July 24, 2011

July 24, 2011

Dear friends,

We were blessed with a great day today. Not just numerically but I believe we also saw some important decisions made for Christ during the services as well. This evening I preached from Ecclesiastes 7:5, It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools. It seemed that our folks paid very close attention and responded to the truths that were presented.

Children’s ministry is going very well. Within the next two weeks we intend to split the children into three different groups in order to be more effective during the preaching time. We will take the children ages 13-15 and meet with them up on the covered roof. This is the age group where we are trying to really place most of our emphasis. It is our goal to see many from this age group begin to start coming to the adult service on Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings. We will have a second group of children ages 8-12 who will meet in the church auditorium. Then the children ages 5-7 will have their own class as well. As always it has been our objective to equip the nationals to reach their own people. Once we make the split we will need three of our men to preach each Sunday afternoon rather than one. Though we had 175 children in the Children’s ministry today, it was a blessing to see one of our national men preach and hold the children’s attention.

Today we had several adult first-time and second-time visitors. It is very common here in this country to have first-time visitors who are only looking for a handout and so it is always a huge blessing to have our visitors return. Today Mao, 20 years old, returned for the third time. He seems to be really seeking truth but is confused about reincarnation. Some of our young men are meeting with him this week with the goal of helping him to more clearly understand the Gospel. Korn visited the church this morning for the first time and returned for the evening service as well. He also joined with the young men who went to the stadium after church to play soccer. Lord willing, I will be meeting with him at 9:30 Monday morning to begin an evangelistic Bible study. Please pray that Korn and Mao’s heart will be opened and that they will soon accept Christ as their personal Saviour.

We have recently seen some amazing things happening in the Cham village. Each Monday 30-40 folks gather together for a service. The persecution there seems to be much more severe than in the city. For the past several weeks, Som has been attending the Bible study and has listened intently to the teaching. She is the older sister of some of our young adult men. Today she made a special effort to travel to Phnom Penh for the express purpose of being a part of the morning and evening services. Please pray that Som will soon be saved.

Yesterday several of our soul-winners traveled two and a half hours one way to Brother Sinath’s home village. This was our second time to witness in this village. It often takes several times for a Buddhist to hear the Gospel before they are willing to admit that they are a sinner in need of a Saviour. There are some in this village who are weighing the cost of accepting the Lord. On one hand they know that they are helpless to save themselves. On the other hand they are not yet willing to accept Christ because of the persecution that would ensue. There was also a man in the meeting who openly opposed what I was teaching. It was good for our soul-winners to be able to experience how we were able to handle his objections. There are so many villages within driving distance of Phnom Penh that are still without any solid Gospel preaching church. Please continue to pray that we will have wisdom as we seek to allocate our time and the workers. We recently purchased a Tuk Tuk for the purpose of traveling outside of Phnom Penh. It was great to not have to rent transportation.

Please pray for the following items:

1) We have two more single ladies coming from Long Beach to help in the ministry. Please pray for Neang Taing (27 years old) and Kayla DaCosta (20 years old) to have a smooth adjustment to life and ministry in southeast Asia. They are scheduled to arrive here on August 6th.

2) We have outgrown our facilities and definitely do not want to begin hurting the attendance. Property here in the city is very expensive to rent but we know that God is in control of that. For the time being we are beginning to look at ways to be able to begin an additional morning service. It would be a huge blessing it God opened the door and provided the finances to be able to obtain a different property in the future. Today we had around 233 people at church.

3) I am meeting with a Khmer young man and his wife this week who are both recent Bible college graduates. I will not take the time to detail how we came about to meet him but it seems that God has brought him across our path. We met him through an independent Baptist pastor in the States who has been mentoring him through Skype for the past several months. I had an initial meeting with him this past week and intend to meet with him again in the next few days. He has expressed his desire to invest the rest of his life as a church-planter. There is as very good chance that this young couple will be the first full-time national missionary to join our team. Please pray that Brother Keo and I will have God’s mind in this matter.

4) Please continue to pray for Missionary Bounna Has and his wife Thy. They are doing a great job on deputation and are scheduled to arrive here in Cambodia in March. We could definitely use them here now!

Because of God’s grace,

Dave, Debbie, Joshua, Jeremy, and Jason.