After a weeks silence on the blog you may be thinking that we have all expired from an overabundance of teaching. Our time, I am happy to say, has been more agreeably occupied. Deciding to utilise the absence of our students due to a national holiday, a group of us packed into a mini-bus and headed out to explore provincial Cambodia. The idea was to spend Thursday morning travelling to Banteay Meanchey, the province of Vanny, Veasna and Vong who all came with us. Cramming ourselves into the mini-bus armed with such essentials as Pringles, lollipops and a guitar, as well as all shapes and sizes of luggage and people we set off. Five hours later, the time Vanny had repeatedly assured us would be more than sufficient to see us to his province, we were breaking for lunch – with another 3 hours driving in front of us. At least the company in the van wasn’t too bad – while Loy spent most of her time eating and sleeping, the rest of us sang, teased each other and had interesting discussions based around the Bible.
Friday morning found us all once again crammed into the van, heading with some anticipation out to the villages. Somehow we had found ourselves all believing Vanny’s assurances that we would be at his village in an hour or so. Maybe we should have paid more attention to the ‘or so’, as two hours later, after a slow, dusty, potholed trip we alighted from the van with no little excitement. We were warmly welcomed by Vanny’s family, a hard working, rice farming, Khmer-only speaking unit. A few hours later, fortified by rice and chicken stew (the foreigners had special bowls with no entrails, chicken legs or bone marrow) we were back in the van and bumping along first to Vong’s place and then on to Veasna’s family. I was so impressed by how we were so warmly welcomed wherever we went, and how well the villagers all live – they have no electricity, living simply in wooden houses with hens, pigs, cows and veggie gardens to keep them fed.Monday morning we departed from Banteay Meanchey and took a bouncy, over excited Loy to Siem Reap and her family home. Once more we were made to feel at home, and sat round chatting as we watched Veasna turn himself into a guava eating machine. It was indeed a sight to behold, although I must say it was not as inspiring as some of the sights we saw the next day when a few of us went to Angkor to be astounded by the ancient temples of Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom and Ta Phrom. The architecture and sheer size and structure of the buildings are amazing. We were however reminded of the temple in the coming Kingdom age – no matter how awe inspiring or remarkable we find these edifices at Angkor, they are but the work of men’s hands, comprised of idols of silver and gold with the temple built to house and worship them. Not just a well constructed building, the temple in the age to come will be truly awe inspiring – especially outstanding when combined with the worship of the one true God. A time when we will all, in unity say “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob, that He may teach us His ways and that we may walk in His paths... come, let us walk in the light of the LORD.” Oh quickly come Lord Jesus.
Sarah
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