This weekend we got to celebrate by attending a big dinner hosted at the church. Our team worked to create a banner that said Happy Birthday on it and we got him a Thrasher t-shirt because it has flames on it and Kim is on fire for the Lord (and because it was funny). We also got him a mug because he likes to drink hot water every morning. The celebration included the attendance of Kim's family as well as our team, and the Governor of the province! It was smaller than some of the other events that have been hosted but super fun and we were grateful to get to celebrate with our host. After our dinner, Kim was presented with a fruit basket from the Governor and then he got to cut his cake. The family rotated through taking pictures of him with his cake and then we were also invited up to take pictures with him as well! While we were up there he asked us to dance footloose because he thinks its so fun to get to watch our team dance. This led from footloose into the cotton eyed joe, into American Kids, and then we ended up putting Faith's phone on a chair and doing Just Dance youtube videos for the rest of the night. Once everyone was starting to clean up, Alyssa had the idea to get out her “Birthday Wig” with the approval of Rebeca and Johnathan. Pastor Kim then got to wear the purple birthday wig with his birthday hat and Thrasher shirt which he was a super good sport about. However everyone started to see how fun and cool the Birthday wig was and naturally they all wanted a turn. We then spent about an hour letting everyone take a turn to wear the Birthday wig, and when they put it on they would go up to the stage and do a little dance with it! This lasted until around 11pm at night when we all decided it was time for bed.
Saturday morning rolled around and Pastor Kim earlier had mentioned that he wanted to take our team fishing while we were in Cambodia. We were all a little hesitant, as Saturdays are our days to rest and recover before the next week, but we all agreed we wanted to partake in this activity that Kim was so excited about. This fishing trip turned out to be so fun! We loaded up the tuk tuk with a speaker, microphones, a few coolers, a jug of water, and we were on our way. When we got to the fishing spot, we laid out mats to sit on and unloaded all the fun things that had been packed. We had a snack of pineapple, grapes and other fruits that I didn’t recognize. They usually eat these fruits with a Chili sauce that was actually pretty spicy so I didn’t have more than a bite. After our snack, David showed us how to catch fish using a net that you can throw into the water, and then it closes on the fish as it sinks. I personally didn’t try the net but a bunch of my teammates did and everyone was fairly successful at catching fish. While they were working on fishing, I was helping make Kabobs with the rest of my team for dinner. There was a mix of chicken and beef, then a bunch of veggies that we cut up such as peppers, tomatoes, and onions. The pastor's wife then cooked these kabobs for us over little fires they were able to build and they were delicious. We ate on big leaves instead of plates and it was one of my favorite meals! After our lunch, the whole team waded out to the river and found clay and started making clay pots and other fun trinkets. We all decided to take some of these home with us to let them finish drying and see if we could use what we built!
Finally, it was time to pack up and head to the boat races! This was just a quick detour on our way home but we got to see some of what I believe would be Cambodia’s fair ground and part of their water festival. There were tens of boats all out on the river with teams of around 20-30 men who were all racing their boats to see who could cross the river the fastest. We watched maybe 3 or 4 rounds of boats, as the rounds went by fast, and then headed home. We got back right before sunset and all went up to the roof to set our clay bowls out to dry when someone also brought up their speaker and we went into a spontaneous worship session at sunset and it was so beautiful. We got to worship on the roof for about an hour until Rebecca called us down for dinner where we found out that it was Youmi, the Pastors niece's birthday, so we all got to celebrate and sing to her as well. She turned 10, the big double digits!!
November 6- November 12 2023