This month’s story

On June 14, students from Biblical’s LEAD Master of Divinity program arrived in Cambodia for a 10 day missions project. The following is a letter from student Mike Albon.

Dear Friends,

I am so American, so unashamedly American. It is great to be home! It was an amazing trip, but it was great to come home to:

It is great to be home, and I love being an American, but I never want to forget:

• Dan and Marti McMillin are 6-year veterans with World Team Cambodia (the country only opened again to missionaries 11 years ago). Dan has an easy smile and a relaxed way about him, and Marti a hearty laugh. Among other things they are helping educate Cambodian pastors and church leaders through the Theological Education by Extension (TEE) program.

  COP Orphanage This place is amazing. They do not get many male visitors so the kids loved having us there, and loved my camera. This is the place where the stench of Phnom Penh became a fragrance to me. It reminded me that “though their sins be as scarlet, he will wash them white as snow”. Adoption out of Cambodia is illegal because of the human trafficking problems, but these kids are being raised in a Jesus-saturated environment. Pray that they will grow up to infect the remainder of Cambodia with the love of Jesus.

  Traffic here was wild, a few cars, mostly motoes. This picture is of the intersection in front of our hotel. If it looks liked controlled chaos, then you are getting the picture.

  The unbelievable moto traffic in Phnom Penh.
• Learning to love rice ~ I really love fresh Cambodian rice, especially with Lok Lak!
• The aroma of Phnom Penh, a combination of sweet pork bbq, standing water, yesterday’s garbage, sewage, and the ever-present black dust.

For our first week in Cambodia I hated that aroma—it was a stench, a metaphor for everything I didn’t like about Cambodian culture and practices (corruption is rampant, the police are Mafioso, 70% of men visit prostitutes, Cambodia is the international sex tourist destination).

I hated that aroma until I smelled it on someone I loved. The Sunday afternoon before we left, 8 days after arriving in Cambodia, I fell in love. With my wife Jamie 8,000 miles away I was already touch deprived when we arrived at the front door of COP. COP is home to over 50 kids—orphans, kids who smelled like Phnom Penh, kids who were covered with the same black dust I had come to despise—kids who were more touch deprived than I was. For the next two hours I was a walking, talking, book-reading jungle gym for at least 40 of the 50 kids. It was wild, I was in love.

When the stench of Phnom Penh got personal it became sweet.

It would be terribly naïve to think that in 10 days we came to understand the needs of the country of Cambodia, but it was plenty of time to fall in love with the people of Cambodia. One wise missionary pastor said it this way, “What will rescue them from the stench left over from years of civil war and blood shed is not Western money, but Western love. Love that comes packaged in the gospel. Their hope is not in infrastructure but in Jesus.”

Thank you for giving me the gift of experiencing Phnom Penh, thank you even more for helping me to know the Cambodian people. They are no longer a mysterious place on a map. They are precious to God, and are precious to me.

Acune! (Thank you!)

Mike Albon, ’07 MDiv

P.S.
I’ve officially been home a week and three hours now, am just starting to get my feet back on the ground, and am only beginning to process how God might want to use this experience to change me. He has touched me deeply in so many places. Please pray that I don’t quit on the processing before it is finished. Please pray that I don’t wall off areas and deny him access. And please pray for the hundreds of Jesus followers who are working to communicate hope to the Khmer people of Cambodia.