Waking up in Cambodia

by Alex Drury

Phnom Penh, Cambodia, at Cambodia Adventist School 

Alex with her students.

And so begins week three of teaching the young-ins. It is barely past seven o’clock in the morning and already I am finding myself wiping the sweat from my forehead in between giving morning worship to my students. I am having the most difficult time fathoming how Cambodia could possibly become any more sweltering and humid than it has already proven itself to be. Still, all of the locals assure me that we are currently in “cold” rainy-season.  I believe it sure as ever seems as though Cambodia is as close to hell-hot as it can get, as it is already hard enough to breathe here….but maybe I am just still in denial.

Today, I must admit that walking out of our apartment and coming to school took more than a stretch of my efforts and beyond the normal “We’ve got this” pep-talk from Alex. Don’t take me wrong, my students have already stolen my heart and I love them to pieces. I just suppose a whole part of me is still “at home” in any desire to find comfort, whereas I know that I should be wholly here.

In the beginning I comprehended the necessity of being present…here, where I physically was, not wherever my head was. I understood that it was going to be more than vital to completely and wholeheartedly throw every ounce of myself into this experience and for the most part I have attempted to do just as so, but I would be lying if I said that being here, any part of me being here, was easy. By no strains of the imagination is this easy. Nonetheless it is exactly what I signed up for.

Waking up in Cambodia is hard. Leaving my unconscious “reality” and being hit hard by the actual reality that is around me every morning usually shakes me up more than not. The alarm alone is enough to shake up my world, then in addition so quickly more “abnormalities” come flying in every direction. Oh yeah, there’s the wild pack of dogs again that always seem to be fighting outside our window…oh right, every morning without fail I WILL wake up sticky and miserably hot, mhhmm, five o’clock in the morning really IS the middle of the night, I cannot even see my hand in front of my face….and the hardest morning realization of them all…I am quite literally a world away from anything that is comfortable to me.

Inevitably I will allow these thoughts to overflow my mind state until the second “snooze alarm” hits me like a brick wall. Amber, you can do this. I am not completely positive how or where these words come to me each and every morning, but they do without fail.   I would like to believe that these words are from something greater than just my subconscious. I would really like to believe that this is an example of God carrying me through this. I’d like to believe that He’s right there every morning without fail, flashing each of my students’ faces in my mind, reminding me to not only finish what I have started, but to master it.

I do, with absolute confidence, know that this year abroad as a student missionary would be a thousand and a half times harder if I did not believe that God was here carrying me through each moment of every day. For that alone I am appreciative; I know that if I tried to accomplish this year on my own, it would be near impossible. It honestly is the craziest feeling, to know and feel Him working through me and the people around me. I am so blessed to have a God that cares about me.

And so, as I sit here wiping the sweat from my forehead, my prayer is that I never forget why I am here, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, how thankful I am that I will never have to do this alone, and that I always remember this experience is so..SO very much greater than a few pictures on Facebook ..or a couple of check marks off of my bucket list; this experience is so far beyond my own self.