Journey with God: #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

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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.