Journey with God: #28 - New class officially started today!

The trial classes were completed last week! Praise God for his amazing work at our center!

Students came for trial class last week

It all began with a big surprise last Monday morning. We originally did not plan to have trial classes on Monday morning, however, 4 boys and girls showed up at the center around 8am and wanted to attend the trial classes. Our teachers quickly put together their lesson plan and teaching materials that was planned for the afternoon classes and started their first trial class at 8:30am! We had 2 level of classes at the same time: one lower level for those do not even know the alphabets; and a beginner class for students who know a bit of English. It turned out we have 5 students who came for the trial class in the morning and another 6 students in the afternoon!

We feel that God has taught us a good lesson that He always has His timing. We have tried to plan and prepare as much as we can on promotion, flyer, and banners; however, we hardly had any student register nor even sign up for the trial classes before last week. We just trust God for His provision and rely on God to bring us students. Trusting God is more important than anything! It doesn't mean we just seat around and not doing anything, but we just need to do our best and God will take care of the rest!

Another thing we learned the past week is we are here to serve God's plan even when it is 'inconvenient' to us. We originally decided not to have evening class due to personnel issues but many youth (between 15 to 20) stopped by and asked for evening classes (around 5pm to 6pm). We were quite reluctant to have evening classes because it is not convenient as we already organized the class schedule, teacher's work hours, flyers printed, ..etc. But we realized we need to listen to God's plan and we have to be giving our best to serve Him. After discussion with the team and Pastor Billy, we decided to pioneer this evening class. Within days, we are able to come up with a plan and line up the personnel for the class. One of the brothers in our church here and together with Thomas and one of our full-time teachers, they will take up the responsibility of this evening class. We will start the evening class registration tomorrow. Praise God for giving us another opportunity to have youths at the center, not only to learn English, but we will have a chance to get to know them and tell them about the gospel!

Today is our first day of class. We current have a total of 12 students enrolled. We want to praise God for His amazing work and answer to all of our prayer. Please continue to pray with us for the student enrollment and more opportunities to tell the students and the community about God.

Please continue to pray for:
- our teachers, students, and us for this first week of class
- the enrollment of youth for the evening program
- the student registration and may God lead the students to His center
- ministry opportunities to students, parents, and the community
- recruitment of volunteers to come to teach English

We are in need of English-Speaking Christians starting Jan 2014 to volunteer to teach at our center. Please consider serving with us here in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. If you can come for at least 1 full week or if you can commit to a month or longer, please email amy.t.leigh@gmail.com or thomas.t.chong@gmail.com for more detail!

Thomas is teaching with our teacher in the trial class

Only one student in our first day of trial class

Amy is teaching with our teacher in the trial class

Practical 'how are you?' in the trial class

Our teacher is reading a story book to one of our afternoon students

Afternoon students

Amy was teaching 'day of the week' in the trial class

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, .... students are learning 'day of the week' during the trial class

Students are doing writing exercise

Young students are coloring number 'one'

Praise God that three young students were in our last day of the trial class,
compare to the first day which only has one student.

A job that should be relatively easy if we have a 'sturdy' and 'tall' ladder. Unfortunately
it is not easy to find such ladder around. Praise God that our teachers finally able
to throw a rope in between the frame structure and we can pull the banner up!