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H Dependence and obedience to God: Joseph's Story
MY BOOK Part 1 Part 2
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ÿ A Trip From Mourng - Journey Of Escaping Cambodia Sometime in the year of 1979, we (my uncle, my sister, and me) and other relatives from Mourng, a small city in the Battambang province located on the road to Phnom Penh, were on our way to escaping Cambodia. When we reached Battambang city, it was morning, and our uncle visited his youngest sister who happened to be the mother of my wife. While my uncle was visiting his baby sister, my sister, and my cousin’s family stayed at another relatives house. We slept there over the night, then our uncle returned with bad news. He told us that he planned to delay our journey for awhile because his brother-in-law had just been shot dead by a Vietnamese soldier. And he decided to stay and comfort his sister in the meantime. So, the three of us went to live with auntie and her family. At this time, auntie had four unmarried girls. Two of them were big like us, and two were younger. And my wife had not been born yet. Living Conditions in Battambang during this political turmoil period, were way under the poverty line. Rice was our only source of food for surviving, and it was hard to find since we children were young and weak. And my Uncle was old and sick. Auntie was a widow with four young children who had no skills to find food or earn a living. The economy of the country was very bad and there was no way for us to make a living. All we had to live on was something left from whatever aunt and uncle had had since the fall of the Pol Pot’s regime. It was so bad that we had no hope for the future. All we could do was do nothing, waiting for any opportunity to come by and grasping it as fast as we could to live on for another day. Just like the old saying, “I only live day by day”, or just like the Cambodian saying that we are living like a chicken, for it only finds food from day to day just to stay alive. I remember once, we (our cousins, my sister, and I) went gathering the morning glory from a far away village out of Battambang city. We walked all day and slept over night at a relatives house and picked up the morning glory next day, all day, and then journeyed back to our place in the city. We sold the morning glory at the market, but the price was so cheap that it was not worth the trip. So, we decided not to go back for it. During this time, anything that we did to make a living was not worth the effort or price. This lifestyle had become our reality so much that we just accepted things the way they were and lived with it. Furthermore, we were less social and numbed to any responsibility in the society. We lost our sense of awareness to the surrounding activities, which meant that we only cared to fill our stomach, nothing else was more important to us than feeding our stomach. For me, I was so ill, I thought I would not be recovering from my illness. And since the living conditions were so bad, we might not have survived much longer, and my uncle was always longing to escape Cambodia - hoping to go to the United States. So, he attempted to convince his sister to journey with us to escape
Cambodia. But many attempts had passed, but still auntie could not make up
her mind about escaping Cambodia; and finally uncle noticed that he could
not influence his sister to come along, so at the end he decided to leave
her and the family with love and compassionated thought that they would be
all right and be satisfied with what they had. So, we advanced forward
journeying to escaping Cambodia from Battambang city. ÿ Kindly send any donations to: International Teams, Khath Ourng Fund, 411 West River Road, Elgin IL 60123-1570, Please make your checks payable to: International Teams, Khath Ourng Fund Thank You for your support and prayers
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