Cambodia How You Have Changed My Heart

We officially landed back in the United States yesterday around 10 am, Jet lag has a whole new meaning to me now...But it isn't just jet lag that I have experienced. I have come home from Asia with an entirely new perspective on the world, and how I live my life daily here in America where I am so blessed.

Leaving the Western World and going to Asia was probably one of the most impacting choices I have yet to make in my life, going to Cambodia & seeing where my family had come from gave me an entirely new understanding to my family and what they have been through. Not only that, but the Cambodian people welcomed our team with open arms and hearts and showed me that even people that have nothing, can give more love than people here where abundance flows. Abundance might not flow materially for those in Cambodia, but a love from the heart is something that does not lack. It amazes me that a Nation with such a devastating history, a history that we all want to shut our ears to because it is easier to be uninformed than educated of the evil....With such a history yet they are one of the most loving cultures I have yet to experience, and it was my own. I am so grateful that I got to go back to where I came from, and really take that experience back to where I am today here in America.

Our team spent our days having  serving the YWAM Base community in Battambang, We had many Prayer Times, taught English in remote villages, worked with Jeevits house, an orphanage dedicated to working with children and families that have been stricken with AIDS. It was an honor to be apart of what God is doing in the Nation of Cambodia. I see the Lords hand in redeeming a Nation back to his heart & I cannot wait for the day that I go back to Cambodia and see even more what God is doing. I was so blessed by the Cambodian YWAM staff dedicated to restoring a Nation back to Christ. Out of the 60 staff at the base, 45 of them are Cambodian. What a picture of a YWAM base coming into a community in pursuit of transforming a broken Nation, and restoring it back to fullness. 

It has taught me so much of how to be really be thankful for all that God has blessed me with. The people of Cambodia are living below the Poverty line of $ .45 cents a day. I had never been more convicted of my materialism and dis content with living. I have struggled in my transition of becoming a missionary with the financial circumstance with not being able to spend money the way that I used too, and after being in Cambodia I have learned and been shown such dark areas in my heart of being un appreciative of what I do have in always thinking that I want/need more.


 The truth is that I do not need more. Society and American culture has shaped my ways of thinking, and I have had a really deep realization of how temporal and meaningless the need for material security and excess. I am thankful for my brothers & sisters in Cambodia. They have shown me that how even though they do not have much, they have a love and joy in there heart from God that I do not even posses in the midst of my lack of perspective.  Although finances are a still a struggle living and working in ministry, I will forever be grateful that since I have food on the table, a roof over my head, clothes on my back, I am more fortunate than most of the world.

Not only am I more fortunate, but I am able to give and serve in the areas of need that I would not normally go to, or want to. Because of the gifts that I have been given, it is in the outflow of my joy and graditude that I would want to live a life that would be able to give to others. Because God has blessed me, I want to bless others. This is how I should want to live my life, this is how I should regardless of what I don't have, I must think of those that have less than I, but are still living out the Gospel...So why aren't I living out the Gospel?

I met so many amazing young kids, kids that just wanted to learn so that they would have a better chance in life, a chance that almost every American has, but some of these kids might never have. It was a privilege to be apart of this dream for every child. Before I left, I spoke on how amazing of a plan that God has for every single of there lives, and I know it true from the bottom of my heart. I am so thankful that not only I was able to impact theie lives, but  for them to be able to be impacted by them. I think I've been changed by them, more than they have been changed by me.  The issue of poverty is no longer a statistic to me, but the face of a little girl. It is by Gods grace that I can give, not just financially..but a gift of love.