Sunday, May 29, 2011
May 28 - neck update, prayers appreciated
Monday, May 23, 2011
Personal prayer request - for God's healing
Photos from Blue Tent 2011
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| Blue Tent Community - May 20, 2011 |
Pics of our outreach to the oudong community..many of the volunteer youth were moved by the story of this communities eviction and then the reality of how they are living today...the community were gracious hosts to us and a lot of great connections were made and we were able to share how God loves them and has a special place for them...the last shall be first in the Kingdom of God
What a blessed day serving with 60 youth today and engaging with the beautiful people of Oudong village.
It was my best birthday ever being able to serve the Lord in Cambodia.
God bless
Kevin
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
God hears the cries of the poor
I just want to thank everyone who was moved to provide this community with Prayer and funding for their tarps. I look forward to sharing more about our time out there this saturday with the community and our continued relationship with them.
I do have a few prayer requests and they are that our time out there will not be focused on just the task at hand but in showing God's love to the community by our interactions while we are there.
I pray for good weather ..so we can install as many tarps as needed before the rainy season really begins.
Leakhena and I are in discerning prayer about how God is leading us to serve particularly this community..we will be married on january 28th and are praying about moving in to this community and sharing a Godly relationship with those there. So please pray for our discernment time that God makes it very clear how this is to be.
I want to thank everyone again for their support in expanding the Kingdom of God here in Cambodia
Som Preah En Pro Tean Poh( May God bless you)
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Urgent request - May 14, 2011 - Blue Tent Community Project
Dear friends
An urgent matter has come up. In January of 2009 I was onsite in Cambodia when government forces and 400 hired workers descended on Dey Krahorm a community in Phnom Penh Cambodia. They forcibly evicted all the families from their own land claiming they had no title to this land and sold the rights to a development company called 7NG.
It was the most devastating experience of my life and paled in comparison to the people that were affected . God really used this moment to confirm my calling to Cambodia and the people of Dey Krahorm.
The development company moved the residents 20km west of the city and 400 of the families were immediately told they were not even welcome on that site either.So a year later they were moved again 38km north of the city to an empty field . I have visited this site many times and have been getting to know the community.A flood in my own place from a strong rain turned my attention to the people of this village and put a request out to my supporters for help in financing for blue tarps for this communities roofs before the rainy season descends .
In my request the information I gave was not complete ...I was told their was 70 homes in this community but after taking a count and seeing the condition of the roofs(pictures attached) there are actually 97 homes and the tarps are 13.50 not 12 dollars. I have mobilised a small force of 50 people consisting of youth groups ,Christian youth leaders a Cambodian English class(non-Christian) and another class from a local Christian school to come help this community put the tarps on. There is a cost involved in transporting some of these groups and providing water and some food for the long hot day of work.
I have had a great response from my supporters and am now only short the extended costs which amount to appox 450 dollars.I pray there will be enough funding so I do not not have to decide which families receive a tarp and which families will go without.
This is an urgent request as the outreach is next saturday and the people are mobilised to help.
For those who would like to contribute from afar their is a paypal link on my blog at
http://kevinincambodia.blogspot.com/
Here’s a link to photos, some taken as recently as within the last week:
Click on the link below to make an online donation to this effort thru PayPal:
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=YBL2NDVJH5NEJ
Many thanks in advance for considering this urgent request.
God bless.
Kevin
Friday, May 6, 2011
Phnom Braset Rock Quarry
It was extremely hot travelling 30km from Phnom Penh to the Phnom Braset rock quarry. I was travelling with another ministry group called rock foundation ( rockfoundationcambodia.webs.com ) a small ministry reaching out to this community of squatters living and working in the quarry.
This community barely eeks out an existence by working tirelessly day in and day out breaking rocks apart with primitive tools . The community works as a team some members breaking apart the large boulders by setting fires with rubber tires under them and then heating them to a point that they can break by sledgehammering them....someone else takes these rocks and smashes them into pieces bigger than your fist....the women in the community strap a bare wooden pole over there shoulders with two baskets filled with these rocks and brings them to another area...they then take a small sledge and ..place a piece of rubber around the rock and pound it into gravel size pieces...for a full truckload they get 12 dollars...a full truckload of gravel beat from the side of the mountain by hand. This would be barely enough to feed themselves and on they go the next day and the next and the next with no end in site but survival.
