Humbled

I don't know exactly where it ranks on the whole humility scale, but trying to become competent in another language is surely one of the most humbling experiences I've encountered. Now, I've had humiliating experiences before (like when I was in junior high and was running because I was late for the bus, which was sitting there at the end of our driveway. I slipped in the slush and had mud all over the side of my pant leg as the kids on the bus were laughing and yelling at me. Yeah, that was humiliating.), but those things happen in an instant - the feeling of embarrassment is intense, the memory lingers for a while, and then you move on and, hopefully, can eventually laugh about it. In contrast, the humility that is required with language learning is a daily trudge. You get these moments of exhilaration when you reach new peaks, but you are regularly - oh so much more frequently - reminded that you are still only functioning at the level of a child. You've come with all of this professional experience to share and a desire to develop meaningful relationships, and yet you're limited to the vocabulary of a second grader. It's one of the major motivators for me to keep going, though. Not because I'm trying to get past having to be humble (I know I need to be humbled whether I want to or not), but because I so badly want to be able to connect with Khmer people. It's why I'm here. If I let pride get in the way I'll never get there. So, for now, I strain to catch as many words as I can, yet sit there dumbfounded while everyone else is laughing at the joke someone just made. I know it will come with time. John Piper is always talking about "Don't waste your...." Fill in the blank with whatever hard thing you're going through. I guess I need to not waste this opportunity for humility.

Normal?

One aspect of my "Cambodia Normal"

Near the beginning of my six month home assignment I had sort of a surreal experience. Having flown in to the Twin Cities from California the night before, I was standing in my sister, Suzanne's kitchen, sipping my coffee while looking out the window. I had this sudden "deja vu" kind of moment where it felt as if I had never even been in Cambodia, as if the past two years had just been a dream. I had lived with Suzanne's family for the two years prior to my leaving for Cambodia, and the experience of sipping coffee next to their kitchen window as I prepared for the day felt so familiar. That may not seem strange, but it did to me because I had spent the last two years adapting to a completely new normal. It's hard to explain how weird it felt to slip so easily back into a Minnesota morning after two years of doing life in Cambodia. Well, last week I was happily surprised when I experienced the same phenomenon on this side of the world! I had flown in to Phnom Penh very late at night, so I decided, rather than having to disturb multiple people at that late hour to get into my apartment, I would stay at a hotel. The next morning I checked out and hired a tuk tuk to take me to my place. And as I was traveling down the streets of Phnom Penh, there it was....that sudden feeling that this was so totally normal. Once again it felt, in a way, as if I had never left. What had once been so "foreign" was now something I could slip back into with relative ease, almost as easily as I had slipped back into American life. Please know, I still need your prayers in a big way. There are still aspects of transitioning from one world to another that are hard, particularly missing the people I care about who are no longer with me when I leave one place for the other. I'm only two weeks in and I'm already struggling at times with loneliness. Also, I still have a lot to learn about Cambodia and am still very susceptible to all kinds of culture stress. But, it was just encouraging to recognize God's grace enabling me to slip from one kind of "normal" to another without feeling like I had lost too much ground. It was refreshing to realize that it has, in a sense, become home to me and that going from one home to another doesn't require starting over completely, no matter which direction I'm going. Thank God for that!

Show & Tell

When you were a kid and you got some special new toy, or maybe a fun new pet, weren't you just so excited for "Show & Tell" day at school to come around? Sometimes we just want to let other people in on the stuff that is meaningful to us. Being in Cambodia I have encountered that a lot. I love to be able to capture on camera or video many of my Cambodian experiences so I can "show & tell" my friends in America and other parts of the world.

Sometimes you just can't do that though. I was thinking about this last month, during a very challenging, emotional week. That Sunday a little one from our ABLE program died, and, later in the week, we received a referral for a sweet little guy who had some puzzling health issues and was extremely malnourished as a result. What does all of this have to do with "Show & Tell"? Well, there were a couple of poignant moments related to those events that I would have loved to capture so I could share them with you. The first was at the funeral of that precious little girl. She was not yet a year old, but she had already outlived her doctors' expectations. She had a number of strikes against her in terms of her health, in addition to being profoundly impaired, but seemed to be thriving in the care of her loving foster mom. And then, suddenly, she was gone. We had done our best to prepare this foster mom for the inevitable reality and, now that it had happened, we supported her in her grief. I attended the funeral along with many of our Khmer Children In Families staff. The photograph I wanted to take, but couldn't, was of our ABLE Community Rehabilitation Team member wrapping her arm around this grieving mother as she wept over her child. I have prayed (and I know many of you have joined me in praying) that the staff of the ABLE program would have not only the skill, but the heart needed for this special ministry. This "virtual snapshot" to me really captured how in this, as in so many other ways, God continues to provide "far more abundantly than all that we ask or think." (Eph 3:2). I was so thankful for a foster mother who loved and grieved her foster child as if she had been her own flesh and blood, and for our ABLE program staff who saw that this foster mother received the support she needed when she needed it most.

