C a m b odia
Tough
One Assignment
With Srey Pit, the little sister of two of my students.
I
could have never prepared myself enough for what I face each day in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Poverty lines the streets. Naked children play in piles of trash. Not a day goes by that I don’t wish that Jesus would come to take all of this pain away. I want to give and give to the people around me, and yet, finding the strength to even get up some mornings and face reality is a challenge. However, I’ve always believed that you should do things with passion or not at all. So I try to remain as passionate as I can about serving. I believe that the people of Cambodia deserve nothing less than passionate love. Serving as a volunteer teacher in Cambodia has been one of the most challenging jobs of my life, but I’ll be forever thankful for how much I’ve
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grown since I’ve With my students. been here. Some days are wonderful, but others are painful and lonely. Sometimes, all you need is for someone to look you right in the eyes, straight down to your soul, and say that they truly believe in you. Today left me with a memory like that, one I’ll always cherish.
The boys in my ESL class.
My students are learning the books of the Bible. Each week they memorize ten new books along with a memory verse. In order to shake up our somewhat monotonous routine, I decided today to write the names of the books on the whiteboard in cursive. Every so often I have the students practice their handwriting, and they usually want to kill me for doing so; they think that writing anything in English is hard. Today I chose to answer their complaints by explaining that even though learning new things can be challenging, it’s ultimately going to be good for them. One of my fourth grade boys was almost in tears as he looked up at my
