May 29, 2011

May 29, 2011

Dear friends,

We intended to start our new Sunday afternoon children’s ministry outreach today but have decided to delay the start by two weeks. This will give us a bit more time to train the workers. Yesterday I was told by one of our ladies that the Mormons in our area heard about the different children that have expressed interest in coming to our church. So this last week they made visits to each of the houses that our workers have been visiting and they passed out rice and many other “gifts” to the parents in an attempt to keep them from allowing their children to come to our church. We don’t know what long-term impact these types of actions will have on the children in our neighborhood. There are two private schools in our area that are operated by the Mormons. In fact, many of the families in our neighborhood have their children on the “waiting” list to get into these schools. We have not officially begun the children’s ministry but about 15-20 children have already begun to attend both Sunday morning and evening services. Please pray that we will be able to make an impact in their lives and see these children come to know the Lord. Long-term we hope to be able to have a steady attendance of 30-40 children each week.

Please pray for several of our people to be able to obtain employment. It is so very difficult to find a job here but it is especially difficult to find a job that does not consume ones entire life. One of our very faithful young adult men was just offered a job that would keep him busy from 7:00 a.m. until 8:30 p.m. Monday-Friday. He sought my advice about taking the job. As of right now he is not planning to accept the job because of the effect it would likely have on his walk with the Lord. Another of our ladies was offered a full-time job but it would require her to move to Battambang Province which is nearly 6 hours from here. She declined the offer because she said that now she is a Christian and she must be at church. Of course the these people’s unsaved relatives think they are crazy for putting God first in their lives. Please pray that these new believers will be able to find honest employment. Recently one of our young married men was offered free housing and a good salary if he would leave our church and join with one of the cults in our city. Praise the Lord that he told them he would not compromise his convictions!

It started raining this afternoon and has continued to rain until tonight (9:30 p.m.). By the time our Sunday evening service started at 5:00 p.m. our street was flooded with sewer water. It affected our attendance a bit but we still had a good group of folks that fought their way through the rain. It was interesting trying to talk over the noise of the rain but overall we had a great service.

Today we had several first time adult visitors. It seems to be fairly easy to get first time visitors here. The challenge it to get them to return once they find out that we are not going to pay them to come to church. It so happens that three of the adult visitors who came today were contacts that Bro. Keo has made over the past several weeks. One young adult man, Chuoun and his young adult sister, Srey Touch, came this morning. This evening, Van, visited the service. Van is 25 years old and is married with two children. He told me that he wants to believe in Jesus but he is very fearful that if he does that the Devil will cause his children to become sick. Please pray that Van will respond to God’s working in his life.

This past week I had the opportunity to meet several new contacts while I was going out door-to-door. Please pray for us as we try to follow up on these contacts. I was able to have lengthy conversations with each of these adults and they all indicated they would like for me to return to their home in the near future: 1) Chanrith (young man 24 years old), 2) Leakhena (young lady in her early 20s), 3) Ham Ra (man in his early 40s. He teaches 12 grade math and had many great questions about Christianity. He became very sober when I talked to him about his need for a personal Saviour), 4) Thouen (man in his late 40s. Sometime over the past several weeks another church in the city gave him a Gospel booklet entitled “Do You Know God?” In fact, when I arrived at his house he was reading the booklet in his house. He had several great questions and hopefully will be open to further discussion in the future, 5) PounLouk and his wife, Khun Thea (young couple in their early 30s) PounLouk teaches the French language at one of the universities here in Phnom Penh. Pray that we will be able to bond with these individuals and see them come to know the Lord.

This picture was taken from our rooftop yesterday evening. It reminds us that the night is coming when no man can work. May each of us be occupied with things that will count for eternity.

Because of God’s grace,

Dave, Debbie, Joshua, Jeremy, and Jason