In my first attempt at summarizing our month in China I realized that it will take too long if i try to write everything out, so I'll just do an outline through pictures for now, but I'd be more than happy to fill in all the details and stories after I get home and can talk to you all face to face.

So lets start at the beginning...race day in Hong Kong...

We were surprised at the end of the race with tickets to Hong Kong Disneyland!!! Anyone who knows me would know how excited I was!

The next morning we left for the mainland of China. 16 hrs on a sleeper train. I really am gonna miss traveling with all these crazy people!

We spent 10 days attending a University as cultural exhange students. Our classes included language, calligraphy, paper cutting, chinese medicine, history, and philosophy. In exchange we hung out with the English majors every day for 2 hrs and just talked to them so they could practice their English.

Here we are in a few of our classes...calligraphy and paper cutting

Making friends at English corner

Laundry day on campus

In a few days we will be arriving in China. Some of you may or may not be aware that China is actually a "closed country." This means that it is closed to missionaries, i.e. it is illegal to preach the gospel. For this reason we will be entering as students on a cultural exchange program, not as missionaries. To ensure safety for us and for our Chinese ministry contacts, we will not be accessing the World Race website while we're in China/Hong Kong. We won't be able to share stories or pictures until after we return to the States (Nov. 20)

I will still be able to communicate via email, however emails should stay focused on general topics and should not contain explicit Biblical references or words that are specifically "Christian." All internet activity can be tracked and will be flagged if anything suspicious is said. I'm not saying this to scare anyone, I'm sure there's nothing to worry about and we'll all be fine, I just wanted to make you all aware that I will probably not be blogging again until I get home next month.

I also want to go ahead and take this opportunity to say another huge thank you to everyone who's followed me and supported me all year. It's been an incredible year and although I'm still me at the core, God has used this experience to help me understand the true identity of who I am in Christ and to shape me into a better version of me…I won't say the best version of me because I know I'm still in process, but I think I'm finally on the right track.

I love you all and am so blessed that you have chosen to share this journey with me.

Blessings,

BriEllyn

One final note…I am only $500 from reaching my full financial support for the year! Praise the Lord, He always provides!

Last week our team made a quick trip to Vietnam in order to renew our Cambodia visas. Although we technically only had to cross the border and come right back, we decided to make the most of our $30 Vietnam visas and actually spend a couple days in Ho Chi Min City (Saigon).

View from a rooftop restaurant

We signed up to take a tour of the Mekong River, but discovered that our day also included many other things as well. We got to taste fresh honey tea, play with a bee hive, hold a snake, watch coconut candy be made, and take an afternoon nap in a hammock on an island. It was tons of fun, and I especially liked the little sun hats they gave us!

Quick photo op stop while driving to the river

Gas station on the river

We tasted some honey tea, then held the bees!

I'm not really sure where the snake came from, but our guide assured us he was perfectly harmless! I never thought I'd ever hold a snake, but it was really cool and so much fun!

Next we were off to watch the process of making coconut candy. Yummy!

Just one of the many uses for old coconut husks....

Paddle boat adventure

We got a 2 hour lunch break, and definitely made the most of it!

Ferry boat across the river

And that's the end of day one…the next day Jon, Talia, Ginger, and I headed off to tour the tunnels used by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. On the way, our tour bus stopped at a warehouse where the government hires victims of the war to create beautiful artwork and carvings to sell to tourists. Most of the artwork was made from egg shells and seashells carefully arranged then dyed, and varnished. The pieces they made were so detailed and intricate, it was amazing. It was also cool to see that the government was helping to provide a way for them to make a living for themselves instead of begging on the streets.

Then we arrived at the tunnels. While we were watching the 15 min. documentary video at the beginning of the tour, it began to POUR down rain. It was ridiculous. Since our tour guide had warned us that rain wasn't going to slow us down, we all bought our little plastic ponchos and prepared to brave the monsoon. The first part of the tour took us through the forests where we saw several different tunnel entrances, bomb craters, and other war remnants. We also heard about all the different boobie traps and weapons the Viet Cong used against the Americans during the war. Considering how little I knew about the Vietnam war, it was very good to see and experience things I've only vaguely heard about until now.

Tunnel entrance: Vietnamese people are very small…Americans…not so much!

Inside the tunnels. To get an idea how small these tunnels are…give this a try. Stand straight up, then bend over at the waist to a 90 degree angle. Then bend your knees about 3-4 in. Now duck your head and try to walk, keeping in mind that you only have probably about 10 in on either side to navigate….oh wait…and turn off all the lights because these tunnels are pitch black except for the occasional "christmas light" that might appear about every 15 meters. We worked our way through 120 meters of the tunnels, which also included several places where the path rose or dropped about 3 ft with no warning. Climb…Drop…Duck! At one point the tunnel narrowed so much that we had to lay on our backs and scoot through because the ceiling was so low. It was pretty intense. They offered an "escape hatch" every 30 meters in case people got too claustrophobic since there's no room to turn around in the tunnels. I was very proud that all 4 of us made it all the way to the end!

