This past month we spent our ministry at New Life Fellowship Church. We were ablet to go into villages, get involved in a bunch of ministries, and get to hear peoples hearts and testomonies. Every person has a different past, maybe different trials, yet the Lord has brought them to greatness and a new life with him.
These are their stories….
Sony
Cham Naum is a village of about 800 people. There is only one ch
urch with about 15 strong members involved. The church was built by the Joyce Myers foundation. This village is very poor so without the funding from this foundation they would probably never get a church building. Sony is one the members of the church. She is 21 years old. Sony was born into a very poor family. About three years ago she made the best decision of her life, to follow the Lord.
The pastor of this church came to her home to evangelize and invite her to church. She agreed but she went solely to hang out. The Lord really spoke to her heart and she wanted to keep going back. Then Sony began to study the word. She began to read stories in the Bible and it began to transform her life. She read things like, “God is good” and “Jesus is the Savior” and started to believe it. That’s when she gave her life to Christ. The Lord started to change everything about her life. She was really shy and didn’t have many friends but the Lord gave her courage and now goes to other provinces and shares the gospel. She also leads and was involved in the health care program through New Life.
Through the church her family got hooked up with Children at Risk and her nephew became a sponsored child. New Life Fellowship provided food for the family to eat, enough money to send the children to school and buy them school supplies and clothes, and helped her family start their own business. Their silk weaving business has provided enough money for her family to build a new house and all live together. It also has allowed her family to make a living by themselves without support anymore. Sony likes the business but has dreams of one day opening up her own small grocery store.
Leap
The first time Leap stepped foot into New Life Fellowship she wasn’t a Christian, she had been Buddhist her whole life. Leap was at New Life to study English in the student center program which is designed to teach students skills for the future. While she was in the program one of her friends invited her to attend a service. She said yes and went. Leap really enjoyed the service and started going often. One day pastor Jesse McCaul preached a sermon that really touched her heart. He invited anyone who wanted to get prayer to come forward. Leap decided that night to give her life to the Lord so she came to the altar. She was crying uncontrollably. Soar, Pastor Jesse’s wife, prayed with her. Leap said in her prayer, “Lord if you are real heal my leg and let my parents accept my decision to be a Christian”. After she prayed her leg was healed and when she told her parents about her decision they were accepting of her choice. At the point on she decided to follow the Lord with all that she had. Now Leap is involved in the worship team at New Life. She sings backup vocals for the band.
Sam Arang
It has been five months since she was healed and Sam Arang is serving the Lord with all that she has. At 68 she has an amazing testimony and a supernatural joy about her. The Lord has done miraculous things in her life and she has lived to tell her story.
Twelve years ago Sam Arang starting bleeding and was unsure what was the problem was. Her daughter passed away from cancer and her granddaughter was left orphaned so she took her in. During the first year of her sickness she went to the traditional doctor and he only gave her natural medicine. The natural medicine didn’t help and caused her to become sicker.
During the next year her bleeding continued and became worse. Sam Arang decided to go to a doctor in Phnom Penh by the approval of her husband. Her husband was the village witch doctor and normally he would not allow his patients to go to the doctor. In hopes of Sam Arang getting cured he allowed her to go. When she met with the doctor he told her she had cancer. She had a mass growing in between her legs and the doctor told her she needed to have surgery to remove it. At this point Sam Arang felt helpless. She said” I had no hope and didn’t have money to do the surgery. I also didn’t want to deal with the stitches and pain”. So she didn’t get the surgery.
After years of not getting better Sam Arang turned to the help of Christians. The people in her village started shunning her because her smell was so bad and because she was bleeding so much. So she went to Mol the Christian leader of her village and asked for help. He didn’t have a church at the time so he took her to a church ten kilometers from her house. The Christians there prayed for her. They felt really sorry for her but had hoped that if it was in the Lord’s will he would heal her. She decided to make a commitment to the Lord. In her commitment she said,”Lord if you heal me that I will completely give my life to you”.
Sam Arang’s condition continued to get worse. She got so sick that she was unable to go to church anymore. During the twelfth year of having cancer the light of hope was found. New Life Fellowship sent out two men to disciple people in the village and to train leader Mol to become a pastor. They also helped get a building for the church to meet in. So Sam Arang went to leader Mol again and asked for prayer. For one month the members of the church and the two pastors from New Life prayed for her. After that one month she stopped bleeding. She was miraculously healed.
Now Sam Arang is amazed by the miracle God has done for her. The Lord has brought her from the point of brokenness to a new life in him. Now she is becoming an evangelic Christian. She said” I’m excited to go into the entire village and preach the good news”. Many people have also come to know the Lord through her. Before her husband passed away he stopped being a witch doctor and gave his life to the Lord. It saved his granddaughter from carrying on the family job and becoming the next witch doctor. Also her granddaughter gave her life to the Lord because she saw her grandmother get healed. Sam Arang is living proof that there is great power in prayer and that the Lord is faithful.
Chatorn
Chatorn is a 15 year old male from Roka Tom village. Roka Tom is a quiet village made up of 130 homes and is about 30 minutes from Phnom Penh. He heard about Jesus from the Christian leader of the village named Mol. Chatorn decided to follow Jesus because he said God is the real and true God. His favorite part about following Jesus is to teach people how to worship. His family is really poor and is made up of 4 children and his mother, his father passed away from unknown reasons. He is the youngest child and all his other siblings work in the factory which is really hard work. They don’t have enough money for food, cloths, school or any other necessity. He is now involved in children at Risk. Children at risk have provided rice, oil, fish, and many other goods to better the life of Chatorn and his family. He now is able to go to school and has clothes to wear there. He has been involved in this program for only 3 months. He said if it wasn’t for Jesus and New Life he would have a really difficult life. It has changed his life. Chatorn has dreams somebody of working for a tourist company. He also has a passion to evangelize to his family and others in his village. He wants to encourage others his age that God is the only true God and that we are to obey our parents. His prayers are that his family one day may all live together under the same house.
Darlin
Darlin is a 13 year old female from Roka Tom, a village just outside Phnom Penh. She came to know Jesus through the miraculous healing of her grandmother and also by the evangelism of leader Mol. She was orphaned at a young age through the death of her mother and the abandonment of her father. Her mother had lung cancer and passed away 10 years ago and her father left her for another family. Darlin is an only child and is taken care of by her widowed 68 year old grandmother named Sam Arang. Because she is supported by her grandmother they are very poor. Her grandmother sells rice in season and that is there source of income. She now is involved in Children at Risk and has been for the past 3 months. Children at risk have provided her with goods such as fish, rice, and sugar. It also has allowed her to attend school. She goes to school Monday through Friday and works really hard keeping up on her school work. She wants to encourage people her age to study hard and also to focus on Christ. Darlin has dreams of one day becoming a pastor and she wants to lead people to have a relationship with Jesus. Her prayers are that God would keep her in his way and that she would inquire wisdom from the Lord. She also wants God to touch her father’s heart.
Village
“It didn’t rain for six months and people couldn’t plant anything. All we could do is pray”, said leader Saphorn. She is the Christian leader of her village. They hadn’t seen rain for six months and every hope of making any income was diminishing. Without rain the crops couldn’t grow and her village relied on crops for everything. The non-believers of the village celebrated Satan in hopes that the rain would come, but it didn’t. One day the church had a meeting and prayed for the rain to fall down. After the meeting it rained a lot. The floodgates were opened up. This miracle allowed people to see the glory of the Lord. Saphorn said,” After the rain came people kept talking about how good Jesus was”. This miracle increased the village’s faith.
