Ohlin's Outside the Box: High School Students + Remote Village Part 2

Here is Abby's account of Day 2 in the village:

The next morning we all woke up to our neighbor blasting our ears with crazy Khmer music through at 5:30, and also to the cold, brisk air blasting the rest of our bodies. I crawled out of my hammock with my blanket wrapped around my shoulders and went to the little “restaurant” where hot instant coffee was waiting for me. Soon after I arrived at the “restaurant” more of our team members started to wake up and come over to get coffee. A little later into the morning after we all shared a nice breakfast of Mama noodles, coffee, and eggs we changed back at the house and made our way up to the little schoolhouse where we were going to share our awesome Bible lessons with the village kids. However, God had different plans. When we arrived at the school house we found that there were about 8-10 kids at the school who had just finished being taught by two men who were being supported by the government to come to the village to teach the kids. They explained to us that it is hard to teach the kids because they are working in the rice fields all day long, and they don’t have the supplies to teach the children properly. So, the teachers asked us if we could bring pencils, crayons, note books, and other supplies for the children. And sure enough that is what we had packed along in our backpacks for the kids! I think it is so cool to see that before we had gone to the village God had already planned for us to bring all of the supplies that the children needed, and also that what we were going to bring was just what the teachers asked us to do. God is so awesome

After we finished talking to the teachers some of the kids had started to leave because they had to start on their chores in the rice fields. For a few minutes we thought about waiting until the afternoon to do our lessons. Then Ms. Harris had the idea for a few of us to go walk through the village to try and get some kids to come to the school house with us. So, Deborah, Dillon, Tia, Ms. Harris and I walked through the village for about and hour trying to find kids to come with us back to the school house. At many of the houses that we stopped at in the beginning there were kids at home who were either too scared to come with us or they were working with their parents in the rice fields. I have to admit that I wanted to give up looking for kids and asking them to follow us, but then I said to myself, “What would Jesus do? I bet he wouldn’t just stop looking for children because it was hot outside and wanted to do his own thing.” As a result of that I decided to press on in the heat and do what God would want to see me do. While we were walking through the village, we came across a house where a little girl was laying on a table and 3 adults were watching the little girl. When we walked up to the people and the little girl we asked what was wrong with the girl. The adults communicated to us that the young girl had gotten an oil burn two days before we arrived in the village. Not only did the innocent girl have a bad oil burn, but she had a high fever and her skin started to get very hot and red looking. Before we left that house we decided to pray over the little girl, and that God would heal her completely and take her fever away and also to make it so that her burn did not get infected anymore. Later on that day, my dad came back to that little girl’s house and treated and covered her burn and gave her some medicine for pain and for her fever.

When we left the little girls house and made our way back to the school house there were at least 15 kids sitting in their desks waiting to be taught. I was so shocked and amazed to see so many kids at the school house who had stopped working in the fields with their parents just to come listen to what we were going to share with them, what had burning in our hearts to share with them ever since we heard that we were assigned to this trip. Yet again we can see how God was already working in the hearts of these young wonderful children, and the hearts of my team and me. God is so good!

After we finished two awesome lessons with the kids David and Goliath, and the creation story we took an hour break and went to have Mama Noodles, eggs, and coffee. Then we gathered the kids again and led them down to the river where we were going to give the children baths and get them all cleaned up. About half of the kids who had been at the school house followed us down to the river to get cleaned up. While we were down at the river I saw about 4 young girls who were afraid to get into the water and play with us, so I decided to get out of the water and I walked over to them, talked to them for a few minutes then asked if they wanted to get their nails painted. They all said yes immediately. So, I sat on the rocks and in the dirt cleaning the dirt out from under their nails and painting them in brilliant colors. The rest of the students either played ball with the kids in the river, helped paint nails or scrubbed the hair of the village kids. Right before we left the river we hung a large rope from a large log that fell over the river. It made a really fun rope swing for the kids.

When we came back from the river most of us changed into our PJ’s for the night and talked and hung out for a while. Soon it was time for another round of Mama Noodles, eggs, and coffee. A few minutes after we got settled for dinner and started eating our noodles and eggs about 10 Khmer people came up to us and waited until they got our attention. When we finally noticed that they were there they explained to us that an old lady had sliced her foot open with one of the tools that you use to cut weeds with. Immediately almost all of the guys on our team dropped their cup of noodles and were headed towards the woman’s house, including my dad with his first-aid kit. Time flew by when the guys were gone and finally I couldn’t take it anymore because I was so scared for the lady and no one had come back to tell us if she was okay or not. I said that we should all gather in a circle and pray for the lady, and that God would give my dad and the other guy’s wisdom to help the woman. After we finished praying the guys came back and told us that the lady had sliced open one of the arteries in her foot and if they had not gotten to her house and fixed her foot when they did, the lady would have slipped into a coma because she lost so much blood. When I heard the news I was so thankful that we were in the village that weekend. If we hadn’t been, the lady with the cut foot might have slipped into a coma and maybe never would have come out of it. And who knows? The little girl’s oil burn might have gotten badly infected and something might have happened to her.

Later that night we had worship time and again, quite a few Khmer people came to watch us sing. During the time that we were worshiping a Khmer lady asked Deborah what our purpose for singing was. And Deborah told her that we were singing because we were praising our Father in Heaven, and giving thanks to Him for all of the amazing things that He has done for us. After Deborah explained that to the lady I saw an expression on her face that I had never seen before. It was almost as if she understood. When the worship time was finished Ms. Harris and my dad decided that we should all walk up to the schoolhouse and have devotions. When we reached the schoolhouse we all gathered in a circle and sat on the desks. It was pitch black outside except for a few dim flashlights that a few of us brought along to make the atmosphere a little more comfortable. As the devotion time began, my dad spoke from two different scriptures, Matthew 14:22-33 and Psalm 37:4. While my dad was talking every once in a while he would stop and ask us questions about what was happening and he also applied some of what was happening in the scriptures to his own life, like what had happened with his previous job. As my dad closed up his talk, a few people took a courageous step to share some of their testimony with us all (I’m not going to name the people.) Anyway, as the testimonies continued to pour out of the hearts and souls of my friends and classmates I could feel Satan trying to make us scared and not believe in God. I am so glad that I can lean on the truth that God is so much more powerful than the Enemy.

As the wonderful devotion time came to an end, my dad and a few others prayed to God and thanked Him for bringing all 17 of us students together to a tiny remote village so that we might become closer to each other and to our Creator. When we started making our way back down the trail that would lead us back to our hammocks, many of us walked without saying a word to one another. Some of us were still replaying the scene that we had just witnessed at the schoolhouse in our minds. Some of us probably didn’t know how to react at the moment. When we arrived back at the Chief’s house many of us grabbed our toothbrush’s and brushed our teeth and got ready to crawl into our hammocks for the night.