Argh, I sighed as the umpteenth person walked across the wet floor. Nica and I had spent hours trying to clean the recently-completed floor of the school building. It would be the official opening ceremony that evening, and all involved rushed around getting ready for the big event. We were tasked with cleaning the 2,400 square meter (25,833 square foot) floor. We each had our latest-model color-coded mops. Dip, mop, place it in a spinner to ring out the excess water, then repeat again and again.
The previous days consisted of assembling desks and bookshelves and building the flooring for the baptismal area located on the school stage. Deon and I carried the twelve large floorboards weighing at least twenty kilograms (forty-four pounds) each outside to dry, then varnished them and took them back inside. When the children had to rehearse their event for the program, we had to carry the floorboards inside. When they finished, we had to carry them out again.
That was in 2017 when we arrived in Cambodia to assist with the project. We had been evacuated from our previous project for safety reasons, and Cambodia was the only option at that time. We helped on the project for two months, went on furlough, then returned to close our project. In 2018 we helped another project for eight months by teaching English. In 2019 we were able to return to our project. We were delighted to be back in a familiar place where we knew some of the language and had made good friends. We were in the process of opening a center of influence, finalizing all the paperwork to secure a building and being ready to order the equipment when we were evacuated the second time.
We were in another country for four months when COVID-19 hit the world. We were given the option of returning to our home country, South Africa, as my mom had global aphasia after suffering a stroke in 2019.
Through the pandemic, we were quarantined in four countries, including government-forced quarantine in Cambodia after Deon tested positive. We had to take a COVID-19 test before returning to South Africa for my mother’s funeral. We did not make it in time. Instead, we spent 21 days in the government facility. But, by God’s grace, we made it through and finally returned to Cambodia.
As a memento, I wanted a picture of the floor once it was completely cleaned — confirmation that we could accomplish such an enormous task. I never got to take that picture, but I learned many lessons from its elusiveness. Nothing is as it seems. We don’t live in a perfect world. Only God knows the true picture.
Floors will always be dirty. People will continue to walk their own paths. I have had to make peace with the fact that I will not know the future, that only God knows the next minute, the next day, the next month. God is in control of absolutely everything. I can only do my best and trust Him to do the rest.
“We cannot see what is before us . . . . We think, ‘If we only knew the future!’ But God would have His children trust in Him and be ready to go where He shall lead them.” (That I May Know Him p.358)
