Day 6 - Church and splashing around in the river

We woke up at 7:30am, lovely and early! As we had to be at CFC (Cafe For Cambodia) at 9am for church. Surprisingly we arrived a little earlier. Worship was held in a room with a cross, guitar and keyboard at the front.

We started with singing “light of the world”, “Over the Mountains and the Sea”, I was so surprised that they sang songs that we sing at “Inspire” and “Spring Harvest”! Also the children had such a strong faith, they were so happy and really believed everything they were singing and when everyone prayed all of CFC prayed out loud together, and the children just didn’t stop it seemed that they had so much to thank God for.

When we were singing, the room was just filled with voices, it was magical and very emotional, and Gemma started crying. Then we sang two songs to them, which were “Lord I lift Your Name on High” and “Blessed be the name of the Lord”.

After worship we played with the children, one of them French platted Gemma’s, Jess’s and my hair. Another girl did Sam’s hair. Others went and played volley ball, we had England Vs Cambodia match! England badly lost! We also brought games for the children to play with. Then we went and ate lunch with them!

In the afternoon we went to a village, which was an hours’ drive from the city. When we got there it was total different from what we had already experienced. All the houses were on stilts and they would have 1 room upstairs where a family including 6 children would sleep. Underneath the room would be were the family spent most of their day, as they would eat and play underneath the house.

When we reached the village the children smiled, but it was hard to communicate as they knew very little English. So we got out Scooby strings and made bracelets, but they just wanted us to make them for them. We brought a blow up dingy and the children had great fun playing in the dirty river.

Whilst I was with the children It made me think that some of them will never know what we know. In England we have such luxury, they will never know how other people live, some of them may never see Phnom Penh, which is the capital of Cambodia and the closest city to them.


But yet even though they don’t know what the rest of the world is like,they still have bright big eyes that shine, and beautiful smiles that just make you think wow your just so happy.

As I stood by the river that the children had been playing in I saw a man washing his cows, and women bathing. It really did feel like I was on another planet. How can they have such different lives to us, it really does seem impossible, but yet it is so true.

One more thing I have to mention is that on the way home from the village we stopped at a service station. Rachel went to the loo and me and the older Rachel waited to use the loo (as there was only 1 toilet). However when Rachel tried to get out she couldn’t as the lock was stuck, we tried pulling the door pushing the lock back in, then we called for backup and asked Kevin and Michael to help, it was quite amusing watching, in the end Kevin left to go and ask someone who works in the service station, as he left Rachel then realised that you had to press a button to release the lock! It was the funniest thing ever, and we called Kevin back. :)

Hannah xx