My last emails have expressed my worries over money.  I have received a couple of replies from those I sent them to.  Thank you so much for your encouraging words and prayers. 

I decided 4 days ago I would fast.  I know it came from God.  In 20 years of being a Christian, I have never fasted and I needed to hear from Jesus.  I needed to know I was on the right track.  I know He has provided all through this ministry, but to have to think about money every day and where it will come has been very stressful to say the least.  I also decided I would read my Bible all day while I am doing this.  What a peace that brings! 

I have heard from the Lord loud and clear, but not what I thought I would hear.  He showed me all that He has started here through this ministry in 1 year.

It is easy for me forget some of these things as i don't really do any of them; I'm just am here to provide a way for the people here to share the word with there own people.  I think that the way we have done things in the past has had bad side effects.  The main one being the people look more to us (foreign missionaries, foreign money) to provided than they do the Lord.  So I try very hard not to be seen doing things; they are all done through Chinda and Chan.  This is what the Lord showed me:

# 1 the English and bible teachings started in the village 9 months ago are going very good.  There are 28 students one amazing teacher.  Chinda found Mr. Sina.  When he started he had 3 cell groups and now that we are paying him he has 9!  Wow!   He turned down a good full time job at Grace School because he would have to give up some of his cell groups.

# 2 The English/Khmer bible study goes on 5 days a week here with Sina leading us and all the employees, including 4 others from outside who come here to study.

# 3 Fish pond filter, air pump and starter pond are completed at Patrick's farm.  We are putting fish in it this week. 

# 4 The cell group we support in the village down the river is growing greatly.  There were 30 children adults standing to the side to listen in on the word of God!

# 5 We are supporting Chandy in Bile school.  Her mother lives next to the family were we have this formerly stated cell group.  This week she told Chandy that she want to be a Christian!  Wow!  Many people are excited and have patiently been praying for this, especially Chandy.  There is also one other lady who is very curious about Jesus.  Chinda and Chan are going down Tuesday to spend the and night there making sure they fully understand the truth of the good news of Christ.  She will be the first adult Christian in that village.  It will a blessing to watch how the Lord works there.

# 6 The ministry is feeding many families from the meat scarps that we would through away.   This is the only meat these families ever get.  Without it their diet would solely consist of rice.

# 7 Starting to work with Samaritans purse is exciting.  They want me to help them set up water filters and air pumps for village so home church pastors will become self supportive.  They have 26 village churches they want to do this year.  Wow!

# 8 The pizza house employs 2 full time and 2 part time Cambodians at a good wage 50 cents an hour.  All other restaurants pay half this.  In other restaurants, they work 7 day a week, 12 hours a day for 50.00 to 70.00 a month, and full time makes around 90.00 and work 10 hrs and have Sunday off

# 9 Partnering with Andy on bacon sales in Phonm Penh will be huge for us.  This will start next week.

A lot has happened in 1 year.  What I got out of all this is that the Lord didn't start all these thing for just 1 year.  He will see them through!!  Thank you Lord!!

Business has picked back up some, and we will be able to pay rent and electric with money from restaurant thank you all for your prayers, please don't stop.

Picture of cell groups 3 different ones and fish filter operating are here

Reflection on my time in Cambodia

While typing this, my friends at the Pizza House restaurant that I've come to know so well are preparing the same meal we had a few days after I first arrived in Cambodia. I now know that it means “cow walking up a mountain.” There are still so many things I don't know about Cambodia though, and two months here could hardly suffice to learn an entirely different group of people, way of life, language, and culture. I really feel like my time here in Kampong Chhnang was more of a blessing to me than the people I came in contact with while here. There is already an established church, although small, in many of the cities of Cambodia. Believers are able to worship freely with no persecution from the government now, which is a tremendous blessing and answer to prayer. A large amount of the population of Cambodia however lives in the countryside and rural areas. The fact remains that about 98% of Cambodia does not believe in Jesus, and there are many who have not even heard His name.

I was able to visit a few of the house churches that meet in these rural settings with my friend Sina and see how God has been moving through this movement. There are some powerful things happening here in the name of Jesus Christ that are bringing people to faith in Him. I heard some of the most powerful and miraculous testimonies in these settings, and this is how the Church in Cambodia needs to grow. The churches that have been established in these city settings need to focus their support and efforts on village missionaries like Sina, that will live like the people, talk the same language, and be the most effective at bringing the Gospel to a nation that is so dark and trapped in spiritual bondage to the enemy. As American believers who grew up in an entirely different setting, we can still come alongside and encourage and train these believers to fulfill this work, and I would love to come back and do just that sometime in the future.

