Cambodia Day 4 - Part One

Friday, January 19th was a most perfect day in Cambodia. The first half of the day would be my final training session with the ladies in the SEAPC Cambodia office. As we have every morning, we began with a devotional. I was excited and a tiny bit nervous about this particular devotional because it came with a physical demonstration and I was not sure if they would understand or think I'm silly.

This devotional contained the theme that is most near and dear to my heart. I remember growing up watching beauty pageants on television. The contestants would each have a "platform" - a message and cause that they were most passionate about. Well, you will never see me in a beauty pageant but I definitely have a platform. It's a message that I long to spread everywhere I go but it is often not understood. It is the difference between religion and relationship.

We read several Scriptures together. I love that all week as I read Scriptures in English, Phearom read them out loud in Khmer. Sarah understood both languages and I was blessed as she often nodded her head in agreement with what was being read.

Before I read my second passage, I pulled out what looked like a toy. It was a game piece from the old Trivial Pursuit board games. I removed
the wedges from the main piece and I explained that when we just had religion, that game piece represented us. We were each responsible for carrying every aspect of our lives. As I put the triangle wedges in one by one, each represented an aspect of our lives: our jobs, our relationships, our health, our finances, our responsibilities, and... our religion. Two things to note here: one, the "religion" was just one wedge and it was separated from the other aspects of our lives; two - we were responsible for it all.

I dumped the wedges back out and said that once we enter a relationship with Christ, the game piece represents Jesus. And inside of our relationship with Jesus is all the aspects of our lives: our relationships, our jobs, our finances, our health. etc. Religion is gone and every other facet of our lives is now in Him. He holds and carries us - every part, big and small. So where are we? I read Galatians 2:20: I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I no live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.

I had brought several of these playing pieces with me and I gave one to each of the ladies and asked them to keep it. I said that when life gets difficult or we feel burdened or if some aspect of our lives seems to be too big or too small, to look at that game piece and remember that Jesus holds it all because we are now in Him.

The Cambodian people have the most excellent poker faces and it is often difficult to tell if they understand or how they are feeling about something. I asked Sarah to translate my demonstration for Phearom and as she did, Phearom's eye's lit up with understanding and she nodded in agreement. Both ladies are shy and do not say very much. So I was blessed beyond belief when Sarah placed her game piece on her desk near her computer and said "thank you - it is very meaningful".

The rest of the morning, Sarah finished setting up her new version of Quickbooks while I simply watched to make sure she understood everything she learned this week. Sarah is very smart and very detailed and a most excellent accountant. By lunch time, she was set up and caught up and my work was done.

For lunch, Oudom took us to a multi-level mall near the Central Market. We ate at a place where they put a bowl of broth on a hot plate and you choose different items to put into it. The restaurant window gave a spectacular view of Central Market with a mixture of old buildings and new skyscrapers. After lunch we went shopping in Central Market and Oudom did all the bargaining for me. As we waited for our tuk-tuk driver, we stopped at a Starbucks for some matcha green tea lattes and I found a prized possession: A Cambodia Starbucks mug!

The second half of the day is a story for another blog post, but I will forever remember this Friday morning in Cambodia.