“I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” ~Philippians 1:3-6
This week we wanted to share 3 quick stories that sums up our last few weeks quite well.
1) We have come to learn that many of the Vietnamese children in Cambodia either don’t go to school or start school later than they should. Many also do not get the needed support outside of school so they end up failing or quitting school when young. One of the current things our ministry does is offer math tutoring. Recently I, Dave, was watching Teacher Meng ask a student to answer 7 x 100. Meng kept saying “7×100 equals what?” and the young boy keep saying “I don’t know” over and over. So Meng then asked him, “if one piece of candy is $100 how much do 7 pieces cost?”. The boy right away yelled $700. I got a big laugh out of this as I saw how happy the boy was to answer the question. This reminded me that children have so much potential, but they just need someone to patiently teach them.
2) We recently started teaching guitar to about 7 teens who want to learn guitar so they can help lead worship. It started with just two teens who wanted to learn and after 2 weeks it grew to 7. This is amazing! These teen boys are so dedicated that they come almost every day to learn and often stay behind after tutoring to learn more. After a few short weeks they have learned a variety of chords and can now slowly strum their way through songs such as “Hosanna” and “Every Move I Make”. Today many of them proclaimed that their fingers have finally stopped hurting from pushing down on the strings. Hooray!!!
3) We want to also tell you about one boy named Tín. Tín always comes up to us and wants to hangout with us telling us about random things that he did. Unfortunately many of the times he is also telling us about a new scrape or cut he got since he last saw us. Joyce has put many bandaids on Tín’s foot over these past weeks. Like many of the children, his family lives day to day on what they make. His parents work collecting cans, bottles and scrap metal to sell in order to make money for their family. Despite this not having much himself, one day he gave our youngest son Josiah a lollipop. This may not seem like much but it amazed us to see how someone with so little can have such a generous heart towards someone he didn’t really know. Tín doesn’t speak any English and our son doesn’t speak Khmer or Vietnamese but they still managed to play together that day. That was enough for Tín to share his precious candy with Josiah. Now that is a beautiful picture of the love of Jesus put into action.
Please continue to pray for all the children and teens who are a part of our ministry. Pray for Tín as he recently had Dengue. This unfortunately is very common with the kids we work with. Pray as well for our team as we continue to re-evaluate our programs and plan for the coming year. Pray for the adults in our church community that they will be able to come out more consistently to Bible Studies and Sunday Worship.
Blessings,
Dave, Joyce, Jadon, Josiah and Elisabeth
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