We had stayed up until 1am with the family on Sunday night saying goodbye to this community that we had grown so close with. The family was leaving at 5am for a church retreat near the border of Vietnam that was a 12 hour bus ride away. They had been attempting to plan this retreat for the past 7 years so they were very excited for it to finally be happening. We wanted to go with them originally but our leadership decided it would be better for us to take a week to process our time in Cambodia. This meant that we had a hostel that we would stay at in Siem Reap for the rest of the week where we would be closer to our other teams. We got up at 4am on Monday morning to say goodbye to the family, and then started to get ourselves packed up. We had done most of our packing already but still had some last minute items like our sleeping pads and sleeping bags to get all put away. Then we mopped the room we had been staying in and by the time we were finished cleaning it was 8am and it was time for us to go. A bunch of the church members that didn’t go on the retreat met us outside to say one final goodbye. We were all once again crying as they were waving to us. The pastor's wife, Necru, even had made us breakfast to take with us before she left.
We drove the two hours down to Siem Reap and then stopped at a cafe to get coffee. We were told that we had to make a stop at a nearby church for the sake of relations before we could go to our hostel. We were all so emotionally exhausted from saying goodbye to the family and packing up all on less than 3 hours of sleep. We then walked into this church and it was our whole squad of 40 other people waiting to surprise us. We were so overwhelmed. It was so exciting to finally be reunited and see all of our friends again but there were also so many people trying to hear about our time in Cambodia when we really just wanted some time to decompress. Still were so grateful for all of our friends and they had even made us a late thanksgiving meal so that we could all celebrate together. After our lunch we went out to the soccer fields where we watched the boys teams go head to head. Both teams had gotten custom jerseys with their names on it so it was super fun to watch them play against each other!
Then it came time for my team to leave and go check into our hostel. Trying to get our 40lb backpacks into a tuk tuk was definitely an adventure in itself, and then when we arrived at the hostel, we still didn’t have our passports back from the visa office so I had to convince them to let us check in anyway. We all went to bed pretty soon after that.
The rest of the week was dedicated to taking time to process what Cambodia meant to each one of us, and allowing us space to emotionally mourn the season we were leaving. Most of the girls on my team even got a tattoo of the word “Chinyiang” in Rebecca's handwriting in Khmer, which means delicious. It was one of our longest running inside jokes with the family. On Thursday, our last full day in Cambodia, my team took me out for a birthday lunch to celebrate since my actual birthday would be on travel day. Faith went up to the counter without me knowing and even got me a piece of birthday cake which was so sweet! They all bought me little presents and tokens which was so kind and I had such a fun time celebrating with them! We also got to have some really sweet time with some of the other teams like pool parties and going out to the market. Overall our last week in Cambodia was such a good reset and got us all ready to start our next ministry in Thailand! We’ve been asked not to share the name of the ministry we will be partnering with due to its sensitive nature but we will be helping women who have recently escaped the sex trafficking ring learn day to day skills such as cooking, sewing, and looking after themselves. We will be living at a coffee shop that then hires these women so they can start to provide themselves with an income. This coffee shop has a hostel on top which we will be staying at, but also has 2 other safe house locations where these women can live while they are learning how to take care and provide for themselves.
November 27 - November 30 2023