Cambodia. Where do we start? This country has seen tremendous evil. Trauma. The scars still fresh from the Khmer Rouge in the mid 1970-1980s. Genocide that essentially impacted the face of every family in some way. In a country of only roughly 7 million when the Khmer Rouge took over, 2 million were killed. A quarter of the population. Unimaginable. The evidence still visible at times.
Yet, we were so humbled by this culture and its beautiful people during our month there. We were both stunned by their love, joy, and generosity. What a redemption story the Lord is writing for these people. Their culture has so much of Jesus’ heart embedded in it organically. The thought of revival here amongst a culture that already loves so well. Wow. This would be, and will be, a powerful place for the Kingdom.
*Beautiful Cambodian sunsets*
We lived in north-west Cambodia in a town called Sisophon. Our team worked with a local host named Dara. He is an amazing guy with a heart to see the lost and unreached of Cambodia encounter Jesus. We taught English and partnered with the local church doing community outreach and prayer ministry as well during our month. We taught with International Foreign Language School or IFLS. We camped on the roof of the school for the month, catching almost every sunrise. Such a special place.
*Our orange home*
*The roof was the ideal place for sunrise time with the Lord*
Our teaching was M-F in the afternoon to evenings. We taught elementary age kids in a program called Bubbles and then ages 12-30 in a program called Hemispheres. Our teaching was a means to build relationships with the staff and students in hopes to share Jesus and the gospel with them and boy did the Lord open many doors! We followed curriculum to an extent, but then also had freedom to do special sessions on goals and dreams, favorite music, which lead to a homework project of looking up Hillsong on youtube, and Austin being able to share the gospel with his class and I (Ally) sharing parts of my testimony with my class, during which I was able to directly talk about how Jesus healed and restored my heart. I spoke directly on finding our identity in Christ, not in what the world tells us we are or need to be and that spoke powerfully to many of the girls and we had some really good one on one talks as well after. The students were hungry to learn and as we got to pour out love on them it was amazing to see the Lord being to till the soil of seeds we were planning by the end of the month. We loved teaching, and after 3 weeks straight, saying goodbye to our students was some of the hardest goodbyes so far this year.
*Austin’s Bubbles class*
*One of Ally’s Hemisphere’s classes*
In the mornings before teaching we did community outreach with members of the church we were attending. This entailed house and school visits and prayers over community members for healing, restoration, and freedom. We saw the Lord move powerfully and seeing the hunger and faith in local believers was humbling.
*Austin sharing at a school*
*A local woman we ministered too. So sweet.*
Even in day to day life, outside of scheduled ministry, the Lord is at work. Just like He is every day in yours, He is inviting us to partner with Him in loving people every day. Austin has a pretty amazing encounter to share of the Lord working through him and a team member Ben early one morning:
Before I share this story I want you to think about a few things. The first is, do you really believe that God can use you to do amazing things? Not just heartwarming and good memories, but do you really believe that God is going to use you to completely change the trajectory of the world and people’s lives?
The next thing I want you to think about is this question, how am I allowing myself to be available to God throughout each day? If you have been reading our blogs you will find that there has been a common theme in most of the blogs that we’ve have written. I have been asking and challenging people to be open and truly listen what God is speaking to you as an individual today. Before reading this story, I want you to take a moment and ask yourself a question, have you been trying to truly stop more and become more perceptive to what God is doing around you? I have been privileged to be in some incredible places and circumstances these past several months, but what has been made abundantly clear to me is that it truly doesn’t matter where you are or what you are doing. God is moving in every place all around the world in miraculous ways. I can confidently say that I have learned, grown, and experienced the Lord in new and powerful ways. The question I want you to ponder before reading this story is, have you learned, grown, and experienced the Lord in new and powerful ways? I ask that you take 2 minutes to sit in front of your screen and pray and ask God if you have.
Every morning in Sisophon at around approximately 5am we were greeted with the wonderful and undeniable sounds of Barbie girl being blasted from large tower speakers in the plaza adjacent from the English center that we slept on the roof of. This was my call to head down to the plaza to begin my workout. This was my routine for much of our time in Cambodia, every morning I began to relish it and feed off of the energy that came from the plaza each morning. People would be walking, running or performing Zumba to Barbie girl and an eclectic Asian mix of high tempo songs. I would work out each morning close by a large pagoda where devote Buddhists would make their daily offerings and prayers. I made part of my ministry for the month to include prayer for the people that walked up to the pagoda while I would exercise.
One morning I was greeted by the sounds of Barbie girl dancing in my ear as I awoke in my tent and the first thought that went through my mind was I am exhausted and I can’t wait to go back to sleep, I am going to skip the workout this morning. The next thought that went through my head was I promised my friend Ben that I would meet him downstairs to workout. I drew myself out of bed hoping that Ben would still be asleep and I could sneak off to sleep. I later found out as Ben and I were making our way to our work out location that he had a similar train of thought this morning. We both agreed that we made it this far so we might as well workout. Little did we know what was in store for us that morning.
