my trip to Southeast Asia

hi friends.

it’s been a while, i know. and i’m sure a lot of you have been waiting to see the pictures from my january trip to Thailand and Cambodia. my apologies for taking forever to upload them (the large quantity of pictures kept making the computer angry and shut the blog down over and over again). but i’m back and the pictures- although out of order- are up. I’ll slowly add captions to the pictures so you are able to experience my memories within the image as well.

important question: so what exactly did i do in Cambodia?

during my january term, i travelled with 24 other Calvin College students to Southeast Asia for a three week class. our focus for the trip was to “engage with development work in Cambodia” and to immerse ourselves in a new culture. so throughout the trip, we listened to, talked to, and engaged with different development organizations and groups in both Thailand and Cambodia (mostly in Cambodia).

i was challenged, moved, stretched, and molded through this trip. it’s extremely difficult to put into words the impact that this sojourning experience had on me and my heart. we did so much, saw so much, and experienced so many new things that it was overwhelming- but in a good way. i hope that i can at least clearly convey a few of the things i learned:

sometimes when we think we are doing good, we’re really not. my church would refer to the book, When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert (good read, recommended) often, so I grew up with the back thought that development work has the power to damage and hurt the people and communities that are trying to be healed. I’ve also learned about the methods and theories of international development in class- I could tell you the definition and effects of each type of development approach. but it’s another thing to experience development work before your eyes, in the community. its easier to see the brokenness of the organizations work as the outsider. after all, our focus of the trip was to be critical of the work going on in Cambodia. how do outsiders come in and help those who are suffering without harming their integrity, without stripping away their way of life, their culture, their autonomy? when we see children hungry, families struggling to support their family, etc., we want to solve their problems and make things better. we can build up relationships and come alongside in community, working together for a brighter future, but the power truly lies within the people. listening to the voices of the community, loving the people where they are at, and being patient with the progress and the setbacks seemed to be reoccurring themes in the successful development organizations.

God’s love persists and his faithfulness is steadfast. i’m going to start this off with a brief history lesson of Cambodia. in the late 1970’s, Cambodia suffered through a genocide of its people, coined the Khmer Rouge after the regime that took force of the country during this period of time. about a third of the population was killed. Cambodia, much like Nazi Germany, has a wounded history that has left a deep scar. Cambodia is healing. the stitches are out, but the hurt is still visible. we got the chance to hear stories from several Christians who survived the Khmer Rouge. listening to their praise of God who sustained them and provided for them during this immensely horrifying time left me in awe. how many of us come out of the complete darkness with only praise? no anger, no loss of faith. the reciprocated faithfulness and the hope they had in God made me question my own relationship with God. i feel as if my sinful selfishness seeps into the essence of my relationship. when something bad happens, I tend to question God why. i’m sure that these individuals cried out to God in frustration and fear, but they continued to praise Him through it all. amazing. another man we met in Thailand, an older gentleman who lived in the neighborhood of a missionary we met, couldn’t even fathom the question when someone asked him if he was ever angry at God. he couldn’t understand why anyone would be upset with God because He was the provider of good things. this man, who lacked many of the things we as Americans would consider essential to living a good life, had a better understanding of God’s goodness and faithfulness than most of us in the room. the christians we met in the slums and the rural villages were few, but their hope and faith in God continues to inspire me not to see what God has not done for me, but instead all the things that he has done for me

traffic and street life are very different in other parts of the world. okay, not as deep as the last two, but still a big takeaway. with people weaving in and out of traffic, heading down seemingly non-existent lanes, I put my complete trust in our bus/van drivers. it takes a special kind of skill to transition to driving in Southeast Asia, let me tell ya. you would expect this kind of driving to result in more car/moto accidents, but it was actually the opposite. we drive faster in the U.S. and we’re more distracted while we’re driving which makes us more careless. driving in Cambodia felt like a Nascar race, but I felt just as safe, if not more. and instead of focusing on the road, I got to look out the window and take in everything around me. the busyness of the street-side markets, the colorful rooftops, mothers buying partially-still-alive fish for dinner on the side of the road– it was all so beautifully chaotic. also, another big difference is how open daily life is on the streets. in the states, we attend to daily activities, shopping and working, behind closed doors. we’ve privatized and individualized our lifestyles in a way that we lose our sense of community. in Cambodia, there were always things happing along the streets. life along the streets is more exposed in Cambodia, which was really cool to observe and experience.

