January 1, 2012

January 1, 2012

Dear Friends,

Happy New Year! It’s hard to believe that we are already into 2012!

Last Sunday we had our record attendance at Children’s Ministry with 210 children in attendance. We were blessed to have 52 Jr. highers in attendance which is also an attendance breaker. We are starting to see some of these Jr. High young people take a stand for the Lord and that is exciting. All together we had around 426 in attendance in the services last weekend. Please continue to pray for our workers as they seek to work with the children and adults in Phnom Penh and Kompong Chhnang.

Last Sunday evening we had a Christmas gift exchange at the end of our service. Everyone who brought a gift was able to receive a gift. A good time was had by all those who participated.

These two children are almost always the first ones to arrive at church every Sunday morning. They wake up bright and early and walk to the church. Our services start at 8:30 a.m. but they normally arrive around 7:15 a.m. and quietly sit in the auditorium until everyone else starts to arrive.

Last Sunday I noticed that the little girls shoes were in very poor condition. It was so sad to see that half of her right shoe was missing. More than likely her parents are too poor to even take notice. I sent one of our workers to the market and had them purchase a new pair of shoes for her.

These are the new shoes that we purchased and presented to her. It was so nice to see her face light up with joy. You would have thought that she received some very expensive gift. In reality it was just a simple pair of shoes. She stayed for the afternoon and evening services as well. The shoes never left her feet! She proudly wore them to church again this Sunday.

We are grateful for a special gift that one of our friends sent us this past week which enabled us to purchase 129 pairs of children’s shoes. May these shoes be used by God to soften the hearts of children and their parents and may they see the love of Christ because of them.

Today we introduced our theme for this new year: With All Your Heart. It is based on Matthew 22:37 where Jesus says that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, and all of our mind. The banner was designed by Bro. Sara Vong who is a staff member at our sending church in California. Bro. Vong is presently visiting us here in Cambodia.

We had an exciting service this evening at the church as we celebrated the new year. We showed a Christian film in the Khmer language, sang many songs, enjoyed a Bible Sword drill, and listened as five of our young adult men preached. It was a blessing to hear how these young men are growing in their understanding of God’s Word. Two of these men were not saved this time last year. One of them shared this evening that this time last year he was celebrating the new year at a bar. One of the other young men was a pornography pusher this time last year. Although the other three young men were already saved a year ago, they recently admitted to me that they were far from God. We are so thankful to see these young men faithfully serving God in the various ministries of our two churches. Lord willing, one of them will become the primary preacher for a new village ministry that we hope to start this year. Man, the young man in blue, intends to meet with his father tomorrow morning to let him know that he is planning to withdraw himself from the university in order to devote his entire life to serving God. His father is still a practicing Muslim and we are not sure how he is going to respond when he finds out that Man desires to serve God. Please pray for Man’s father’s heart to be softened.

Thank you for your prayers and support of this ministry. We look forward to seeing what God will do this next year. In our next update we hope to share with you some of our specific ministry goals for the year 2012.

Because of God’s grace,

Dave, Debbie, Joshua, Jeremy, and Jason