End of May 2024 Update
After two months of living and ministering in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Peter and I were feeling pretty confident about where to find things…until, that is, I needed to buy a dress for the wedding of some missionary friends. Forgetting that I am, by Asian standards anyway, an Amazon, we set out for a downtown market which we were told has EVERYTHING. Picture here a giant gutted stadium, stuffed with hawkers selling everything from clothes to produce to live animals, with hundreds of hot, harried customers bargaining at full volume. Of course, there were no dressing rooms. Of course, there were no mirrors. Of course, I had to try dresses on OVER my clothes in front of God and everyone, in 100-plus-degree heat, dragging XXL dresses over my XXXL hips, watched by a gaggle of entertained shopkeepers. Peter promptly went off to buy vegetables, perhaps feeling discretion was the greater part of valor. I was not amused.
As to other challenges, you’ll be glad to know we’re rapidly adjusting to rickshaw travel, less panicked when our driver squeezes through an impossibly small gap or careens up onto the sidewalk to bypass traffic, less prone to hyperventilate when 8 rows of vehicles jostle for position in the width of 3 lanes, less apoplectic when the light changes to red… and everybody keeps right on going. As friends of ours who’ve been here for years advised us, “Just think of yourself as a fish in a school all swimming along together. Don’t stop, don’t hesitate, just go with the flow.” Hmm. Keep swimming…good advice.
As to the ministry, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the enormity of Cambodia’s needs. The poverty, the corruption, the inequality, the trafficking…it’s a lot to take in. The country is still rebuilding from the genocide that executed nearly ALL educated Cambodians roughly 40 years ago…teachers, doctors, nurses, engineers, accountants… generations of role models eradicated. But we remember the “How do you eat an elephant?” strategy when everywhere we look believers are doing what they CAN do, fixing what they CAN fix, healing what they CAN heal. We’ve met several couples working as teachers, raising their own families, funding their own missions, and bringing the Gospel (and clothes and school uniforms) by motorcycle to kids in remote villages and/or who forage on garbage dumps. It’s our privilege to work with these missionaries, training their leaders in disciple-making, discovering needs and meeting them, finding where the hand of God is already blessing and lending financial support. We’re just wrapping up two six-week disciple-making courses and will begin another next week, this time translated into Khmer.
In the Dominican Republic, work continues among the displaced Haitians, with regular food distribution (Manna Packs from Handfuls of Hope/Feed My Starving Children) and support of newly planted churches and pastors. To our delight, two friends from Dallas recently wrote they’re involved in preparing the meals, as FMSC has a packing plant in Richardson. Who knows if those very packs were the ones transported by Pastor Jaime and are in the arms of the kids in the pictures? God’s divine protection was evident this week when the truck’s transmission seized up, abruptly halting deliveries…unwelcome and expensive news, indeed…until the mechanic hauled the transmission out of the chassis and discovered a wheel tie rod ready to fail. That wheel coming off the loaded truck at high speed would have been disastrous! Thank you, LORD, for Your divine protection! Saturday Kid’s Club for the Dominicans continues to capacity crowds of eager kids. Pastor Jaime reports that the church established by Pastor Lucien (one of the five Haitian pastors your donations support), has grown so much they’ve had to move to a bigger place…in less than a year from planting!
I’ve written before of a young disciple-making couple we worked with in MaeSot, themselves parents of two young children, who’ve brought 11 young people from a beleaguered village in M_______ to live with them so they can go to school on the Thai side. I begged for pictures this month; at their leaders’ request, the kids’ faces are blanked out. Conscription is in force in M________, and most of these kids are eligible to be drafted. Your donations help supply this group with rice.
One of the children’s rescue homes we support in M_______ is waiting for rain just as anxiously as we are; their well at the new compound, despite being re-dug, has run dry, meaning all washing must be done at the river. When you have 40-plus children, this is no easy proposition, but it has not stopped the pastor from accepting two new girls who have nowhere else to go. What a faithful servant she has been, raising so many children over the years! This is the same pastor whose own health issues are substantial.
In the interior of M__________, cut off from many services by distances, inhospitable terrain, and the war, Indigenous pastors work with small home churches to spread the Gospel and raise up believers for Christ. One of our team is faithful to take medical supplies, food, Bibles, and supplies to these servants, who continue to teach, preach, and baptize, increasing the Kingdom.
Last month, I wrote of the Khmer Bibles we purchased and put into the hands of missionaries with small home churches. Our long-time contact in Chiang Mai, Jim Randall, arranged for us to get Kids of Destiny coloring books in Khmer so that missions teaching kids on Saturdays would have culturally appropriate and engaging materials to use. What a blessing to have so many generous people working together for the Kingdom!
As we head into June and disciple-making training with several new groups, we are so grateful for:
· God’s incredible provision of a convenient, affordable, safe place in which to live, and open doors to minister,
· Amazing missionaries and pastors here who have shortened our learning curve in a new culture and helped us get a running start,
· The continued support…emotional, spiritual, and financial…of friends and family back home who make all these projects possible,
· Peter’s health, energy, and passion to minister,
· The rain…which has finally begun to cool us all down!
Much love...
"For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants." Isaiah 44:3