WHY YOU NO TAKE RIEL???
It’s done.
We saw Jesus move in crazy, awesome ways.
I am not the same person I was three and a half months ago.
Reverse culture shock is taking its harsh toll on me. ( I almost cried when I got coin change back the first time I payed for something when I got back in the States - Cambodia doesn’t have coin change).
So all I ask is that you continue to pray for me as I go back home to Canada tomorrow. I might just be a wreck. Already I’m feeling depressed, but that is when I will continue to press into God even more. All my teammates left today, I have a whole hotel room all to myself, and for the first time in three and a half months, I am alone. The room is silent. And I don’t know what to do with myself. I’ve been in constant community, and I mean constant, no alone time whatsoever, for three and a half months. It feels odd to be alone. Before I went on this trip, my introverted self relished every bit of alone time I got. Now, it feels alien.
And the fact that I’ve had to pay $4 for a coffee is even more depressing. I’m so used to forking out 2000 riel (50 cents) for a Khmer iced coffee, and restaurant quality meals only cost $5, so imagine the shock when I went to Starbucks for the first time in a while and I looked at a menu for the Italian restaurant down the street from my hotel. Oi veh :(
But even though reverse culture shock is being a jerk, I can still look back and praise Jesus for all that He’s done in Cambodia.
He IS moving in that country. It is so evident. I hope He sends me back some day. I will never forget the friendships I’ve formed there with my team, the girls, the orphaned boys (I got to send a few pictures and a letter to Phearum :) ), and the children we’ve encountered, especially little Huah. I miss his stuck up haired, rotten toothed, smells like urine half the time, four year old self. I remember the time he smelled so bad, my teammate Erin and I gave him a bath at the centre, he loved it. That boy loves the water. And going out at night in Phnom Penh and talking with the bar girls, the men that are buying sex, and prayer walking the red light district. Now that was unforgettable.
So I want to send out a huge thank you to all that have supported me during this season of my life, prayerfully and financially. I can officially tell you that it was worth every penny and every second of prayer. And a big thank you to my church for putting some extra money in my pocket to keep me fed and alive, to pay for tuk tuk rides to ministry sites, to paying for a homeless woman’s meal, to buying a few bottles of coke so I could stay and talk with the bar girls. I was going to give the remaining money back to my church, but God has used every penny of it :)
So now, I will go and find some supper….please pray I don’t cry at the high prices I’m not used to lol.
All My Love,
Sarah Rochel
P.S. I will be starting a new blog fairly soon about what God is doing with the next step in my life. I haven’t talked about it really at all in this blog, so here it is in a few words: God is sending me to live in Ireland to start up a safe house for sex trafficking victims. Crazy eh? I’ll be posting the link once I get it up and running.
