Cheaper by the Dozen

Above: Me driving the 15 passenger at SHIPS with New, Old, and Upcoming Family

Below: Two Photos of my pre-Cambodia first outreach ideas (wrote 9 months ago)

Below: The 9 monthers and their "parents" on debrief. We did it!

Below: My upcoming January DTS life as staff

Above: Don't miss this AWESOME Video recap of the past 9 months created by my teammate and good friend Lauren.

A definition from Google: “Cheaper by the dozen” means “things are handled more efficiently as a group, rather than individually”.

Recently, I’ve crossed multiple Asian borders, feels like land, sky, and sea all for love. Now I realize that Jesus got it right. Love is cheaper by the dozen.

I left Cambodia a week ago, entered Thailand, flew to Korea, and then crossed over the Pacific to make it back to Kona, the place from where it all started. It wasn’t so much that God started something only in Kona, it actually began long before I entered and then left and again reentered her shores.

If you are just picking up on my blogs now or have followed my journey since I started posting a year ago exactly, let’s debrief and let me give you a recap.

In September 2017, the Lord radically spoke prophetic words in and through me, over my own life. It was a birthing of sorts. Unexpected to me, I was given a shift, a new call, not necessarily greater than any call I had before but more of a new responsibility in the Kingdom of God and to the people of/ across the Pacific. I remember prophesying next to some of my well trusted and beloved friends in Christ on a particularly epic Louisiana evening. I knew that I was “birthing” something, yet it wasn’t just one thing but I knew…two. The first thing had me flat out declare to the Lord the words “no, no” and, no” over and over again. Then the second, I felt courage, clarity, and began declaring things from God with boldness, it was a “yes”.

This past year, 2018, I’ve literally stopped in my tracks at times because my life has looked spot on to those prophetic words from September. I sit here writing, in closing one of those “birthings”, as I’ve quite literally lived in Southeast Asia as a “student” missionary for the past nine months. However, the journey continues. Quite literally, the second one is close at hand, this time I will not be coming to Southeast Asia as a student with YWAM but rather as the leader of a new nine month* student outreach team.

People keep asking me if I am excited about this new team. I truly am. I am also very expectant. Why? Because of the evidence of the goodness of the Lord in this land of the living, or rather “The Kingdom of Wonder” as Cambodia is called.

Let me share a few brief recaps just from the past few days before I actually left Cambodia to explain the fruitfulness of this mission’s field that is in desperate need of laborers.

Few days prior to leaving Cambodia:

My day looked like listening to my Khmer friend play piano and sing one of his favorite English songs right now, “Beautiful” by Phil Wickham. Just a few months ago I was showing him correct fingering and a few chords on the piano. This staff is one of our Cambodia base’s main worship leaders and Evangelists. To see how fast he’s picked up on piano as a worship leader, for me, is absolutely inspiring.

I was able to pray with a different Khmer staff because he was short on finances. After praying, around the same time, a financial gift came in for me from this site. I was able to give some of God’s blessings for me to my brother. This is one of the great privileges us foreign/ fellow missionaries in Cambodia living with Khmer missionaries get to participate in. Most of the families of our Khmer staff are actually Buddhists and so these “missionaries in their home towns” have very few contacts outside of our YWAM base who can and are willing to sow seeds to help them remain vital staff members to our mission to this nation. Without the Khmer staff, we wouldn’t be there in the first place. Specifically, this Khmer staff brings our base joy and is an incredibly faithful prayer warrior and handy-man, like building bunk-beds for our base to host more DTS students and Outreach teams.

Next, another Khmer staff needed help making a letter to ask for supporters so they too could remain on the field like me. Typing English for me comes very natural and hearing her share stories about the photos in her letter, gave me a glimpse into how vital she is as a staff and in our Poipet, Cambodia community. This Khmer staff is one of our main translators and teaches all of the staff how to cook for the base meals to feed base staff, guests, outreach teams, and students. This staff member also invites local neighborhood/street kids in for free Khmer, math, and English lessons where these kids would otherwise be perhaps up to who knows what (like sniffing glue, picking up trash for cash, parenting one another through fights and violence, etc.). This staff teaches them good hygiene and also about Jesus.

