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Dear CCAM Partners and Friends,

This past week, the country of Cambodia celebrated Khmer New Year.  All of our students and staff, except for Gioia and Noren, went to visit relatives.  Therefore, the two of us were free to join with Sarath and Bopha for an evangelistic outreach in Kratie province.

For most of the day Friday, we traveled by car....first on smooth national roads….later along increasingly narrow, dusty, and bumpy tracks into the jungle, sometimes with steep drops into ditches on both sides!  Praise the Lord that Sarath is a very skillful and careful driver!

Whenever we venture into the provinces, we witness once again the difficult existence of all the poor families living in thatched huts along the way.  This time, we stopped at one of those thatched huts for lunch!  Sarath's father and his second wife live there in Kompong Cham province, and many family members were visiting them that day for the holidays.  So far, there are no Christians in their community, since they remain very resistant to the Gospel message.  Please pray that God will soften their hearts.

Bopha cooked lunch for everyone over a wood fire under their thatched house on stilts!  We all ate together under the house, seated on two kreh (wood platforms used for sitting or sleeping), while broods of chickens and a couple of puppies scurried about on the dirt floor beneath us, hoping that we would drop some scraps for them.

After lunch, we bid them farewell and continued on our journey, slowly winding through the jungle and finally arriving by 3 pm at the house of Sarath's mother in Kratie province.  Her wooden house was larger and set on higher stilts.  Many members of her family were beginning to arrive, gathering together under the house.

A few of the village children came to check out the big van that they had just seen driving through the center of the village.  We sent them back to call all the kids they could find to come hear stories, sing songs, play games, and receive gifts!  Within 15 minutes, children started streaming out of the jungle, hurrying to our location!  Some were running, some were riding bicycles, and a few were being transported on motorcycles by adult members of their family.  Many of the adults stayed to enjoy the ensuing program.

First, Noren welcomed everyone and asked the children to sit all together on a plastic tarp spread on the ground in the shade of the house.  Then, she shared her life story about being an orphan as a young child, about barely surviving the Khmer Rouge regime as an adult, about becoming a refugee to the U.S., and about eventually coming back to Cambodia as a missionary with her ministry partner Neakru Awmnaw (Teacher Gioia).  Interwoven throughout this story was her testimony about when she first heard about Jesus Christ, about how she eventually learned to trust Him to save her from difficulties, and about why she finally truly believed in Him as her only God and Savior!

After her testimony, Noren formally introduced Gioia as her ministry partner and as the author of the book that she held up for them to see:  "A Hole of His Own"!  Noren told them that we had first heard this true story from our CCAMS students and that Gioia had decided to publish the story in a book to distribute to Cambodian children everywhere, showing how the Word of God teaches people to care about and help one another unselfishly.  Then Noren read the theme verse (Philippians 2:4) and continued by reading the story to them, with Bopha's daughter Hannah turning the pages of another copy of the book to show everyone the pictures.

Noren ended her presentation by comparing the unselfish sacrifice of the children in the story to the infinitely more costly and difficult sacrifice of Jesus Christ as described in the Bible, since He paid for the sins of the whole world by His death on the cross.  Then Noren said that everyone needing God’s forgiveness could receive His free gift of salvation through Jesus Christ, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, and therefore the one true God!

Next, Bopha and her nephew, who work with World Relief, taught the kids some Christian songs and played a few fun games.  Then they distributed gifts of toys to them and helped us organize the children into family groups, so that we could give one copy of our book to the oldest child who could read in each family represented.

After receiving their books, many of the children gathered around Gioia, thanking her with a polite sawmpeah (hand gesture like praying).  Some of them pointed to her photo in the back of their book and then pointed to her, giggling and whispering to one another her Khmer name, “Neakru Awmnaw.”

In turn, Gioia thanked them for coming and encouraged them to continue learning at school, and also to learn about the Word of God from Christians living in their area.  Later we discovered that there are no Christians living in their area!  However, Sarath reported that some American missionaries had recently begun visiting that village once in a while.

After giving books to the children, we passed out Christian tracts to the adults.  I saw some of the recipients read the tract and then carefully put it in their pocket.  Others looked at it briefly and laid it aside or let it drop to the ground.  At that point, a child would invariably come to pick it up!  Some of those children read the tracts for their relatives who could not read!

One 12-year-old girl named Sophea came to sit next to Gioia and proceeded to read the whole book for her mother and siblings sitting nearby.  Then she read the book again just for Gioia, delivering the dialog with great emotion!  After that, she took out a tract that she must have picked up and stored between the last page and the back cover of the book.  Carefully unfolding it, she proceeded to read the entire tract to Gioia, also in the hearing of her mother.

After reading it, Sophea just as carefully folded it back up and restored it to the safe place at the back of her book, apparently keeping it to be ready to read again in the future.  Then she asked Gioia for another plastic bag to protect her book, because she had misplaced the original one.

One by one, all of the children and their relatives began to depart for home.  We waved good-bye to Sophea as she walked into the jungle with her family, each of the siblings carrying a box of toys, and Sophea also transporting her precious book in the plastic bag!

Later, Sarath reported to us that his mother had, for the very first time, shown great interest in discussing this “new religion” with him!  Please pray that God will cause the spiritual seeds being planted in this community, by us and by others, to grow into a vibrant new church!

Partners together with God and with you,
Gioia and Noren
1 Corinthians 3:6-9

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