Last Friday I pulled an all nighter. This time it wasn’t to finish my English paper or study for my psych midterm. This time it was an all nighter for prayer–well for God, really. Last Friday my center had their end of the summer “Overnight Pray.” The night started at 10 p.m. and wasn’t over until 5:45 a.m. the following morning (although I didn’t get to sleep until much later that next day, because I immediately had to get ready to attend a Cambodian wedding. Yes, it was awesome). After some initial prayer and worship songs, we each were given a sheet of paper and two candles–to write what we feel guilty of before God by candlelight, and then to burn it with the second candle. This I believe helped set the tone for the night of a focused mind and an honesty with God. Next was a snack…because clearly the Cambodians must eat within the hour. “Snack” by the way, in Cambodia usually means a large meal that they have in between larger meals.
Then it was time for me to give the message on a topic I had been asked to discuss: “What makes God smile.” This topic had caused me quite some stress to say the least…I don’t know, what does make God smile? I had spent the last few days looking up all the verses listed under “please” “pleasing” or “pleasure” in my concordance in the back of my bible–which, by the way, are many. But every verse seemed to be irrelevant or honestly pretty boring. Finally though, I realized that what I was looking for was extraordinarily simple. What pleases God, what makes the all-powerful-God-of-everything smile the most is simply when we spend time with him; when we are in relationship with him, and enjoy his presence. Well, the rest was easy. While I had been worried that I would bore the students, as I was speaking it became clear to me that this was far too important of a message and far too important of a night, for God to let me do it on my own. All of the students were looking at me eagerly and scribbling down notes in Khmer, and Chhunleang kept saying, “Oh I like this message very much Brittany” in between translating for me. Then it was snack time…obviously.
I have enough to say about this night to fill a short book honestly, but to keep it simple, what I can say is that my trip would have been incomplete without it. It was the capstone to everything that I’ve learned here, and particularly my time with all of my friends at my center.
See you when you see me, –Brittany from Team Cambodia