Our team ventured about 3 hours southeast of Siem Reap to the beautiful, sunny Kampong Cham! This city of about 110,000 lies on the shore of Southeast Asia’s largest river, the Mekong. This will be the Elephant Gang’s home for 2 months.
I got the strong vibes of a 2nd-world soviet bloc city out of the 80s, as the main part of KC is very inner-city like while it’s quiet streets lie virtually empty. There’s a really cool bamboo bridge and nice shoreline walkway with a good number of cheap yet nice restaurants on it.
Our ministry is to serve alongside “Life of Mission” Presbyterian Church, shepherded by Pastor Socheat, a man in his mid 40s, who speaks minimal English. Despite language barriers, I can see clearly his heart for the people in the area to believe in Jesus and to get all the local Christians to be plugged into church.
Here, many of the children have already accepted Jesus by Pastor Socheat’s and others’ efforts. However, many adults are resistant to the good news.
From what I have learned, my new friends here tell me that the reason most of the adults are resistant is that they are either too distracted by wealth or see Christianity as only a Western religion and stick to Buddhism since it’s cultural.
I pray that this young generation rises up to remain strongly in the Lord and lovingly influence the older generations.
Life of Mission Presbyterian Church. Also our home!
The best part of my week was making a new friend named Sipha. Okay, I’ve gotta tell you about Sipha. He’s a real cool guy. He goes to school 13 hours a day, plays piano, is learning guitar, plays soccer regularly, and has huge faith. He just turned 20 on the 2nd, and my team got the chance to take him out to dinner to celebrate his birthday.
He told me he has never had anyone celebrate his birthday before! Un-real! So, we took him out to the local restaurant, got him some good grub, sang happy birthday, and Emily Weeks got doughnuts to celebrate. It was a nice and simple good ol’ American birthday. And from what I saw, I think he really enjoyed his birthday and that we celebrated him. And I know that God was celebrating him, too.
You know how I said he has huge faith? Sipha accepted Jesus 3 years ago from hearing the gospel through his friend (now his girlfriend ;)) and through Pastor Socheat. Sipha told me that a day after sitting down with Pastor Socheat over coffee asking questions about Christianity, he accepted Jesus and said that the Lord touched his heart.
His family was not happy with Sipha’s decision to accept Jesus. They soon afterward kicked him out of the house, and he’s been living at the church ever since. Sipha found Jesus to be of greater joy and of greater worth than all that life had to offer — he won’t trade anything for his faith in Jesus. He said that during that time, when he would feel sad over his family’s rejection, he would read his Bible and find joy and peace again. Praise the Lord.
Luke 18:29-30:
“Truly I tell you,” Jesus said, “No one who has left home… for the sake of the Kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.”
Now Sipha has an entire world of believers to call family.
I can’t help but worship God for how He comforted and helped Sipha. Now, he’s on fire for God and he’s got a great Kingdom dreams for his life. He plans to marry his girlfriend after graduating university, and then afterward be a missionary with her.
He has a heart for the people of his country to know Jesus. One thing I find amazing is that Sipha carves time out of his insanely busy schedule to read the bible and spend time with God just about every day.
Please join with me in prayer for the church, Sipha and the believers here to be strengthened and that they would bear much fruit from their faith. Pray that those resistant to the good news would have a softened heart. Pray for my team as we learn to live in our new conditions and love the people here and that we would make an impact and truly bless the ministry.
Thanks for reading!
Brandon
Teaching simple English to 5th grade Khmer students. Wish me luck…
*written with the permission of Sipha
