nomadgirl

A few years ago my daughter and I spent Valentine’s Day weekend in a village outside Phnom Penh, building houses for four families. It was a school field trip, and my daughter’s sixth grade class was the youngest class ever to make the trip. Those 11 year-olds showed courage by volunteering, but even that could not compare to the courage of these families. Their constant smiling kept us near tears that whole weekend. What could they have to smile about? They had close to nothing, just the clothes on their backs, and each other. Yet smile was all they did, as they watched us work. And when we finished the houses, and turned them over to the families who would live in them, they smiled some more, and bowed in gratitude, over and over again. We couldn’t stop the tears. All we could do was bow back.