Also, I walked outside to greet a few of our neighborhood kids myself, this led me to play with them on our make shift tire swing and then to bring out the few coloring books we have at our base so that they could color in a quiet and safe place. These kids literally just hover our base because they aren’t going to school. Many of their parents are too poor to provide or too drunk to care, so we at the base play a vital role in encouraging them to be all that God wants them to be and to do all that God has created and destined them to do.

Why am I sharing all of this? Because I want you to hear friend that missions looks like love and love looks like people. People look like children or Khmer staff and people receive love through giving quality time, gifts, encouraging words, acts of service, and giving physical touch. The God opportunities to “love your neighbor” in Cambodia are rampant. John 15:13, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

Just in my last few days in Cambodia I was able to pray over a Khmer staff (words), dictate one’s newsletter (service), give finances to (gifts), push children on a swing and create space for them to color (time), all the while being physically present with them in order to affirm them the Khmer way, through a nice pat or squeeze of the arm (touch). What I’m trying to say is the prophetic words that God gave me now over a year ago, has lead me to Love, which is greater than any word(s).

Love looked like me leaving Louisiana to train at a Youth With a Mission base in Kona for three months in order to live in Cambodia as a missionary teaching English pro bono and loving like Jesus for the past 9 months through evangelism, praying for healing, among so much more. Living in Cambodia was more than those prophetic utterances I had in September. Let me repeat, I was ultimately lead by love* not just experience.

Dear me 1 Corinthians 13 mantra

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, like Khmer, French, English, or unknown heavnenly tongues but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal or Cajon. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge like having various “birthings” and if I have a faith that can move mountains, like leaving Louisiana and owning only what I can carry now days yet having all that I need because God is my financial covering, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, like giving my car away, or living in the elevated temperatures of Cambodia, or getting lice even though my hair is much shorter than ever before, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Chelsea (love) is patient, Chelsea (love) is kind. She does not envy, boast, is not proud. She does not dishonor others, is not self-seeking, is not easily angered, keeps no record of wrongs. Chelsea (love) does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. She always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Chelsea (love) never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a woman, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

In particular, I didn’t really understand why the Lord used a “birthing” to call me out a year ago. Now, as I just finished one nine-month “deployment” or “tour”, if you will, I am thankful He did, because it helped me remain purposeful and hopeful that God was in the nation and so would I be.

Now, allow me to share what God did these past 9 months and why I am excited to be leading a team back here for another 9 months in 2019.

This past year was a year of grace. Like I mentioned to the Lord in the first “birthing”, I did in fact take on the position of, specifically, the word “no”. “No Lord I don’t want to go to Cambodia I want to go to PNG, because that’s in the Pacific… not across the Pacific*”-me the week I was asked by leadership at Ships to join the Cambodia team.

“No Lord I don’t want to do the BCC because I already went to Bible College”-the week after debrief upon entering our BCC (Bible Core Course) season.

“No Lord I don’t want to lead a 9 month outreach team back to Cambodia in 2019 because I just cannot”-during the BCC while studying the book of Jeremiah as our base leadership asked me about my upcoming plans.

“No Lord I don’t want to leave Cambodia, and return stateside and re-immerse into the Kona YWAM Community just to re-immerse back into the Cambodian community”-my heart, on the plane to Kona and ultimately these past few days here in Kona, to be honest.

Despite my initial bucking to most of the things God has actually called me to do, eventually, and miraculously these things end up being the very things I am most passionate about and fruitful in because I was destined and designed to do them-not in my own strength of course.

If I have learned anything this year it’s that faith isn’t just one leap, but requires many daily choices. Like choosing to go to Cambodia and trusting that God can speak to leaders regarding my life…choosing to trust that God did want me to study the Bible again but this time, inductively and 24/7, 7 days a week, for three months straight…choosing that God had hand-picked and equipped me to lead this upcoming January DTS (Discipleship training school) nine month team back to Cambodia and if I wouldn’t obey it would be like “fire shut up in my bones”, so… I have to and now I am actually stoked but feeling like I am “in over my head”.

