The long awaited time had come! We were actually getting company again. The covid restrictions here in Cambodia are lifting little by little. They’ve lifted enough that a team from iGo was able to come for one of their ministry trips. After almost 2 years of not being around any other American youth, I was thrilled at the thought of having people who, not only are close to my age and speak English as a first language, but also understand the culture we were born into. I had so much fun writing this blog post and remembering all the good times we had when they were here. It turned out really long so I decided to split into two separate posts.

Monday, April 11.

After a couple of set backs along the way, the iGo team finally made it to our house late this evening. Friedrich’s and Lanita came over for supper. We got to know each other a bit and found our many connections with each other. The poor people was exhausted from their long travels, so they went to bed as soon as they could. They’ve been traveling almost 24 hrs.!

I’m so happy, Julianna and her sister are both going to SMBI the same term as Dallas and I. It’s kind of a relief. I’ll actually at least kind of know someone other than Dallas. Plus they are not only from the mission field, but also from Thailand. We’re pretty much neighbors! It’ll be so nice to have someone with similar experiences in a sea full of “normal” Americans. Oh, there is also two Friedrichs here now, a Friedrich Stoltzfus and a Friedrich Miller (from here).

Tuesday, April 12.              

Today we only had a half day of school so that Carissa and I could go with the team. We watched the well guys drill in the morning. Friedrich and Keith both tried their hands at it. We girls sat down by the stairs and just observed. We hadn’t been sitting there long before the house owner noticed that the white girls were sitting in the sun. Of course it wouldn’t do to have them ruin their beautiful white skin with a tan! What a shame that would be! He quickly brought over chairs and set them in the shade where the sun wouldn’t hit any of their beautiful white skin.

After eating lunch with the well team, we went to one of the fishing villages to pass out bible story books. I love hearing them exclaim over how interesting and different everything is. It made me remember how blessed I am to have a chance to live in a place like this. We split up into two groups. We’d give a couple of children  books, their friends would see and race over to get one too. There were so many children! They’d come flocking around us begging for a book to take home. After we finished those two roads, we made our way back to the front of the village, giving out books as we walked. We were hot and tired by the time we ran out of books!

Carissa and I were very happy when they were willing to play spikeball with us. We have barely played since Lydia and Lanita left in June last year. Which is really sad, because all of us love playing. It’s just not as much fun with siblings that you see everyday. It was so fun to play again! It felt so good to talk to the girls while we weren’t playing. We had some really good conversations. We got a couple games of spikeball in before us youth went over to Friedrich’s for supper. It was a good day!

Wednesday, April 13.                                                     

After breakfast this morning, Lanita came over and we rounded up enough bikes for her and the team to go exploring all morning. The guys were busy with Wednesday staff meeting. I was busy trying my hardest to get Forrest and Alaina to be excited about finishing their lessons for the day! That didn’t work very well. All they could think about was the team biking all over the village, seeing the sights, while we did school. I was relieved when it was finished!  I have a feeling that school will not go as well as usual this week. Oh well, what can you expect with visitors here?

Dad got one of the SALT guys to order pork and rice for lunch. We thought it’d be fun do something with the staff for Khmer New Year. It’d give the team a chance to get to interact with the staff a bit more. The Salt staff grilled both pork meat and dog meat (sorry if that fact bothers anyone! It was a badly behaved dog, and it wasn’t anyone’s pet.) The team was excited to try everything. It was very good! We all sat in the shade to eat. The Khmer people definitely knew how to make their meat. My goodness, Vut ordered way to much meat! They didn’t even grill all of it. Our fridge is full of pork now!

The team went out with Dad to his bible study in Kompong Pluk after lunch. I stayed at home and did random jobs that needed to be finished. Sreypov had come home from her homeland on Saturday, but I didn’t get a chance to see her. So I went to visit her. The house was totally empty. I called her and she told me that she went back last minute to her mom’s house to watch over stuff while she is gone. I haven’t seen her in so long! I’m so disappointed that I didn’t catch her in time!

When everybody came back, we went over to Sen’s and watched the guys play volleyball for a while. Then they asked us if we wanted to play too. We did play, I won’t say that they were super competitive games because most of us were very rusty. It was fun to play again though. It was a good day today.

Thursday, April 14.

The team went over to Friedrich’s to paint the inside of their house today. Friedrich and Renita took them out for a Khmer breakfast. We had a normal day of school. We ate some of the leftover pork for lunch. I was really tired after school, so I went to lay down for 15 minutes. I ended up sleeping for over an hour. After I finally was awake enough, I took over some tools and stuff to Friedrich’s. The house looks much better with the lovely gray instead of yellow! After I dropped that off, I came home and made cinnamon twists for tomorrow. Everyone went to Lanita’s house for supper. We’re going up to the mountain early tomorrow morning since we have off for the new year, so we all went straight to bed after we got home.

