Jom Rip Sua from Cambodia! (Translation: Hello important person)
Happy Christmas! I hope you’re all having a quality Christmas break!
Sunday 28th Dec
I’m sitting in an internet cafe about half a mile from where we are staying where they charge $0.50 per hour, so pretty cheap. The currency here is 4000 riel to $1. We’ve just come back from the four-square church down the road from us where the family we’re staying with help to run. It was a two hour service and most of the seats were taken up with children who live in the church orphanage. The whole service was in Khumi, starting with different groups of children doing songs with actions at the front. Some of the songs we recognized the tunes to such as father Abraham; I think that’s a favourite here.
The Village
The week before Christmas seven of the team went off to a village in another province about two hours away, we all went in a truck with our luggage and half the team perched on the back. This week was amazing. We arrived at the church last Friday and didn’t really know what to expect would be there or exactly what ministry we would be doing but had prepared some teachings and activities before arriving. The plot of land that they owned was about 40 square feet with a building for the church and above it was where the orphans slept. There was also a place to eat downstairs which was also used for English teaching. The English teacher is a guy called Suri, he is a really intelligent guy and has and interesting story. He used to live in the village and tell peoples fortunes until he heard the gospel and decided to accept Christ into his life. Now he serves the orphanage by living there and teaching the children. He is in a wheel chair so lives downstairs in the complex. All of their cooking was open air and water is pumped from underground. This was the only water supply so if you wanted to wash you had to pump some buckets and take them to the designated “shower”. Amber and I only did this once in the 6 days and we had to do it under torch light! This was a memorable experience under the diamond bright stars in between palm trees getting cold water poured on oneself. Living with chickens, cockerels, chicks, dogs and puppies and about 8 pigs made our stay a noisy one! They keep the pigs to be able to sell to provide money to feed the orphans.
The couple looking after the orphans are named Samuel and Stranuch. They were about the same age as the team and both of their fathers lived at the church. Samuel could speak good English and served as our translator, his father was the head pastor of the church and Stranuch’s dad teaches music; mainly drums and a keyboard. The church was set up in 2000 by an American pastor. Currently there are 26 children living there, either because their parents have died or because their families are in too much poverty to look after them. The children who still have families around can go and stay with them; so while we were there we got to know the 20 children who were there. I was blown away by the enthusiasm and warmth of the children. They all came out to greet us in the morning that we arrived and we quickly got to know them, making attempts to speak each other’s languages.
The heat slowed me down quite a lot and also because this is winter season in Cambodia they didn’t see the need for mosquito nets so I got bitten quite a lot. The electricity was produced using a generator but this went off at 8pm so we all had early nights. It was good that we went to bed this early because as soon as the cockerels saw a glimpse of sunlight they started crowing! Usually at about 4 in the morning! The kids got up at 5am before school for clean up and devotion and we got up for a lazy 7 o’clock breakfast. There was a lot of relaxing time during our stay when there wasn’t much to do but the main thing that we did in the week was visiting the church members.
“Old man River”
One older couple we went to visit most days lived in a house a short walk away. Most of the houses were wooden on stilts with hammocks underneath but theirs was grander, made of bricks with silver railings. The couple’s son had built it for them as he works in America. The lady was so warm and hospitable; she came out to greet us and pulled us in to the house ardently. She told us her testimony of how she heard the gospel and decided to believe, since then people kept asking how she was so strong, she used to get ill a lot but not now she goes on morning jogs. This was funny to hear from this little 80 year old Khumi lady, she had more energy than me! She told us that recently when she was jogging she fell over and felt her rib brake, people from the church prayed for her the pain had lessened. Her husband was bedbound because he had hip problems so we prayed for them as a team and read some scripture. Neither of them can read because their profession had been farming. Most of the people in the village are rice farmers. During the Khumer Rouge occupation he had worked in the fields and she had worked carrying heavy loads. Her faith and testimony was so inspiring because of its simplicity and yet it was everything to her. We agreed to visit her everyday while we were staying and they took up our offer to take her husband to church on Sunday.
On the way home Samuel took us past one of his friend’s houses who grows coconuts. We all stood around this 50ft tree while this guy climbed bare foot up the trunk then cut us down 10 coconuts. We drank from one of the coconuts there as the man sliced the top off for us; the water was so refreshing in the heat. That evening we joined the orphans for their evening prayer meeting. After praying they had asked if we could share a testimony or teaching so I shared two stories with them about God’s provision. I told the story about George Muller who ran an orphanage in Bristol, England after the cholera epidemic and how everyday he would pray for God to provide food and money to look after up to 300 orphans and everyday God provided what they needed. Also the story at the start of Brother Yun’s book “The Heavenly Man” after his father got miraculously healed and the whole family became Christians Brother Yun prayed and fasted for a Bible. There were very few Bibles in China at this time due to communism. On the 100th day of his fast there was a knock on his door and someone randomly gave him a Bible! Hopefully this was an encouragement to them as times were quite tough for them as the children were currently only getting two meals per day. They were also praying for money for transport and also money for more land so that they could keep more pigs to sell and make money to pay for food. All together they would need $ 4000 for all this. They also prayed for school uniforms for the children, more church members and for the government, against corruption.
