Green Pastures

Update 3 is pretty late in getting out to you all – things have just been so busy lately!! Sorry for the delay.

A lot has happened in the last month!! I’ve had a lot of ups and downs. Last month I missed home quite a few times and was really looking forward to getting home. But now I just feel totally settled and I’m pretty sad about the thought of coming home and leaving Cambodia!!!  I’m now into my 4^th month and have just over 2 months left until I’m coming home – how time has flown!!

The weather is still crazy – tropical rain and thunderstorms every day at some point which also causes a lot of power cuts and a lot of flooding which can be frustrating! Though I really love seeing it rain here because it means the temperature drops quickly and it’s not as hot to work in!! The traffic is still as crazy as ever. I have seen multiple motorbike accidents since being here and have actually been in a tuktuk crash myself (what is it with me and vehicle crashes?!). Don’t worry though I wasn’t hurt at all and actually witnessed the favour of God so strongly. After praying at the crash, the man whose car we crashed into had a complete change of thought and blame, and what could have taken hours to sort out and meant a lot of money to hand over, ended up being sorted in a few minutes with only a small amount of money handed over. Praise God for answered prayer, provision and protection eh??

As for the girls, they are awesome as always! They have been on school holidays for the past 2 months so that has meant spending a lot of extra time with them and doing some really fun activities with them. I’ve also been using the school holidays as a time to get all the older girls together to do “special focus” teachings with them, giving the girls Biblical teaching on topics such as self-image, being a confident single woman, relationships and dating, marriage and family, sex and the dangers of sex before marriage etc. It’s been a really special time and the girls have been so responsive. I also provided the girls with an anonymous question box where they can write down questions to get answers to all those embarrassing questions without the embarrassment. I’ve had a lot of excellent questions and am continually praying to God for the wisdom to answer them!!!! I’ve loved spending this time with the older girls. Once a week we also try to take the girls on some sort of special activity. One afternoon we took the girls roller skating, only to discover that not one of the girls or staff knew how to roller skate! So I had the privilege of teaching 16 girls how to roller skate! It was just awesome to build their confidence and see every girl able to stand up tall and skate by the time we left. Though it wasn’t so easy on my back holding up all those girls who were constantly falling as they were learning to skate!!! Haha. Another thing I’ve been doing with the older girls during their holidays which they love is helping them to cook and prepare boiled eggs and rice, which is then packed into containers and bags and taken down to the riverfront where our girls give out the food to the homeless and street kids. This is a really special time for me – it’s an honour to see the girls so eager to serve God, and such a privilege to be able to help those who are on the streets. It certainly gives me an appreciation for the life I have been blessed with!! We have also had 2 pretty major events with the girls in the past month. One of our girls became a Christian last month which was just awesome!! And another one of our girls has just been for major heart surgery in Singapore. Praise God that she is doing well and is recovering very quickly.

God has definitely been teaching me a lot since being here and showing me lots of little lessons. I really do have a huge appreciation for things back home which I normally would have taken for granted. The messages He has been laying on my heart to preach to the staff here especially have been awesome, and I have heard a lot of staff members using some of the things I have preached to them as a means of encouraging someone else. I love hearing from God what He wants me to share with His people. God has also been giving me a lot of divine appointments and opportunities to minister into people’s lives. I’ll give you a few examples of some of the amazing stuff God’s been doing. When I first arrived in Cambodia, I met a woman whose husband had been put into prison for a very very minor disagreement with someone. Straight away my heart went out to this woman and I spent a lot of time praying for her and ministering to her. The day of the court case I prayed for the woman and God showed me clearly the words of Jesus when He saved the adulterous woman from being stoned “Where are thine accusers?” I shared this word with the woman about her husband. After this court case was over I found out that the man who had issues with her husband said he had no problems with him anymore. When the next court case for sentencing was due, God laid it on my heart to tell this woman “Go and prepare your house because your husband is coming home.” After the court case I received a phone call thanking me so much for my prayers and support because her husband had been released and was coming home. Praise God for answered prayer hey?? Powerful!! 2 other events which really stick out to me was on my days off recently when I took a trip to Siem Reap to see the Temples of Angkor Wat which is one of the wonders of the world. As I walked through one of the temples I got stopped by a little girl trying to sell bracelets. I was wearing a cross necklace which says “Jesus” inside the cross which the girl pointed out. She asked if Jesus was my name. I was so taken aback thinking that she had never actually heard of Jesus before. I guess you kind of wrongly assume that everyone has heard about Jesus!! I ended up talking to this little girl in the ruins of a Buddhist temple all about my awesome God and what He has done for me, and for her. I told her all about what it means to be a Christian and had a great time building up her confidence. Before I left she gave me a bracelet and refused to take any money for it – saying it was a sign of our friendship and something I could always remember her by.  The next day as I travelled home from Siem Reap on my own on a 7 hour bus journey, the tour guide from the bus moved the whole way to the back of the bus to talk to me. The more I talked and laughed with her the more comfortable she began to get with me and soon she completely opened up about her life, and about a very broken relationship she was in, revealing how heartbroken she was to be mistreated and abused by the man she was in love with. She ended up crying her heart out with me on the bus as I built her confidence, reminded her of her worth and her choices and gave Godly wisdom on her situation. As I walked out of the bus after a 7 hour journey, I gave a big hug to a girl I was blessed to meet, and who now had a smile on her face thanks to God and His divine appointment to help this girl at her point of need.