My favorite thing about Cambodia at the beginning of my trip was the people, and that has not changed at all throughout my time here. The overall friendliness of just about everyone I came in contact with was overwhelming, and the relationships that I've been able to start have been a huge blessing to me. The amount of love I felt at a church I have only visited three times here and the prayers they spoke for me I feel could not be matched at churches I have spent years at in the States. I really am going to miss the people I've met here terribly. The question I've heard more than any other from them is when I will come back. I tell them all that I will as soon as I can, and it is my hope that God has the same plan in mind.

Please pray for the business that Mark has begun here, without whom I never would have come to Cambodia in the first place. His vision and heart for these people is just as strong as it was over a year ago when he left America. God has been blessing the Pizza House financially, and the meat packaging is set to begin very soon after I leave. Pray for Ellis and Rachel as they seek to help out in any way they can and have been learning the language and culture at a rapid rate. Pray for the Cambodian Church, that God would raise up national believers and leaders to go to those who have never heard the name of Jesus Christ in Cambodia and plant churches that will grow and multiply. May the name of Jesus be lifted high in this nation! Thank you for keeping up with all of my posts, see you all very soon.

-Brother (Baby) Mark signing off

Last time teaching in Cambodia

Party with the youth group at Pastor Vuthy's church

My best friend in Cambodia - Chan

 

A Day at Angkor Wat

Rachel and Ellis arrived here last Wednesday. The travel seemed to go well for them. They have both spent a lot of time overseas so I think it is a bit easier for them to acclimate. Rachel has been soaking up the language since it's one of her passions and already knows about as much as I do! They gave me some support that they wanted to give me when we were both back in the States which gave me the chance to afford a trip to Angkor Wat! So after they sat in on all of my classes we hopped on a bus heading towards Battambang on Saturday morning to start the adventure. 

On the bus I sat next to a man from Nigeria who teaches English at the university in the city. We talked about a lot of things since it's a five hour bus ride and I found out that he was born a Muslim, then became a Seventh-Day Adventist, but now is more of a universalist. He was convinced that people can be their own judges, they know whether they are good or bad enough to go to Heaven or Hell. He seemed to have respect for Scripture so I asked him about where it said that there is none who is good and what the cut-off was for being a "good enough person for Heaven." That Jesus lived the only perfect life and it is only through him that we can live in Heaven with Our Creator. He changed the subject shortly after that, but I hope that it helped him reconsider some things.

Arriving in Battambang, the buses to Siem Reap were entirely full for the rest of the day but in order to get a full day in of sightseeing at Angkor Wat we had to get there that evening so we piled in a Toyota Camry with six other people and made our way to Siem Reap. Right away we got picked up by a man named Nang who became our tuktuk driver for the next two days of sightseeing. I had really high expectations of what the temples were going to be like since I've wanted to  see them for a long time, and they blew my expectations away. We got up before sunrise to start the tour at the main temple and visited about seven more temples afterward until the early afternoon. It really was amazing what these people were able to accomplish without any kind kind of machines or technology to accomplish the architecture. The level of intricacy in the artwork was mind-boggling as well. 

We did a full loop around the lake on our way back to Kampong Chhnang, and that time I sat next to the main sports writer for the Phnom Penh Post, one of the most reputable news agencies in Cambodia. He grew up in the Brahmin caste in Bangalore, India and we had some good conversation as well. By the time we got back home yesterday it was late and left just enough time to eat and then crash into bed. 

Be praying for my last week here in Cambodia and the start of Ellis and Rachel's time here. They're still trying to figure out what their place is in the ministry here and how best to serve God with their time. Pray for clarity for them and that Mark's ministry would continue to be blessed financially. Thank you and God bless all!

-BM

The back of Angkor Wat after walking through it

Bayon or "the Face Temple"

Rachel and Ellis looking tired at Ta Prohm

They had elephant rides! They cost 15 dollars, but pictures are free ;)

House Church!

This last week has been pretty spectacular. I was able to join some of my students for a youth rally conference that was being held in town all of last week. The conference drew youth from five different provinces in Cambodia, and about 200 students were there worshiping God. The believers here are so passionate and it was an awesome experience to worship Our Creator with them. When my friend Ratanak was helping lead worship with some other students he rushed offstage and grabbed my hand and dragged me up on stage to dance with them for the whole group. Even though the songs are in Khmer, what I can do is sing the Hallelujah choruses and jump and clap my hands, it was a lot of fun. There was a small team visiting from America that were able to spend the whole week with them and then headed up to Angkor Wat. The last night of the conference there was a big bonfire and worship session that lasted for over two hours. It was powerful to be a part of and although I couldn't understand everything, it left me feeling very encouraged and helped me to build some stronger relationships. 