We were sitting on the ground to take this picture.

Finish Line!

We ended our time in Vietnam with a team dinner at a fun restaurant called Windows

Just a small glimpse of typical traffic here in SE Asia...one of these days I'm gonna post a video cuz you just have to see it to believe it!

Today was our last day of debrief here in Cambodia. We'll be loading up the bus at 7:30am to head back to Bangkok where we'll spend 2 days before heading to Hong Kong. I'm excited to meet up with all the other teams, although I'm sure it will be pretty insane having all 4 squads (105 people) together for the first time!

For the last two weeks my team has been working with an organization that helps underprivileged youth in Cambodia. The goal is to help them learn life skills that they can use to generate income and support themselves. Much of the information I would love to share is confidential, thus the reason for my extremely vague blogs and no pictures. Our time here has been very challenging and I know it has stretched everyone one my team quite a bit. We have all learned and grown so much and hopefully I will get the chance to share these experiences at a later time.

One thing I am excited to be able to share is that my 7 years of restaurant experience is finally being put to good use! For the last few days I (and Eric) have been teaching the fine art of waiting tables to about 30 of the youth we're working with. It's been fun and challenging, but also very rewarding to see the excitement on their faces when they realize that they're being taught skills that are in high demand and will be able to help them earn a living. It's also been eye-opening to realize that nearly EVERYTHING we're teaching them is completely new to them. Few of them have ever actually eaten at a sit-down restaurant so they're completely unfamiliar with what it's like to be served.

They're learning very fast, and it's especially impressive to realize that they're not only learning all this for the first time, but they're also learning it in a different language! So far we've covered basic greetings and restaurant related vocab in English, hygiene and sanitation, personal appearance, and how to interact with customers. Next week we'll be working more with taking orders (an additional challenge considering that most of them are still learning how to read and write Khmai), working in the kitchen, making change, and general customer service.

This past Thursday we also had the privilege of jumping on board with a couple of the other teams here in Phnom Penh to help with a ministry their church offers called the Joy Club. Every Thursday the New Life Church hosts a VBS like program for 150-200 street kids. When the kids come they are usually extremely dirty, so I got to help with washing the kids up before the program started. After that was finished my role turned into bathroom/hall monitor to make sure the kids weren't congregating around the bathroom or just plain running wild. It was pretty crazy. While I was watching the kids I ended up talking to this 13 year old boy who was volunteering with the church. His name was Phanit. His English was awesome, and I really enjoyed getting to know him and hearing his story. I found out that he learned his English from a private school he attended when he was younger, but then his family couldn't afford private school anymore, so he started attending the English classes offered at New Life. The church teaches English, but they also preach the gospel. Phanit told me that about 3 months ago he had become a Christian through what he'd learned in English class. He was so excited about Jesus, and was so passionate about serving the Lord any way he could even if it just meant standing in front of the water jug and washing glasses after the kids drank out of them. He said his goal now is to do God's work in Cambodia and tell as many people as he can about Jesus because of how big of a difference it's made in his life. This kid was amazing...so full of joy. He asked how long I had been a Christian and when I told him "about 18 years" he told me how lucky I was to be able to grow up not only in a Christian family, but also with a Christian church family. He is the only Christian in his family at this point. It was very humbling for me to realize how often I take for granted my family and church family back home. This kid was just so excited to soak up anything he could about Jesus, it was very encouraging for me.

At this point it looks like we have about one week of ministry left here, then I believe our team is going to head to Vietnam to renew our Cambodia visas. Since we have to renew our visas by Oct. 3 we figured it would be fun to at least be able to say we've been to Vietnam. It's only a few dollars more to cross the border than to renew at the embassy here. Our debrief at the end of the month is going to be at Angkor Wat, an amazingly beautiful temple that I believe is included in the 7 man made Wonders of the World, so that should be exciting. After that we head to China for our last month of ministry. We have zero details at this point of what we'll be doing in China, but I'll pass them along as they become available.

This is just one example of the numerous places where you'll see luxury right next door to poverty. As the country slowly rebuilds the contrast seems all the more stark.

95% of intersections here are completely uncontrolled...no stop signs, and very few traffic lights. You just slowly work your way through traffic and wedge yourself through to get where you need to go.

The huge yellow building is the Central Market filled with hundreds of vendors selling everything you could possibly imagine...Kari and I joke that it's Cambodian style Wal-Mart!