Tuesday started week two of ministry here in Battambang, Cambodia.
My team’s ministry for this month is working in a local trauma hospital, as well as planning a Children’s Read Aloud at the Ezra Café Library.
Every morning at 8:30am my team and I will bike to the trauma hospital. From 9am-11am, half of my team will go outside and play games/make connections with the caregivers. In Cambodia, nurses do not provide their patients with basic needs like ours in America do. Instead, they just give them their specific dosage of medicine. It is one of the patient’s family members (caregivers) job to feed, bathe, clothe, etc. the patient if they are not able to do so themselves. Caregivers have to take off work, find babysitters, and stop their everyday life in order to care for their family members in the hospital. The caregivers usually sit outside in order to find rest and take a break. My team is able to play games (usually Jenga) and invite others to join. This helps us to make connections with the people around us.
We are not openly allowed to speak of our faith in the hospital. For us to be able to pray for someone or tell the Gospel to others, we have to be asked. I struggled with this concept at first. I was aggravated that I could not go up and ask someone if I could pray for them. I believed that the only way that these people would come to know Christ was if my teammates or I, personally went up to them and lead them to the Lord.
If we are not outside in the courtyard of the hospital, we are inside making Christmas cards. Ann (our ministry partner for the month) started a paper making company at the hospital. This paper is used to make holiday/birthday/thank you cards. The cards are sold in various countries. Ann hopes to eventually move the paper-making machine into a small village- giving the people who live there a way to make money. It is an amazing project, and don’t get me wrong…I LOVE CHRISTMAS. Christmas 24/7. All the time. Sign me up!! But when I was first told that I would be making Christmas cards as a ministry, I questioned God.
The Lord really tested my faith in these moments. I wasn’t allowed to openly speak about my faith in public at the hospital, and the other half of my time was spent in a room making Christmas cards. “What is the point of this??” I asked God.
Before the race, I asked God to reveal Himself to me in new ways that I have never experienced before. I asked for healings, casting out of demons, and the dead raised back to life…all the things I have read about in scripture but have never experienced firsthand. Things that I know He can do and still does, we just have to ask for it.
So when I found out what my ministry was, I was upset with God. I asked for new experiences, and I received Christmas card making.
I was soon reminded by one of my squadmates that I am here to bring the kingdom of God.
Bringing kingdom is not just the “big things”. It’s loving those around you that the Lord has put in your path. It’s doing whatever He has laid before you to the absolute best of your ability.
God has placed me exactly where He wants me to be. All I am asked to do, is to love like Jesus loves. And be thankful in all circumstances.
“Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.” Luke 16:10
God is changing my mindset. I am extremely excited to see His plan for this next month in ministry, and the rest of my time on the field. I am open to all the new experiences that He is laying before me, whether that is being used to heal someone or designing a Christmas card.
Often you are asked to plant the seeds, instead of reaping the harvest.
Ways you can pray:
- That my team will have opportunities to start conversations and share our faith with the caregivers (language is a huge barrier, some of us are trying to learn general Khmer to make it easier)
- Joyous attitudes while doing ministry
- The hearts of those that we are witnessing to
- Health for my teammates and squad
- Safety while traveling to and from ministry (bike riding in Cambodia can get intense!)
