I am extremely grateful for my opportunity to serve God through my STSM trip to Cambodia this summer. Going into this summer, I knew that I was going to be entering a season of significant change and transition, as I am now finished with college and preparing to start my professional career. On top of that, God was also pointing out a lot of the complacency and things that I needed to change in my own heart for the sake of my spiritual walk. In the midst of all of this, I truly believe that God presented STSM to me as an opportunity to take action and set the tone for this next season of my life. I felt that God was asking me if I was truly willing to sacrifice everything for Him and live according to His will. With the money that I would soon be earning, with all the new responsibilities that I would have, and all the ambitions that I had for my future, would I really be willing to give that up to God? And so, with that conviction in my heart, I decided to say yes to God and give Him my obedience this summer.

I’ve been blessed with several previous opportunities to serve on missions in the past. I’ve gone on several trips to Mexico, Guatemala, and Korea. However, after coming back home from this summer’s trip to Cambodia and reflecting back on everything that God had revealed to me, I can definitely say that God showed me something very unique, yet beautiful through this specific experience. I think that the biggest blessings for me from this trip were the relationships that I got to make with the seminarians at ITCS and the missionaries at TIM school, and the lessons that I learned from my conversations with them and even from just observing the ways that they loved and honored God with their lives.

In my previous experiences with missions, and even just ministry in general, it sometimes felt easy to just switch into “ministry mode” and serve more from a “spiritual high” than a genuine heart for the people that we are serving. However, with my trip to Cambodia this summer, it felt very different. Just with the nature of the type of ministry we did, there were certainly times where it felt like we weren’t really doing “missions.” A vast majority of our ministry was spent with younger kids in VBS or English camp, and so none of the things that we did were all that “spiritually intense” or anything like that. There were no altar calls or revival services with people breaking down and committing their lives to Christ. To be honest, there were many times where it felt like we were more of a team of summer camp leaders than a team of missionaries. However, over the course of the month, God continuously showed me his heart for the ministries that we worked with and how he was using them. God showed me, through the seminarians and missionaries, that serving Him and living a life that is fully surrendered to His will doesn’t always have to be so extravagant. 

Through my many conversations with the seminarians at ITCS, I got to hear their testimonies and I could see the heart that they have for their nation. Many of them had to make significant sacrifices in order to study at the seminary and some even faced rejection from their families because of their decision to follow Christ. Despite these obstacles, their genuine desire for the gospel to reach every village and province in their nation is so evident in their faithfulness to their studies and to the ministries and church plants that God has tasked them with shepherding.

During the two weeks that my team spent at TIM school, I learned a lot from Missionary Stanley and his wife, and the way that they live their lives with a faith and assurance that God will provide for them. Their lives as missionaries are not filled with anything extravagant: most of their daily life is centered around simply running and maintaining TIM school. However, even with just their faithfulness to that task, I witnessed how God uses them to exude the love of Christ to the students at the school, to their families, and even to the local community.

Coming back and getting into the regular rhythms of life again, I think the main point of application that I want to apply to my everyday life is to have a heart that is relentless for God. Through the seminarians at ITCS and the missionaries at TIM school, God used my month in Cambodia to show me examples of what it looks like to follow him daily. It doesn’t need to be extravagant and it doesn’t necessarily need to be anything so extreme, but it does require daily discipline, a heart that is fully surrendered and submitted to the Father’s will, and a wholehearted love for God.