First Westerners at Village cell church
On Sunday we attended the church service and Dave, Nathan and Mark went to get the older gentleman. We found out afterward that this was the first time that he had been out of the house in two years! The children sang and danced at the front, Nathan preached the sermon and Natalie shared a testimony based on Jeremiah 29v11. In the afternoon we were invited to one of the cell group churches in another village to encourage them. We all (30 of us including the children) piled onto the back of a “tractor”. We trundled to the village about 30 minutes away. It was so special to visit this house church. They met in a wooden house on stilts with holes between the slats and we all sat around the edges as they welcomed us and then began the service. Nathan preached again and we shared communion using fanta and crackers. Half way through communion an official looking guy with a camera showed up and started taking pictures. We found out that the church had never had western visitors before so the family had hired a photographer to record the event! Right at the end of the cell group the leader’s wife introduced us to a young girl who was about 10 years old. She was in a lot of pain as her leg had swollen to double the size of the other. She asked us if we could pray for her. The girl was really upset and it was pretty emotional, as we heard her story most of us were in tears. Her parents had died, leaving her and her sister. The neighbors were looking after her but were also abusive. She began having this problem with her leg and also she has tumors in her ears. The cell group family was trying to look after her but didn’t have enough money for food and definitely not enough to take her to the hospital. Amber was able to give her money from the team so that she could get checked out at the hospital.
The family took us outside to meet all the other children and we played games with them and met some of the neighbors as well. On the way back to the orphanage our tractor stopped off to see some monkeys. It turned out that these were inside the grounds of a temple where all the monks live. As Ywam guidelines say not to go there for ministry we didn’t stay long. We saw the monks that lived there and they found us funny, they must not see that many westerners as they were pretty intrigued by us.
Dirt Track Prayer Walk
Another highlight of the village trip was when Samuel took us on an Evangelism walk down the road that the church was on. As a group we walked along the track keeping an eye out for people who were interested in talking to us. We passed an older lady who came to the edge of her property to see us. We stopped and talked to her as Samuel translated and it turned out that she was suffering from arthritis in her knees, Nathan shared with her his testimony that he had been healed of arthritis in his knees when he was 23, he had had it since he was 5. When asked whether she had ever heard of Jesus she said yes, she watched programs about him on television every morning! We prayed for her knee but said she was still a Buddhist. We went further down the road and stopped at a house where they were selling things outside, we started chatting with them and then did one of our well rehearsed dramas. The drama was about how Jesus frees us from bondage when nothing else can. We weren’t really sure about what they thought of this and when we asked them they said that they had never heard of Jesus before. This walk was turning out to be history making, meeting people who had never even heard the name Jesus before. The drama had affected one lady in particular; she had become a Christian but had stopped believing because there was no one to encourage her. We prayed with her and Samuel wrote down her name to keep in contact and support her at church.
The last night was one of my favorite moments. I shared a teaching on the father heart of God and afterwards we gave them all crowns to represent that they were sons and daughters of God and gold coins to represent the inheritance that they receive from him. They were all loving it. We all said a word to encourage them at the end and it was emotional as we said our goodbyes. These children were such a treasure they didn’t have much material wealth or even loads of food to eat but it was clear to see that “the kingdom of Heaven belongs to such these.” The experience of spending time with these children really illustrated to me that the most important thing in life that we need is God’s word. An image that I will always have in my mind is how the children living at the orphanage all worship God with all their heart, mind and soul. It’s exciting to know that they are the rising generation of Christians in Cambodia.
On our final day we made our last visit to the older couple’s house. We chatted for a while and she told us that the night before she saw Jesus face above her bed, she had reached out to touch it but nothing was there! She gave us all hot drinks and then we said some goodbyes after going up on the roof to see views of ponds with pink lilies. We left the next morning after breakfast, traveling back on the truck with our luggage. I had traveled inside the truck on the way to the village so on the way back I took the opportunity to ride on the outside. Six of us perched on the side of the truck going 60miles an hour all the way home. Christmas day we woke up to pancakes and crepes and then had Christmas on the roof. We opened surprise presents from our family which none of us knew about; an awesome moment, I have to admit I shed a tear. In the evening we went for a meal at a nice restaurant.
Half the team was due to leave for the next village on Boxing Day (the 26th). For different reasons I decided not to go and stayed back with the West family, Amber, Dave and Jared. The plan is to help with orphanage ministry at the 4 square church not far from where we are staying and help with teaching an English class in the late afternoons. Ok, so that’s about a 5 page update. I commend you if you are still reading at this point! Thank you for your prayers and support. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Until next time…
Emily xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
PS If you wanted to help support the Foursquare children of promise home, Bouengtrah you can contact Samuel at jesuschrist4kh@yahoo.com
Posts
January Newsletter: Much Ministry So I am writing this after my return from Cambodia and after graduating from DTS but I wanted to fill you in on the highlights of outreach. So much went on. After Christmas, while 7 of the team were at the second village, the remaining team helped with teaching at a 4 square orphanage before and after lunch. On their return we began some regular ministry.