“I’ve seen you move, you move the mountains and I believe I’ll see you do it again” has remained my song for this season. He who started this good work in me, and in Cambodia will see it through and so I can trust that God is for me, ahead of me, behind me, before me. If He is in Kona, I am in Kona. If He is in Cambodia, I am in Cambodia.

In order to open this new season I hear Isaiah 55.

“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.

Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.

Behold, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples.

Behold, you shall call a nation that you do not know, and a nation that did not know you shall run to you, because of the LORD your God, and of the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.

“Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near;

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

“For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall make a name for the LORD, an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”

Most recently, I had to choose to return to Kona in my heart, fully embrace that I was back to debrief with my now 9-month team family as well as staff train with familiar faces from the past January DTS lecture phase to get ready for this upcoming January lecture phase.

I am still having to choose many things, like my attitude and willingness to “be” here, “be” in the next wave to Cambodia, “be” staff-working pro-bono weekly and steadily for an NGO and one of the largest missions movement called YWAM for the next two years specifically.

Up until this weekend, after having been now stateside for a week already, I was remaining so stimulated and busy spending time with friends, helping prep and serve lunch at the Ships Base, going from meeting to meeting, driving the 15 passenger van to make airport and Target runs, going to ministry/corporate gatherings at the upper and Ships campus, and swimming again, that I hadn’t really stopped much to choose “no”, which is great. But, if you caught that, “up until this weekend”, which was the last day that anyone else from my most recent, should I call it now “old”, 9 month outreach team member was still on the Island. I haven’t been apart from my “old” outreach team in months. We did everything together and lived in/ like Khmer culture/community.

If you know anything about warm climate cultures or Southeast Asia for that matter, it’s a very communal minded culture, quite the opposite from the western independence I have re-entered.

Sure I have more air to breathe and space to spread out, but if you could hear my heart…

My heart is a bit heavy as I write this because I think the main thing that the Lord did in me this year was wreck me for love and so I feel that I’m a bit lovesick, if you will, for my family in Louisiana of course, but for the Khmer, and my now “old” 9 month outreach team family.

I knew He’d do this.

I knew when I joined YWAM that God was going to place me in a different family to grow in love. When Jesus prayed in John 17 over His disciples young and old, current and upcoming, He really meant that He wanted us to become One as He was with the Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). Oneness takes time, because oneness, or true unity is sacrificial and is a choice. It’s actually many leaps of faith in the direction of love. Love looks like giving time, gifts, encouraging words, acts of service, and appropriate touch. Now, with one season coming to a close the main “no”, I am currently facing is the temptation to say “No, Lord I don’t want to open up again and love because I just became true family with a group of people that you’ve now separated me from.” However, I can truly sense that this upcoming season, especially as a staff member but also because I’ve gone to Cambodia and did the 9 month outreach already that God will use my influence, experience, and now heart for unity (John 17) to champion a group of radical Ezekiels, Daniels, Ruths, and Esthers to become love.

We will become love by first falling in love with Jesus and then becoming His hands and feet towards one another (inreach) and those we come in contact/ serve with (outreach).

I believe this next wave will become pillars to the ministry to which God is orchestrating in Poipet Cambodia specifically in order to see the nation truly transformed in one generation-Poipet’s puzzle piece. So in regards to closing this season and “the first birthing”, I hear Isaiah 54. Which encourages me to “Sing, O barren one, who did not bear; break forth into singing…For the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her who is married. Enlarge the place of your tent, do not hold back, you will spread abroad to the right and to the left, and your offspring will possess the nation and will people the desolate cities. All your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children, no weapon that is fashioned against you shall succeed, this is the heritage of the servants of the Lord.”

I love this passage and it really encouraged my past 9 months. Especially because it wasn’t easy getting wrecked for love. I love my earthly family, actually to the very depths of my heart, I do, which makes missions very difficult but then again very easy at the same time. Hard because I long to be with them or rather have them here with me, but I know that we are a family of missionaries, pastors, settlers (occupying territory for the Kingdom of Heaven, no Buddhists in my lineage) and pioneers of whichever frontlines we are called to.

