December 4, 2011
Dear friends,
We are wrapping up another wonderful weekend. The spirit in the service this evening was very good. We had somewhere around 340 in attendance this weekend. Some of the folks who were in the service tonight had been here at church since early this morning but they sang out with energy and obvious joy. Sunday mornings we have been teaching and preaching through the book of James. We will be done with James in four weeks. Lord willing, just after the first of the year, we will begin the book of Acts. Sunday evenings I have been teaching a five week series dealing with the various reasons why people stop following Jesus Christ. We are considering these three basic reasons: 1) They were never saved in the first place, 2) The love of the world replaced their love for the Lord, 3) The bad example of other believers has caused them to stumble. I feel that this series has proven to be very helpful for our people. Though we are in a third-world country, there is still the temptation for our people to love the things of the world – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.
It has been a blessing to see some of our young teenage believers begin to serve in the ministry. SreyNik (16 years old) was saved and baptized here at the church and has been so faithful to the Lord. She never misses a service and is faithful for soul-winning every Saturday. She also serves in the Sunday afternoon Children’s Ministry.
I met Srey Srahs (14 years old) several months ago while I was out soul-winning. I actually was trying to win her 19 year old brother, Tola, to the Lord. He did not seem to be interested. However, Srey Srahs was interested and she began coming to church. Some of our lady workers got close to her and led her to the Lord. She has been faithful to church for the past two or three months. Last month she followed the Lord in believer’s baptism. Nearly every Sunday night during our evening service she thanks the Lord that He has given her the desire to know Him and to live a life that is honoring to Him. Tonight she began serving as a teacher’s assistant in our Sunday evening children’s class. She is so excited to be able to help teach children God’s Word.
One of the purposes of our Sunday afternoon Children’s Ministry is to target Jr. High young people with the Gospel. Today we had 53 Jr. Highers attend. Five of them, who have been coming for several weeks, placed their faith in Christ this evening after the service. We encourage our national workers to be very thorough with their presentation of the Gospel. The evidence that some of these young people are truly saved is the fact that God has changed their lives. They desire to be at church. They are willing to endure the trials that come into their lives because of their new faith. Srey Srahs is just one of the young people who have been saved because of the Children’s Ministry.
We are thankful for Kohna (12 years old) and his two sisters, SreyNeang and Seavmey. They are almost always the first ones to arrive at church. They enjoy being here so much. We thought we had lost them because their grandfather decided that they were taking their new faith too far. He prevented them from coming to church for about four weeks. Then, for no apparent reason, he changed his mind and has allowed them to once again come to church. This past Saturday he even allowed them to attend our Saturday morning soul-winning ministry. While he was waiting for our workers meeting to start, Kohna drew, from memory, this map of the world. Not too bad ! I doubt I could do that ! Maybe he will become a missionary one day to one of the countries he just drew.
Here is the link to our video update for this week. The assistant pastor from my home church took a missions trip to Cambodia last month and was with us for about a week. When he returned to the States he gave an update to the church. This video includes some excerpts from that service. He showed some pictures during his update. However, most of the pictures he showed were not very clear so I have replaced them with my own pictures. We hope you are challenged by this video. http://vimeo.com/33221090
Because of God’s grace,
Dave, Debbie, Joshua, Jeremy, and Jason
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