About a week ago, our team split from our squad and traveled to another city about an hour and a half from Siem Reap to partner with another ministry host. We will be away for about a month with just our team focusing on new ministries and people. Going into it, we knew very little of what to expect but came in with hopeful hearts.

Man, were we surprised when we arrived at the school where we are living. As we pulled in a bunch of students and staff were waiting for us cheering for us when we got out of the van. They had also made a real sign for us that said, “Warm Welcome to Team Epimone - World Race.” They were all so kind and welcoming as we exchanged greetings and took pictures in front of the sign. 

Over the past week, our main ministry has been teaching English to high schoolers. Knowing English is really highly valued in Cambodia because it opens up job opportunities and helps them to further their education. The classes we teach know some English so it has not been too challenging to communicate. We have really been helping them with pronunciation because their teacher does not even have good pronunciation with many words. We have all enjoyed getting to teach English and appreciating how difficult our language is. Our team has also been able to appreciate how challenging Khmer is to understand and speak. At the school we are living at, it has been awesome getting to know the kids and talk with them. They are all very interested in talking to us. We are treated like we are famous as they want to take pictures with us and get our Facebook’s. 

Our other ministry has been helping and leading worship at a local church started by a Korean lady named Grace. We had the chance to prepare some worship songs and sing them for church on Sunday. Also, her and her husband have a separate house where they support 10 high school aged kids and we were able to interact and play soccer with them. It has been cool to build a relationship with Grace, her husband and the kids and we look forward to working with them more in the coming weeks. 

As we have been away from our squad, our team has been able to develop a really good relationship with the English teacher we work with and the restaurant owner of the place we eat at everyday. Sokam, the English teacher, has really opened up to us about his beliefs and been so kind to invite us to his house twice to eat. Soheng and his wife, the restaurant owners are so kind to us and treat us so well. They always make sure we eat enough and like the food. They are all so kind to us and it has blessed us so much. We have been able to share that we are Christian missionaries and are really close to being able to share the Gospel with them. So I ask if you would pray for their hearts to be open to hearing it. 

Overall, our team has been doing really well. Some of us have been sick with various sicknesses but it has not been bad. We are all learning what it looks like to do ministry and walk with the Lord intently as we have a lot of flexibility. A prayer request for my team is that we would all be purposeful and not waste the time we have to impact the people around us.