#62 - Wish you all have a Christ-filled Christmas

Last month, we have been going through “This We Believe” as we mentioned in our last blog. We feel this is the most important part of building strong foundation for our students' faith. During the last 3 weeks,  we have been focusing on the Messiah, Jesus -- we studied both the Old Testament and New Testament, and even compare what other religions believe about "jesus" that is not the same Jesus from the Bible. Although it seems to be a series of simple Bible studies, but we want to encourage our students to read the Bible and get to know God more and more everyday.

* Please continue pray for us while we teach and proclaim God's word each day. May God help us to be faithful in preaching His word and have patient to each student.

** Please also pray for our students for those who already believe to keep their faith and build a stronger foundation.

*** Pray for the students who have not believe will open their hearts to understand and learn about the truth and believe in Jesus Christ.

For this Christmas holiday, our family will be visiting Hong Kong. We will be sharing at Clearwater Bay International Baptist Church on this Sunday (18 Dec) worship at 11AM. Feel free to come and meet us there!  Hope you see you in Hong Kong!

Located at: Clearwater Bay School清水灣小學
Address:Lot 235, DD229, Clear Water Bay Rd, Hong Kong

We wish you all have a Christ-filled Christmas!

Students singing worship songs on Sunday

Sunday worship - studying "This We Believe"

Team work during fellowship

Playing a game to put the Old testament events in order

Each group is giving a picture of the Old Testament event, e.g. Noah's Ark

There are about 15 to 20 events to sort out

Some students are reading through the Bible to find the answer

The students need to line up the events and tape them together

Reading the Old Testament in the Bible

Thomas is explaining each Old Testament Bible events

This would be the first time for some of the new students to hear the Bible events

#61 - Challenges in new school year...... continue

Praise God for new students to join our Discipleship Program

It has been very overwhelming with a new wave of new students that in the last 2 months.  This year, we have 15 new students just joined our Discipleship Program.  Praise God for bringing the new students to us, but there are also many challenges ahead.  Read more in detail below and pray for us for the issues that we are facing.

Issue #1: Do not know God
Over half of the new students have not been to church nor heard of the Gospel before.   Even though some of the students are recommended by some pastors from the village, many of them have not been to church or know what is the Bible.  Many of them are our current student’s cousins, neighbors, or friends of our students’ parents.  We are very thankful that God brought them to us, we are also worry about their overall spiritual needs.

Prayer Request:
Pray for our new students to open their hearts to get to know God.  Pray for our old students to strengthen their faith and learn how to be a good spiritual brothers and sisters to the non-believers.  

Issue #2: Sunday sermon, fellowship, and classes
With over 40 students, our nightly class is a bit over-crowded and their levels of Bible knowledge and English comprehension also varies greatly.

Because of that, we started a new series of Bible study: “This We Believe” by Stuart Olyott -- which is an introductory survey of the Christian faith.  We want to build a strong foundation in their faith and develop a heart to pursue God.  We are also taking this chance to train our old students as they become group leaders and help new students understands the Bible in class. 

Prayer Request:
Pray for us while we teach and proclaim God's word each day.  May God help us to be faithful in preaching His word and have patient to each student.

Issue #3: Scholarship
Praise God we have a few brothers and sisters partnering with our ministry to support our student scholarship.  We have been interviewing our students and learning about their needs and backgrounds.  There is no doubt they are all very poor and many of them are looking for work or even had worked during high-school to save money for university.  A few students show that they are just lazy in preparing themselves to study at university and plan to just wait for “hand-out” from churches (as many other churches do in Cambodia).

Prayer Request:
Please pray for us to have wisdom to use the scholarship fund to support the most needed students and for those who are willing to learn to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.  Pray for the students to be thankful for the scholarship support that they received from other brothers and sisters and work hard in their daily lives.

Issue #4: Facility problem – Water flow is too slow!
For those of us who has lived in a high-rise building  (10 floors to 50+ floors in Hong Kong) would have never thought water pressure would be a problem. Unfortunately in Cambodia, most houses are poorly built. The building that hosted our boys’ students only has 3 floors with 4 bathrooms but water pressure is very weak. We currently has 25 boys living in the building which is a major issue every morning when everyone either need to go to work or go to school at about the same time.  Two proposed solutions are: 1) Build an extra bathroom on the 2nd floor back balcony, but one problem will be there are only 10 months left with the building’s lease and there may have additional leaking problem; 2) Install a water pump to increase the water pressure.  Both solution costs almost US$300.