Matthew 10:37-38 “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me; and anyone who does not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me.”

I know my earthly family, will stand firm here or there as followers of Jesus so that makes it easy because I know that everyone is all good wrapped up in the capable hands of God OUR* Savior. It’s also easy because the depths that my love can reach for my niece and nephews as well as my flesh and blood sister and brother for example urge me onwards in this family of God to allow my heart to “love again”-God’s ever growing family, now mine, like these Khmer brothers and sisters, but also those I have done life with 24/7 already this past year, my old team from Kona as well as our various mission builders and visiters like Janea or Yoonjung. I need to love again my upcoming family of staff mates for the January DTS as well as this new team of DTS student missionaries that God will put together. And So I shall.

When our last week rolled around in Cambo, we were actually a group at our base of around 12 after many had journeyed onwards after Thanksgiving holidays in order to visit family before returning for another season of missions. Time and time again I couldn’t help but wonder what it must have been like to be with Jesus and part of His group, because we were like the 12 disciples in Cambo. Our group at our Poipet base these past 9 months was ever shifting. It was such a highlight and beautiful gift from God to have my best friend Janea who has my heart and runs so hard for Jesus to join us for 3 months as she always keeps me sharp (as iron sharpens iron Proverbs 27:17). But God didn’t bring her to Cambodia just for me to reconnect with Janea, who represents my “old life”, I guess we could say. He wanted to bridge it all, my “new life” with my (now old) outreach Kona team as well as our Poipet Base staff and Khmer staff family with “old” family I had been running with over the past ten years, namely Janea.

Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor. If either of them falls down, one can help the other up.”

God wanted to teach me all about love, like sharing the ones you love with others, and having no boundaries or exemptions or exceptions but loving “everybody*, always” as Bob Goff. I kept running closer to my outreach team, Khmer and Base staff, as I ran closer to Janea simultaneously, because that’s what God has called us to, expand our heart and love the new and the old like the family that they are.

It didn’t take from me to expand in love in this way. It only added and literally grew my heart to love like Jesus from the well that is Jesus.

I’ve always wanted to live in the book of Acts or in Biblical times and God gave me the gift of 2018 and Cambodia in order to actually do that. Not only in reading the Bible cover to cover during the BCC did I feel like Cambodia’s climate and terrain were Biblical Israel, but also the base in Poipet is quite small and so you are literally with folks 24/7. Obviously, this took time to adjust to as I love to lean into God and take time away from the crowds, but this challenge of loving all day, every day, everybody, always, did nothing but good for me and added to the witness of Jesus in our Poipet community. They will know we are Christian by our love.

Since I am back in Hawaii, let me reference one of the best words I’ve learned to live in Hawaiian: Ohana, meaning family, and that nobody gets left behind.

Our team grew over the past 9 months.

We actually left a team member behind in Bangkok our first week of outreach.

All of our team members spent hours of quality time with one another before, during, and after our last week here for debrief, our last week of outreach.

We’ve grown.

Things didn’t feel right if one member was missing. We all checked on each other like with the Khmer phrase “did you eat rice already?” to make sure we all had enough money to buy food or did in fact eat, and eat enough.

Literally, I don’t understand how God did it but we became family, no one was more flamboyant or important than the next. We were equals, unified, with a heart for each other and the country we had been ministering in for months now.

I have a deep love and a heart for “the 12”, which actually at points on our base decreased and increased, we even made it to a number of over 30 people. Numbers aside, I learned that you can never out give God in the realm of love and that it’s always a good choice to say “yes” to love no matter how long you physically see someone or how long it’s been since you’ve been with them.

Literally, since going to Bible College back 2011-2013 God gave me a revelation that is becoming, for me, quite timeless. He told me, “be careful, how you leave one season, is how you will enter the next”. This was so that I would as Danny Silk puts in “Keep my Love on” no matter if I was leaving one place to enter the next.