it is all about leading with love. leading our actions with love. leading our words with love. leading our relationships with love. while this isn’t a new lesson for me, it was a big takeaway from this trip. during one of our discussions, we talked about 1 Corinthians 13, the verse that lays out what love looks like. love is patient, love is kind… God calls us to love. it’s one of the greatest commands in the Bible. one of the missionaries I got to meet in Thailand exemplified Christ’s love so clearly. his fierce and unapologetic love for his neighbors was so evident in the way he talked about them to the ministry work he was doing in the streets. his goal wasn’t to go out and convert people. his goal was to love his neighbor well and in the process show that he was different than others through Christ’s love. 1 Corinthians 13:3 says “If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing”. especially with development work, we put so much into the tangible results and love seems like an added thing in the process. but like I mentioned before, it is the relationships built, the love poured into the community, that really impacts results. even in the hospitality of the village members during our home stays at the end of our trip and the communal love shared among the village members was a clear indication of God’s love (even though they didn’t know it as non-believers). they provided so much for us just during the two days we were there. they loved well despite the language barrier, despite the lack of resources compared to western standards, despite the cultural differences. what i’m trying to get at here is that love is one of those things that transcends barriers. it becomes its own form of communication. taking this view of love back home with me, I want to be a person who leads with love in all I do.

we miss so much when we have a tourist mindset. while under technical terms we were tourists, traveling to a different country in a large school group- but we had ulterior motives of learning more about development. we went into the villages with world renew community partnerships and got to experience the daily life of multi-purpose farmers, eat fried crickets outside of a local church with the villagers, and hear from community leaders and how they are able to contribute to the lives of their neighbors. we saw the real Cambodia through these experiences: who the people are, their culture, their way of life. and yes, we did do the typical touristy activities. we went to Angkor Wat (absolutely incredible) and the beach along the Gulf of Thailand. we walked the night markets in. Siem Reap, one of the biggest tourist cities in Cambodia due to the proximity of Angkor Wat. but you don’t see the true Cambodia while having a drink watching the sun set, sitting in a beach chair. its the conversations with locals, eating rice and fish soup with your host family, and listening to the stories of the past and present that really give you the taste of Cambodia. we often see places just for their attractions, including in the states. and while this is fine for the most part, we still can’t forget about all that we are missing when we only focus on the tourist spaces. to get a true taste of a place, remember the people, remember the history, remember the culture.

those were five of the big takeaways from this trip. I’m still processing some of things I saw and experienced and probably will never fully process them. places like the Killing Fields and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, two historical, horrific places where so many lives were taken.

through our partnership with World Renew, who scheduled our time in Phenom Penh and our home stays in a farming village, I have gotten to see what good, sustainable development strategies look like. and just by being in a new culture, I got to try so many new foods, learn a small amount of a new language, and meet such kind and friendly people during the trip.

i’m thankful for Calvin’s opportunities to travel abroad. I think this was an important trip for me to step out of my little bubble and experience a country much different than the places I call home. this experience has expanded and altered the way I look at development work and my own life and faith.

this post ended up being longer than I thought it was going to be, and I only shared five things about the trip. I guess that just further shows how complex this experience was. hopefully this gives you a small glimpse at how my january went and the kind of things we were discussing while traveling around Thailand and Cambodia. feel free to ask questions or reach out to me, i’d love to talk more about my trip and all the cool things we got to do!

thanks for reading.

camryn