Our Corolla Cruiser

Having a car means we can take the missionaries out to teach people in the boonies (although our little Toyota Corolla wasn't meant to go 4 wheeling in the jungle). Most missionaries in our area haven't been in a car for months - some not since they came to the mission. They ooh and aah over soft seats and air conditioning. We've learned that in the past, if the missionaries needed to get to some place further away, they hitch-hiked (not the Sister missionaries). They'd hop on the back of an open bed truck - along with 10 other people. Or sometimes they'd jump on a city-to-city van (a beat-up van crammed with people who don't have showers, stopping at a bunch of po-dunk places to pick passengers up or drop them off).


We took missionaries to a back-woods place about 35 kilometers out of Kampong Cham. It was a beautiful drive - mingled with litter. The people lived in a humble wood shack, with a small breakfast grill in front along the path/road - which was their primary source of income. We sat on rickety chairs (the missionaries sat on wooden foot stools), taught them about the temple and God's plan for families, then left them with a small poster of the Philippines Manila temple. The Mom (not a member of the LDS faith) kept rubbing the poster like it was the most precious thing in the world. She wants to learn more, but can't come in to church because one of them needs to tend the "breakfast grill" in case someone stops by. Somehow it will all work out.

Yesterday we visited three member "homes" to teach about the Book of Mormon and temples. It was only 5 miles out of Kampong Cham on the main highway to Phnom Penh. But once we walked100 yards away from the road, we might as well have been in a scene from Tarzan. It was a warren of tin and wood huts - all on stilts (they keep livestock under their houses, and have a "table" in the shade). Some had electricity, some didn't. Water came from shallow wells and roof run-off pipes directed to large urns. Families dip water from the urns for home use. But the people are loving and sincere. They accept their current circumstances and hope that their children will gain something better. The older women (ages 57 and 59) loved Erin. They hugged her, kissed her on the cheek, and treated her like she was a visiting queen. I was just ancient arm candy for her.

As I start to feel sorry for myself - perspiring in a dusty, muggy, mosquito-clogged paradise, I think of Jesus. He left a home that made our Sandy, Utah house look like a hovel. It was a palace designed for Royalty - the Lord of heaven and earth. Yet He left that beautiful place so he could live as the son of a carpenter, in a sleepy village under Roman rule. He never complained about his poor circumstances, nor about his occasionally flaky friends. He willingly chose to submit himself to barbaric cruelty unequaled in human history, and never asked, "what's in it for me." He would look at me in Cambodia and lovingly say, "quit whining." It helps me to know that He has walked a path far more difficult than mine.