I knew in 2017 that I needed to remain invested in my immediate family and family in Christ in Louisiana upon leaving to start a new journey in Kona. It’s a testament to some of the family like friendships that began and grew over this past 2018 that I had left Louisiana well and in love as I did in fact begin my time here in Kona open hearted, and especially in Cambodia, as I kept diving deep towards becoming love with new people.

Not only that, but in 2017, God was asking me to display radical generosity in giving away my car and not ask for anything in return as an expression of what true love looks like, unconditional and undeserving. I thought I did this then to teach or demonstrate love to the party receiving my old car, but now I know that God gave the car to me in the first place in order to receive my own gift, the gift of love, and an understanding of what it truly means to love, without borders, boundaries, or conditions, not withholding but ever growing. Furthermore, I ended 2017 living in radical generosity and God had me live it out as a lifestyle daily in 2018. Before September, I used to think I needed to ration my love or withhold, but God had me exercise it in 2017 upon leaving Louisiana, in getting rid of everything I owned, in order to fully embrace it in 2018.

I can’t tell you the many times various base roomies this past year shared their finances, food, drinks, clothes, talent, expertise, time with me and vice versa. I kept giving but kept receiving. It was a never ending cycle to try to keep up with the goodness of God and just distribute daily. Like in the Book of Acts, no one had need because we all took care of each other, Khmer staff and all, in prayer and in the practical. Literally, just upon returning to Kona I had to put a stop to the flow. Someone was ready to donate a ton of groceries to me but I just didn’t have any more room. This is what Kingdom looks like and I would have never known if I would have allowed fear and my “no” to get in the way of God’s love and leading for my life. Also, this would have never continued if I had left Louisiana bitter, cold, or unwilling to “keep my love on”.

Now, I write this to remind myself. It’s easy for me to want to put up walls now, just before a season shift, but I know better. It’s better to open up my heart again, and just like Jesus was a gift to the world, I need to be one again and receive the gifts that are people, new family with the old family…again.

I pray we both, me and you reading this choose to say “yes” to God’s feast He has prepared before us, those open doors and opportunities to do something that is bigger than ourself. For me, that looks like remaining in Kona, transitioning after the holidays to staff a new 3 month DTS school, and lead a 9 month team back to Cambodia. For you, that may look like choosing to forgive someone and reconcile just before Christmas. Whatever it may be, trust me, as I learn to live it out myself, the lifestyle of “no” is expensive. You lose out on the greatest gift the Lord has given us, namely, Himself, and He is love. Your heart may not realize it, and you may think you have too many relationships or responsibilities on your plate to possibly add one more thing, one more time, but this round two, “do it again”- lifestyle of loving, and the “yes” is really cheaper by the dozen.

Now Fundraising 7K total for my 2019 #Mission2PacificTake2

To give, simply donate directly on this site, click “Give Today” at the top of this page!

OR Click this link to Donate:

https://www.freefunder.com/campaign/ywam-dts-staff-cambodia-2019

Small brief break down of 2019 expenses include Base and Outreach staff fees due monthly, transportation, food, medical (Tuberculosis Test $20, $50 Volunteer Travel Insurance Card, dental, eye-care, etc.), meals at Upper Campus ($2 breakfasts, etc.), and Khmer staff support. First deadline for staff fees of $1200 due February 1st

Another way to give* Click this link to purchase items from my wish list:

http://a.co/8xml4mG

My wish list for Missions in 2019:

2 Kids Jesus-themed coloring books

1 pair of Hammock straps

1 pair Tough Core-Grip Gloves

1 travel Case for Melodica

(Year supply) Advocare Rehydrate, Spark, and Herbal Cleanse (Peaches and Cream)

1 Go-phone SIM card

1 prepaid Go-phone plan ($50)

1 IPhone 6S runner’s waterproof case

1 Waterproof watch (blue)

Thank you for considering how you can help be a part of this continuing journey. May God bless you, Merry Christmas, and a Very Happy New Year, 2019! The best is yet to come.