Cambodian Affection

In our group debrief last night JB talked about how these kids are pure expressions of Christ's love for us. The way they shower us with affection is pure love and it's all action, no words.

All day long they embrace us. They come to us with towels with ice inside, wiping our faces and arms. During our breaks they pull out chairs for us and massage our backs and arms. It never stops.

One 10 year old boy in particular, Tuy (pronounced "T"), has touched me. He is so happy to see me. The only communication we have is our names. He'll come up to me, say my name and put his arms around me. He holds my hand while we walk. Today he wiped the sweat from my face. I've never experienced affection like this.

Tuy also works hard. He helped shoveling gravel and then with raking it along the paths.

It's not just Tuy, all the kids are like this. They love to serve us and they do it without one ounce of selfishness. It's humbling to say the least.

Every day when we leave they surround our bus. They scream goodbyes to us, wave and pound on the windows. When we arrive in the morning they run out to the bus to welcome us. They offer to carry anything we have.

The kids work alongside us and make any task fun. Today when we hauled load after load of heavy gravel and sand on the cart their game was to see how quickly they could unload it and return back to the piles.

The affection these kids give us truly is like Christ's love. Like the words from the Casting Crown song this love is intimate, intoxicating and it's extravagant. So strange I had to come all the way to the other side of the world to experience first hand such a love. However I have a new perspective for how big God is and how incredibly vast His love is.

James