We arrived in Cambodia this week. We are living in Kompang Cham this month and working/living
at the youth development center.
Our ministry contact is a beautiful Pilipino lady named Cecil. When we arrived to our ministry, we were
under the impression that this month we would be teaching English. However, we soon realized that they use
English classes to draw the attention of the youth living in this city and
share the gospel with them.
Kompang Cham is the most highly populated Muslim city in
Cambodia. Mostly all of the students
are Muslim or Buddhist. Mostly all
of the students do not know who Jesus is and have never read the Bible.
Cecil expressed her desire for us to teach on “Identity” this week.
As we began to make lesson plans, we realized that we cannot begin to
explain identity without first explaining that our students were created for a
purpose and by a Creator.
During our second day we decided to have each class read
Genesis 1. All the students read
out loud from a Kmer Bible for the first time. They had never heard this story before. This was the first time they ever
read the Bible.
I began to describe that they were created in the image of God. After He created man, He said that it
was “very good“.
We passed around an inkpad and paper and had every person
put their fingerprint down. We
then asked if they thought God spent just as much time and care in making
them. Most of them were shy and looked down. But one of the men spoke up and said “Maybe”. They didn’t know.
I then explained that each fingerprint in the world is
completely different. Out of the
billions and billions of people in the world, God decided to make each and
every fingerprint different and special.
He must have spent time on each of us to make us each different and
special.
I also read Psalm 139:13-18
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts,[a] God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand –when I awake, I am still with you.
I said that even before we were born, God knew who we were
and how he wanted to make us. Not
only that, but the Creator thinks about us. He thinks about us more than the number of grains in the
sand. So in fact we must be
important and special to the Creator.
The message we tried to express to the students is that we are all alike and
different in many ways. “Same Same but Different”. And that God made us all unique and special. He made us for a purpose and has a plan
for our lives.
This was the first time they have ever heard they were created for a reason
and the first time they have ever heard about their Creator.