  

Prayer time right before musical worship

The bonfire

This past Sunday I woke up and was out the door before seven on a moto with Sina heading to a village about 25 kilometers from Kampong Chhnang. Sina leads 8 different house churches that are all very young, two of the groups we visited were less than three weeks old. We only visited four different houses that day, but were on the go for about twelve hours. The first group we visited was the oldest and largest with about 25 people in it. They had people who were able to teach and even provided everyone with a small breakfast of bread and rice. 

The next group was much smaller, but I’d been there before. The man who had been completely paralyzed before that Sina and some others had been praying for was there, his name is Taud, but I'm probably spelling it wrong. When I saw him a month ago he still could not walk but had control of his upper body. When I saw him two days ago, there was no sign of sickness left in him at all, he was completely healthy. What I was not expecting was for Sina to say, “Okay Mark, you can preach now.” I should have known beforehand that they would ask me to say something, but I was not expecting to preach for the house churches, even though they were smaller, about 8-10 people. I opened up to Matthew 4, the passage I used at Tree of Life two weeks before and started talking with them about discipleship as my friend Chandy translated. None of the people there were present for the service beforehand so I figured I was in the clear. The same thing happened at the next church we went to, also a similar size. At the last church we prayed for a man with a gigantic boil in the middle of his foot and an old Buddhist woman who could not use her legs. There was a boy there who was mute whose older sister was trying to help him read and sing. The love she had for her brother was one of the more touching things I've seen here so I had to get a picture of that. 

This week Rachel and Ellis are headed to Cambodia, their plane lands in Phnom Penh very late this evening and Mark will be there to pick them up. Pray for their time here and that God can use them in powerful ways as a team for the three months that they will be spending here in Kampong Chhnang. Thanks so much for reading and God bless you, Brother Mark out.

First and largest house church

Second church we went to, the man in the brown shirt is Taud.

The third house church, the small speaker by Sina is how they do musical worship

Sister and brother

 

1 Year Back in Cambodia... W.O.W.

Recap of this Past Year:  

When I first got here I lived in two different cities for three months before Kampong Chhnang. I didn’t get any enthusiasm to do what the Lord sent me to do; business to support missions. I took the Perspectives Course on Global Missions which said to look for a “person of peace” where you do ministry. When I came to Kampong Chhnang, I found that person here.

In October I hired Chinda to help me. She is a very godly young woman, but I was very hesitant about hiring her at first since she is married and we would be working a lot together and sharing a moto. You don’t see couples on motos together unless they are married or engaged. So I was worried about that at first, but it isn’t a problem now. Her husband Chan is working here as well and they both live in this big house with me.

In November I started an English school in a village ten kilometers from here. It is going very well! The Lord provided a very godly teacher to take my place and Mark has been helping teach there once a week every Friday.

In December, Mosaic sent money to buy 125 children Christmas presents at $15 each, what a blessing that was. I just never knew how much work doing something like that took beforehand. Then in January, Pastor Repsold came for six days. We decided at that time to not do fish ponds since bacon has a much better financial profit and will employ many more people than fish ponds. It takes one person to do six fish ponds compared to bacon which will employ between 3-8 people depending on how big it gets.   Bacon ran into some distribution problems, mainly packaging, so I started a pizza restaurant a few months ago as there are no Westerner restaurants here in town.

To say the least it has been quite a year. So many things have happened in a short amount of time. God has opened many doors and I say God because it has all been from Him. 

I am not what you would think of as your typical missionary; more just a lover of Jesus and a business man. Combining the two has had many struggles but many more blessings. There have been some setbacks, but as always the Lord has opened other doors when He closed one.  For example, starting the bacon; that was a big setback, almost 3 months. But because of it I opened a pizza restaurant and it is doing very well! We are averaging $450 a week which covers half of our expenses. That will take some pressure off the bacon sales.

Working with the Cambodians has had its hurdles, but none so high that time has not gotten us over them. Things have settled into a kind of routine which is nice since it has been pretty crazy for the last 6 months. I think everyone is ready for a normal pace and I know it is a relief for me. It won’t last long as I will be traveling to set up bacon sales after the first. Then we will see how busy it is here. Right now mornings are slow, we don’t open until 10:30. School is out for the summer so we don’t have much of a lunch either. But that will give us a lot of time to get the bacon down good when we start which we will be needed. Teaching them how you want things done takes about five times as long as it does someone in the States. Everything is different for them: from keeping things clean to packaging. Trying to explain why you want something the way you want it done can be so different from what they have done forever that they want to go back to their way of doing it. One big thing I still work with is waiting until something is all gone before buying any more. I always try to have two of something so when the first one is gone you can get another before you’re out. They tend to just let both run out; it is getting better but I really have to watch things. The reason for this is they have never had enough money to buy anything extra, most do not have enough to feed their family well. So buying more than you need is out of the question.

