Unsung Hero (n.): Men and women who are dedicated to serving some of the most impoverished populations in the world, yet rarely receive recognition for their dedication and service. These givers may also live with meager conditions but give consistently from an abundance of God’s love. Their names may not be in history books, their acts unknown to the rest of the world, while unrecognized, they shake a generation and move a culture, and ultimately build the Kingdom.
Team Kairos has spent our time in Cambodia looking for Unsung Heroes so that we might partner with them in the future. In our search, we ended up spending a few days with missionaries in Koh Kong: the Cox family. Some people on my team homeschooled the kids and we got to be a part of their family for a while. They are truly amazing people and it was an honor to be invited into their home. During our days of helping them out, we visited the Cham people, a villiage of Muslim fishermen. We went to do a prayer walk, smile, say hello, and begin building relationships with the people there. Foreigners don’t really come through, so people were interested in our presence. The first day we were there, we began talking to a Muslim woman who was squatting in the dirt, cutting up some fish. She asked why we were there and we told her because of Jesus. She said she didn’t know Jesus and when we asked if she would like to know about him, she said yes. If you met someone only for a brief moment, who knew nothing about Jesus, and you had one opportunity to tell them about Him, what would you say? This is the question we were faced with. I decided to take the initiative. I simply said something along the lines of, “I pray to Him when I am scared or need help and He gives me comfort and peace. I love Him because He loves me. He loves everyone and because He loves everyone, I love eveyone, and that’s why I’m here.” As I began saying these things, a large crowd started to gather around. The woman looked down the whole time and never stopped chopping her fish. The translator looked at me and said, “I don’t think she is interested.” With that we left. My teammate Lauren encouraged me and said that if that was the only thing that woman ever ended up hearing about Jesus, it was the right thing to say. We went back to the villiage the next day. We started off by talking to an old man, then there were four boys who were watching us who we could no longer ignore. We decided to teach them the song “Head Shoulders Knees and Toes”, which drew in some more children. Then we tought them the “Hokey Pokey” which drew in an audience. After that we played London Bridge with the kids and by this time we had a crowd of about 200 people and that’s not an exaggeration! Once we finished that, we felt like it was time to move on, so we waved goodbye and began walking…and about 50 children followed us. It reminded us of when Jesus would come to town and crowds would follow Him. Although the “Hokey Pokey” probably won’t bring anyone to the Lord, so many people saw us with Chris Cox and he will be continuing ministry there by building relationships. Kids there will know him as the guy who was with the girls who taught them fun songs.
We also helped the Cox family by making advertisements for people to come on short term missions, long term missions and to help with homeschooling their kids. Chris Cox also filmed our time with them to try and get people from their supporting churches to come visit on missions trips, and this was the result:
