“Haley, dun’t fart.”

This is the most accurate description I can give of what it is like to teach a class of Cambodian preteens who speak broken English.

All of a sudden there was a bad smell that crept its way into our classroom.  Emily quickly picked out one of our students and told him not to fart, which began a series of “Haley, dun’t fart” and “Emily, dun’t fart.”  We definitely did not stop them.  We actually joined in the ridiculousness.

This is just a snapshot of classroom life.  There are many more stories filled with laughter, incredible moments where we see the Lord working, and times when your heart breaks from the look on a kid’s face when you hand him back his test and he got a 31%.  However, this incident is even more a depiction that people are all alike.  Farts are funny in the US and across the ocean in Cambodia, especially to boys and girls who are not quite teenagers.  The same is with many other aspects of life.  People are people.  We may do things differently and have different societal rules, but we are more alike than we probably realize.  We all laugh when we find things funny.  We cry when we are sad or hurting.  We feel discomfort and weakness when we are sick.  We all seek God when we are desperate.

We are all made in the image of God.  We just have to ask for his eyes to see his children as he does.

Everyone always thinks it’s such a big deal to give up your time and your money and go across the world for the sake of the gospel.  Yet, when you have a burden for lost and realize the power of the gospel, it really doesn’t seem like such an enormity.  It is simply following where He leads.  It is thoroughly humbling that God would desire to use you. It seems more like a joy to invite people to become a part of the body of Christ.  I realize that God has entrusted me to be a minister of his word whether I am at home in California, or at school in Colorado, or across the ocean in Cambodia.

When I think about what I have sacrificed for this time in Cambodia, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord (Philippians 3: 8).  We all have sacrificed to come here—it may be time with a fiancé, or schooling, a job, comfort, our plans, or something as simple as running shorts—but we did it so God may be glorified.

If you think the sacrifice is too much, it’s not.  Cambodian believers often sacrifice relationships with their families to follow Christ.  They sacrifice what people think about them.  They sacrifice feeling like they belong.  It’s all for Christ.  Wherever he leads you, let it be deeper into his heart.