Cambodia Afterglow
YWAM New Zealand | Thursday, September 29, 2011 at 3:54PM We have just returned from our most recent Mission Adventures trip to Cambodia, where a team of 12 youth from Wanganui Baptist, New Zealand were one of our favourite yet. The three ministries that we worked with all deal with children in poverty, so we spent lots of time washing hair, teaching English, and having loads of fun. A highlight of the trip was taking 38 children whose families live and work on a garbage dump to the Phnom Penh water park. It was all systems go, as many of them had never left their village, never been on a bus, and never been swimming before – but fortunately we had an incident free day!
Another highlight of our time away was a short trip across the border to Vietnam, where we investigated a new outreach option of delivering Bibles to remote villages via motorbike. Keep your eyes on the outreach page of this website for this new trip becoming available from 2012!
Probably our biggest highlight happened in the last week of our time in Cambodia. It came about through our work with a children-at-risk ministry in a relocated slum outside of Phnom Penh. We have worked with these guys with our Mission Adventures teams over the last several years, and have always been touched by the difficulties that families face with housing. In some cases, 40 families are living in a structure no bigger than a double garage. However, while we were there, 11 families – after four years of waiting – received a 6x7m plot of land from the government, and as it would happen, the majority of these families are part of a Bible study group who have been praying specifically for land for more than one year. While this was great news, the families were still unable to afford to build a house, so they constructed what they could out of bamboo, tarps and old pieces of iron, and moved in. So Wade had the thought, what if we could build a house? The week that followed was probably one of the busiest of our lives, with plans drawn up, money donated overnight from a business in NZ, multiple shopping trips with our tuktuk driver/translator, and a four-day build in 35 degree heat, assisted by an awesome team from the new YWAM Steps of Justice ministry. Finally, at 6pm on the evening before we flew home, we were able to hand the keys of a new 4x5m wooden house over to the family of mum, dad and three boys. And of course, we will be back in the future to continue partnering with the children-at-risk ministry in building more houses… So keep your eye out for this new mission opportunity also coming soon to Mission Adventures New Zealand!
The happy family sitting on their brand new front porch.
Reader Comments (1)