Cambodia (part 15)

The summer after our junior year of college was busy for Isaac and I. He spent four weeks on a ship with the Navy, and shortly after he returned I was heading to Cambodia to teach English with a team of 30 college students and a few adults.

I had met everyone on the team at an orientation. Most of them were from Oklahoma, and I think there were only two of us who didn't know anyone else on the team. I was the youngest person on the team at 19.

I had some strange dreams before leaving. In one, I was hiding behind a broken wall of some sort with some children. War raged all around us, and I was trying to protect the kids and get them away from the fighting.

Despite the dream, I wasn't scared. I was so excited.

Until I got to the airport.

A bunch of people came out to the airport to see me off, but the trip that I had been excited about for months was suddenly terrifying to me.

If someone had pulled me aside and said, "You know, you don't have to go if you don't want to," I probably would have gotten in my car and gone home, despite the two thousand dollars I had raised to go.

Instead my BSU director pulled me aside and said that he thought that God was allowing me to feel the fear at that time for a reason. That later, I would be able to be calm and clear-headed when it was necessary.

It wasn't all that reassuring at the time, but he let me cry on his shoulder, which helped some.

But he turned out to be right.