Jordan in Cambodia...Again

First of all, if you have not read/watched/listened to Sharon Eubank's BYU speech entitled "Turning Enemies into Friends," you need to hit that up. It is amazing! I loved her message. Here is the link:  https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/sharon-eubank_turning-enemies-into-friends/ . She talks about service to others, using our free time to do good and be productive rather than wasting it, and especially about helping others. Many of us feel that we should invest significant amounts of time and money into helping save the world. We want to build schools or wells or make quilts or 72-hour kits or go on humanitarian trips. These are all worthy endeavors, but she says that the biggest gift is us ourselves. We are the gift. We have the ability, each one of us, to change lives just by helping people feel loved, safe, and welcome wherever they go. The world is full of so much hatred and divisiveness, and we have the ability to share light and goodness wherever we go, and that is fre

Botevy was a poor mother looking to provide for her family. Eventually, once she became more financially secure, she noticed other children suffering in poverty with a lack of resources to help them escape their conditions. She knew she had to help, so she began taking these children in and providing them educational opportunities and let them live with her so they could have a chance for better futures. She used her own money until she could finally establish an organization that obtained donations from others to fund her efforts. She has since been able to assist nearly 100 children, many of whom have gone on to serve LDS missions and are in college. Anna is a devout Christian who came to Cambodia and fell in love with the country. She started a restaurant that employed underprivileged Cambodians and taught them new skills that could help them escape poverty. She has employed hundreds of Cambodians, all of whom still keep in touch and come to the restaurant because they feel valued

It's 6:30 AM, and the alarm wakes you up, if you haven't already been woken up by the crowing roosters, the cultural wedding music being blasted from megaphones nearby, the creaking wooden bed frame, or the heat. In Cambodia, life begins with the sunrise, which is almost always before 6 AM, so sleeping until 6:30 is late here. After a quick shower to cool off and clean up, I'm already sweating again by the time I put my clothes on. The temperatures this time of year hover around 95 degrees, with a heat index almost always well above 100 degrees. It's toasty, but that can't stifle the excitement of being in a country full of culture, history, and truly remarkable and friendly people. A typical day begins with a quick breakfast, likely a Styrofoam container of rice and pork with eggs and pickled vegetables, a popular breakfast dish here. After shoveling down our food, we get on our tuk-tuks to go teach. Tuk-tuks are a common and popular mode of transportation here.

Life has been so busy! Ever since our first week of cultural/historical exposure, we have been on the go constantly. After leaving Siem Reap, most of the group went to Kampong Cham, the province where most of our project work will be taking place. However, I, along with 5 other team members, went back to Phnom Penh to work at Cambodia's first dairy farm, Moo Moo Farms. We did a service project here at the beginning of the program, but now, we would have the opportunity to help the founder, Kenny, with a different project. He wants to provide free milk to school children in the area, but his business doesn't have enough revenue yet to provide it free of charge. So, he enlisted the six of us to research the best model for reaching out to donors in America to help raise funds for this cause. We spent several days in the city seated at a coffee shop (gotta take advantage of that WiFi) researching different donation models in different social enterprises. We found many different opt