This is a community without electricity,no fresh water or well.
Brett Hedlin and his Cambodian wife Sokeun have been travelling out here once a week on fridays to spend time with the community and share God's love with them.They have hooked up with some other ministries and now provide some bible studies with the kids and worship.They have fellowship together sharing soup and rice..breaking bread together...the ministry has bought some land nearby to build a team centre and are trying to get some funding together for a cart you put behind a moto which acts as sort of taxi to bring the children to the local church.
Today Bret with his ingenuity installed a water filter that uses sand rock and then a blacklight to kill impurities it can clean 60 gallons a minute ...without electricity he installed a car battery that they will recharge when necessary.
Bret and his team will also help them with building a proper well and provides some health care when funds are available.
It was great to witness the love that this community had for the people God sent to serve them..it wasn't just witnessing with my eyes but by being there and sharing in their life and community I was instantly a part of their community ..a community open and warm to the love that we share with them.
It was a blessing to be there today and I look forward to many other opportunities as they are very close to another community God has put on my heart.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
April 2011 Update - Shelter from the Rain
Hello to my mission partners
As you know I was in Bangkok for most of April receiving treatment for my shoulder and didn't return until the 22nd. I am healing slowly but still in major pain as there was two issues with my arm and I have to go back to see the doctors in Bangkok on the 20th of May (my birthday) for probably another surgery on the nerves in my arm.Pray I receive healing for my birthday this year.
This month I would like to share a moment I experienced with my fiancee Leakhena (with her permission of course) and also an opportunity for you to help in a tangible way a slum re-location site this month.
I returned on the friday night from Bangkok and was actually moving into a new place. Leakhena's family moved me well I was away for treatment into a smaller one room place which is located inside a complex of buildings which live most of her extended family from her Grandmother to numerous uncles ,aunts and an immeasurable amount of young cousins.Only one Aunt speaks a little bit of English and so this place will be helpful for my language study .
On saturday night although we are a month away from the rainy season it rained extremely hard. This was my second night there and the sound of the rain on the tin roof was deafening it sounded like hail the size of golf balls falling on the roof. at first I was upset at the sound as I just wanted to sleep and it was keeping me awake. Then I noticed there was water coming into my room from two different corners it created two puddles which didnt quite join but took up almost half of my room. I was frustrated and thinking oh no it isn't even rainy season yet and I will be mopping this up for the next 4 months.Then I felt awful as I realized that I had a tin roof unlike most of the people I encounter in the re-location sites. I had a floor that was tile and easy to clean and not a mud floor. I had a mop a tool to make this job extremely easy. I felt extremely blessed and prayed for my friends that do not have that luxury.
As I shared with Leakhena the next day she shared this with me.......
" when I was a young child we lived in a small place and the roof was made of coconut palm leaves ...there were holes in the roof and the water would come through when it rained and we would have to move around in the night to find the driest spot." Then the tears started flowing down her face as they did mine and she shared this.." I always remember one night it was raining so hard and the water was coming in everywhere..(Leakhena has three younger sisters and a brother) my mother and father only had one raincoat and they huddled all us kids together and all night they stood in the mud and the rain pouring through our small hut and held the raincoat over us to try to keep us dry.
As we waited until our tears stopped I was happy I was sharing this moment with Leakhena......you see Leakhena was not crying about the situation or the poverty she lived in . She was crying because she realized the sacrificial love her parents had for her and her siblings. It was this act of love that was being recognized for what it was. Her father passed away about 8 years ago and this is a memory of His love to her and her brothers and sisters.
This moment will never be forgotten because it was based in Love and was Love.
I was home for Easter Sunday and couldn't help but be moved by the sacrificial Love that our King died for us.
This is why I am here to share with people the sacrificial love that God has for them. That He would give up His only begotten son while we were still sinners. Please pray for me that I will be able to share His love sacrificially with the people of Cambodia and that I act in Love in all my encounters and when asked why I do it I can explain that it was already done for me.
