My Name is Matthew

It looks like this month we will be ministering in a very
specific way-TEACHING! Funny that this is where the Lord brings me when I left
behind a career of teaching back home. Anyway, a school was just recently
opened up down the street called “Solomon Independent School” (SIS for short)
which opens its doors from 2pm-7pm for English and Computer classes for free
for the public.

There has been a very amazing group from a University in
Singapore here with us this week. They came to stay in Baray, Cambodia at our
contact’s Homestay to do community services including build wells, repair huts,
teach English, and do eye exams giving out free eye glasses when needed. This
team donated and set up 22 laptop computers so that SIS would have a much
needed computer lab. Over the last few weeks when they’ve been here, they have
facilitated Computer and English classes at SIS which have been greatly
appreciated by the Cambodian locals. Esther’s desire is for us to take over
once they leave tomorrow. We have had a little chance to shadow them this week
and look to begin leading these classes beginning tomorrow on our own. Three of
us: Kathleen, Nikki, and Sarah, will be teaching English from 2-4pm, 5-7pm.
Alecia, Tamara, and I will be conducting Computer classes from 2-7pm, they go
in 1 hour rotations for computer availability.

Yesterday I felt discouraged, it was my first time in the
Computer class and honestly I felt completely useless. I’ve never taught
computer before and plus I did not see how helping someone find the “Tab” key
was helping further God’s kingdom at all. After about 3 hours of walking around
the classroom pointing at screens and sweating immensely, I finally sat down in
the back of the room with my head in my hands and cried out to God in my heart.
“Why am I here Lord? I could be teaching back in the States, getting paid, and
not be hot and tired right now! I could be actually with people who speak
English and understand me when I talk!” instead of a response there was
silence…finally I lifted my head up and immediately a computer screen directly
to my left caught my eye.

The screen read:

MY NAME IS MATTHEW

I LOVE JESUS

..okay, crazy…so far we have encountered few Christians, and
the ones we have really haven’t been able to have much conversation with us
because of the language barrier. I scooted over to the computer and asked the
boy typing…”is your name Matthew?” He said, “yes” (in ENGLISH!!) I then said,
“Do you love Jesus?” He said, “Yes! I love Jesus very much!” Bahh….I cannot
tell you how excited I was to hear those words come from his mouth. (It was
also at that moment that my teammate overheard me asking this boy these
questions and looked over at me thinking I was pretty bold in approaching him
lol)…Matthew and I proceeded to have a conversation in very broken English but
the gist was that He didn’t used to know Jesus, but once went to church he
found Jesus and now has peace because Jesus provides and helps him when he
prays. His prayers were answered when he needed money for University, so he
loves Jesus very much.

In a country that is 93% Buddhist and 2% Christian….God is
ordaining incredible meetings already with fellow believers here. I was so
incredibly encouraged after my conversation with Matthew and look forward to
more conversations with my students in the days to come. There are also two
monks who come for typing class at the end of the day who are very reserved but
I pray that the Lord will open a few avenues for us to be able to converse and
witness to them in these coming weeks. Please pray for continued boldness in
our conversations and that the message of Jesus will transcend the language
barrier.