#29 - Past Week, Past Month & Past 6 Months

Past Week

The Lord has opened many doors here and we got to know many missionaries from all over the world, who are serving Him here in Cambodia.  We started our very first session with a group of university students who lives in a christian college dormitory ministry.  These students are referred by their churches or pastors from their villages and now working their way for a bachelor degree in an university in the city.  Many of them were interested in learning to play piano for worship purposes hence Amy started an one-hour class with them on a weekly basis and I will give an one-hour class on some practical matter on biblical living.  We will start with biblical personal finances for about 8 weeks and then move on to relationship & marriage every Saturday.  It is an amazing and humbling experience for us to see how these students live in a very basic facility.   When we think of a dorm, we think of fancy posters on the wall with a bed, a chair, a desk with a stack of books, a nice table lamp and a shiny laptop but what we see is almost NOTHING.  We meant nothing. These students have almost no possession; a few students shared a small fold-able closets and sleep on a simple mat. Their rooms are as empty as a soccer field.  There's hardly a fluorescent light in a room; most of us would not even let our kids read under these low-light condition.  There's really nothing greater to get to care about these young christian and share God's word with these young people; they are very eager to know more about God, about how to live a more Godly lives and just how to be a follower of God.  There's so much temptation for them in the city.  I can hardly imagine how difficult it is for them to restraint themselves and focus on God without supports from other Christians.

This is one of the rooms that 6-8 students live.  A foldable closet on the left.
shared by a few students.  At night, they have a simple mat to put on the floor to sleep.
There is no bunk beds or mattress (which is consider very basic for many of us....)

Amy is teaching the beginner piano class.  Students are all eager to serve in music!
They are also extremely excited to touch a keyboard freely for the first time and
that we are leaving the keyboard for them to practice during the week!

Thomas is teaching the biblical personal finances class!

These young Christians are faithful and eager to learn and serve the Lord!

Past Month

It’s been a month since we started the English program at our center.  There’s certainly many ups and downs and we learned to give the burden to God and rely on God’s sovereignty and grace.  Praise God that we now have 24 students in total.  It is a blessing to see all the students enjoying their classes with shiny smiles on their faces when they enter the center.  I always wonder if the children will ever remember why these foreigners would came to their community to start a school teaching them English.  This is a question I will save for Jesus when I met him after my life on earth but now we focus on being the sower.

Past 6 Months

Amy and I cannot believe it's been 6 months since we moved to Cambodia.   As much as I knew about the south-east Asian culture for spending most of my childhood holidays in Indonesia and traveled throughout these SE Asian countries, living here is certainly a big change.   If it is not for God’s blessing and presence with us, we will not be able to cope with the change especially with two very “spoiled” American-born child.  Not only our children are spoiled but also us, who have been living in the states for our adulthood; we have been living and traveling in the best of all conditions.   

We always thought we know and understand what it is like being in third-world countries but we really don’t "know" it until we actually lived here.  We never thought how much our so-called "normal" live-style in America or Hong Kong embedded into our thoughts related to how every thing in our daily lives should work.  Clean water supposed to come from any tap, electricity should be powering up every thing in your house without interruption, road should be smooth with occasionally bump, rain should go down the drain without flooding the street, and etc…...  If we look around at the local people (even in the capital city), you cannot stop wondering why there are so many children playing on the street and not go to school, why five people can jam into one motorcycle, why a mother will be holding a baby in one hand and steer the motorcycle with another, why so many men are sitting around doing nothing, why so many young women or teenage girls are shipped to the factory packed in a cargo truck making fashionable clothing for us in the western world and etc…… As a Christian, we cannot stop thinking all these people who grew up near a pagoda; praying and worshiping to a monk who walked pass their house door any moment.  Will they ever get to know our Lord? Will they hear and believe in the truth about Him.  Obviously, we know God has the power to pierce through any stone-like heart and open the eyes and ears of anyone to see Him.  Our job is very simple but very hard to do at the same time -- to speak the truth about our Lord.   It sounds so simple, right?  May God grant us the courage to do this simple task and may God let us realize He has our back when we are doing as He asked.

Clean water, electricity, house with no water leak, hot bath water,  a "flat" road to drive.....
are not easy to get in any 3rd world country.  May we all be thankful to our Lord that has given us these privileged
and not take it for granted!

Praise God that Gryphon and Joelle are always happy wherever they go.
Picture taken before Sunday service outside of our church (while Amy is rehearsing with the worship team),
at International Baptist Church of Phnom Penh.

Pray For Us

1. Pray for Thomas' parents and sister's family in Hong Kong who still does not know the Lord.

2. Pray for Thomas' former students from Pui Tak Center in Chicago, many of them are not saved.

3. Pray for God's direction on how to best use our God's given skills to serve Him here in Cambodia. There's are so many places in needs. 

4. Pray for our family for good health, and safety.

5. Pray for God's people and the missionaries in this country that we will not lose our focus on Him and not yield to temptation nor the evil.

6. Pray for God's people in the developed world that we are not blinded by the "normal-ness" of our comfortable lives but be warned daily of the need of the King of kings in the rest of the world.