“I have received full payment, and more. I am well supplied…And my God will supply every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:18-19).
“How many stars does your hotel have?” one missionary asked his missionary brothers.
“Mine is a three-star hotel,” one boasted.
“I stay in a five-star hotel,” chimed in another.
“I have you all beat,” a third missionary named Roger interjected. “I sleep in the all-star hotel.”
A moment’s silence held the other missionaries in suspense.
“My bed is outside,” he explained. “And from it I can see all the stars.”
Four years ago, Roger and Deb DePedro left their Filipino homeland behind and followed the Lord Jesus to Cambodia as missionaries. They had just one hundred dollars to their credit, because they had expended their last pennies on their incoming flight. So for some time, while Deb began teaching English in the shadow of a mango tree, Roger would sleep beneath a canopy of stars in a borrowed bed. And there he dreamed of what the Almighty might do in the village of Po Pehl, Cambodia.
That dream began, actually, with a single vision five years earlier. While Roger was a seminary student in the Philippines in 2005, his mind was branded during one chapel service by the image of a cross on which a “C” had been carved. At first, he took it to mean that the Lord was calling him to China. Little did he know that the nearby nation of “Kampuchea” had in recent years changed its name to “Cambodia.” After a one-month outreach trip to Cambodia, Roger understood the meaning of his vision. The Lord was summoning him—not to China—but to the Khmer Kingdom of Cambodia.
Yet at first the vision seemed more like a nightmare. Roger admits that he resisted God’s call for three years. Never One to let His children settle for less than their highest joy, the heavenly Father began disciplining Roger. He took away his financing business and everything he had.
Meanwhile, the Spirit of God was at work in Deb, who was then a college student with aspirations of becoming a professional teacher. When presented with the opportunity to take a six-month discipleship course through Youth With A Mission (YWAM), Deb was a bit hesitant. But she told the Lord that if He would help her pass her final exam, she would take the YWAM course. It was there that Deb met Roger. And quite independently of Roger, the Sovereign Lord had lit within Deb’s heart a flame of love for the Cambodian people.
The two married in September of 2009 with the intention of planting churches in the remotest villages of Cambodia. There was just one problem. They had no money. So instead of letting their hearts sink, they instead sunk to their knees in prayer. In due course Roger found himself in a conversation with a fellow missionary who said that if God would bless him, he would support Roger to the tune of $100 per month. Later they again reached into empty pockets and cried out to the Lord for the final $300 necessary to fly to Cambodia. In time a brother in Christ covered the $300, and the wings of God carried them to the Khmer Kingdom.
Roger began to pastor a church in Siem Reap, and the DePedros saw nineteen souls baptized. But it was still their God-given ambition to plant a family of faith among the unreached villages.
As Providence would have it, one day a fellow YWAM missionary found a half-naked and profoundly mentally ill woman named Ratch roaming the streets of Siem Reap. Upon inspection of the woman it seemed to Roger and Deb that her condition was demonically caused. So they prayed for Ratch; and by the finger of God the demon fled from Ratch and so did the mental illness! Ratch’s full recovery, however, was long and painful. She writhed so mightily under the weight of post-partum depression that she had to be chained and confined to her home. But Roger and Deb would regularly visit Ratch to minister to her emotional, physical, and spiritual needs.
Then came the watershed moment. As the missionaries served Ratch, they found favor with her mother Ram. They shared the Gospel with her, and she believed in the Lord Jesus Christ!
When Roger visited Ram’s native village of Po Pehl and saw her property, the still small voice of God rang in Roger’s ears: “This is the place.” So Deb taught under her mango tree; and Roger dreamed under his stars; and up from the arid soils of Po Pehl, their little seed of faith, watered as it was by the Lord of the Harvest, grew into a fledgling church. For when Ram, the family matriarch, was soundly converted to Christ, over a dozen members of her extended family, including Ratch and her sons, were born into the Kingdom as well!
At one point along the way Roger saw a vision of a building resting on Ram’s property. The plot of land, however, was anything but a picturesque place for ministry: it was a dense jungle of trees and heavily barricaded ant hills. And then again there was the problem of finances. It was another impossible dream. But in faith Roger began readying the land for a building—tree by tree, ant hill by ant hill—his hands blistered because he and Deb could not afford gloves, much less a sizeable building in which to carry out their ministry. Then as Roger and Deb prayed, the Lord moved in the heart of a Christian sister. As she prayed, she felt compelled to connect Roger and Deb with some generous supporters. “And what,” Roger asked, “do you ask in return for funding the building?” “Only that you take me out for dinner sometime,” came the response. And so, out of that same Po Pehl soil, a building sprung up.
Meanwhile, Roger’s missionary friend kept faithfully funding the couple at a clip of $100 per month. One month, however, the check did not come in. As she prayed, Deb felt strangely led to check her e-mail. Lo and behold, she found in her inbox a message from a couple of generous Buddhist friends she had once met on a plane, asking if they could “send them something” by the hand of a friend who was visiting Siem Reap. Frankly, Roger and Deb weren’t expecting very much. But as it turned out, they received a gift of $150—which was more than enough to pay for two months’ rent!
Still other stories could be told and have been told. But Roger and Deb summed up their testimony with a few potent words: “When God guides, God provides.” Roger and Deb attest that although they have had virtually no source of sustainable income these past four years and no “plan B,” they have never run out of rice or fuel. They answered the call; their Father covered the bill.
From the moment our team met Roger and Deb, we have been inspired by their loyalty to the Lord, by their disarming humility, by their joyful resignation to the Holy Spirit, and above all, by the depth of their faith. And for the past couple of weeks, it has been our joy to serve them and share in their dream for Cambodia.
Let it be known that the God who brought light out of darkness in creation, and the God who brought life out of death at the resurrection, is the same God who brings impossible dreams to pass for His glory today.
Perhaps if our dreams lay within the realm of possibility, we have not yet dreamt as God would have us dream. What impossible dream has God sent your way?