I’ve also been doing some work with other organisations in my free time over here. I have been out with one organisation in the evening time to the slums where people are living in rubbish dumps. I got on my welly boots and trudged through a lot of sludge and rubbish moving from house to house giving out food parcels and bottles of water to families. The smells were horrendous. The houses couldn’t really be considered as houses. And I found myself struggling to comprehend that people could live like this. Imagining children growing up not knowing any different to this. And how super blessed we are to live the way we live back home. How often we take it for granted. I’ve also been working with an organisation every once a fortnight which goes into the red light districts to minister to the men there. I have been experiencing such breakthrough in this ministry with the men. God has been doing some incredible things, and has opened a huge amount of opportuni ties for men to open up to me. God has really been laying things on my heart to ask each man about, and when I ask that man what God has laid on my heart about them, it’s been opening up so many doors. For example, God laid on my heart once that I was to ask a young guy about his dad. When I did, I found out that his dad had bi-polar disease and tried to commit suicide multiple times – one which was on this young guy’s birthday. From this opening he then went on to tell me all about his life story and I was able to share with him all about God and his restoring power. Another man God revealed to me was passionate about freedom of choice. When I approached him about this he was pretty stumped and admitted that freedom of choice was very important to him. He was the type of person who thought a lot of things through and asked how I knew Christianity was the one true religion. After a quick prayer for the wisdom to answer him in the right way – God showed me that while every other religion says “you must do this”, and is probably brought up through your family for you to start believing as soon as you are born; Christianity is the one religion which gives you choice. God never forces himself on you. He gives you the choice to choose Him. To choose God’s true freedom. The man left with a different view on Christianity, not really knowing what to say. And these are only a couple of the awesome experiences I’ve had there!! It’s been incredible!

English lessons with the staff are going well and I’m really enjoying being able to teach them – though I do realise how strange my accent must be over here when the staff try to repeat words after me. They end up sounding nothing like they should, and a few times I’ve had to actually put on a bit of an English or Australian accent to get the staff to pronounce the word right haha!!

As for my free time here – I’m still doing Kick Boxing in the evenings which is going great – I’ve also been building some great relationships at the club, and have met some incredible people there who have opened up to me and told me their story. I also went to see my first kick boxing match at the weekend and really enjoyed it actually – God taught me a lot of lessons from one kick boxing match randomly, which I then went on to turn into a devotion for the staff believe it or not!!! I recently spent some time with one of the Cambodian staff learning how to cook chicken fried rice the Cambodia way which was delicious!!!! I also took a trip to Siem Reap lately as I mentioned before to see the temples of Angkor Wat with one of the visiting teams here. It’s crazy how many times I had people trying to put an incense stick in my hand to offer to Buddah!!! But the temples and their grounds were just stunning. I put up video blogs of my Siem Reap 2 day journey on my website (www.amandacotter.co.uk) if you want to see/hear more about it!! And on top of all that I’ve actually managed to try my hand at go karting in torrential rain, shooting and quad biking!! I’ve been making the most of my free time here!!! Though my time here is definitely made easier by having great people around me. I’ve met some awesome people with visiting teams coming through and there is now another volunteer here who arrived a month or so ago whom I spend a lot of time with too.

Things are going great, it’s awesome sitting back and reflecting on what God has actually done this past month. It’s crazy.

So to finish off, some prayer points:

-          Continued strength and wisdom for the journey and especially for staff and “special focus” girls devotions

-          Prayer for more God opportunities and for the doors to open to speak to more people about God and build trusting relationships with them

-          Prayer for the specific people I have mentioned above, these ones in particular have stuck with my heart

-          Prayer for our girl who had heart surgery that she would continue to do well and recover quickly

-          Pray that the money to pay for our girl’s heart surgery would come in

-          Pray especially for opportunity at kick boxing club – I feel it strongly in my heart that there is a purpose behind me being there, and have a real burden for the awesome people there.

-          This past weekend I’ve felt under spiritual attack, please pray for the confidence and strength to brush it off