So, why are we living and serving in Cambodia?
Is it because white people are the saviours of the developing world?
Is it because we have ‘so much to offer’ a nation recovering from genocide and war?
Is it because we want to share Christ with people who have never heard the gospel?
Honestly, one of the biggest reasons that we live in Cambodia is that we like it here.
I have prayed this prayer for nearly my whole life: “Jesus, may the joys of my heart meet the needs of Your world.” For me, Cambodia is the place where my joy intersects with the needs of God’s world. I recognize this as a gift of grace, because many acknowledge that Cambodia is a difficult place to live. Of course there are daily challenges, like the unrelenting heat, not to mention the unending corruption and injustice. But for Lyle and me, cross-cultural living energizes and excites us. Learning to love the people of this nation has drawn our hearts closer to the heart of God.
My dad often marvels at the openness Cambodians have towards us. He says, “When I think about cross-cultural missions, I think about how I’d feel if someone came up to me speaking bad English, and THEN tried to share a foreign worldview or religion with me. I don’t know how open I’d be to that!” For better or for worse, most Cambodians are open to foreigners, especially Western ones. They patiently laugh when I make language mistakes, and strangers constantly invite me to sit down in their homes. (Admittedly, most of that is probably because I have a cute baby, not because I’m a foreigner.) I am well aware that my face and upbringing bear the marks of “rich privileged white person”. I am aware of what this has meant around the world throughout history – from colonialization to financial hand-outs to local churches looking a bit too much like American megachurches.
So we always try to start by listening to our friends and hearing their stories, long before we try to implement programs or save the world.
I think one of the reasons that I love Cambodia so much is that I didn’t hear its stories by reading books or listening to jaded expats talk about Cambodia. Rather, Cambodians told me about Cambodia. And I didn’t hear a single story of one demographic of Cambodians. I am close friends with middle-class university students, high class officials, moms in the slums, garment factory workers, ex-monks, radio DJs, and people who survived the worst of the Pol Pot regime. The stories I’ve heard are both heartbreaking and hopeful.
I believe in cross-cultural ministry because something very heaven-like happens when this mutual sharing of humanity occurs. We all need a ‘prophetic outsider’ to both listen to us process our world, but also to provide a different perspective and speak into some of our cultural blind spots. In Canada, my life was changed forever by my college roommate who happened to be a Korean ‘outsider’. My prayer is that I can be this ‘prophetic outsider’ for my Cambodian friends. It’s the things that we share in common – raising kids, going to work, living as spiritual beings with hopes and fears – that allow us to connect. From this connection, there is so much joy in learning about and sharing our differences, including our language, food, wealth, and faith.
Having said that, there are very practical and urgent needs here, and we work for an organization that does a really good job of addressing the needs of poverty, education, empowerment of locals, and sharing the gospel. (www.asianhope.org) But you know as well as I do that there are needs all over the world. My prayer is that the joys of YOUR heart will meet the needs of God’s world.