The second snapshot that I would have loved to capture was when I accompanied the family of the sick little boy to a medical clinic. This family had come to us in desperation. They had heard about our foster care program and wondered if we could find a foster family for their little boy because they didn't know how to cope with his mysterious illness. The doctors they had seen weren't telling them anything and the child was only getting worse. We encouraged them that we would come alongside them and help them so they would not have to relinquish their little boy. While we were waiting our turn at the clinic, I saw this sweet young couple interacting with their little boy with such love and tenderness. I thought of how often people in the West hear of families in developing nations "abandoning" their children and how little we know of what it is to walk in their shoes. In a country with rampant poverty and virtually no social supports or access to medical insurance, a serious illness can financially devastate a family. In many situations, relinquishing a child is a decision of last resort and often made with the hope that it will offer the child a chance at a future that the family feels they are unable to provide. When I saw this little boy with his parents I knew that the idea of giving him up had to have been a wrenching one for them. I'd like my friends and family to see in this "virtual snapshot" why our staff at Children In Families work so hard to do what we do.

In both of these instances the scenes were just too personal to capture in a photograph and used to "show and tell," no matter what the motivation might be. You may have noticed that, though I work with children here, you don't see a lot of children's faces in the pictures that I do share. We at Children In Families want to honor our families' right to privacy and to be a normal family. In keeping with that, I try to capture the essence of what we do without putting childrens' faces on display. Now that I've started my six month home assignment I'm looking forward to doing a lot of "show & tell" about the work that Children In Families is doing. Please send me a message if you'd like to have me come share with your church or other group!

Preparing for Antioch

The Children In Families Team

"and from there they sailed to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had fulfilled. And when they arrived and gathered the church together, they declared all that God had done with them, and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles." Acts 14:26-27

It's hard to believe that in less than 2 months I will be heading back to the U.S. for my first home assignment! Just like Paul wanted to share all that the Lord had done with the believers in Antioch who had sent him out for ministry, I am looking forward to having the opportunity to share with many of you how much the Lord has worked through your prayers and support here in Cambodia. I would like to meet up with as many of you as I can. If you have a small group that might be interested in hearing about my work with the ABLE program and the work of Children In Families in general, or if you think your church or Sunday School class would like to have me speak please let me know. I'd love to have the opportunity to share what God is doing here with as many people as I can.

 Here is a tentative schedule of where I'll be when:

March 8-16: California - Vacation time with my family including my brother's wedding!
March 17-April 26: Iowa/Minnesota/South Dakota
April 27-May 16: Texas (Dallas area)
May 17-June 15: Texas (New Braunfels/San Antonio area)
June 16-26: Colorado - Home Assignment debriefing at WorldVenture headquarters
June 17-July 5: Vacation time with friends & family
July 6-19: Iowa/Minnesota/South Dakota
July 20-Aug 16: Texas (New Braunfels/San Antonio area)
Aug 17-Sept 5: Iowa
Sept 6: Back to Cambodia!

I'll be trying to get in touch with many of you who are on my contact list, but feel free to let me know if you'd like to schedule a time to get together one-on-one (even just to grab a cup of coffee) or if you have a group who would be interested in getting an update on what Children In Families and the ABLE program are doing. If there is a particular event at which you would like to have me speak, please let me know. Even if the date doesn't match up with the tentative schedule, there's a  possibility I could flex to make it work. Just email me at lkyunker@gmail.com and I'll do my best to connect with you.
 

Times

Photo compliments of Cambodia Trust

I've been doing this daily devotional of sorts lately called Daily Office. It's meant to be a means of breaking into your workday a couple of times each day to get quiet with the Lord so that you can learn to focus on and be led by Him throughout the rest of the day. It has a big focus on meditation and being quiet to allow the Lord room to speak. It's something I've needed, and part of a work that God is doing in me to break me of my need to be constantly doing. I believe God wants me to line up my behavior with my belief that I desperately need connection with Him every moment of every day. Fostering that connection means taking time out with Him and not allowing any task to be more important than that fellowship. I'm not not where I'd like to be in that area, but I'm learning.