Prayer Request:
We pray that for God’s provision in this matter that we can find a suitable solution to solve this problem and funding for this.

We pray for your continuous support and partner with our ministry!

HOW TO SUPPORT US

In the USA, please send check:
Payable to: "Chinese Baptist Church of Northwest Suburbs"
Memo Line: "Thomas & Amy CAMBODIA"
Mail to: 4242 Kirchoff Road, Rolling Meadows, IL 60008

In Hong Kong, please send cheques:
Payable to "Clearwater Bay International Baptist Church"
Memo Line: "Thomas & Amy CAMBODIA"
Mail to: P.O. Box 65414, Tseung Kwan O Post Office, Hong Kong

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

More photos of the activities at our discipleship program in the last 2 months:

"This We Believe" - What is Bible?

Students write all the books in the Bible in English & Khmer

Posted all the books in Bible onto the wall, so the students can easily refer to them during Bible studies

Some students check the translation and some students decorating the writing

Explaining what are the books in Bible

Explaining the theme of various sections of the Bible

Old Testament and New Testament

Sermon topic: This We Believe -- What is Bible?

All the new students went back to hometown to get their high school documentation.
(empty seats on the right side!)

When all the new students finally returned back from their hometown, we discussed
the purpose of our discipleship and dormitory program to the new students.
Older students are sitting behind Thomas -- asking the new students to adhere to the rules at the dorm,
and look up to the older students as examples.

Students are divided into 7 groups -- mixing the old students with the new students.

Examining the sins in our lives and what the Bible says about it

An older student is helping the new student to find the Bible verses

#60 - Prayer Requests for our students

New school year has begun for our children – Gryphon is now Grade 5 and Joelle in Grade 3!  We had a very blessed summer to meet many of our friends in the Chicago area after we moved away almost 6 years ago! Thank you for many brothers and sisters who organized meetings for us to share our ministry with you. We pray that God will move more of you to partner with us or other ministries to fulfill the Great Commission and make disciples in all nations.

Sharing at the women's Bible fellowship at our church in Chicago

Sharing at the marriage fellowship

After the summer vacation, we were expecting to prepare for the new students to come to Phnom Penh to join our program. However, in the last two weeks, few students needed our immediate attention. Please pray for us, our students and their families:

(I) One student has quitted her job because not only her salary were given over 10 days late for the past two months; and her boss did not even give her the agreed upon salary as the boss said he will deduct the salary for all the Sundays and any holiday that she didn’t come to work. She left her job about a month ago so she has been living with very limited cash.

(II) One student’s family wanted her to leave our dorm due to a family’s sudden financial problem but she also told us her sister doesn’t like her to be in a Christian dorm. We are now working with her and providing her with a temporary rental scholarship to allow her to continue to stay. She may have problem with her living expenses in the coming months.


(III) One of our current scholarship student’s family also have some financial problem and no longer able to support her living expenses in Phnom Penh. She is struggling to buy food to cook and eat every day. Other students in the dorm are sharing food with her each day now and we are trying to help her in the short-run. In the long-run, we are seeking different ways to support her and helping her find an part-time or full-time work. 

Please pray for wisdom and guidance for us and pray for patient and strength for these students not to lose hope and be faithful among these difficult situations.

Other Prayer Requests:

1. Four (4) new Grade 12 high school students just joined our program. As we explained to some of you before, the quality of the public school in the province has deteriorated and the national exam requirement has gone up tremendously two years ago hence many high school students from province are looking for ways to come to Phnom Penh to study high school (at least senior year) to better prepare the National Exam (which is the requirement for university admission). We are happy to have 4 new Grade 12 high school students just joined our program. Please pray for them as they just come to the “big city” and learn to live by themselves with other brothers and sisters.

2. Need your prayer for our dormitory building lease. It’s been 2 years since we rent our 1st dormitory building. Praise God that the landlord wishes to renew our contract and even ask us for a longer term contract (more than 2 years), but as our operational expenses are all faith-based donation from brothers and sisters, we are not sure we can sign a lease that is longer than 2 years. Please pray for God’s provision on this matter.


3. New scholarship is needed for university students. Many “Grade 12” high school students are preparing for their National Exam in late August. While the exam result will come out around mid September, many students do not have the fund to pay for the tuition and living in Phnom Penh. We pray that more scholarships can be available through brothers and sisters, so that more students can continue their studies. The costs will be US$120 per month to support one student. (Please contact us if you are interested)


4. Additional Fund is need because of the increase of operation expenses. As Phnom Penh continues to develop, living expenses for our dorm and our family also continuous to increase. We also have additional expenses in various special projects like the Gospel Camp last April. Please pray for our financial needs and more brothers and sisters will support us financially.


