Hannah Blanton
“Stop!” the airport guard yelled as he walked quickly over to my dad. “You can’t use a camera in here!” My dad lowered the video camera from his eye and turned to face the angry guard.
“Can I just video my daughter opening her present? It’s her birthday today.”
“No!” returned the guard. “No cameras!”
After this abrupt interruption to my gift opening, I sat very still, almost scared to move. But my dad smiled reassuringly at me and my brothers and sisters. “Go ahead and finish opening it,” he said.
We weren’t too surprised by this “friendly” welcome in the airport. After all, we were in Vietnam waiting to catch a flight to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. We had just spent a month in Singapore because of an attempted coup d'état in Phnom Penh. Thankfully, the threat was gone, so now we were trying to get back to our home in Cambodia. The day was August 13, 1997—my sixth birthday.
We had been in Singapore since the second week of July. When the coup broke out in Phnom Penh on the evening of July 5, my siblings and I quickly realized that the explosions we heard were not late July Fourth fireworks. During the next few days, my parents made plans to escape the country with an older missionary couple. We were worried that we might not be able to leave, since many other people were trying to leave the country as well. But we finally found just enough tickets for our two families on one of the last flights to Singapore.
Once we arrived in Singapore, we were welcomed by the nationals and several American missionary families. The one month we spent there was enjoyable but long. One highlight was going to the national zoo. My siblings and I loved watching the animal shows there. We also joined a church while in Singapore. I can still remember a baptismal service the congregation had one Sunday morning at a beach. I remember being thankful that I was not getting baptized in the ocean—I thought that would be a terrifying experience.
But despite our new friends and fun experiences, we missed Cambodia, the country God had called us to minister to. We kids especially missed Cambodia. It was an exciting place, and had already started to feel like home after only a few weeks of living there. One day, my parents heard that another missionary family had safely returned to Phnom Penh. We immediately made plans to return.
I was excited to discover that we would be flying back to Cambodia on my birthday. We would have to fly to Vietnam and then catch a flight to Cambodia, because Singaporean airlines still considered Cambodia too dangerous to fly into. The night before we left, I had my official birthday party. My mom and the other missionary wife came up with a cake, and everyone sang to me.
The morning of my birthday, we ate a quick breakfast in the missionaries’ apartment, then left for the airport. As we were walking across the hot pavement to the rickety plane we were to board, somebody came running to catch up with us. It was a sweet Singaporean lady who lived in the same apartment complex that we had been living in. She had often done our laundry for us, and she loved giving us kids treats when we came to pick up the laundry with our mom.
This time she had a special treat just for me. She handed me a plastic bag as she wished me a happy birthday. I peeked right away to see what was inside. The bag contained a huge chocolate chip cookie. I shyly thanked the lady as she gave me a quick hug. Once we boarded the tiny plane, my dad warned us to be ready for a rough ride. As the plane took off, my stomach seemed to leap into my throat.
Throughout the short flight the plane bounced and jostled us. I thought it was fun—I had never been on such a small plane before, and it felt like an amusement park ride to me. But my parents were grateful when we touched down safely in Vietnam. We later discovered that a plane from that same airline we were flying on crashed near the Phnom Penh airport a few weeks later.
Inside, Vietnam’s airport seemed bigger and more modern than the Cambodian airport. I was grateful as I noticed the air conditioning. All eight of us sat down in a long row of seats to wait for our connecting flight. That’s when my parents gave me my next present. And that’s when the guard thundered over to stop my dad from videoing my reaction as I opened the gift. I can’t even remember what that gift was.
I do remember a gift I received later that day, once we arrived in Cambodia. We got back to our house just before dark. My mom bought groceries from a nearby store that sold Western food, and we enjoyed eating the delicious tacos she made. Then we gathered in the living room where all of us kids were going to sleep, because our bunk beds had not yet arrived. My dad helped us push the two bamboo couches and chairs together to make a big square in the middle of the living room. The green cushions would make a comfortable mattress. All six of us kids piled onto our “bed.”
Then my mom handed me a gift bag. I opened it up to discover the book, Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The book was exciting enough, but along with it came a pair of gloves that looked like bear paws and a headband with bear ears on it.
“Go ahead and try them on,” said my dad. This time he was able to capture the moment on camera.
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