There are still many people in Cambodia especially in the re-location sites that do not have adequate roofing for the rainy season which starts within the month.One site in particular at the bottom of Audong mountain is in dire need....these people have been evicted twice in the last two years and their huts are similar to the worst ones at Andong village(picture attached)before Pastor Abraham along with some churches have been putting tin roofs on. The people here were evicted from Dey Krahorm and then evicted from that re-location site as they were deemed to have no claim to property..these people are extremely poor and cannot fix their huts in time for this season.
Their are 70 huts which all house families that need a blue tarp for this next rainy season....the large tarps are $12 each and comes to a total of $ 840 dollars. I have never requested money in my newsletter and don't even know if it's appropriate but I do know God let the flooding of my place to steer my focus to where it should be ..on those with less.
I will be going out to the village on Monday and will be taking video and talking with my Cambodian friends who are committed to helping this community. I will post the video after I have edited it but the people here need your help today before the rainy season begins. A youth leader from Georgetown,Ontario LD McKenzie has helped me start a blog where I will be posting my future newsletters and thoughts..it is located at
http://kevinincambodia.blogspot.com/
Their is a link to a paypal account for donations if you feel moved in that direction. Please contact me at
kknight45@hotmail.com if you would like another way to donate.
God bless
Kevin
About Kevin - Kevin's Testimony
You don't need to spend much time with Kevin before you discover that his heart has been softened by the impact of God's grace upon his life. In fact, many of his homeless and addicted neighbors in the Downtown Eastside affectionately refer to him as "the weeping preacher".
The first time Kevin attended Tenth Oct 7th 2007, he sat timidly like most newcomers in the back row of the pews . That Sunday a missionary Craig Greenfield with Servants To Asia's Urban Poor (SERVANTS) was the guest speaker. He shared about the need for more missionaries amongst Cambodia's urban poor living in slums. Tears streamed from Kevin's eyes as he sensed Jesus say, "I'm calling you to this."
Soon after this, Kevin became actively involved in both the mission life here at Tenth and with SERVANTS. He gained missiological and theological training through courses offered at Tenth and through an eight-month internship with SERVANTS.
In July of 2010, Kevin will be moving to Cambodia as a missionary with SERVANTS living amongst the urban poor. Already, Kevin has become a wonderful link between Tenth and our ministry partners in Cambodia. We look forward to seeing how this partnership continues to deepen over the coming years. Kevin recently returned from his second trip to Cambodia in which he co-led the latest Tenth missions trip and spent more time with the SERVANTS Cambodia team. During his first trip he spent three months living with a Cambodian host family in a Phnom Penh shantytown and ministering alongside the SERVANTS Cambodia team.
Even though Kevin has ultimately felt God calling him to Cambodia, he's learned to see everywhere as a mission field. So for the past year Kevin has been serving as a full-time missionary with the SERVANTS Vancouver team, living and ministering in the Downtown Eastside (DTES). Due to the poverty of loneliness that is rampant throughout the DTES, their main form of ministry has been offering hospitality to those neighbors that are not normally the recipients of welcome. The community tries to see through God's eyes and scripture that is held dear amongst them is Ezekiel 37 Dry Bones " So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet-a vast army. "
Every evening neighbors join Kevin and the SERVANTS Vancouver team at the dinner table. They gather together as family. Many miracles have occurred at the table as they watch the armour of the street melt in the presence of God's love. Another crucial ministry of hospitality is what Kevin calls Prehab. Prehab involves offering a bed and the 24/7 support of a Christian community to those attempting to remain clean and sober while they wait to be granted entry into rehabilitation programs. By God's grace numerous neighbors going through Prehab have come to accept Christ and live out God's purpose and plan for their lives.
As Tenth church let us encourage Kevin as he prepares with cultural and language study and continues his ministry in the DTES until his departure to Cambodia in July 2010.
Prayer Points:
For God to continue nurturing amongst our church family at Tenth a zeal for missions locally, with our ministry partners in Cambodia, and around the world.
Hudson Taylor once said, "God's work, done in God's way, never lacks God's supply." Pray for the Lord to provide for all of Kevin's financial and prayer support needs as he seeks to carry out God's work for him here in Vancouver and in Cambodia.