Day Two in the slums and I am already: broken hearted, amazed, awed, open to loving people more, mad at  the world for letting this go on, floored by kindness, and being changed.

If you didn’t pick up on it a lot is going on inside of me right now. This month were are serving in the slums of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and I know this is going to be one crazy ride.

Day One we ride in our new form of transportation, a tuk tuk, to Rubbish Mountain (the name of the trash dump) and the adventure begins as soon as we hit the dirt road. Our contact told us that this part of the drive wasn’t even the worst of it. And he was right. We thought it was bad passing over the make shift bridge that goes over the black foamy river. Then you begin to smell the stench of something that in America we would be driving in the opposite direction of, not towards it. With my bandanna operating as my mask to keep a little of the pollution out of my lungs we venture on. We finally hit the extremely muddy road with a pot hole puddle every few feet. After sliding all around, holding on for dear life, and praying that the tuk tuk does not topple over into a puddle of sewage water we finally make it to the slums. Cheers and screams of “hello” in the cutest Khmer accent welcome us by the dozen or so children. They didn’t know we were going to be there but welcomed us as long lost friends. It was the perfect way to start off a month in the slums…Not to be stuck in the reality of the poverty and hopelessness but overwhelmed by love.

We are blessed this month to work with Sarith, a local Cambodian minister who was called here. He told us how he was shocked when he first went to the slums and amazed that people could live this way. His heart broke for the people. He also never really liked kids but then his mom started to run an orphanage and his heart changed for them.

The first day we went out to meet some of the community and to introduce ourselves. Day two we learned about hell. No actually health, but every time the Sarith says health it sounds like hell. It was a confusing conversation until I realized what he was really saying. Precious! A health professional was there to speak to a couple of the growing leaders in the community. The goal is that once they learn about the different health topics they then go out into the community and share with others. So after our lesson that is what we did; we went back out into the community.

I know this is going to be another challenging month. It will be another month of new things that burst my little American bubble. It will probably be another month that gets me further outside of my comfort zone than I’ve been before. But if I’m not here for that, then what am I here for? Bring it.