May 26, 2013

May 26, 2013

Dear friends,

Sopheak, 18 years old, attended our church faithfully for quite some time last year until her grandmother prohibited her return. She did not like the “changes” that were taking place in Sopeak’s life because of the things she was being taught at the church. After being gone for nearly 6 months, she showed up again this past Sunday. It seems as though her grandmother has agreed to allow her to return. However, she is only allowed to attend on Sunday morning. We are happy to report that, while meeting with one of the national workers, she obtained the assurance of her salvation this past week. Lord willing she will follow the Lord in believers baptism on Sunday, June 9th. Please pray for her spiritual growth as well as the salvation of her grandmother.

Sok San is a close relative of Somaly Ros, the youth pastor’s wife at our sending church in California. When Mrs. Ros visited Cambodia several months ago she invited Sok San to attend the church. Due to the godly testimony of the Ros family Sok San has seen her need of salvation and has accepted Christ as her personal Saviour. She is making an effort to not just attend the services but to get involved as well. It was a blessing to see her stay after the morning service to help work in the 11:00 a.m. Children’s Ministry outreach. She was singing right along with the children and appeared to be having a great time. She is a sharp young lady and seems to have a lot of natural abilities. Please pray that she will keep coming to church, stay involved in ministry, and grow in her new faith.

About 20 or so of the men from Phnom Penh traveled to the village church in Anlong Tnout village last week to paint the new church building. We had a wonderful time working together and the building looks much better now that it has a few coats of paint on it. Point of interest: They do not seem to sell primer here in Cambodia so we were painting right on the bare cement walls. It took about 5 coats ! The village congregation will now begin working on raising money to purchase windows and doors for the building. Lord willing the money will be raised within the next few months and the building can be completed.

There has been a slight delay in getting the roof for the new church building in Prey Bang village. It seems that the contractor in the village did not have a welding machine in order to weld the metal together that he had promised to have welded almost two weeks ago ! When we finally got a hold of him this week to see what was taking so long, he let us know that he was trying to find the equipment and would have the roof up for us by the end of this week. Here’s my take on the situation – He knows we are Christians and “can’t” get mad at him. So, he is doing other people’s jobs ahead of ours even though we have a signed contract. If he doesn’t fulfill his end of the deal real soon I guess we will have an opportunity to put his theory to the test. 🙂  ...can’t or shouldn’t…?

One of the families who has recently begun to attend the village church is Chhay and KimLa. The Lord allowed me to lead Chhay to the Lord some time ago but his wife just recently accepted Christ within the past couple of months. They are expecting their first baby in a few months. Chhay is the son of a very popular Cham witchdoctor and has had some struggles in the past dealing with some issues related to that situation. (The Cham people are believed to possess the strongest occultic powers of any people group here in Cambodia. I have been told that his father, before dying this past year, was one of the most famous witchdoctors and had clients all over Cambodia.) I believe that Chhay and KimLa desire to have a family that honors the Lord. Last week they asked if I would be willing to sit down with them and teach them about how to have a Christian family. As other couples heard that we planned to meet they asked if they could participate in the meeting as well. To make a long story short, we decided that we will have a couple’s seminar sometime in June or July. This will enable us to offer teaching that we can’t provide during church-wide services. Please pray that Chhay and KimLa will remain consistent in their church attendance and walk with the Lord. They have been at church now for 5 weeks in a row.

For the past two months we have been trying something different for the Sunday Phnom Penh Children’s Ministry. Rather than having all 150-200 children meet at the church all at once we have been having them come in smaller groups of between 30-50 children. This past week Brother Vannak preached for the children’s service and he did a wonderful job of communicating to the children. He preached on the importance of not depending upon good works in order to have your sins forgiven. He used a poster that we recently created to use when we do evangelistic outreaches. I have included a low resolution copy of the poster for the benefit of those of you who read Khmer.

Here is the link to a short video that we shot on Monday morning. Included in this video are some short excerpts of our Sunday evening service in which we had 4 of the Bible Institute men preach. Each of these men are faithful believers who have taken a strong stand for the Lord. We are grateful for their teachable spirits and the zeal that they have for the work of the Lord. They all help to preach in our various Children’s Ministries and teen services throughout the week. They are also all 4 involved in the various village outreaches as well. I believe you will be blessed by listening to the short excerpts. They obviously preached in Khmer but I have added English subtitles for the benefit of those who can not understand the Khmer language. https://vimeo.com/67138581

Because of God’s grace,

Dave, Debbie, Joshua, Jeremy, and Jason