Friday, April 15.

Ughh! I don’t know how I did today! Normally I can barely go to bed late because I’ll be tired the next day. It must be my “people high” that keeps me so energetic, because it’s not at all normal!

I told a couple people that if they think about it, to call me and make sure I wake up. Well, some people got time zones mixed up! One person called at 1:30 a.m. and another at 3:00. It made me laugh. (If you are that person, don’t feel bad! I loved it!) I got up for real at 3:30 so I could preheat the oven for the twists. I video-called Lori and Avi while I got ready. I can’t believe I actually get to meet Avi in person in less than three weeks!

When Friedrich’s and Lanita got here, we piled into the truck. It was a bit of a tight fit with the guitar, ukulele, breakfast, plus all of us in the truck bed. But it made good memories!  Once we finally got there, we hiked down the mountain to a good place to sit. Sitting there surrounded with such good people, I was so grateful for this amazing gift God gave me this week! Julianna and Veronica served everyone coffee. Then we passed around the twists that I made and the breakfast burritos that Renita made. The sunrise honestly wasn’t anything amazing, but it was so worth going up! After we had eaten, we pulled out the instruments and sang for a while. Then somehow a rock throwing contest got started. It was fun.

After we got home, some people decided to take a nap. Some of us girls went over to Lanita’s house to clean the upstairs for her. Ruth is coming tomorrow, she’ll stay in the upstairs. We talked while we worked, a lot of it was about mission related topics. I think it’s so neat that most of this team has lived abroad on missions! It makes you feel a special connection to each other. It was good to talk to Veronica especially. Her family has lived out of country almost the same amount as we have. I think a lot of our experiences, and the way it has shaped who we are, are very similar. It was so good to connect with them!

Guess what we had for lunch? Leftovers. More grilled pork and leftover chipotle bowl. When will it be gone?! The guys left soon after lunch to go swimming. They went to a little lake/pond with cliffs. It looked beautiful! Not the normal kind of place you’d find here. They had a blast jumping off the cliffs into the water.

Meanwhile, the girls decided that we should go find a coffee shop in town with AC and hang out there. We had all climbed onto the truck. That’s when the problems started. We were all on the truck. Mom tried to start the truck, it wouldn’t start. She tried and tried. We called the boys and asked them what the trick was. They tried to explain. We tried. It still wasn’t working. We tried push starting it a couple times. Finally Lanita got on her moto and was going to go get the van. She was on her way out of the gate when it finally started. She put her moto away and we went to pick up Renita. Mom decided she wasn’t going to risk having the truck not work again. So we swapped vehicles at Friedrich’s. We had to connect the battery to the van before we could leave, but thankfully it worked fine after that! We got out to Rd 6. The new year traffic was insane! We sat there for a long time and never got a chance to turn out onto the road. We decided that it’d probably be best to either stay home, or find a shop closer to home. We went to one that Renita had been to before. I’ve seen it multiple times before, but never actually went myself. It was a neat place. They have a big garden/park  with lots of little rooms or shacks to sit in. The place was packed full though. They only had one table available. It was interesting ordering drinks, they were out of so many kinds of syrups and fruit. We finally all got our drinks. The artistic ones in the group pulled out their watercolors and painted for a while. Before we left, each of the girls prayed a prayer of blessing over us individually! They’re some great girls.

Poor Mom, she had to deal with all the vehicle trouble! We got back to Friedrich’s and the truck wouldn’t start again! No matter how many times we tried to push start it, it just wouldn’t cooperate. We pushed it out to the road and it was so close to starting. Finally I gave up and called Dad to come get us. Dad tried once and it started up like a charm! Apparently you have to push in the clutch extra far in order to start it.

We had been going to go mini golfing, but it was too late. We decided just to stay at home and play spikeball or throw frisbee. Julianna and I took the moto to go get vegetables for supper. I saw it coming but there was nothing I could do. There was no way out. Up the road aways I saw the people armed with squirt guns, buckets of water and baby powder. I wasn’t sure if they’d get us if we’re foreigners, so I tried to go out around them. It didn’t do any good. One guy stood right in front of us and gave us no choice but to stop. They drenched us with water, then proceeded to rub baby powder all over mine and Julianna’s faces. Through the whole ordeal, they were apologizing profusely! By the grins and smiles on their faces, they definitely weren’t sorry in the least! I got the vegetables I needed. Then I made sure my money and phone was safe in the grocery bag. I was much better prepared to be soaked on the way back.

After supper, we played random group games until 12 o’clock. Lanita called it a day soon after that. The rest of us weren’t too tired yet so we sat around and talked some more. Keith got out his snacks and kindly shared them with everyone. It’s amazing I’m not more tired than I am with having gotten up so early.

It’s so, so good to have people around! I’m so thankful for them.

To be continued…

Heather for the Helmuths…