Battambang 3

Allright, so I know this is my third post today, but you guys deserve to know what's going on. Now, about this rice harvest. During our intercession times in Kona and Bali, we would often pray as a team, "Lord we want to bring in your harvest in Cambodia..."
We meant, of course, that we wanted to work in God's spiritual harvest field and have a fruitful ministry in which we would see people come to Christ. However, God showed us his sense of humor, and some poetic justice, by answering our prayers literally. For three very long days last week, our team got to work in the ricefields of Cambodia.

This was very strenuous labor, but it was also an interesting and worthwhile experience. Even the start of each workday was an adventure. We would take off from our house between 6:30 and 7:00 AM, and climb into the back of a pickup truck. If I thought I had experienced a bumpy ride before this, I was wrong. The ride from Bangkok to Poi Pet was all paved highway, and the ride from Poi Pet to Battambang was inside a van. These drives were not just bumpy and uncomfortable; they were painful and at times dangerous. There were always many of us crammed into one pickup truck bed along with ice chests and other supplies, so we had to sit on the edge of the truck bed. The ride would usually take about an hour to an hour and a half, but it wasn't the distance that made it take this long. It was the road quality. I didn't even know you could call what we were driving on a road, it was so bad. We had to drive through ditches and over humps that made the truck lean over to the point where the truck bed was diagonal. At times we went over bumps that threw our bodies into the air and the only thing that kept us from flying off was our hands hanging on for dear life. Whenever I would fly through the air, another bump would cause my bum to slam down onto the narrow railing I was sitting on, leaving me with a sore bottom even from the start of the workday.

These rides were also interesting because we'd see all sorts of livestock. Hey dad! I finally got to see one of those pigs that are as big (if not bigger) than cows! I remember one time this summer when we went to the zoo and they had these outlines of different sizes of swine, and you said that you used to see pigs the size of cows all the time. Anyway, the cows in Cambodia are actually quite skinny (they don't look like they're very well fed), especially when you see them next to the humungous water buffalo. Water buffalo are these big, fat, black bulls with huge horns that stretch out to the sides and pull heavy carriages stacked with bags of rice or what have you. The pig I saw was actually more comparable in size to the water buffalo. Sometimes, I'll see a guy riding a moto with this huge pig inside a basket strapped onto his moto sitting behind him.

When we finally got out to the rice fields, there was this village where we saw boats lying around, looking kind of like Noah's ark must have. These wooden canoes were sitting in a completely dry as bone landscape. Why would you ever need a boat here? It turns out that this whole piece of land floods during the wet season, and the water gets at least 6-8 feet deep! It happens because of the Mekong River, which is the only river in the world that flows upstream. When the rains come, it backs up and floods this huge area in Cambodia. The rice actually grows while the fields are flooded (it's floating rice), and people can only get out to the fields by paddling in a canoe. Then the rice is harvested during the dry season (December and January). So we arrived at the perfect time to harvest rice.

Our team leader Rob had some contacts with this organization called CAMA (Compassion and Mercy Associates) and its parent organization CMA (Christian Mercy Alliance), and they own a bunch of land in Cambodia and rent it out to rice farmers for a much cheaper price than most landowners do. They basically help farmers who don't have any land of their own get started in the farming business. the land that we harvested was not being rented out to any locals, but CAMA planted a crop because if they had left it fallow, it would have grown weeds, which would be very problematic for next year's planting season. We had 12 hectares to do. A hectare is 100 meters by 100 meters, or a football field square. So 12 of them is a sizable chunk of land to harvest. Fortunately, the stalks had already been cut with a sickle and gathered into bundles, or sheaves. So our job was to go out into the ricefields and collect the sheaves of rice.

We could carry two at a time (any more would get too tiring). There were some Khmer Christians who were working with us that were able to take a lot more, but that's because they're used to working in the hot sun for hours on end and often stack it up and carry it on their heads. For the first 3 hectares, we had to carry all the bundles back by hand to a certain spot where they had laid out tarps and were organizing them into neat stacks. After an exhausting morning, we had a much welcomed lunch break. After lunch, we realized that carrying it all by hand back to this one spot would take too much time and effort, so we rented this great big dump truck to collect the sheaves. Our job then changed to going out into the field and gathering the rice bundles into stacks so that when the truck drove by, we could toss them up into the truck. This was quite difficult at times, because the guys standing up in the truck bed would arrange the rice so that as much as possible could fit, and they would stack it to the max. So we had to lob these heavy bundles of rice way up to the top of the stacks, and sometimes I felt like I was going to throw out my shoulder.
They would stack the rice so high in the truck that one time, as the truck drove over a bump, half of the rice flew out of the truck and we had to throw it all back in.

These were challenging, long days, but we learned a lot of perseverance and they were definitely character building exercises. The last day (we worked Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday), after all 12 hectares of rice had been stacked high into one pile, we hired a guy who owned a threshing machine to come out. He drove out in this huge tractor, and the deafening roar that would last all day began as he started the thresher. Our job that day was to toss the bundles of rice into the thresher and then collect the grains of rice in sacks as they fell down the chute. Meanwhile, the chaff (all the useless straw-like material) launched out of a cannon on the other side of the thresher. This was the longest day by far. We left at 6:30 AM and didn't get home until after 12 midnight. Threshing is just a very long process, and the fact that the machine broke down several times throughout the day didn't help. Over the course of the day, the pile of rice sheaves dissipated as the mounds of chaff grew exponentially.

The sacks that we filled with rice are stuffed to the absolute maximum, and I think they weigh about 220 pounds by the time they are full. The crazy thing is that the Khmer guys could carry them. Although the Khmer people are very slender, they are very wiry and strong for their size. We were all amazed by their strength and how hard they worked. They were almost like machines themselves. This one guy Dara was at least 50 years old and he seemed to never tire out and would stop for water so seldom that Rob called him a camel.


Working alongside the Khmer was so cool. At times we wondered why we were doing this, because harvesting rice had never crossed my mind as being one of our outreach ministries, but it was really a time to just humble ourselves and serve, carrying every bundle of rice as if we were doing it for Jesus. It was also cool because Jesus' parables about the sower and about separating the wheat from the chaff are relevant to me now. They make more sense because I know more about the whole process. Plus, we got to learn how the food we eat everyday here in Cambodia comes to our tables. I think I appreciate it more now. I never realized how hard farmers work in order to bring the staple of Khmer diets to the people.

It was challenging, but Jesus taught us some lessons along the way, such as:

Be careful what you pray for! (you just might get it!)

Working in God's harvest field is sweaty, arduous work; it's not easy. It takes effort and time to get to know people and bring them into the Kingdom.

The harvest is great, but the workers are few. This saying is so true, both in literal rice harvesting and in Kingdom of God harvesting.

Overall, Jesus is cool in telling about the Kingdom through stories about farming that down home, humble people would have a better chance of understanding. So often we don't understand Jesus' parables because we don't know about farming and stuff like that. So it's cool to get a life experience that I would never have unless I grew up on a farm.

God is teaching me so much!

I love you guys.

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