Dear Friends and Family,
Hello from Cambodia! I hope and pray this finds you all doing well!
This past year it has seemed like every other week I am on the road somewhere. This past week I returned from a trip to the country of Laos. It is also considered part of South-East Asia, but is a landlocked mountainous country located to the north of Cambodia and Thailand. It also has a pretty strict communist government, so the church is pretty limited as to what they can actually do. I was there shooting a video focusing on our compassion work with children in some of the remote areas of the country.
Asia’s Little Ones helps to fund and coordinate children’s ministry throughout the Asia-Pacific region for the Assemblies of God World Missions (they helped with the orphanage we used to run in north-eastern Cambodia), and they asked me to help them produce a video and DVD to help raise awareness and funding for projects in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar. Within the next year, one of our other funding agencies for these ministries, Mission of Mercy, is going to stop funding, so Asia’s Little Ones is trying to increase their support to pick up the slack. In addition to a two minute overview of Asia’s Little Ones work here, the DVD will also contain detailed project tours from Cambodia, Thailand and Laos. (You can find the two minute overview posted on our website for viewing, but the three tours will only be available on the DVD(they are each between 13 and 20 minutes long, so they are too large to post on the website)).
But visiting Laos was almost like taking a time machine back to when we first arrived in Cambodia. The level of development, what is and isn’t available, access to information, and more are very similar to Cambodia in the early 1990’s. It helps me realize again just how far Cambodia has come in a short time. In some ways it made me miss the “old days”. But like most things of that sort, it wasn’t so much the conditions or time that I missed, but rather some of the relationships that we had at the time. Back then, when there were very few missionaries or foreigners of any kind in Cambodia, we all knew each other and had close friendships and partnerships with each other; in those days it was rare to see a foreigner that you didn’t know. Now, Cambodia has MANY foreign workers, and missionaries from many different organizations and agencies, and we are constantly meeting new people for the first time.
Of course this article started out talking about how I had once again been on the road for some project. The good news is that I think that is the last trip I have scheduled until we leave for our deputation cycle in June (at least the last trip outside of the Cambodia). It is good to be home again. Although there are lots new people here, there are also some real long term relationships that we have had with people here for more than a decade, with both foreign missionaries and with Cambodians.
In January I was able to attend the World Missions Summit in the USA, an event designed to expose college students from across the country to the needs and opportunities in foreign missions and to challenge them to ask God what part He had for them to play in fulfilling the great commission. The event went much better than I expected, with more than 3500 students attending and more than 700 making commitments to do short term missions assignments overseas during their college years.
But that was in many ways just the start of a process. I am still regularly involved in helping these students see the opportunities and get a feel for missions work. As a part of that, I will be hosting an online chat with college students interested in missions work this coming week. On Tuesday evening, Feb. 28th, at 10:00 PM central time, I will be on live answering questions and chatting with these students about missions, media in missions, Cambodia, or ministry and anything else they might ask. Please pray that God would speak to these students about giving a year to minister on the mission field. If you would like to check out the chat, you can find it at www.giveayear.com, and click on the chat-room link.
This coming week we will be having a board meeting for the Cambodia Cassette Bible Institute (CCBI). That’s not unusual, but this meeting will be a bit different than most of them. First, one of our major partners from Sweden will be at the meeting. CCBI is a partner with the International Cassette Bible Institute, and their international representative will be here. He comes about once a year, and it is always a good time together. But the real difference in this meeting is that I need to announce that I will be stepping down as chairman of the board, at least temporarily. Because we leave for deputation in June, a new chairman will need to be chosen. This meeting I will make the announcement, and the next meeting we will have to make our choice. The board is made up of many good people, but finding the right one to be the leader who moves the project forward could be difficult. Please pray with us that we would be led by the Holy Spirit to select God’s choice for the position.
It is hard for me to believe that four months from today I will most likely be somewhere in the USA visiting churches! Our deputation cycle stats the end of June, and last for approximately one year. During that time we will be raising our support for the next four years here in Cambodia. We do that by visiting churches across the country (I will speak at between 150 and 250 churches during that year) and sharing about Cambodia and our ministry.
This can be a stressful time, because we have a set budget we will have to raise before we are allowed to return to Cambodia. Please pray with us as we make final preparations for this time that God would direct us to the right places and move on the hearts of His people to supply our need quickly. Also, you can help shorten the time we are in the States by considering an increase in your monthly support of our ministry. If everyone who currently supports us increased their monthly support by just $10 we would be about halfway finished with what we need to raise! Please pray and ask God what part He would have you play in getting us back to the field quickly!
We are also still finalizing our housing for the first few months we are back in the States, and we are still looking for a reliable car. Pray that God would direct us in these plans as well.
Besides all the preparations we are making for deputation, we are at the same time trying to finish a number of projects here in Cambodia as well. Please pray with us that we would be able to get everything finished in a timely manner.