Mark Wegner came here about five weeks ago and has three more to go before he goes home, will really miss him when he goes. He has been a tremendous help for me but not in the ways I would have thought. With him being only 22 years old, I had my doubts before he got here, but the Lord knew just who to send. I have been able to bounce things off of him and he has helped me see things in a different light many times. Being by myself for ten months not having any other perspective on things it’s easy to get stuck in one direction. One of the biggest things I have seen is that a lot of problems I have been having are me: forgetting that I came here to do business with them and forgetting that I also need to change the way I do things. This is not the USA, and some things will never work like they do there. Close, but not quite.

Rachel and Ellis arrive on the 30^th, really looking forward to them coming. They will be here for two weeks before Mark leaves. It will let him show them a lot of what has been happening. They will be able to pick up teaching English. Six weeks with Mark is great but another three months will make a world of difference. Pray that the Lord send someone else to fill their place before they leave. 

The house I rented is very big, it has seven bedrooms. I thought at the time that it was way too big but the Lord knew better. We used the downstairs living room for the restaurant and with Chan, Chinda, Mark, myself, and now Rachel and Ellis it is getting smaller. Well that is the short of it! The Lord has blessed this ministry greatly, please continue to pray for it. God Bless all!

-Father Mark

The filter system for a fish pond

Me and Patrick

In Rains Inside in Cambodia

Due for another update!

I remembered my German teacher in high school playing Jeopardy with us to help us learn so I tried that with my students this past week. Seemed to be their favorite game so far, just takes more time to set up than board races. I did assign them homework this week as well but all of them did it to avoid singing the lazy song to the whole class, mission successful!

After teaching with Sina on Friday, we went to a small group leader meeting at a church building out in the country. Only one other person there spoke English, which made it hard to communicate with people there, my Khmer is still very basic, but I did get to help them color stuff for their youth group gathering coming up. You don't have to speak Khmer to color with crayons! We shared dinner together afterward as well which was fantastic.

Church leader meeting

I heard from my pastor on Skype that same morning. I had emailed him regarding a hold that Moody had placed on my account because I hadn't paid them yet for the internship. He told me that the church had picked up the rest of the money that wasn't raised and covered the cost of the three credits. Praise God for His provision in that, and for an awesome family of believers in Spokane!

Saturday morning I set out on Channa's bicycle for Prey Khmer village outside of Kampong Chhnang to spend a couple days with the family that Margaret from Peace Corps has been living with. Mark was very insistent on me spending some amount of time living in some kind of village setting to get more of the “true Cambodian living experience.” Their village is about a 13 kilometer bike ride, which isn't all that far, but Channa's bike had seen better days. I think my favorite part of the weekend may have been a hike we made to a large hill nearby and climbing to the top to see the surrounding country. I do love taking hikes, and haven't gotten to do as much of that as I would like here. 

Me looking mildly dramatic

 

A nice dog in Cambodia! - Patona

The family was very hospitable but devout Buddhists. I woke up the last morning to find two plates of fruit close to my door which I almost began to dig into for breakfast until I found out they were for their ancestors. Before leaving for church Sunday, the mother asked where we were headed and seemed displeased with the answer, saying something I didn't recognize about Jesus in Khmer. I then said “I love Jesus” in very poor Khmer, to which she responded, “Well, Cambodia does not love Jesus.” The sad thing is that she is basically right, with less than 2% of the country claiming any kind of faith in Jesus Christ. Please pray for this nation. I was able to do very little communication with the host family since they spoke no English whatsoever, and I really hope that I did nothing to slander the name of Christ to them since they have such little interaction with people who follow Christ and would base any assumptions they had about Christianity on the way I acted during those two days. It rained basically the whole weekend and our ride to the church was a truck with a cover top with several people piled in back. I began to feel water dripping on my head after climbing inside and looking up saw a tear in the roof. Margaret saw my predicament and said, “Yeah, it even rains inside in Cambodia.” A Filipino pastor named Aaron and his father began the church we visited. They have a main building in downtown Kampong Chhnang but drive out to different areas in the country and worship with people who can't make it downtown.

