry about human approval since acceptance comes from the Heavenly Father
• Christ lived a humble life while being confident; He laid down His life while knowing who He was

Questions on Humility:

• • Lord what do you like about me?
  • What do I like about myself?
  • (we ended up sharing our answers to the whole group… yes it was awkward, but it strengthened the group’s dynamic since sharing personal information with each other displayed a sort of intimacy and each person built up their own boldness through this act of sharing)

Prayer:

• You don’t have to hear God’s audible voice all the time
• It’s natural to have your thoughts wander while praying; in fact, it’s alright to ponder a distraction and tie it back to prayer by lifting the distraction or thought up to God
• Putting in place a structure might make the prayer more “authentic,” meaning that a structure – listing out what you might pray for – can bring freedom to the mind
• Adoration in a prayer calls for more intimacy with the Father
• Try putting salvation into perspective while praying
• God is good before, during, & after a prayer
• The persistence of faithful prayer makes God smile:)

Questions on Prayer:

• • Do we actually believe that prayer can change anything?
  • How much do we fight for the principalities of the spiritual kingdom?
  • Am I willing to commit to things in prayer?

So yeah, that’s what’s been up here in Cambodia recently!

Currently…

We are starting to process how our time went here in Cambodia as it comes to an end. On January 3rd, the squad leaves Cambodia and travel northwest to Hua Hin, Thailand for an official debrief time before we head to South Africa! I will be using the time in Thailand to reflect on how God used the guys and myself in Cambodia to pave the way for the Lord! I will be hugging elephants, resting on an actual bed, and restoring my energy for the highly anticipated ministry outreach opportunities in South Africa!

With all that being said, I hope your holiday season is one full of JOY and PEACE from the Father! Happy New Years and have fun making (and attempting to keep) those resolutions if you decide to. I might start using the Mailchimp app for updates, and will continue using this platform, so if I post from that app, you will get a direct email sent and it will have all my updates right there on the email for you to read if you want to!

Happy Holidays and enjoy your time with family and friends this sweet holiday season! If you feel led, I would love prayers for physical and spiritual rest as we transitions countries. That I might find time to reflect on the ministry done in Cambodia and how it went well or what hindered the ministry process; so that my heart is ready for South Africa and all God is preparing there for us! Thanks for checking in and being a part of this crazy adventure with me! Love you & know that God loves you more:)