Journey with God: #57 - Prayer Needed - Youth Gospel Camp is coming!

TRUST & OBEY is the theme of our 3-Day Youth Gospel Camp in our students hometown in less than 3 weeks (April 10-12). Amy and I are so overwhelmed with our regular dorm program and Easter while preparing for the camp. Our dorm leaders are helping with translation and some of the logistics. Amy will be leading all the music worship --- She is training our dorm worship leaders to help lead the congregation in singing praises and as you may remember, we have been teaching our students traditional hymns. Also Amy is organizing and training our students to sing as a choir. Choir presentation is a brand new concept to them as they are so influenced by contemporary secular and church music with lead-singer(s), a drum and some guitars……. One of our goals is to introduce to these youth what is good worship music and how to appreciate hymns.

I will be giving an overview of God’s characters through the book of Genesis using Adam & Eve, Abraham and Joseph; and then presenting the Gospel. The emphasis will be on “Trust & Obey” in our Christian lives and following Jesus as a life-long journey instead of a one-time application. We are using our students to do some skit and presentations to share a few of these Bible stories.

We certainly need your prayers in so many aspects and the most important is for us to present God’s word in its completion to these youth and to our dorm students and God will give them a repenting heart to follow Him.

Secondly, in recent months, we are very troubled to see more and more so called “christian ministries” here in Phnom Penh that exploit young people’s emotions, and experience thru concert styled music, bouncing up and down in the worship hall, exciting activities outside of churches, food, classes, and many benefits etc…... Most of the guest speakers that these churches invited are Word of Faith preachers (faith healer, prosperity preachers) from USA. There is no teaching of Repentance, no teaching of Obedience, no teaching of Sin and all these young people consider themselves Christian and they believed they are saved. It is just very scary and we certainly felt helpless in this aspect. We felt very burden to turn them to God’s word but really don’t know where to start. Many of these are the biggest churches both local and international (English/Khmer). Please pray that God will give us guidance of what to do and pray for these youth to seek God’s word themselves and for all of us to have a heart of discernment.

Lastly, please pray for the camp, there are still so many uncertainties including the number of youth, the technical difficulties and also our budget. We expect about 100+ youth will join a month ago but now the estimates may drop to below 100. From what we heard, many youth may go to work during the month long Khmer New Year break in the province. The drought in the past farming season (El-Nino effect) has hurt many families in Cambodia. Therefore, many youth rather work in the field than pay a small fee to go for the church camping. Moreover, we have not been doing any fundraising for the camp but we trust that God will provide thru all of you when the time comes. Please pray for the youth for their heart to seek God and pray that the youth comes to the camp not because of fun games, t-shirts and food, but they come with their seeking hearts.

Photos - Practice singing as Choir for the camp!

Practice our camp theme song - "Trust and Obey"

Learn new hymns: He Lives, Christ Arose, In Christ Alone

1st time for our students to practice to sing as choir

Introducing how to sing "do re me fa so la ti do". 1st time they hear and learn about it!

Most of our children (in US or HK) take it for granted for regular Music class at school.
But it is such a privilege for our students can learn how to sing.