Dear friends,
We are thankful that our youngest son Jason is feeling better. This past week he had a fever of over 104 and was basically out of it for two days. Then the third day he woke up and was fine. We are not sure what was wrong with him but we are relieved that he is better now.
We are in the rainy season by now. It has rained heavily every day for the past week or so. We were prepared today to have a very low attendance. Especially in the children’s ministry. However, we were still blessed with over 200 in attendance today. It was a blessing to have many children walk to church today even though by afternoon it was very wet and they could have easily come up with an excuse not to come. Please continue to pray that we will be able to make real progress with several of these children. We are currently “targeting” about 15-20 of the older children who are ages 12-14 and trying to really get close to them. We feel like we are starting to make some progress in their lives. Pray that their parents will not prevent them from coming to church and being involved in the activities that we have planned in the near future. We have had some of the parents forbid their children from coming to our church once they realized that their children were actually interested in the Gospel.
One of the blessing of having the church situated in Phnom Penh is that we are in close proximity to so many villages. We have been talking to the church for the past couple of weeks about our responsibility to try and help spread the Gospel to the hundreds of villages that are within an hour drive in all directions of Phnom Penh. To our knowledge the majority of these villages have virtually no true Gospel witness. We are beginning a new evangelism outreach that we are calling OPERATION GO! We are presently raising money in the church to purchase more Gospel tracts. Our church here in Phnom Penh will do what they can to help contribute financially to this project. We are planning to produce 15,000-20,000 full-color tracts that will be printed right here in Phnom Penh. If you would like to help contribute to this project please let me know. During OPERATION GO! will encourage as many of our people as possible to get involved by merely handing out tracts from village to village. Once you get outside of Phnom Penh you are likely to face much more scrutiny by the local officials as well as by the “powers that be” in the Protestant community. We will not technically be operating withing the letter of the law by publicly proselytizing in these villages. We will begin with some of the villages that we drive through in order to get to the Bible study that takes place every Monday in one of the Cham villages. Many of these villages have a strong Muslim presence. Pray that God will direct our steps in this endeavor and that He might even lead our people to someone who is open to the Gospel. Likewise, please continue to pray for the Monday Bible study. Bro. Keo and some of our people are doing a wonderful job of breaking new ground. Last Monday there was over 30 in attendance. Many in the States are surprised to learn that there is a substantial Muslim (Cham) population here in Cambodia. More than half of those who have been saved in our church over the past several months are from the Cham community. This photo was taken recently and is of a group of Cham women here in Phnom Penh.
We were blessed today with six adult visitors this morning. Three come from a Seven-day Adventist background. One of the men who came is the landlord of some of our families. One of the men who came is a security guard and works all night. He just got off this morning at 7:00 and came to church at 8:00. One of the ladies who came for the first time is 69 years old. Out of concern for her privacy, I will refer to her as V.S. One of our faithful ladies, Teven, has been witnessing to her for the past 2 months. V.S. is a highly educated lady who is also works for the government of Cambodia. On a regular basis she meets with the Prime Minister. It was exciting to have her call this past Thursday and ask that we go to her house to explain more about the Gospel. I believe that she is genuinely seeking to know the True God. One of our faithful men, Bro. Sinath, and I met with her for nearly 2 hours and answered her questions. We left her with more material and assured her that we always welcome her questions. She came to the church this morning and sat down right in the front row just feet from the pulpit. I watched her as I was preaching and she seemed to be holding onto every word. Humanly speaking, it is highly unusual that a woman of her social standing and age would be open to the Gospel. Please pray that we will have wisdom to deal with V.S. and that she will soon be saved and take an open stand for the Lord.
This week we will seek to follow-up on the adult visitors from this morning. Please pray for us as we try and reach out to Mr. Oudom and his wife, SokNy and their two children, Miss SokNa, Mr. Pealan, Mr. Sophal, and Mrs. V.S.
Because of God’s grace,
Dave, Debbie, Joshua, Jeremy, and Jason
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