As I prepared for the trip, I remember one of my pastors saying, “I know that you will come back a different person…what I want to hear are the stories about what God has done!!”
So, here are some of the amazing things God did during our time in the Steung Mean Chey slum of Phnom Penh, Cambodia:
Multiple physical healings!: chest pain relieved, breathing restored, eyesight returned to normal, fever broken instantly
Multiple hearts turned to the Lord!! stories below
During our last afternoon at the slums, we had a revival. We invited as many people in the slum as we could find to tell them about it , and even had some of our squadmates come!! It was an amazing time of prayer, worship and more prayer for the people…and of course, God showed up and astounded us with His presence!! Physical healings, hearts turned to Jesus, and other God things happened that afternoon through the MUD and heat!! Read on for some of the stories…
Praise the Lord for His glory resounds among His people!!
This is TR, who is a worship leader at another church in town. He is a young man on FIRE for the Lord, who gave up his Friday afternoon to spend time with us in the slums, sharing the love of Jesus with his people. Throughout our many thanks to him for sacrificing his time, he stopped us with thanks for his own for taking him to the slum. The Lord blessed his obedience because he told us that he would have never agreed to go out in the pouring rain and mud to stand and hear about the Lord, as the people in the slums did that afternoon! PRAISE the LORD for He is GOOD!!
The girl that we are praying with here came to the revival, not knowing what was going on nor knowing anything about God. She came forward for prayer, also stating that she wasn’t sure what she wanted prayer for…the girl on the left is one of my squad mates whose teammate had ministered to the girl in the white shirt, Ronni…she came to the Lord just days before we encouraged her to be praying with this girl who was “hungry” but didn’t know what would fulfill it! Ronni shared her story with this girl and explained that she had come to the revival because the Lord was pursuing her!! What an amazing God we serve that He would bring a new believer to the revival to bring another soul into the Kingdom!!! Praise the Lord for our God is so BIG!!
This man we had prayed with earlier in the month…and God did a transforming work in Him!! At the revival, we saw him praising the Lord, and this transformed man went to the front and exhorted his fellow neighbors to seek the Lord and challenged them to “rise up!!” Even before the revival, we saw a physical transformation in this man…Sandy, the nurse practitioner in the slums, mentioned that the Lord had begun a good work in him!!
These are the beautiful people that we came alongside this month, ministering in the slum.
The sight of the Lord’s REVIVAL in Steung Mean Chey…a day that, we believe, changed an entire community! Because His love is contagious and will infect all those around it!! Whether under tents, sitting on plastic chairs in MUD or sitting in a beautiful elaborate church, God shows up when you invite His presence!!! After the majority of the people at the revival went forward for prayer, Sandy mentioned that it was not because the “white people” requested it from them. She knows the people and where they have come from, their struggles…and she stated that they were genuinely seeking the Lord as they stepped forward for prayer!! Praise the Lord, for He pursues His people and never forsakes them!!
During one of our first days doing home visits with the health volunteers, we prayed for a woman who had a severe fever that had lasted several days. She was visibly feverish, with sweat beading on her forehead and arms. By the time we were done praying with her, her fever had broke and the sweat was vanishing!! Before we left the slum that day, she came over, showed us that her fever was completely gone and that she was completely healed!!! PRAISE the Lord for He heals the sick!!
That same day, we also prayed for a woman who responded to the message about God wanting to heal our “sick” hearts by saying that “sometimes I have anger in my heart towards other people.” We prayed over her and later learned that she was a new Christian of about two months. As we saw her throughout our time in the slums, there was a visible lightness and joy about her.
During one of the first days in the slum, my teammate, Natalie, was asking the question,
“Why? Why are we here Lord??”
She promptly looked down and this is what she saw.
Oh, Lord, may I never forget why I am here…to be bringing joy to the
hopeless, the unloved, the ones who don’t know the JOY that I have.
hopeless, the unloved, the ones who don’t know the JOY that I have.