Ben and I put in our headphones and completed our stretches and were about to begin our run when a woman slowly sauntered over to us. She appeared to be quite pensive and not very happy as most people we had encountered in Cambodia. The woman was dressed normal, nothing about her gave us any pause or hesitation. She was almost so normal that we didn’t notice her, until she approached us with a hand extended. We stopped and reached back out to her. We attempted to greet her in Khmer, the local language, and she didn’t respond. We tried to greet her in English and once again no response. After standing there for a moment with no response she suddenly burst into tears. Immediately we offered her a seat on the bench nearby. We sat with her unable to communicate or say anything just hold this woman’s hands as she cried. After a few moments she placed our hands on her belly and it became apparent that she was pregnant. She continued to cry and so Ben and I did the only thing that we could. We began to pray, and we prayed, and we prayed, asking God what do we do? After several minutes she pointed at me and pointed at her purse which had a grocery bag tied to it. She indicated to me that she wanted me to untie this grocery bag. After I untied the bag I pulled out the item inside, it was a smoking chemical for killing bugs. I was confused by what this might be and I held it in my hand as I prayed and then the Lord made it clear to me that she was going to take this poison to kill her baby. I pointed at the poison and then at her belly and she nodded yes and began to sob. I began to cry as well overcome at the idea of this desperate mother wanting to take poison to end her child’s life. I gestured at the poison and shook my head no and held the poison behind my back and through her sobs she nodded in agreement. I pointed to her and to her baby and in Khmer told her that Jesus loves you. After sitting with her for a period of time she got up and began to walk over to the pagoda to pray. During that time Ben and I began to intercede and ask God that she would find nothing there and would only be able to walk away from that experience finding Jesus. After many tense moments of prayer passed we looked up and she was nowhere to be found. We felt disappointed that we didn’t get to continue to pray for her, then suddenly she was walking back over to us. The woman placed our hands on her belly once again and softly cried. During our whole encounter with the woman she seemed like something physically was “off” with her. I couldn’t figure what was wrong with her, but as we sat there with her I prayed that God would protect her and her baby against anything that might be going on inside of her. As I prayed this she suddenly began to gag. I increased the fervor of my prayer and she began to vomit onto the concrete again and again. After she had finished you could distinctly make out several pills in her vomit. The woman began to point at them and then point at her baby and began to sob once again. The Lord made it clear to me that she had taken these pills to harm herself and the baby. Once again we spent several minutes in prayer over her and her baby, asking God what do we do in this situation. The woman stood up and gestured for us to follow her. She began to flag down motorbikes driving on the road and talking with them. After the third motorbike she flagged down and spoke to I don’t know if the woman or the driver used the word clinic or the Lord gave me a divine understanding, but I asked the woman in English do you want to go to the clinic? She looked at me and excitedly nodded. This is first time that she had responded to any words or form of communication that we had tried with her the past 2 hours. By the grace of God about a week prior we had been praying and hoping for a chance to go and visit a hospital to pray for people and for Ally to make some labor and delivery ward connections. Once we had established that she wanted to go to the clinic, I knew exactly where I was supposed to take her. We walked the streets in the early morning to the clinic. Where we finally found someone who spoke a little English and was able to provide a little bit of translation for us. Ben and I were able to exchange our names with the woman and she let us know that she was 5 months pregnant with her son. We passed the mornings events long to the staff at the clinic and they took her in a room to begin to check on her, so Ben and I walked away from the clinic in awe and shock of the events that had just transpired. We had no way of being able to communicate with this woman yet the Lord had highlighted us to this woman. We were able to help save this woman and her son even though we were completely unqualified and unequipped to handle that situation.
Having had more time to reflect on that morning I am left with a few thoughts. What if I had given into my desire to simply just roll over and go back to sleep? I believe that was the enemy trying to prevent me and Ben from being down in the plaza that morning. The Lord allowed Ben and I to be used to bring about His divine will and save a life even though we literally couldn’t do anything. All we could do was pray. The question it left in my mind is how can I allow myself to be used by the Lord even in the impossible situations?
This is the thought I want to leave you with is how are you allowing yourself to be interruptible by the Lord even in the mundane routine of life? Ben and I could have easily just gone back to sleep or just been focused on our agenda to work out that we would have totally missed the opportunity to interact with that woman? How can you allow yourself to be interrupted and respond to the Lord. God loves every person in this world so much that He is able to use complete unequipped and unqualified strangers to change people’s lives and literarily save their lives. All because he loves them so much.
To the boy that I may never meet,
God loves you so much. He has loved you and your mother from the beginning. He has a purpose for your life. I am praying that you will grow up to be a powerful man of God who loves his family and community in a radical way that makes others notice your desire to serve like Jesus. I believe that the Lord will raise generations of people from you that will spread His kingdom all through Cambodia and into the world. I pray and believe all of this in Jesus’ powerful and Holy Name.
Amen.
We are wrapping up our time in Laos and will have updates on ministry here soon. Thank you for continuing to pray for us and our team as we head into month 8.
We love you all.
Austin and Ally
