Tag: mission trip

There are different kinds of people in the world.

There are Coke people. These are cool people, up on all the latest fashion, beloved by friends and enemies alike, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. These are people you want to marry your daughter, be your boss, and watch on “Jeopardy.” These are happy people.

There are Pepsi people. These are insecure people, people who prefer imitation leather instead of the real thing, and are constantly challenging Coke people to a taste test. These are people you want to cut off on the freeway, live next door to your evil boss, and see tackled on “COPS”.

I went to an awful church today.

They didn’t have Starbucks coffee. They didn’t have any coffee. Good grief, they didn’t have any snacks at all. It’s like they didn’t even care to satisfy our morning cravings.

They didn’t have a sign on their building; it didn’t seem to be important that people know where they are. Come to think of it, they really didn’t even have a building, just a room in what looked like a strip center. No decorations, no cross, no baptistry, nothing.

And no chairs, so we had to sit on the floor. On the floor! Are you kidding me?

If you’re also a reader of the 121 Mission blog, you might feel like you have déjà vu…

Act 1 — Angkor

The day begins as three tuk-tuks roll down the road in the dead of night. Well, 4:30am, which is pretty much the same thing. Several of us were headed to Angkor Wat for sunrise pictures. Angkor is the largest of the temples in a huge complex built in the twelfth century. It was originally a Hindu temple, but is now Buddhist, and is considered the largest single religious monument in the world. It is also the main tourist draw of Cambodia, if not Southeast Asia (over one million visitors a year come to see it).

In photography, “high contrast” is, loosely speaking, when there is a marked difference between darkness and light in the image. This has been a high-contrast week.

Did any of this happen to you this week?

• You walked along the neighborhood with a friend and passed three women, and when you got around the corner the person you were walking with said, “Those three women are all traffickers,” i.e. they sell girls in the neighborhood to brothels for sex.
• You got to the location where you were doing a VBS, and the pastor’s son came out and stuck up his hand so you’d take it and walk with him, exactly like your grandson.