#49 - Three Students Left the Dorm -- Prayer Requests

Although there are so many great things to share with you, we also wanted to tell you some of the many issues we encountered lately.  Please joins us to pray for these individuals:

1. We have 3 of our students left our dormitory at the end of April. Each of them has different reasons and it is very hard to find out what’s really going on with their lives and their relationships with God.

Please pray for student #1 for her spiritual life and her life with her future husband.  The reason she left our dormitory is she wants to live with her future husband’s Aunt until she get married.  We want to especially pray for marriage and her relationship with her future husband, as her husband is an America who lives in Cambodia for many years.  Inter-cultural marriage is never simple and both of them are still very young and have not finished university.  Our hearts were very heavy when we heard about her decision to move out from our dormitory.  Please pray for her relationship with God and also for us to find ways to continue to guide her in her life.

Please pray for student #2 for his spiritual life.  The reason he left our dormitory is he wants to have the freedom at night and the weekend to go out with friends.  He is an older student who will be graduating in August this year.  He is also working full-time to support himself while going to school.  He also has a younger sister that still lives in our dormitory, who is not able to attend university because of her grades.  He has many hardships in his life because of his family, but we are very worried his relationship with God.  Please pray for him for he will continue to seek God and remember God has a plan for him.  Please also pray for us to find ways to continue to guide him in his life.

Please pray for student #3 for his will to continue to seek God.  Student #3 is not a student, but he is a high-school dropout.  He lives in our dormitory for almost a year intended to finish a short course of repairing mobile phones.  Unfortunately after he completed the short course, he was not able to find a job, so he found himself working in restaurants as a buzzer, runner, or security guard.  He is a new believer and we have been trying to encourage him to get to know God more.  We also tried to get him to get more training.  He told us that he is going to work for his uncle and the uncle will pay for his living.  Please pray for him that he can continue to seek God and get to know God more.  Please pray for us to have wisdom to help him and continue to guide him in his life.

2.  Please also pray for the university student café ministry that we have been helping.  We have been part of the Leadership Team for about 6 months and there are many minor issues in its operation but lately we encounter a serious management issue that needed the board’s attention. Please pray for wisdom in this difficult situation and God to guide us in assisting the Board to find a solution.   Please pray for us to continue to serve God humbly and never put ourselves ahead of Him.

#48 - New Computer Class!

We are very excited and for the special gift that we received from NLCF church in Australia.  A group of young people from their church has raised fund for us to buy computers for our dormitory.

Although many of us in the west would have one or more computers plus a smart phone, tablet, phablet etc....., half of our students do not even own a smart phone and don't know how to use a computer. 

In order to make sure we took good care of this precious gift, we spent some time to draft up our computer usage rules and policies, and discussed in length with our students on how to use the computer equipment appropriately and responsibly. 

The rules and policies seem to be very common as we see in many computer labs, e.g. keep the area clean, wash hands before using the computers, no food or drinks, and sign-in and sign-out form, no games and videos, etc. We want to teach our students their responsibilities to take care and use the computer equipment and learn to how to use it appropriately.

There were so much to consider before we decide what kind of computer we should purchase.  Factors like theft, maintenance, durability and the software our students need.   After much debate and back & forth, we decided to buy 3 desktops with i3 processor, so that it is powerful enough to run the programs our students would need e.g. MS Word, MS Excel, MS Powerpoint, QuickBook, AutoCAD, Photoshop...etc. 

After the computer arrived, we setup individual username and password for each students for each computer. When the password was given out to each student, they were all very thankful and feel very special to have their own password!  

We started our computer classes with our students for 2 weeks now.  Although our students need to share the computers during class, they are still very excited about having computer classes. Our first class was checking on their typing skill.  You can see they are trying their best to type (even it's very hard for them!)

Our first goal (for the next 6 weeks) is to learn MS Word while creating their own CV. During the class, we gave a sample resume for them to follow and type.  They all spent over an hour to work on that with many struggles......

The 2nd class was about MS Word basic formatting functions, e.g. how to choose fonts, change color, alignment, change size,....etc. They also learn how to create a new table!

In the 3rd class, we gave them a quiz to to encourage them to practice more on their own free time, then continue to teach more MS Word formatting e.g. bullet, number, spell check, etc. We praise God for the new computer equipment and new classes that added to our dormitory and enable them to study and learn more.

Please continue to pray for our students for the growth in Christ, and other skills.