#44 - Discipleship ministry updates

Thank you for all your continuing support and prayers!   Many of you probably wondered why we haven't update our blog for 2 months.   Praise the Lord for opening various ministry opportunities and developing a much stronger relationship with our students.  

There are so much to share with all of you and please continue to pray for family, our students and our various ministries.  You are part of our team as your prayers are crucial in our work.


#1: Discipleship Program

As of this month, we have been running the program for 3 months.  We are very encouraged to see our students getting more interested in our nightly Bible study/English class (9:00pm to 10:00pm Tuesday to Friday).  Don't forget, most of them work a full time job and go to school in the evening.  

Every Saturday, we have our Fellowship meeting and dinner (6:00pm-9:00pm). We also cook for the students on Saturday, so they don't need to cook for themselves.

Every Sunday, we have Sunday worship in our dorm and Thomas will share every other Sunday.  In the past few weeks, Thomas have been speaking related to the birth of Christ.   

#2: Students  

Besides preparing our daily program, we spent a lot of our time tackling with our  student individual's needs about his/her school, living, or family. Each person has an unique situation and we have been praying with them and also trying to find ways to help them.  

In the past two months, one of our biggest challenges was our potential candidates to receive scholarship but failed the national high-school graduation exam.   This year, the Cambodia government decided to end the corruption in its national high-school graduation exam in August.  The result was 75% of the high-school seniors FAILED and even though a re-take of the exam was scheduled, 1/3 of the students dropped out and only 1/3 of them passed the re-take exam.  

We have 2 girls who failed the exam but they decided to stay with us and joined our program despite of their financial hardship and pressure from family.  These 2 girls are under tremendous pressure from their family to go to work in the factory.   After a few weeks of scrambling to find potential options, we received a call from a Christian institute run by the Hong Kong Alliance Mission as they accepted them to enter their 3-year Associate Degree program.   It is such a relief knowing that they can continue their education.

#3: Accounting Apprenticeship
One of our goals was to help our students to gain better skill and work experience.  In September, we accepted 1 student as our accounting apprentice.  Although she is a 3rd year student at university majoring in banking, she never learns some basic skill such as Excel.  Praise God that He opens door for us.  Although our apprentice has only been trained for 1 month, we were approached by a brother from our church (a missionary from Canada) to help with his ministry's bookkeeping needs (a Christian Cafe with a mission to reach university student).  Under our supervision, our apprentice is now able to perform basic data entry in QuickBook for daily income and expense.  We are very humble and grateful to see God works miraculously by opening doors for our ministry needs and also use our skills and experience to further His Kingdom.

#4: Leadership team for the Christian Cafe with a mission to reach university students 
God continues to work in our hearts to reach the unreached university students.  After about a month that we provided the bookkeeping and accounting services to this ministry, we were approached to provide more support to this ministry.  We truly believe God puts us there to help widen our reach to university students because the ministry is a Christian Cafe with a mission to reach university students.  We are now part of the leadership team to help re-organize the ministry activities and its cafe business.  We pray that we are able to help this ministry to share the Gospel to more university students, to make the cafe become a place where students will be loved and discipled, and the cafe business can continue to grow to support all the ministry expenses (a self-sustained ministry). 

Please continue to keep us in your prayers!

Photos of our Discipleship program in the last 2 months

*** Sunday Worship ***
(Thomas preaches every other Sunday)

*** Fellowship ***
(every Saturday 6-9pm)

 

*** Bible Study ***
(Week night 9-10pm)

*** English Class ***
(Week night 9-10pm)

*** Fellowship Dinner ***
(Every Saturday night,
we will bring food from home)

*** Special THANKSGIVING notes ***

*** Special Visit from an Australia Team ***

*** Accounting apprentice ***

*** Part of Leadership Team ***

for the Christian Cafe 

#43 - The Unexpected

This week, Cambodia is celebrating one of their most important festival, Pchum Ben. Traditionally, it is a 15-day festival and they spent this time to remember and pay respects to deceased relatives. Although all our students are Christians and do not observe the Buddhist’s religious act, they all returned to their hometown to be with their families.

We also had 3 days of public holidays this week so we, including Gryphon and Joelle, took this unique opportunity to travel to their hometown and visited each of the students in their homes.  The students were happy and “worry” at the same time when we told them we are going to visit each of them at their homes and meet their parents.  Gryphon and Joelle were very excited for the trip as we told them we will be going to see the students’ home and farm and we stayed in a “Khmer chalet” (wooden house) with no air-con and no private bathroom.

It took us 4.5hours to get there due to the holiday traffic
and extremely bad road conditions

HEAD-ON COLLISION -- A white van is coming straight at us on the highway.
This is part of the main highway from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap
and have been under construction for the last 2-3 years and it never ends.  

Sand Storm -- Very dusty, rocky and uneven road almost the entire road
from Phnom Penh to our students' hometown.  Imagine if you are riding on a motorcycle.

Scene on the way (notice the sandy road -- it is actually a highway)

Scene on the way

Scene on the way

The day before the trip, our 9 years old car suddenly overheated.  We immediately brought it to the garage, hoping it is an isolated incident.  They realized the coolant is mixing with the engine oil (see the pinkish jelly substances in photo) and the engine gasket needs to be replaced.  They explained to us it is a 2-3 days job and all the workers were getting ready to leave the next morning so the repair cannot be done until after the holiday.  So we reluctantly told our dorm leader that we needed to cancel the trip.  It was a great disappointment.  After a few hours of struggle, disappointment and prayers, a Pastor and a good friend offered their cars and drivers to give me a ride to the province and return to the city. Praise God for He knows what’s best!!  If our car did not break down the day before the trip, it would be disastrous to overheat on our way and waiting for help in the middle of nowhere with two children in the car.

Fruitful trip --- We got to meet all of our students’ families and see their homes and the environment they grow up in.  It helps us understand our students' background and worldview.   We also had a fellowship meeting with some of the high-school graduates who are hoping to come to Phnom Penh for universities.  We attended the Sunday service at two churches and meet their church members especially a lot of the youth. The trip is tough because the road condition was extremely bad and it took us 4.5hours to get there and 3 hours to return.

This pig lives under one of our students' house

One of the student's family and house (the pig is behind us)

Another student's family.  Grandma (sitting in the middle) has become blind recently.

Worship at a village church

Visited one of the satellite churches of the main church.

Children attending Sunday worship

All of us were standing and singing praises together 

Several youth are presenting a worship song with a few traditional dance move for the festival.

Pastor Kea is encouraging the believers to stand firm, be bold and faithful.

This is a typical village church (no door no windows)

A small house where the church leader lives along with about 6 boys
who are either orphans or lives far away from any school and church.
The red color roof building is where they have worship and English classes.

Talking to the church leader who is responsible for this satellite church and the boys living there.

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Main Church

The main church building, which is recently completed.

This is an open area behind the main church building where they host English class during the week
and various fellowship and Sunday schools.

Although it maybe ill-equipped in our eyes, the church uses it for daily English classes,
Sunday school for children & youth and many other fellowship activities. 

The church only has funding to build wall around half of the church land.
They are praying for more funding to complete it.

Meeting with high-school graduates from the main church

Meeting with high school students from the village

Introduce the discipleship program in Phnom Penh

Prayer Requests:
1. Scholarship fund is needed for potential high-school graduates to have a chance to attend university
2. God’s presence to be with us every day as we teach and share God's word with the students and we do not fall into the temptation to rely on ourselves but rely on God alone. 
3. Holy Spirit to guide us daily when we disciple and care for these young Christian university students in our dorm
4. Our family's health and safety in Cambodia

Thank you for your prayers and support!

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