Anyway, this past week one of the readings was that section of Ecclesiastes (3:1-8) which starts out, "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens."  I took a little time to meditate on the verses and to see if any of them resonated with me in particular. I found that "a time to plant and a time to uproot" really hit the mark for where I am right now. I have planned ever since I came to Cambodia that I would be going back to the U.S. for home assignment in March 2014. I've vaguely sensed the time drawing nearer for that, but in the last month it hit me with force that my home assignment was a little over four months away. That has done some crazy things for my psyche and it's been a bit of an emotional roller coaster.

It's hard to express all that is involved in adjusting to living in a completely different culture than the one in which you had been raised. It was helpful to have studied about this prior to coming, but it still doesn't fully prepare you for what the experience will be like. I imagine it's kind of like the difference between hearing what child birth is going to be like and then actually giving birth. I get through one "phase" of this adaptation process and start to feel like I've adjusted, when, next thing I know, I'm thrown into another level of learning to adapt, or finding where I haven't adapted as much as I thought I had. Well, the sudden realization that I am soon to be returning to the States just broke me out of the "new normal" that I had established. I feel like I'm kind of caught between the "time to plant" and "time to uproot." My focus has been on planting, but now that I really need to start preparing my co-workers here for my absence and also making plans for my home assignment, my brain really wants to shift to "uproot" mode. To be honest, I'm a bit frustrated and impatient with being in this in-between time. I'm still here. I need to be here in my head and heart as well as in my body, but my head and heart have already started wanting to run ahead to March when I get to hop onto that plane. Don't get me wrong, I'm still ever so grateful to be doing what I'm doing here, but I've really missed my friends and family there, and now that I am actually making plans for seeing them (for many reading this, you) it actually seems to have intensified the longing. It feels like there are areas here where I still need to plant, but I so badly want to focus on the uprooting.

So, as I'm experiencing all of this emotional turmoil, something that I noticed is that, as badly as I want to return to the States right now, I really, really want to return to Cambodia. I've spent enough time planting here that my heart is now forever split - I feel like whenever I am in one place I am going to be missing the other. It's a good thing, but not always an easy thing. Kind of like longing for a Kingdom you've never seen but that has been planted in your heart by the King. Please pray for me as I go through this emotional planting/uprooting season.

No room for boasting

The LORD said to Gideon, 'The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over me, saying, 'My own hand has saved me.'" Judges 7:2

Gideon is one of the guys listed in the Hebrews 11 "hall of faith" and his place in God's story is found in Judges 6-8. When he is first called by the Lord to deliver Israel from Midianite oppression he is addressed as a "mighty man of valor." The verses that follow, however, would incline one to view that as a rather facetious statement. Gideon seemed anything but valiant.

But, who am I to talk? I'm not the ideal missionary. I'm not nearly as brave as I'd like people to think I am. My trust in God is not equivalent to what I know it should be in light of all of His faithfulness to me. In the midst of the political anxiety that had recently gripped Cambodia during & after the recent elections there were times that I had felt fearful and anxious. Of course, it is not bad to be wisely cautious, but, I had to wrestle with questions like, "What am I really willing to risk for the sake of the Kingdom?" And even when things are relatively normal, I wrestle with wondering how effective I am. Is my effort going to have an impact? I'm an idealist and in my idealistic imaginings I am the kind of disciple who is willing to weather any storm with steadfast faith; the kind of follower of Jesus who would do anything He asked without question or complaint. But in my emotional response to the recent political tension, as in so many other things, I find that my real self does not measure up to my ideal self. But maybe that's okay. Maybe it's not about what I can bring to the table so much as just my being willing to show up, knees knocking as they may be.

Because as I was talking a few days ago with a fellow sojourner, I was so encouraged to be reminded how much God is doing through my being here which has been totally beyond my control. It's just one of those paradoxical ways that God works. I can see that there are some really good things happening here through the ABLE ministry that very likely would not be happening if I had not come, and yet I can take virtually no credit for them. A prime example of this is our hiring of Savorn, ABLE's community rehabilitation team member in the village. Being so culturally and linguistically distant from the village, I was completely dependent on our other village staff to find someone to fill this role. The way it all played out, I didn't really even have a chance to explain to them exactly what we were looking for, and so, when she started, I kind of had to just hope for the best. Well, as I've seen Savorn at work, I have been blessed beyond all I could have hoped for. She has been a very receptive learner in all that Srey Ny (our Khmer physiotherapist) and I have been teaching her, and she really seems to have a heart for serving these children and families. The other village staff have commented on how impressed they are with the improvement they are seeing in some of the children we've been working with, and we could not have had this kind of impact without Savorn's consistent follow up. In God's providence, the dream I had for this ministry is starting to take shape and I have no room for boasting, only gratitude. 

Savorn, ABLE's community rehabilitation team member