5. Fund is needed to purchase new Khmer Bibles. We currently only have the bilingual version of the New Testament. Since June 2016, our students had been studying the Old Testament. We have been borrowing the Khmer Bibles from another organization and the Bibles need to be returned at the end of August. We are praying for funds to purchase 40 Khmer Bibles (with Old and New Testaments) and some Khmer Bible Study material. The costs will be around US$8-9 each (Bible) + $100 (Bible study materials) = US$ 450 (or HK$3500). (Please contact us directly if you would like to support to purchase New Khmer Bibles)



HOW TO SUPPORT US
In the USA, please send check:
Payable to: "Chinese Baptist Church of Northwest Suburbs"
Memo Line: "Thomas & Amy CAMBODIA"
Mail to: 4242 Kirchoff Road, Rolling Meadows, IL 60008

In Hong Kong, please send cheques:
Payable to "Clearwater Bay International Baptist Church"
Memo Line: "Thomas & Amy CAMBODIA"
Mail to: P.O. Box 65414, Tseung Kwan O Post Office, Hong Kong

Here are some photos for our recent project to study Old Testament's character.  Students are grouped into different team to read the Bible, write summary, and present the story.

#59 - Report Card

It has been extremely hot since April and 6 months of dry season since November last year but, May was the most brutal of all.  All the land was extremely dry and brown.

As for our students in the Discipleship Program, it has been almost a year since we have separated into the boys' dorm and girls' dorm.   Last few weeks, we have been busy preparing a “Report Card” for each of our students with personal comments. Our student leaders also helped us to grade their performance. Each student is graded on the following areas: attendance, class participation, homework, cleanliness, helpfulness, obedience (to the rules and listen to the leaders), and Bible interests.

We are happy to see half of our students had given an overall “A” grade for their performance and their eagerness to learn. We are also happy to see some of the students seem to have growing interests in learning and pay more attention in Bible studies and worship after the Gospel Camp in April. Even though we can never tell whether they have truly changed to follow Jesus, we are happy to see the seeds were sewed and we prayed that one day God will let the seed sprout and they will become the true disciples!

On the other hand, a handful of our students have been given warnings of their behaviors, and if they did not make any changes, they will be asked to leave the program. We pray that God will change their hearts, and listen to God’s Words, humble themselves, accept that we are all sinners and repent, and to follow Jesus.

How about ourselves? Who is given us the report card? As we stumble through our life, we know God is watching over us all the time on whatever we do. Although we live in Cambodia, a poor country that seems to lack of everything, but we know the only one thing that we all need is to know God and follow Him. So, when we call ourselves Christians and followers of Jesus, we are the representatives of God in our daily lives. And here is a prayer from our family: “Dear heavenly Father, wherever we go or whatever we do, may we be the salt and light for others, and to glorify your Name, so that others will know you are the only one and true God. "

As for our family, we are very excited that we will be visiting Chicago in July!  This is our first trip back to USA after leaving 6 years ago.  Joelle doesn't even recall what Chicago looks like =)   We will be sharing our ministry at our Chicago church CBCNWS and with other fellowships. Please pray for us for our health and safe travel!

Looking forward to meeting with our friends in the Chicago area!

Our students' grades
- this is the draft result from our discussion with student leaders

Fellowship night on Sat -- Joelle is eating her dinner while being the Projectionist.

Worship on Sunday

New Testament Bibles in English and Khmer.
We used it for class when we studies the 4 Gospels and Romans.

We also just borrowed 14 Bibles (New and Old Testament) in June
from another mission group from Hong Kong to study Old Testament
because we do not have the budget to purchase new Bibles for all the students. 

During Sunday worship - Gryphon and Joelle has been sitting in the back
although the weather is up to 40C with only 1 fan in the back

Every Sat during Fellowship,
Amy introduces new hymns to the students to sing,
so that the students learns that good hymn can help them to know more about Bible.

This is one of our architecture student's homework -- A Khmer traditional building

Amy discussed homework with one of the scholarship students
after Sunday worship

SURPRISE!!  We started a new series for our Sunday messages, and last Sunday when we start to on Exodus,
we have a visitor from Israel joined the worship.  She is a Messianic Jew!  Praise the Lord!!
She came with a university student group on a social work trip