The leaking truck with my friend Teav

I visited the health clinic in Prey Khmer this morning and was basically just in the way. The biggest function of the building is to serve as a pregnancy center, not quite my place. I spent the majority of the time in the waiting room reading a book while political rallies for the election next weekend were blasting their propaganda on the street outside. Keep praying for God to put the leader that will serve the people of Cambodia the most and pull this country out of the cycle of intense corruption it is caught in. On the way back to the house, Channa's bike finally gave out about a half kilometer from the house, which luckily was right next to the bike repair guy I'd visited before. Dropped off the bike and walked the rest of the way to the house and got to relax a bit before writing this. The church I visited two weeks ago is holding an all-week youth conference that I'll be checking out tomorrow, pray for revival in this country and for the youth in the Cambodian church to be on fire for the Gospel. Read this verse at the end of Philippians since we finished our Bible study of it so I might as well close with it: “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with your Spirit” (Philippians 4:23). 

-BM

Fried Crickets

I meant to get this post up a couple days ago but the modem unexpectedly died again, this time while skyping my sister; not a pleasant experience (sorry Elyse!). The teaching has been going well though, besides the students not always doing their homework. That one has been hard to figure out since they come to the classes out of their own choice in the first place, it's not a required thing. Seeing as how they won't be receiving any kind of grade that sticks to a transcript as well, I had to be more creative with how to punish them in some way. Made up a lazy song, partly, I really can't take much credit for it since it's just the poem “The Lazy Nothing-Doings” by Shel Silverstein put to the tune Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star... or the ABC song... or Baa Baa Black Sheep (take your pick). The words went with the tune well though! Plus Cambodians seem to hate singing in front of their peers so it seems to be effective. One of my Buddhist students expressed her dislike of the Bible to me on Thursday, I don't want to shove it down her throat but don't want to stop reading Scripture in class either because of one student. I'm still going to talk about it daily, but only one verse a day so it's easier for them to swallow and doesn't take up as much class time as before. Please be praying for my students though.

My friend Lai invited me to go with him to Pursat last Thursday as well. It's not too far of a journey, at least on a map. It's probably about the distance of the western suburbs of Chicago to the Wisconsin border, but it takes roughly two and a half hours by moto. I still had a good time though. We visited a pagoda at the base of a large hill named Phnom Puk, gave us a nice view of the country around us. It was nice to see another province as well and get out of Kampong Chhnang for a little while. 

This is what the ascent up the hill looked like

Lai on top of Phnom Puk

The next day I went to teach with Sina again but afterward he wanted to go watch the fishermen by the rice paddies. They all used nets, similar to the ones that were used during Christ's ministry on the Earth in Israel. Made me think of when he called his first disciples, asking them to follow Him so that He could make them fishers of men (Matthew 4:19, Mark 1:17). I had been asked the day earlier by the teacher from Tree of Life if I would preach at his church that Sunday. I had no idea what I was going to talk about, but watching those fishermen and hearing the words of Christ in my head I had my idea. That we are to engage in evangelism as fishers of men in this sea of lost people in Cambodia drowning without Christ and teach them to make their own fishers of men. One of the nice things about having to give a message in church is that there is a translator so you get to think about how to phrase the next sentence while they are talking, super convenient for a first-timer like myself.

After watching the fishermen in the rice paddies though, we were about to head back when we started talking to a seller. She had a huge pile of changrah, or fried crickets on her table. I'd been asked a few times in the past if I wanted to try them but had found ways of dodging it until then, and just figured I better bite the bullet (or cricket). I was surprised by their taste though, more like salty Cheetos without the fake cheese on them than anything else. I can check intentionally eating insects off my list of things to do now!

You're supposed to buy them by the canfull

Please be praying for Chan and Chinda as the weeks wind down before she has her first baby. I visited a friend's wife in the hospital yesterday who had just given birth to a baby girl. Mark said the women here are generally hospitalized for a week or two after giving birth. She said she was very cold and they kept piling blankets on top of her, so prayers for her recovery and the health of her newborn would be good. Also for the business that Mark is running, God has been giving it a lot of success and it brought in almost 500 dollars in its fourth week which is truly His doing. I read a verse this morning that I wanted to share as well, reminded me of a song that I like a lot by Josh Garrels called “Rise” and I wouldn't be surprised if he took some inspiration from it. It's from Micah 7:7-8, which says: “But as for me, I will watch expectantly for the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation. My God will hear me. Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy. Though I fall I will rise; though I dwell in darkness, the Lord is a light for me.” 

Thought I would include the song in a link too if you wanted to listen to it, forgot I could do that :P

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOEU3xt29Lk 

-BM